Dr. Susan Kleiner, PhD, a clinical sports nutritionist who will be attending the Sports & Active Nutrition Summit in San Diego in mid-February, said she has seen massive changes since trying to make a name for herself as a young academic by doing studying competitive bodybuilders. Back then, prior to the founding of the International Society of Sports Nutrition, which she co-founded, almost all science was done by men to men. Those results were then applied to women with sometimes questionable scientific justification, Kleiner said.
After a long expected time
But that picture was finally beginning to change for the better, she said.
“I can look over the horizon and times change,” Kleiner told NutraIngredients-USA. “Overall, there is a glimmer of hope that we will start collecting more data on women.”
Kleiner said there is a valid reason why the focus has been so clearly on men in the past. While this decision likely had some gender bias (men are more reliable, less “moody”, etc.), there was also a functional reason. It cannot be denied that it is more complicated, difficult, and expensive to include women in a study or to study only women than to study only men.
“This bias persists because it really is a little more complicated to conduct studies on women. For example, you cannot examine women with pharmaceutical birth control because you then change the natural hormone balance, ”said Kleiner.
“Then you have to rely on the natural cycle of every single woman. You have to arrange your data collection based on these cycles, which can make it more expensive, ”she added.
Taking off the corset of nutritional science
But beyond the functional aspects, perhaps there was a remnant of Victorian sexual repression. Somehow, after the relatively unrestrained Middle Ages, when the bodily functions of both sexes were part of everyday life, reproduction was clouded in mystery and shame, and this, strangely enough, also distorted the view of some scientists. That is a way of thinking that also needs to be changed, said Kleiner.
“Now we can finally talk openly about the menstrual cycle. It was only because of Lucille Ball that they could even say the word ‘pregnancy’ on TV, ”said Kleiner.
A question of scientific sloppiness
A core topic that Kleiner has spoken about many times is that scientifically it’s just sloppy to assume that whatever works well to fuel a male athlete is fine for a female, with smaller servings. There is no data to support this view, she said.
“It wasn’t long ago that Dr. Bernadette Healy, MD, was named NIH’s first female director and launched the women’s health initiative, ”said Kleiner. (Healy was appointed by Pres. HW Bush in 1991.)
“We had no data on women in clinical feeding settings. Everything was done on men and extracted on women, ”said Kleiner.
Kleiner said that while data on women piles up, there is still a wealth of research to be explored. For example, the response to inflammation changes within the menstrual cycle. What could be the implications for specific exercise and diet recommendations? The frequency with which women experience cruciate ligament ruptures differs from men, which could have to do with the relative angles of the hips and knees between the sexes and could also affect their recovery. And Kleiner said the question of whether women’s experiences with recovering from head injuries are different from men’s and what can be done about it remains to be clarified.
Panel participants
Dr. It gets smaller during NutraIngredients-USA Sport & Active Nutrition Summit 2022which returns this year as a personal event. The event, held in partnership with the Sports Nutrition Committee of the American Herbal Products Association (AHPA), is scheduled for February 14-16 at the Hyatt Regency Resort on San Diego’s beautiful Mission Bay. This unique event brings together academic researchers with formulators, brand managers and marketers to provide a complete picture of how to be successful in this rapidly evolving field.
Dr. Kleiner is the owner of High Performance Nutrition LLC and author of The New Power Eating.
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