Dr Stacy Sims: The 5 supps women should take
Unfiltered met with leading exercise physiologist and women’s health expert Dr Stacy Sims to discover her science-backed advice and insight on how women can better train, eat, recover and life to perform at their best.
This transcript on the best supplements for women has been taken from our video interview with Dr Stacy Sims. It has been edited for clarity and brevity. You can watch the full video interview here.
What are the most important supplements for women?
I always put creatine first, because it’s so essential. For health, and then also for some exercise performance benefits.
For iron, I always talk about the fact that women are often on the low end of normal and so they’re never actually going to get help from a professional. So women can look at cycling their iron intake according to the menstrual cycle: so low hormone phase, every other day first thing in morning. We have to look strategically at how we supplement and I don’t want women to just blanket supplement because too much iron also looks like or has the same symptoms as being anaemic.
I often recommend certain nootropics. I tell women who are premenopausal to use rhodiola. Rhodiola is a really good way to counter cortisol in high-stress situations and allow you to get into more parasympathetic activation for sleep.
And then for women who are perimenopause to post-menopause, I talk about ashwaganda because it’s just a stronger adaptogen that works on so many different layers of stress.