Starre Julia Vartan

Loved writing this piece for National Geographic, which brings together three areas of flexibility (which I argue is an unsung strength) in the female body: bendiness, metabolic, and life-span flexibilities.

We all know that generally female bodies are more stretchy, and I detail a bit about why that is, but my favorite section might be on metabolic flexibility, which is a true superpower, preventing illness and disease even as female bodies carry more fat (which we can then use to power endurance work!).

Lastly, the overlooked flexibility — the incredible changes the female body can go through in a lifetime, from menarche to menopause, a monthly cycle of creating a heroine egg for possible fertilization AND a uterus lining growing and shedding and healing the uterus, and of course the incredible change the female body goes through during pregnancy and postpartum, as well as breast feeding! Male bodies just don’t do any of these things, remaining much more static over time and it’s something we don’t generally acknowledge — the complexity and demand on the body that those changes demand.

And WOW do I LOVE the image my editor chose to accompany the story, by famed photographer Paul Nicklen (worth a follow over on Insta!).

Here’s the Lead to the story:

On the slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro, the air thinned to a whisper. Deborah Clegg, a metabolic physiologist with a newfound appreciation for high places, found herself unfazed by the altitude. Her stride was steady, her energy unflagging. Clegg’s climbing partner, Biff Palmer—an accomplished nephrologist and mountaineer who had summited Everest and six of the world’s tallest peaks—found bagging Kilimanjaro more challenging.

Following the Kilamanjaro climb in 2013, they continued scaling heights together, and they noticed a pattern. Mountain after mountain, Clegg consistently outperformed Palmer—not through bravado or better conditioning, they observed, but something deeper. Another factor was at play. Their conversations turned from competition to curiosity: why did her body seem so well adapted to the low-oxygen air and long exertion?

Back in the lab, they set out to answer that question.