In this episode, we delve into the topic of women's health and the unique challenges they face. We explore various aspects of women's health, including hormones, lifestyle changes, and practical tips for improving overall well-being. Our guest shares valuable insights on the importance of lifting weights and consuming enough protein for optimal health. We also discuss the use of hormone replacement therapy, exploring both its potential risks and benefits. Additionally, we touch upon the impact of endocrine-disrupting chemicals and the use of oral contraceptives.
Throughout the episode, we explore the long-term effects of synthetic hormones and stress the significance of informed consent when choosing contraception. We provide practical advice for maintaining hormonal health, such as adopting a real food diet, staying physically active, prioritizing sleep, managing stress, and finding joy in life. Our guest emphasizes the importance of women asserting themselves and learning to say no to things that no longer serve them. Lastly, we encourage listeners to find healthcare practitioners who are open to having honest conversations about hormone replacement therapy.
[00:00:08]
Barry Luijbregts:
Hey. And welcome to another episode of the Improving Barry podcast. I know it's been a while. Right? I've been busy Building Podhome .fm, which is a podcast hosting platform with intelligent features. But now I do have a new episode, and that is with Cynthia Thurlow. And in this episode, we talk about women's health in particular and what the particular challenges are that they deal with. We touch on lots of topics including hormones, the pill, lifestyle changes and some practical tips that women and also men can use to improve their health. Now this might be the last episode of improving Barry that I'll be publishing for a while.
And I want to thank you for your support and for learning with me about health and wellness. It's been quite a journey. And throughout my episodes here, I've learned so much from all My incredible guests, I'd encourage you to go back and listen to other episodes of improving Barry as well as there is so much to learn. Now without further ado, here is Cynthia.
[00:01:19] Cynthia Thurlow:
Thank you very much for taking the time, to talk with me today. We've been trying to meet up for a while, and you're very busy as you are now very popular as well. And that's very good on you, so thank you. Well, no. No. I I always honor the opportunity to to connect with people, especially, you know, to me, I think it's important to not Being in an echo chamber, it'd be very easy to say I'm only getting to deal with podcasts that are female centric, and I've come to find out that Sometimes the the best feedback that we get, in my business is from podcasts where it may be not female centric, and people are like, my wife, my My best friend needs this information, and so, we try to we try to honor all the requests, but sometimes it takes a little bit of time to to fit them in this schedule. So thanks for your patience.
[00:02:04] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah. That's totally fine. And I really, respect that you're doing that and to get that information out there because it's really necessary, As we've just, spoke about offline. So yeah. Like I talked about, the health information out there, even the alternative Health information that does not come from, traditional, medicine is very much focused on men and on males. Like, most of the studies are done on males. Most of the information out there is generic, but for males. So women are very different. Right? That's my assumption, at least.
[00:02:37] Cynthia Thurlow:
Perhaps we can start with what actually is the big difference between men and women when it comes to health? What are the big differences there? Yeah. And you bring up such a good point. There really is a lack of research and focus on women, and I suspect it has a great deal to do with the fact that women have menstrual cycles or at least For a good portion of their lives, they have a menstrual cycle, and it it makes it more challenging for researchers to account for that. So it makes us perhaps less attractive. But when I start thinking about the the key differences, I think about the physiology piece. So, you know, down to a cellular level, men and women are designed to procreate, but women are designed to carry life. And so that menstrual cycle and the fluctuations in sex hormones and The responses that a woman goes through throughout a 28, 30 day cycle is quite substantial and significant.
I think there's also, Helping women understand, and men for that matter, that women's bodies tend to be more sensitive to stress. Though the stress could come from just, hard physical activity. You know, a lot of female athletes will suppress their menstrual cycle. I think about, chronic Stress, you know, we're just coming out of 3 years of a pandemic, and I think for a lot of people, they've had more stress and not less. So really focusing in on that fertility piece is one that I think really differentiate men and women pretty substantially.
Right. So think, you know Yeah. Yeah. Go ahead. Yeah. Yeah. No. No. And and I think, you know, it goes without saying when we're we're looking at athletics that there are key differences and you could have the most conditioned Olympian athlete that's a female versus a male, and there's just key differences and, you know, the the types of muscle fibers that they have, the degree of endurance, they can they can sustain, physiologically what's going in our brains day to day, week to week. And so I understand why researchers find women less flexible in terms of how they can manipulate, research variables, And that's why you see so much research being done on lab animals and then menopausal women, so women that have gone 12 months without a menstrual cycle. I think up until 1993, there was little to no research that was done on women in their peak furlough years. And so the hope is that over time that this will change and it will it will evolve because I know for myself, you know, even clinically, People will ask me, well, where's the research on x, y, or z? And I'm like, there's not enough research done on women. So a lot of it's conjecture. A lot of it is anecdotal. A lot of it, You know, I I have a practice with thousands of women in it and, you know, this has just been my clinical experience, but I do hope that that changes. But I think the key mechanism or differences really belied the fact that women have menstrual cycles and the the fluctuations day to day, week to week really make a substantial shift in Every bit of our our physiology.
[00:05:29] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah. So if you think about it, we we men We we have it so easy. Right? So we're we're kinda like or most of the time, we are very even hormonally, as in it doesn't really change that much. You know, we have our day to day cortisol spike and metatode and all that type of stuff. But testosterone
[00:05:46] Cynthia Thurlow:
and the the the things that determine our mood are pretty even. Where for women, that's completely different. It's Yeah. It Completely different. It absolutely can be. And I I think so many people fail to understand that it's Not just about sex hormones as you appropriately stated. It's melatonin and cortisol and the understanding that Our entire endocrine system is so belied by, our interaction with our environment, our nutrition, Our sleep quality, what we do for exercise. I mean, at a basic level, all of us are impacted by those things, but I think women are much more sensitive to each one of those levers.
[00:06:24] Barry Luijbregts:
Okay. So if you look at, what you see in your clinic as well, what are the most common things, that women have issues with? So common health issues,
[00:06:34] Cynthia Thurlow:
compared to what men don't deal with, for instance. Yeah. I I would say, especially for women north of 40 years old. So women in their late thirties, early Forty's early stage of perimenopause, which is the 10 to 15 years preceding menopause, and there are changes in progesterone levels. As our ovaries our ovaries are as old as we are. Unlike sperm, which replenishes every 2 to 3 days, women are born with a finite amount of eggs. And as our ovaries are going into retirement, we are not creating as much progesterone. So progesterone has a large impact on sleep. So some of the common things I see is insomnia.
I see a lot of anxiety and depression at this stage of a woman's life. And more often than not, when they're a traditional allopathic provider, they're being prescribed sleeping pills, antidepressants, antianxiety agents when it's something that really needs to be addressed with a Scooch of progesterone. Other common things that I will see is weight loss resistance, which I can't think of anyone out there, male or female, that wants to deal with weight loss resistance, but that tends to be a larger issue for women in perimenopause and menopause.
I would say the other thing is a loss of energy. So suddenly women are too tired to get out of bed. They're not depressed. There are otherwise happy individuals, but they just lack energy throughout the day. And a lot of that can be derived from The poor quality sleep, but also some cortisol issues. And I would say, you know, lastly, something that seems to be really common for women in this age is the, changes in their libido. And, unfortunately, people always the testosterone Shauna, I was like, that can certainly contribute, but I think there's a lot of other things that women in, I call it, the sandwich generation that probably have kids that are still at home, And then they're helping to take care of parents who are who are aging, and they may be at a position in their job where they're, you know, maybe they're in managerial position or they have more responsibilities, and so they really feel a tremendous amount of compression that they can't meet everyone's needs all the time and certainly not their own. So those are the more common things that I see pretty consistently. In fact, the weight loss resistance piece is probably the common one. And I always say it's never just 1 thing that contributes to that. It's usually 5 or 10 things that contribute.
[00:08:47] Barry Luijbregts:
Right. So and the menopause thing and the the the Pre or perimenopause thing. Obviously, that is a thing that comes with age as well. And the other things that you say, for instance, Other hormone problems, weight loss problems. What do you think are the causes of that or what what contributes to that?
[00:09:08] Cynthia Thurlow:
Yeah. And it's a great it's a great question to ask because it's one that I think many people don't realize that there's so many confounding variables. So number 1, If you don't get high quality sleep, and it's only about 2 to 3% of the population that need less than 6 hours a night of sleep, so people will tell me, oh, I don't need I don't need 7 hours of sleep. Yes. You do. You genuinely Yeah. Need more sleep than you think you do. Because when you're not getting good quality sleep, you are impacting your blood sugar levels. You're impacting insulin levels and helping people understand that even 1 night of poor quality sleep will reduce your likelihood of maintaining healthy blood regulation by up to 60%. It also impacts leptin and ghrelin, which are these appetite and satiety hormones. And you're not gonna create healthy food. You're gonna create junk. You're create that hyperpalatal processed food. I also think stress, and I I keep using the example of the past 3 years, but we've dealt with unprecedented amounts of stress being disconnected from our loved ones, for our family members, wearing masks, you know, not being able to travel, all the things that we take for granted. But, obviously, if you have chronically elevated cortisol, you're going to have elevated glucose, you're going to have elevated insulin, and that can also contribute to that.
You know, I think one of the other things that a lot of people don't realize is the role of trauma. So if people have a history of adverse childhood events here in the state. There's a a a scoring mechanism where you can get a sense of how many traumatic events as a child you experience. Doesn't have to be physical abuse. It could be emotional abuse. It could be bullying. Women that have that have high ACE scores or more at risk for not not only weight loss resistance, but also autoimmune conditions, so things like psoriasis, rheumatoid arthritis, etcetera.
I think a great deal about gut health, you know, underlying latent infections, parasites, dysbiosis, you know, h pylori. I'm seeing a lot of these things that are coming up for quite a few women. So, obviously, there's a lot. You know? Some women don't properly break down their fat, so they have a lot of fat in their stool. So it's steatocrit, not having enough digestive enzymes, eating inflammatory foods. So thinking about it from the perspective, we know the most inflammatory foods are things like gluten grains, dairy, Alcohol, sugar, and more often than not, people are in their thirties, forties, and fifties eating like they were at 18 and wondering why it no longer serves them.
And they're eating a lot of processed food and not a lot of nutrient dense food. I would obviously argue that meal frequency has a great deal to do with, weight loss resistance. So Most people in the United States are conditioned that we have to eat snacks and mini meals. And that meal frequency, you know, encouraging people to eat 6 meals a day, Five meals a day is really detrimental because every time we sit down and eat a meal, depending on what types of macronutrients, what types of protein, fat, and carbohydrates someone is consuming has a larger or less of a net impact on your blood sugar response and also insulin.
The blood sugar's up and insulin's up, You're going to remain you're gonna be unable to actually use store fat as a fuel source. So thinking about that, I also think about over exercising. You know, unfortunately, I I would probably argue that a lot of people think they can out exercise a a bad diet. So people have this believe that if I do CrossFit 5 or 6 days a week with no rest period, that somehow I I always say this rule of hormesis, beneficial stress. So if a little bit of exercise is good, more is better. A little bit of fasting is good. More is better. If a little bit of food restriction is good, more is better. And so helping people understand that over sizing can lead to high cortisol levels, can even lead to low cortisol levels from chronic stress depletion. But those are some of the more common reasons, and obviously, These hormonal imbalances, I've talked about insulin, cortisol, and and glucose Mhmm. But also changes in our sex hormones. And I find that testosterone in particular for women Has a lot to do with the body composition changes that a lot of women struggle with, especially in the latter stages of perimenopause and early menopause.
And I think a lot of people wanna blame it on estrogen, and I say all the time, it's all about balance. So as we have less per circulating progesterone and more circulating estrogen, That in and of itself, this relative estrogen dominance can contribute to some fluffiness that no woman or man for that matter wants to deal with. And so Understanding that estrogen kind of start this this decline throughout perimenopause and then you drop off a cliff, and testosterone tends to be A little bit more graduated, and about 25% of women in menopause will actually still continue to make sufficient amounts of but that's obviously not the norm. But those are the most common things that I think are contributing. The last thing I would tie into that though is alcohol use. I think a lot of people don't understand that alcohol in and of itself is quite calorically dense, you know, 9 calories per gram.
And if you are eating a big meal and having a bunch of alcohol, your body will prioritize metabolizing the alcohol first and more often than not, storing the rest of your meal, Potentially is fat. And so helping people understand that, number 1, we generally don't make great food choices if we're drinking a lot of alcohol. Number 2, understanding that it's it's not a 0 calorie beverage. You know? If you're drinking your calories, it is still calories. And then helping people also understand that If you're drinking you know, here, they have, like, really sugary drinks like pina coladas and daiquiris. I mean, it's almost like dessert in a in a beverage. And how that really doesn't serve us well to be drinking our calories. If you're going to choose to drink alcohol, get a biodynamic organic Wine, drink, you know, a a clear spirit like gin or vodka are always gonna be better choices than the heavier alcohols and certainly the ones that have a lot of sugar combined with the alcohol
[00:14:49] Barry Luijbregts:
itself. Alright. So, I wanna get into, the hormones and what we can do to change things, later as well. But so all the things that you just mentioned include sleep, of course, nutrition, stress, trauma, all of those things that, as alternative medicine are kinda generic things that could go wrong. Right? So those things also impact men, quite some. Why would they or do they even impact women, disproportionately?
[00:15:23] Cynthia Thurlow:
I I think a lot of it has to do with the physiologic changes that go through in what we refer to affectionately as reverse puberty. I mean, there's really no other way to put it. Like, I have teenagers and my teenager's hormones. They're in this massive, anabolic growth phase. And and what happens to a lot of women is they're in this this catabolic state where their body will break down muscle to Fuel their body, but I I think a lot of it has to do with the changes in sex hormones as a starting point. The number 1, this, The changes in progesterone, with the ovaries, your adrenals will actually step in to provide additional assistance. Oh. Makes women less stress resilient in perimenopause and menopause, which is why that stress piece. I always say it's not 5 minutes of meditation once a day. I mean, you literally have to work things into your lifestyle that will allow you to reduce your stress levels. Like, As an example, you have a new dog. You know, hugging a dog, hugging your significant other, having a loved one will actually reduce Cortisol because you'll secrete a hormone called oxytocin.
So helping people understand there are things they can do throughout their day, but oxytocin doesn't hang around for long time. So I I remind you to do things all day long that that will help with that. Understanding that when you have less circulating progesterone, you will get relative estrogen dominance. Now a lot of the traditional allopathic community will not even recognize what that represents, but it really is this imbalance between these 2 sex hormones, and this is where women will start having very heavy menstrual cycles. They may become weight loss resistant. They have painful breasts, especially around their their cycle. They they make it puffy and bloated.
They may find that they're craving different types of food. So that is absolutely 1 piece. And and I mentioned the testosterone. All that tends to be like a slow lag, going into Menopause, it's also important to let people understand depending on where a woman is in their menstrual cycle, they could be more or less insulin sensitive. So we know from the day that you start bleeding up until Ray Renovulation, you're more insulin sensitive versus after ovulation. As you get closer to when you start bleeding again and progesterone predominates, you will be ins more insulin resistant. And so helping women understand that Depending on where you are in your menstrual cycle, you may have to eat and exercise a little bit differently.
And for many women, myself included, wasn't it wasn't until I was in my forties that I even realized that there were differences throughout the menstrual cycle that necessitated different lifestyle choices because that's not something I learned Training, in medicine years ago was one of those things I learned as I kinda tripped into perimenopause myself. And so I I think that, you know, that's another saying the piece about sleep that so many women take for granted that they don't have good quality sleep and helping them understand, well, If you, you know, are are binge binging on Netflix up until midnight, and you're not wearing blue blockers, and you're in a really bright room, and you've got all this blue light that's Pressing melatonin.
Guess what's going up? Cortisol. Guess what happens when you don't get sufficient circulating amount of melatonin? It's going to impact your sleep quality. It is going to impact whether or not you're getting bursts of growth hormone later in the early, you know, 1 AM, 2 AM time frame. Helping people understand that melatonin is not just a sleep hormone. It's a master antioxidant. Yeah. It plays a lot of different roles. And so helping women understand that this Cortisol and melatonin mismatch in and of itself can exacerbate things because I have a lot of very high functioning women, women that are in positions of, you know, where they have a lot of responsibility either at home or in an office or hospital situation, and they're thinking about All the thing their to do list is running in their minds all day long. And so they go to bed and it doesn't stop. And so they're waking up at 1 o'clock, 2 o'clock, 3 o'clock, And they're either having sweats or they're feeling anxious or they're thinking about that to do list. And so women are getting into a position where they're not allowing themselves to be relaxed enough to actually have good quality sleep, and that can be a huge detriment to that weight loss resistance piece.
And then I I kind of tie in the I don't sleep well. I'm not making good food choices, and then I think I can just out exercise whatever I'm doing, and so they'll do these very intense classes. Orange Theory Fitness is popular here in the States. CrossFit is popular. I don't mean to pick on them, but I'm just saying, like, That's not the kind of exercise a middle aged woman should be doing every single day. And in fact, I would argue that strength training And doing light walking and yoga is going to be much better for you in terms of balancing the autonomic nervous system. But a lot of women just Sam, oh, and I'm still gonna get up at 4:30 in the morning to do that 5 AM class because that's gonna help me lose weight. And what would they really would be better served by is maybe getting an extra hour of sleep or 2 hours and then starting their day.
[00:20:08] Barry Luijbregts:
Okay. So that is Actually, very, very complicated, as your yeah. It is. As your your insulin resistance, changes throughout a month. Goodness me. I'm so so happy that I don't have to deal with that. But so so you're saying, the Change in your hormones when you, move throughout life, that is one of the things why all of these lifestyle factors are more impactful for women as well. We also see it, earlier in life as in in in my experience, a lot of younger women, twenties and thirties, Now, do not have regular cycles anymore, have things like PCOS, other hormonal problems as well, weight gain, weight loss resistance as well.
Where can we what's the cause of that?
[00:20:56] Cynthia Thurlow:
Yeah. It's a great question. It's funny. I was just talking about this with a colleague very recently. We were talking about premature ovarian insufficiency. So when we're dealing with younger women And for anyone listening, it's not normal nor is it benign for a woman not to have a menstrual cycle. I think about it as the same level of importance as blood pressure and pulse and temperature and respiratory rate and pulse oximetry. So if a woman is no longer getting a menstrual cycle and they're young, if they're not pregnant, we to be figuring out why. And PCOS can oftentimes, you know, women have these anovulatory cycles or they just don't like it at all. But I I suspect there is a Just to, just to define it, that is polycystic ovary Ovarian syndrome. Ovarian syndrome. Right? Yes. It is the number 1 endocrine disorder for women. Okay. More so than even thyroid. So it really is a huge issue.
And just to kind of tie into that, Unfortunately, PCOS is grossly underdiagnosed because everyone makes the assumption. I say everyone as clinicians make the assumption that you have to be obese or overweight. About 25% of women with PCOS are actually thin, so they call it a thin phenotype PCOS. But back to these young women who are not menstruating at all, POI is a huge concern. I I think it's a combination of POI. Things were exposed so poly so it's, Premature ovarian insufficient.
[00:22:13] Barry Luijbregts:
Okay. Yes. Sorry.
[00:22:15] Cynthia Thurlow:
So POI is something that I believe is multifactorial. Meaning, there's many things that are contributing. I think that There's likely an element of exposure to endocrine mimicking chemicals, you know, in the environment, in our food, our personal care products. I absolutely believe that. And if you look at the research, it talks about how specific types of endocrine mimicking chemicals are a 1000 times more potent than the than the actual hormone itself. So not only do they have a tremendous impact on that hormone receptor, But they're much more their their their effects are potentiated substantially.
I think about the fact that many people in westernized countries are eating hyperpalatable, highly processed foods. They're not eating real food. They're not drinking real beverages. They're drinking their calories. They're not very physically active. I have 2 teenagers, and I can speak from personal experience, although they're male. The net impact of The pandemic on young people's mental health has is more profound than any of us could likely imagine. I think that we won't see the full net impact of the mental health impact of the pandemic in for probably 5 to 10 years. But, certainly, in talking to a lot of teenagers and young adult, having 3 years of essentially suspended animation where their their lives were just kind of influx, I think has a lot to do with some of the changes. Now, obviously, vaccine research is not my area of expertise, but I have a lot of, a lot of my colleagues that are Talking about the net impact of specific vaccine potentially having impact on fertility and younger people.
Again, not my area of expertise, but something that I I think over time, we will see more and more report of things that could be Potentially impacting the hypothalamic pituitary ovarian axis or hypothalamus pituitary gonadal axis. So we're talking about Communication between the brain and our testes or the brain and our ovaries and how that might be dysregulated by vaccines. I I think a lot about The fact that we're not living the kinds of lifestyles that our grandparents did. You know, our grandparents got out in soil. They got in they got out in nature. And now we live in a society where many people don't even have to leave their homes. They can have Uber Eats. I don't know if you have Uber Eats where you are. Yeah. Yeah. We are. Say, like, that that is the, it's just it's Baffling.
But, you know, we can essentially live our lives and never have to leave our homes ever. Yeah. And so I think it's these unnatural, unaligned ways that many of us are living our lives. I think that has a lot to do with it. But I but I would imagine if you were looking at what is categorically having The largest impact on fertility, it is very likely our exposure to toxin. And, you know, looking at As an example, we're looking at men, understanding that the number 1 and two reasons why men have lower testosterone levels is endocrine mimicking chemicals. Number 2 is insulin resistance.
And so helping people understand that if those aren't in check, it can impact not just men, but also women as well.
[00:25:22] Barry Luijbregts:
So let's let's talk about these endocrine mimicking chemicals. What, are some examples of that? Like, for instance, Sunscreen. Right? There's lots of stuff in sunscreen that is highly toxic and, endocrine, disruptive. What are other things?
[00:25:39] Cynthia Thurlow:
Yeah. So you think about parabens, you think about phthalate. They both begin with p's that they're, you know, these kind of goofy phthalates is like PHA. You know, it's it's one of these words. Like, I always say, just take the p out and just pronounce it. Thales, I think about bisphenol a. These are things that are not well regulated, and I can only speak to United States. United States does a really crummy job protecting consumers From, ingredients that we know based on research are not particularly safe. You know, it's it's I think there there hasn't been a law passed in the United date a substantive law since the 19 thirties to protect consumers. So I always say you have to read labels and you have to question things. I I think on a lot of different levels, the assumption is made if it's in my grocery store or if it's in a mall or if I can find it online, that it has to be healthy. And I always say we have to be fastidious about looking at ingredient lists. Like, I know when I go into some of the website and I maybe I'm Searching for body wash for my teenagers who use copious amounts of it, and it's like I check off the no phthalates, no paraben, no, you know, BPA. But understanding that if we're exposed to plastics, we're still getting exposed to these things, so try to limit plastic exposure. And I say limit because I'm a realist. I think it's Probably unrealistic to have no plastics exposure, but we wanna limit it as much as possible.
But understanding that these estrogen mimicking chemicals, or forever chemicals or whatever kind of moniker you wanna give to them, they're not benign. And we wanna limit as much as we can, not so that we become paranoid about our lifestyle and how we live our lives, but I know that it makes me much more thoughtful, you know, about How I go about purchasing things for my home. You know, I think about the fact that most shampoo is in plastic, that, you know, a lot of things you go to the grocery store, A lot of things are in plastic. And so I was just talking about this the other day. You know, avocado oil is supposed to be such a great alternative to, You know, seed oils, which are rampant here in the United States. And I was saying the other day, I was in Costco, and I was like, great. They carry the avocado oil that has met my patient, but now they put it in plastic. And so I said, we'll just go back to buying the smaller bottles in glass, you know, just to limit that plastic exposure. But I I think it seems benign, but it's not because it's cumulative over time. You know? The food, the environment, personal care products. I think the average woman Uses 12 to 15 products on their face and body every day, and that's average. So there's women using more. And you think about if every product has 10 ingredients, that's, You know, hundreds, if not thousands of chemicals we get exposed to every day just from our personal care products.
[00:28:13] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah. Yeah. So that's, that's bad news, and that's also good news. So you said a lot of things there. Let me, summarize and and then go back. First of all, about the vaccines, I listened to a, Joe Rogan episode where he interviews Robert Kennedy junior, which is episode, 1999, June 15th. Definitely, listen to that. He explains how that whole industry is essentially captured. And, unfortunately, that all of the, people that Create vaccines are never liable for whatever happens even if they are, negligent and do the bad thing. Anyways, I'm not an expert. Go listen to that. So that's vaccines.
The endocrine disrupting thing, obviously, that's all bad news. Right? That's in all of our stuff, including everything is in plastic. But that's also good news because that means that you can pretty easily do some things. Like for instance, I used to, use deodorant that I just spray in my armpits straight into my lymph nodes right there with lots of chemicals, aluminum. I don't know what's in there. Just read it, and you'll you'll be scared. But I just got rid of that. And I'm sure in the US as well, there are probably lots of companies that make a, You know, a natural deodorant for just a couple of ingredients, some oil, some essential things might not work a 100% as well as your chemically, deodorant.
But if you just switch that out, you do that once, and then you never have to think about that again, and that's one less thing that you are exposed to. And you can do that with all of these things. So that's kinda good news. You just have to start thinking about what are the things that you can easily replace. You don't have to do that all at once, of course, but just just pick 1 today, for instance, and just replace that. And then that's one less thing to worry about, and you might start to feel better.
[00:30:00] Cynthia Thurlow:
No. It's such a good point. You know, we don't wanna feel powerless. And so I I think that the message is always find 1 or 2 things. Like, I usually start with toothpaste, body lotion, and deodorant. And I agree with you. I laugh. I spent years using this prescription strength Dove deodorant, You know, because I would be in the hospital and, you know, sometimes you have really sick patients and you're flying in helicopters and you have all the stress. And I came to realize when I made the transition, I didn't actually need the super strength deodorant antiperspirant. What I really needed was just something that was clean. And the transition now, I tell people all the time, it's amazing to me how much product I felt like I needed whenever I got stressed. And I'm like, I was inhibiting A natural function of my body. My body was trying to sweat, and I was inhibiting my body's ability to to sweat underneath my you know, in the axillary underneath their armpits.
And I'm like, that is completely contrary to what our bodies are designed to do effectively, detoxify, know, you know, get rid of, toxins and and sweat and you know, it's just fascinating to me that, you know, we get too we make things too complicated. We try to suppress things that are otherwise natural, and so that in and of itself create problems. But I love that you made the switch as well. But, helping people understand, it's not you don't have to change everything all at once. Pick 2 or 3 things that are within your budget
[00:31:18] Barry Luijbregts:
and make those changes and then move on and make more. That's actually I think deodorant was the very last thing I changed because I was so convinced I would not have any SaaS. And I was so humbled and surprised and grateful to find out there were lots of clean companies out there. Yeah. Well, there you go. And you just have to run into one of those companies or in in your local store. And and then the other point that I would like to, add on there, as you said as well, people assume that if you go to the grocery store, Everything there that you find is safe, has been tested, and is made to be healthy for you. Well, unfortunately, that is really not the case Because those people are just trying to sell you something, and they don't really care that it hurts you or is unhealthy. They're also not actively trying to hurt you or Anything like that. They just try to sell you as much of that stuff as they can.
So you have to question everything. And if you listen to some of my other episodes as well, It's really depressing, you know, how the environment, is against us when you think about health, but that's just the reality of it. So you have to question everything. You have to Read labels. And if you can, just buy things that do not have labels on it, that you can recognize as actual food that an animal would eat, when it would be outside.
[00:32:30] Cynthia Thurlow:
But No. And and it's interesting because I think for a lot of people, they We overcomplicate thing. You know? We make it far harder than it needs to be. I was on a flight recently, and I never ever ever eat the food on the plane. I just either fast or I bring, like, Something clean with me. And surprisingly, on this one flight, they gave out pistachios. There's pistachios and sea salt. That was the only thing that was in Really? The package, and I actually told them I was like, can I take 2 of those? Because I'm gonna keep 1 with me in my bag in case I get hungry at some point. But I was saying I said I'm so glad. I mean, I know there's there's lots of nut allergies out there, so I wanna be sensitive to that. But I was delighted to see there was an option other than, like, Cheez Its and Goldfish crackers and, you know, crappy stuff. You know, the the carby stuff that we don't need more of, although it tends to be like, my husband would say that's fun food for travel, and I'm like, great. But it's not food that's healthy for us. Like, the pistachios and sea salt, 2 ingredient, both recognizable.
It's not gonna, you know, get spoiled in your bag. Mhmm. I was delighted to see that. I was like, okay. Maybe we're making a little bit of progress.
[00:33:33] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah. Oh, that's that's very, yeah, positive. So let's get back to, to the hormones. So we we see that All of these lifestyle factors can impact us in in early age, women as well, and later. And later also, know, there's an independent factor for women where you go to this menopause. So besides all of the lifestyle factors, we've heard about lots of them In this podcast about how to sleep better, how to eat better, besides all of that, what can women do when they are starting to creep into that zone of menopause?
[00:34:08] Cynthia Thurlow:
Yeah. I think the probably the most important or 2 most important things that women at this stage of life can do is number 1, Lift weight. And I know women, as a rule, they like to do their cardio. They don't wanna get off that treadmill or I call it the treadmill. They don't wanna stop running. And I'm not telling you to stop doing cardio, but you are going to be better served by building and maintaining muscle. And the reason for that is Muscle is the 1st area in the body that becomes insulin resistant. So the more muscle mass you have, the less or the more insulin sensitive you will be and less likely you are to become insulin resistant. This is very, very important. I always say metabolic health is wealth, but understanding that Not only has it become a little bit more challenging as you're getting older to maintain muscle mass because our hormones are sometimes working against us and I can explain why, But you have to work harder.
Absolutely critically important. If you wanna think about what young muscle looks like, half Filet mignon. It is delicious. It is almost all muscle meat. Right? Yeah. Ribeye. The ribeye is a fatty, marbly, fat cut laden piece of beef. That is what old muscle looks like. If you wanna think about it, you wanna look you want your muscle to look more like that thin muscle Because or the house, like, that healthy muscle because what starts to happen after the age of 40 is something called sarcopenia. Not a question of if, but when, if you were not working against is muscle loss with aging. You also lose strength if you are not actively working against it. So number 1 is lift weight. Number 2 is eat enough protein. And I know that this can sometimes be polarizing. It's not meant to be, but you wanna eat at least a 100 grams of protein a day. And what I find is most of them at this stage of life are eating teeny tiny portions of protein and too many carbohydrate, then I remind them you have to hit enough Protein in your meals anywhere from 30 to 50 grams of protein in a meal to actually stimulate 30 grams is the minimum.
To stimulate muscle protein synthesis in your muscles. So lift heavy weights, eat enough protein. And the third thing that it's important for women to understand is that as we are losing estrogen, as our follicular stimulating hormone is going up because our body our brain is sending an SOS to the ovaries, Release an egg. Release an egg. Release an egg. And our body is just, you know, kind of it's it's on hiatus. It's going on vacation. Mhmm. Understanding that that high FSH, That low estradiol, that in and of itself is catabolizing and breaking down muscle.
This is why it is so, so important. So big takeaways, Lift and eat enough protein. Now a lot of women will ask, you know, I'm plant based. I prefer eating plant based protein. What I find for a lot of women at this stage of life is they eat too much carbohydrate. It is very hard to be a 100% plant based and get your protein needs met without having a, detrimental amount of carbohydrate intake. So If you if you're an omnivore and you eat plants and animals, great. You wanna shoot for 30 minimum 30 grams of protein with each meal. I like to push it. I usually say to my female patients and clients, I want 50 to 60 grams in a meal. You slowly work your way up.
Most men probably would not be phased by 50 grams of protein. But for a lot of women, it seems overwhelming. It could be the difference between 6 ounces of chicken versus 8 ounce. And so it's really not that much more. But helping people understand that that that lifting a weight and that protein consumption is going to help you maintain muscle mass, and that's going to be so so important because this is when women and men, quite frankly, men go through andropause, they are also at risk for developing sarcopenia. And you think about it, how many people you see that are in their forties, fifties, sixties, and they have a pancake butt. They've got skinny little sinewy muscle because they have no muscle, and they'll tell you I can't lose weight to save my life, but I'm skinny. They're skinny fat. You know? They call it toffee than on than on the outside fat on the inside. And a lot of it has to do with that muscle mass loss. So when I go to Pilates, I'm always amazed at how many women, They're probably a little bit older than me, and they're thin, but they are so sarcopenic. They have their little muscle mass on their bodies, And that is that is a poor prognostic indicator. So if you wanna age well, you wanna make sure that you maintain that muscle mass. So so important.
[00:38:25] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah. Yeah. I think that's very important. I always hear from my guests here as well that, cardio is not for weight loss. Doesn't work. Nope. It just doesn't work. So lift weights. That's that's very helpful.
[00:38:37] Cynthia Thurlow:
Lift weights and do zone 2 training. I think that, you know, I I think You do something for your mind, so whether it's yoga or tai chi or, you know, whatever you enjoy, if you stand out in nature and ground your feet. But Zone 2 training is usually that kind of steady state where you can you can talk. You're not breathless. You're not winded, but that don't 2 training is very, very important.
[00:38:59] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah. What about, hormone replacement therapy? Is there a place for that as well?
[00:39:05] Cynthia Thurlow:
I a 100% agree that every, female and male for that matter should be should have a discussion with their health care practitioner. Obviously, the lifestyle stuff is very important to do first Mhmm. Because I see a lot of practitioners that, you know, they have someone that has a terrible, Excuse me. They have a terrible diet. They don't exercise. They don't sleep, and then they give them hormones, and they gain a bunch of weight, and then they're mad. And so I I think it's important to understand that The lifestyle stuff is foundational. When that's been dialed in, then we think about you know, maybe someone starts with oral progesterone The week before their menstrual cycle is a starting point.
Maybe that progresses to towards the latter stages of perimenopause. Maybe they have a little bit of estradiol. It could be by a patch or it could be compounded. And then as they transition into menopause, they may have additional need. They may need a little bit of testosterone therapy. Remember what I said earlier about 75% of women do need or would benefit from? That's probably the caveat. Testosterone is controlled substance here in the United States. There's no FDA approved testosterone therapy for women, so it has to be compounded, Which is a whole separate tangential conversation, but I do find that, you know, progesterone along with estrogen And testosterone can be very, very helpful.
I do think that there's also a place for thyroid medication depending on the individual. In fact, a lot of my female patients, that's the first they start with their thyroids are really underactive. More than likely, it's it's an autoimmune condition called Hashimoto. So Mhmm. Addressing that, you know, I'm I'm starting to see more and more individuals prescribing low dose naltrexone therapy, which, if anyone's familiar with what naltrexone It's used in microdoses, but it can be very anti inflammatory. Used in conjunction with thyroid replacement therapy can be very helpful.
When it comes to men, same type of thing. You know, the number 1 and 2 reasons why men have low testosterone, it it's not just The fact of andropause is more gradual. It's not like women kinda get shoved off a cliff and then everything stops. But helping men understand that if you're insulin resistant, you gotta fix that first. If you are exposed to a lot of endocrine mimicking chemicals and your testosterone's low, you have to address that first. But I do find that if someone is insulin sensitive and they are mindful of their exposures environmentally in their personal care products and in their food, that men can do really well on testosterone therapy. I think that there's still this stigma about men and testosterone therapy, which I think is criminal.
There's also this stigma from the Women's Health Initiative that came out in about 2002, that extrapolated that all Hormone replacement therapy would cause cancer. And what was used in the study were women that were 10 years into menopause were not healthy to begin with. Some of them were former smokers. They were obese Yeah. Or overweight, and they used a synthetic progesterone called progestin, and they use a synthetic estrogen, oral estrogen called Primerin. And that is not the same as what most clinicians are recommending now for women for HRT. So I'm very pro HRT. Obviously, there are always exceptions. But more often not even the women that I know in my practice who are working with, like, an oncologist or a integrative medicine provider.
There are even instances where women who have gone through cancer treatment may benefit from Very targeted hormone therapy. But, again, that's not my area of expertise. But even women who have gone through cancer treatment, that's not in and of itself a total contraindication.
[00:42:36] Barry Luijbregts:
Okay. So let's stay on the hormone path a little bit more and and just talk about, the pill. So the pill that women are on to not get babies, a lot of women are on that for decades. What do you think about that? Should people do that?
[00:42:57] Cynthia Thurlow:
This is a big topic. So oral contraceptives, obviously, I am a pro women's choice. And I am someone that had very mild PCOS, and my doctor put me on oral contraceptives when I was a young adult. And so I thought it had fixed the problem of having irregular cycles. I think that the lack of informed consent is something that I now counsel women to have conversations about because oral contraceptives, By many people's estimation are endocrine mimicking chemicals. We're talking about synthetic hormones. We're talking about hormones that if you use Oral contraceptives for 10, 15, 20 years. As you appropriately said, a lot of women stand for that long.
You're you're essentially put into this Menopausal state with very low estrogen levels, very low progesterone levels. Women's bone health is impacted. Their muscle health is impacted by being kept in a low estrogen state. That's not something that I even knew about. It wasn't something that was talked about. The women understand that if they they need this for contraception, that they want to be on oral contraceptives for as short duration as possible. Now there's lots of other options. You've got, nonhormonal IUDs, that you can certainly if if someone's in a monogamous relationship, you can obviously work On family planning methods where they're assessing cervical mucus and temperature changes.
I think for a lot of younger people, they don't want the they don't want the responsibility, understandably, because they have busy active lives. They don't wanna have to monitor their blood, their their, temperature. They don't wanna monitor cervical mucus. So I understand why they would be attractive, but I I think most clinicians are not fully explaining What can happen? And then coming off of the pill, a lot of women are going through long periods of amenorrhea where they're not getting a a menstrual cycle at all. And so I I think that The average person, if if their clinician would take a couple minutes to explain to them what the long term effects can be beyond contraception, I I think that would that would allow women to make better choices for themselves. I certainly if someone had said to me, you're going to be osteopenic in your thirties because you missed out on these, you know, peak bone building periods of time in your life that might have caused me a little bit of pause. And so I always like to be transparent, say there's no judgment on my part. People have to do what what in the best interest of them and their sanity.
But I do think that Royal contraceptives have a place, but I think full disclosure and fully informed consent needs to be part of that conversation As opposed to just putting women on birth control, that's going to be the most reliable when ultimately it may actually end up being detrimental.
[00:45:46] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah. And I think that's probably the main, problem at the moment that most people just don't get the information. They don't get that from their from the GP Or, you know, from the news, from the Internet, it's just this is what everybody does, so you do do it too. And then, you know, you find out that you have all these consequences later in life. Yeah. Which is why I'm saying funny. All those years of being on the pill, I used to think I had a horrible PMS.
[00:46:10] Cynthia Thurlow:
And for anyone listening, you're not actually you're suppressing your normal Hormonal communication between your ovaries and your brain and you're put on synthetic hormones, I didn't actually have bad PMS. I just had bad PMS because I was on the pill, and that withdrawal bleed was just because I had stopped taking, you know, the the last, you know, the last week of your cycle, you're not taking you take either a sugar pill, you can take placebo or you're not taking anything at all, and that's why you get a withdrawal bleed. But I think for a lot of individuals, you know, certainly, I I trained in inner city Baltimore. I'm acutely sensitive to making sure women have access to good contraception if they choose to be physically physically excuse me, sexually active, but I think Also helping women understand the long term implications of what choice of contraception they're using, what can can be of issue in the future.
[00:46:59] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah. Okay. So we've covered a lot of ground, so far, hormones, lifestyle factors as well, including a and having enough information about it, perhaps we can end on some, let's say, practical tips. We've already had some, that people can use to, especially women, to become more hormonally healthy and to, you know, get rid of that weight.
[00:47:26] Cynthia Thurlow:
Yeah. So, again, the most common pain point for my patients and clients for sure, I would say number 1, you know, focus on eating real food. You know, if you as an example, you know, I I like my my new patients to kind of do a Whole30. Whole30 is no gluten grains, dairy, soy, alcohol, sugar. For a lot of people, that's daunting to kind of cut those out for 30 days, but it allows us to really assess the net impact of processed on our health. And so if you're really focusing in on more nutrient dense whole foods, you're less likely to overeat because your those key satiety mechanisms are will be triggered, in the body, I would say, you know, make an effort to be more physically active. You know? I love having an Apple Watch. I like to track how many steps I take a day. And, You know, usually, by this time of the morning, I've got close to 10,000, and I tell people, you know, park further away when you go to the grocery store, take a walk in the morning, take a walk, you know, In the evening, try to get in more physical activity. We know that walking is hugely impactful. And in fact, we know walking after a meal will help lower your blood sugar.
If there's any concerns about potentially being insulin resistant, you know, having a glucometer or a continuous glucose monitor, At least here in the United States, you can purchase those things without a doctor's prescription. Obviously, if you're diabetic, you can get it covered by insurance. I think having glucometers and CGMs is really invaluable for seeing your net impact of sleep and stress and nutritional choices. Lift weights. You know? It doesn't have to be that you are a power lifter. It could be that you start with bodyweight exercises and slowly kind of Work your way up to doing, heavier heavier lifting.
Gotta prioritize sleep. I know it's not sexy, I try to get into bed 30 minutes earlier. It really does make a big difference. Don't try to catch up on your sleep over the weekend. I I feel like in a lot of ways, A lot of women try to do that and you can't make up for 5 days of crappy sleep, which is 2 days of sleeping more. That's not the way the body works. I would say the other thing is, you know, being really proactive about managing stress, and finding something that you like doing. I personally really like Walking in nature, that's become something, you know, during during the pandemic, there were lots of new habits that we, learned to embrace, and one of them was walking outside nature with My dogs every day and my husband.
I love, meditation. I really like laying on I have a PMF mat, so that's, pulse electromagnetic, frequency, and it's very relaxing. But, obviously, each one of us, you know, find something that that works for us. I would say the other thing is, You know, the ability to start saying no to things that no longer serve you, I think mindset's really important, and women tend to be more prone to people pleasing. Ironically enough, Estrogen is one of these key hormones that kind of plays into that. So as women are in, you know, middle to latter stages of perimenopause and menopause, they find their voices. And in many ways, they will articulate what they do and don't want, much better than they might have done in their twenties, thirties, and early forties. So The ability to say no and then just learning to do things for pleasure, like whether it's reading, whether it's going on vacation, whether it's connecting with loved ones, You know, really, like, those things are all super important, and then find a practitioner that you are comfortable working with that will have the conversation with you about whether or not Hormone replacement therapy in one capacity or another might be beneficial for you. I think every man male and female deserves to have that conversation.
And it's not just a female centric thing. It's not just a male centric thing. It's just the reality of we are living longer, and you don't have to white knuckle it through Menopause and andropause, if you're not feeling like your quality of life is where it needs to be. I I think that I would say that to anyone, irrespective of Where you live or how old you are, get the answers you deserve and find a practitioner that's willing to help support them.
[00:51:18] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah. I think that's very powerful, especially the part of, being able to say no to things. So choosing yourself, Choosing, to do things for yourself, especially as women, as you discussed, are are more, prone to stress. So where can people find more about you and your work?
[00:51:37] Cynthia Thurlow:
Thank you. So www.synthiathurlow.com, you can get access to my book, The Intermittent Fasting transformation. You can connect with me through my podcast called Everyday Wellness. You can find me on YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, be forewarned, I can be a little snarky. I also have a free Facebook group that's for men and women called the intermittent fasting lifestyle backslash my name that Anyone is welcome to joy. It's an anti drama zone, so you don't have to worry about any drama because I have zero tolerance for it. Talk about boundaries. I have healthy boundaries even in my groups.
[00:52:09] Barry Luijbregts:
It's good. Okay. Excellent. I will put all of those things in the show notes so that people can find that, easily and can connect with you. Well, thank you very much for talking with me today. Thank you. It's been a pleasure. Alright.
Hey. And welcome to another episode of the Improving Barry podcast. I know it's been a while. Right? I've been busy Building Podhome .fm, which is a podcast hosting platform with intelligent features. But now I do have a new episode, and that is with Cynthia Thurlow. And in this episode, we talk about women's health in particular and what the particular challenges are that they deal with. We touch on lots of topics including hormones, the pill, lifestyle changes and some practical tips that women and also men can use to improve their health. Now this might be the last episode of improving Barry that I'll be publishing for a while.
And I want to thank you for your support and for learning with me about health and wellness. It's been quite a journey. And throughout my episodes here, I've learned so much from all My incredible guests, I'd encourage you to go back and listen to other episodes of improving Barry as well as there is so much to learn. Now without further ado, here is Cynthia.
[00:01:19] Cynthia Thurlow:
Thank you very much for taking the time, to talk with me today. We've been trying to meet up for a while, and you're very busy as you are now very popular as well. And that's very good on you, so thank you. Well, no. No. I I always honor the opportunity to to connect with people, especially, you know, to me, I think it's important to not Being in an echo chamber, it'd be very easy to say I'm only getting to deal with podcasts that are female centric, and I've come to find out that Sometimes the the best feedback that we get, in my business is from podcasts where it may be not female centric, and people are like, my wife, my My best friend needs this information, and so, we try to we try to honor all the requests, but sometimes it takes a little bit of time to to fit them in this schedule. So thanks for your patience.
[00:02:04] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah. That's totally fine. And I really, respect that you're doing that and to get that information out there because it's really necessary, As we've just, spoke about offline. So yeah. Like I talked about, the health information out there, even the alternative Health information that does not come from, traditional, medicine is very much focused on men and on males. Like, most of the studies are done on males. Most of the information out there is generic, but for males. So women are very different. Right? That's my assumption, at least.
[00:02:37] Cynthia Thurlow:
Perhaps we can start with what actually is the big difference between men and women when it comes to health? What are the big differences there? Yeah. And you bring up such a good point. There really is a lack of research and focus on women, and I suspect it has a great deal to do with the fact that women have menstrual cycles or at least For a good portion of their lives, they have a menstrual cycle, and it it makes it more challenging for researchers to account for that. So it makes us perhaps less attractive. But when I start thinking about the the key differences, I think about the physiology piece. So, you know, down to a cellular level, men and women are designed to procreate, but women are designed to carry life. And so that menstrual cycle and the fluctuations in sex hormones and The responses that a woman goes through throughout a 28, 30 day cycle is quite substantial and significant.
I think there's also, Helping women understand, and men for that matter, that women's bodies tend to be more sensitive to stress. Though the stress could come from just, hard physical activity. You know, a lot of female athletes will suppress their menstrual cycle. I think about, chronic Stress, you know, we're just coming out of 3 years of a pandemic, and I think for a lot of people, they've had more stress and not less. So really focusing in on that fertility piece is one that I think really differentiate men and women pretty substantially.
Right. So think, you know Yeah. Yeah. Go ahead. Yeah. Yeah. No. No. And and I think, you know, it goes without saying when we're we're looking at athletics that there are key differences and you could have the most conditioned Olympian athlete that's a female versus a male, and there's just key differences and, you know, the the types of muscle fibers that they have, the degree of endurance, they can they can sustain, physiologically what's going in our brains day to day, week to week. And so I understand why researchers find women less flexible in terms of how they can manipulate, research variables, And that's why you see so much research being done on lab animals and then menopausal women, so women that have gone 12 months without a menstrual cycle. I think up until 1993, there was little to no research that was done on women in their peak furlough years. And so the hope is that over time that this will change and it will it will evolve because I know for myself, you know, even clinically, People will ask me, well, where's the research on x, y, or z? And I'm like, there's not enough research done on women. So a lot of it's conjecture. A lot of it is anecdotal. A lot of it, You know, I I have a practice with thousands of women in it and, you know, this has just been my clinical experience, but I do hope that that changes. But I think the key mechanism or differences really belied the fact that women have menstrual cycles and the the fluctuations day to day, week to week really make a substantial shift in Every bit of our our physiology.
[00:05:29] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah. So if you think about it, we we men We we have it so easy. Right? So we're we're kinda like or most of the time, we are very even hormonally, as in it doesn't really change that much. You know, we have our day to day cortisol spike and metatode and all that type of stuff. But testosterone
[00:05:46] Cynthia Thurlow:
and the the the things that determine our mood are pretty even. Where for women, that's completely different. It's Yeah. It Completely different. It absolutely can be. And I I think so many people fail to understand that it's Not just about sex hormones as you appropriately stated. It's melatonin and cortisol and the understanding that Our entire endocrine system is so belied by, our interaction with our environment, our nutrition, Our sleep quality, what we do for exercise. I mean, at a basic level, all of us are impacted by those things, but I think women are much more sensitive to each one of those levers.
[00:06:24] Barry Luijbregts:
Okay. So if you look at, what you see in your clinic as well, what are the most common things, that women have issues with? So common health issues,
[00:06:34] Cynthia Thurlow:
compared to what men don't deal with, for instance. Yeah. I I would say, especially for women north of 40 years old. So women in their late thirties, early Forty's early stage of perimenopause, which is the 10 to 15 years preceding menopause, and there are changes in progesterone levels. As our ovaries our ovaries are as old as we are. Unlike sperm, which replenishes every 2 to 3 days, women are born with a finite amount of eggs. And as our ovaries are going into retirement, we are not creating as much progesterone. So progesterone has a large impact on sleep. So some of the common things I see is insomnia.
I see a lot of anxiety and depression at this stage of a woman's life. And more often than not, when they're a traditional allopathic provider, they're being prescribed sleeping pills, antidepressants, antianxiety agents when it's something that really needs to be addressed with a Scooch of progesterone. Other common things that I will see is weight loss resistance, which I can't think of anyone out there, male or female, that wants to deal with weight loss resistance, but that tends to be a larger issue for women in perimenopause and menopause.
I would say the other thing is a loss of energy. So suddenly women are too tired to get out of bed. They're not depressed. There are otherwise happy individuals, but they just lack energy throughout the day. And a lot of that can be derived from The poor quality sleep, but also some cortisol issues. And I would say, you know, lastly, something that seems to be really common for women in this age is the, changes in their libido. And, unfortunately, people always the testosterone Shauna, I was like, that can certainly contribute, but I think there's a lot of other things that women in, I call it, the sandwich generation that probably have kids that are still at home, And then they're helping to take care of parents who are who are aging, and they may be at a position in their job where they're, you know, maybe they're in managerial position or they have more responsibilities, and so they really feel a tremendous amount of compression that they can't meet everyone's needs all the time and certainly not their own. So those are the more common things that I see pretty consistently. In fact, the weight loss resistance piece is probably the common one. And I always say it's never just 1 thing that contributes to that. It's usually 5 or 10 things that contribute.
[00:08:47] Barry Luijbregts:
Right. So and the menopause thing and the the the Pre or perimenopause thing. Obviously, that is a thing that comes with age as well. And the other things that you say, for instance, Other hormone problems, weight loss problems. What do you think are the causes of that or what what contributes to that?
[00:09:08] Cynthia Thurlow:
Yeah. And it's a great it's a great question to ask because it's one that I think many people don't realize that there's so many confounding variables. So number 1, If you don't get high quality sleep, and it's only about 2 to 3% of the population that need less than 6 hours a night of sleep, so people will tell me, oh, I don't need I don't need 7 hours of sleep. Yes. You do. You genuinely Yeah. Need more sleep than you think you do. Because when you're not getting good quality sleep, you are impacting your blood sugar levels. You're impacting insulin levels and helping people understand that even 1 night of poor quality sleep will reduce your likelihood of maintaining healthy blood regulation by up to 60%. It also impacts leptin and ghrelin, which are these appetite and satiety hormones. And you're not gonna create healthy food. You're gonna create junk. You're create that hyperpalatal processed food. I also think stress, and I I keep using the example of the past 3 years, but we've dealt with unprecedented amounts of stress being disconnected from our loved ones, for our family members, wearing masks, you know, not being able to travel, all the things that we take for granted. But, obviously, if you have chronically elevated cortisol, you're going to have elevated glucose, you're going to have elevated insulin, and that can also contribute to that.
You know, I think one of the other things that a lot of people don't realize is the role of trauma. So if people have a history of adverse childhood events here in the state. There's a a a scoring mechanism where you can get a sense of how many traumatic events as a child you experience. Doesn't have to be physical abuse. It could be emotional abuse. It could be bullying. Women that have that have high ACE scores or more at risk for not not only weight loss resistance, but also autoimmune conditions, so things like psoriasis, rheumatoid arthritis, etcetera.
I think a great deal about gut health, you know, underlying latent infections, parasites, dysbiosis, you know, h pylori. I'm seeing a lot of these things that are coming up for quite a few women. So, obviously, there's a lot. You know? Some women don't properly break down their fat, so they have a lot of fat in their stool. So it's steatocrit, not having enough digestive enzymes, eating inflammatory foods. So thinking about it from the perspective, we know the most inflammatory foods are things like gluten grains, dairy, Alcohol, sugar, and more often than not, people are in their thirties, forties, and fifties eating like they were at 18 and wondering why it no longer serves them.
And they're eating a lot of processed food and not a lot of nutrient dense food. I would obviously argue that meal frequency has a great deal to do with, weight loss resistance. So Most people in the United States are conditioned that we have to eat snacks and mini meals. And that meal frequency, you know, encouraging people to eat 6 meals a day, Five meals a day is really detrimental because every time we sit down and eat a meal, depending on what types of macronutrients, what types of protein, fat, and carbohydrates someone is consuming has a larger or less of a net impact on your blood sugar response and also insulin.
The blood sugar's up and insulin's up, You're going to remain you're gonna be unable to actually use store fat as a fuel source. So thinking about that, I also think about over exercising. You know, unfortunately, I I would probably argue that a lot of people think they can out exercise a a bad diet. So people have this believe that if I do CrossFit 5 or 6 days a week with no rest period, that somehow I I always say this rule of hormesis, beneficial stress. So if a little bit of exercise is good, more is better. A little bit of fasting is good. More is better. If a little bit of food restriction is good, more is better. And so helping people understand that over sizing can lead to high cortisol levels, can even lead to low cortisol levels from chronic stress depletion. But those are some of the more common reasons, and obviously, These hormonal imbalances, I've talked about insulin, cortisol, and and glucose Mhmm. But also changes in our sex hormones. And I find that testosterone in particular for women Has a lot to do with the body composition changes that a lot of women struggle with, especially in the latter stages of perimenopause and early menopause.
And I think a lot of people wanna blame it on estrogen, and I say all the time, it's all about balance. So as we have less per circulating progesterone and more circulating estrogen, That in and of itself, this relative estrogen dominance can contribute to some fluffiness that no woman or man for that matter wants to deal with. And so Understanding that estrogen kind of start this this decline throughout perimenopause and then you drop off a cliff, and testosterone tends to be A little bit more graduated, and about 25% of women in menopause will actually still continue to make sufficient amounts of but that's obviously not the norm. But those are the most common things that I think are contributing. The last thing I would tie into that though is alcohol use. I think a lot of people don't understand that alcohol in and of itself is quite calorically dense, you know, 9 calories per gram.
And if you are eating a big meal and having a bunch of alcohol, your body will prioritize metabolizing the alcohol first and more often than not, storing the rest of your meal, Potentially is fat. And so helping people understand that, number 1, we generally don't make great food choices if we're drinking a lot of alcohol. Number 2, understanding that it's it's not a 0 calorie beverage. You know? If you're drinking your calories, it is still calories. And then helping people also understand that If you're drinking you know, here, they have, like, really sugary drinks like pina coladas and daiquiris. I mean, it's almost like dessert in a in a beverage. And how that really doesn't serve us well to be drinking our calories. If you're going to choose to drink alcohol, get a biodynamic organic Wine, drink, you know, a a clear spirit like gin or vodka are always gonna be better choices than the heavier alcohols and certainly the ones that have a lot of sugar combined with the alcohol
[00:14:49] Barry Luijbregts:
itself. Alright. So, I wanna get into, the hormones and what we can do to change things, later as well. But so all the things that you just mentioned include sleep, of course, nutrition, stress, trauma, all of those things that, as alternative medicine are kinda generic things that could go wrong. Right? So those things also impact men, quite some. Why would they or do they even impact women, disproportionately?
[00:15:23] Cynthia Thurlow:
I I think a lot of it has to do with the physiologic changes that go through in what we refer to affectionately as reverse puberty. I mean, there's really no other way to put it. Like, I have teenagers and my teenager's hormones. They're in this massive, anabolic growth phase. And and what happens to a lot of women is they're in this this catabolic state where their body will break down muscle to Fuel their body, but I I think a lot of it has to do with the changes in sex hormones as a starting point. The number 1, this, The changes in progesterone, with the ovaries, your adrenals will actually step in to provide additional assistance. Oh. Makes women less stress resilient in perimenopause and menopause, which is why that stress piece. I always say it's not 5 minutes of meditation once a day. I mean, you literally have to work things into your lifestyle that will allow you to reduce your stress levels. Like, As an example, you have a new dog. You know, hugging a dog, hugging your significant other, having a loved one will actually reduce Cortisol because you'll secrete a hormone called oxytocin.
So helping people understand there are things they can do throughout their day, but oxytocin doesn't hang around for long time. So I I remind you to do things all day long that that will help with that. Understanding that when you have less circulating progesterone, you will get relative estrogen dominance. Now a lot of the traditional allopathic community will not even recognize what that represents, but it really is this imbalance between these 2 sex hormones, and this is where women will start having very heavy menstrual cycles. They may become weight loss resistant. They have painful breasts, especially around their their cycle. They they make it puffy and bloated.
They may find that they're craving different types of food. So that is absolutely 1 piece. And and I mentioned the testosterone. All that tends to be like a slow lag, going into Menopause, it's also important to let people understand depending on where a woman is in their menstrual cycle, they could be more or less insulin sensitive. So we know from the day that you start bleeding up until Ray Renovulation, you're more insulin sensitive versus after ovulation. As you get closer to when you start bleeding again and progesterone predominates, you will be ins more insulin resistant. And so helping women understand that Depending on where you are in your menstrual cycle, you may have to eat and exercise a little bit differently.
And for many women, myself included, wasn't it wasn't until I was in my forties that I even realized that there were differences throughout the menstrual cycle that necessitated different lifestyle choices because that's not something I learned Training, in medicine years ago was one of those things I learned as I kinda tripped into perimenopause myself. And so I I think that, you know, that's another saying the piece about sleep that so many women take for granted that they don't have good quality sleep and helping them understand, well, If you, you know, are are binge binging on Netflix up until midnight, and you're not wearing blue blockers, and you're in a really bright room, and you've got all this blue light that's Pressing melatonin.
Guess what's going up? Cortisol. Guess what happens when you don't get sufficient circulating amount of melatonin? It's going to impact your sleep quality. It is going to impact whether or not you're getting bursts of growth hormone later in the early, you know, 1 AM, 2 AM time frame. Helping people understand that melatonin is not just a sleep hormone. It's a master antioxidant. Yeah. It plays a lot of different roles. And so helping women understand that this Cortisol and melatonin mismatch in and of itself can exacerbate things because I have a lot of very high functioning women, women that are in positions of, you know, where they have a lot of responsibility either at home or in an office or hospital situation, and they're thinking about All the thing their to do list is running in their minds all day long. And so they go to bed and it doesn't stop. And so they're waking up at 1 o'clock, 2 o'clock, 3 o'clock, And they're either having sweats or they're feeling anxious or they're thinking about that to do list. And so women are getting into a position where they're not allowing themselves to be relaxed enough to actually have good quality sleep, and that can be a huge detriment to that weight loss resistance piece.
And then I I kind of tie in the I don't sleep well. I'm not making good food choices, and then I think I can just out exercise whatever I'm doing, and so they'll do these very intense classes. Orange Theory Fitness is popular here in the States. CrossFit is popular. I don't mean to pick on them, but I'm just saying, like, That's not the kind of exercise a middle aged woman should be doing every single day. And in fact, I would argue that strength training And doing light walking and yoga is going to be much better for you in terms of balancing the autonomic nervous system. But a lot of women just Sam, oh, and I'm still gonna get up at 4:30 in the morning to do that 5 AM class because that's gonna help me lose weight. And what would they really would be better served by is maybe getting an extra hour of sleep or 2 hours and then starting their day.
[00:20:08] Barry Luijbregts:
Okay. So that is Actually, very, very complicated, as your yeah. It is. As your your insulin resistance, changes throughout a month. Goodness me. I'm so so happy that I don't have to deal with that. But so so you're saying, the Change in your hormones when you, move throughout life, that is one of the things why all of these lifestyle factors are more impactful for women as well. We also see it, earlier in life as in in in my experience, a lot of younger women, twenties and thirties, Now, do not have regular cycles anymore, have things like PCOS, other hormonal problems as well, weight gain, weight loss resistance as well.
Where can we what's the cause of that?
[00:20:56] Cynthia Thurlow:
Yeah. It's a great question. It's funny. I was just talking about this with a colleague very recently. We were talking about premature ovarian insufficiency. So when we're dealing with younger women And for anyone listening, it's not normal nor is it benign for a woman not to have a menstrual cycle. I think about it as the same level of importance as blood pressure and pulse and temperature and respiratory rate and pulse oximetry. So if a woman is no longer getting a menstrual cycle and they're young, if they're not pregnant, we to be figuring out why. And PCOS can oftentimes, you know, women have these anovulatory cycles or they just don't like it at all. But I I suspect there is a Just to, just to define it, that is polycystic ovary Ovarian syndrome. Ovarian syndrome. Right? Yes. It is the number 1 endocrine disorder for women. Okay. More so than even thyroid. So it really is a huge issue.
And just to kind of tie into that, Unfortunately, PCOS is grossly underdiagnosed because everyone makes the assumption. I say everyone as clinicians make the assumption that you have to be obese or overweight. About 25% of women with PCOS are actually thin, so they call it a thin phenotype PCOS. But back to these young women who are not menstruating at all, POI is a huge concern. I I think it's a combination of POI. Things were exposed so poly so it's, Premature ovarian insufficient.
[00:22:13] Barry Luijbregts:
Okay. Yes. Sorry.
[00:22:15] Cynthia Thurlow:
So POI is something that I believe is multifactorial. Meaning, there's many things that are contributing. I think that There's likely an element of exposure to endocrine mimicking chemicals, you know, in the environment, in our food, our personal care products. I absolutely believe that. And if you look at the research, it talks about how specific types of endocrine mimicking chemicals are a 1000 times more potent than the than the actual hormone itself. So not only do they have a tremendous impact on that hormone receptor, But they're much more their their their effects are potentiated substantially.
I think about the fact that many people in westernized countries are eating hyperpalatable, highly processed foods. They're not eating real food. They're not drinking real beverages. They're drinking their calories. They're not very physically active. I have 2 teenagers, and I can speak from personal experience, although they're male. The net impact of The pandemic on young people's mental health has is more profound than any of us could likely imagine. I think that we won't see the full net impact of the mental health impact of the pandemic in for probably 5 to 10 years. But, certainly, in talking to a lot of teenagers and young adult, having 3 years of essentially suspended animation where their their lives were just kind of influx, I think has a lot to do with some of the changes. Now, obviously, vaccine research is not my area of expertise, but I have a lot of, a lot of my colleagues that are Talking about the net impact of specific vaccine potentially having impact on fertility and younger people.
Again, not my area of expertise, but something that I I think over time, we will see more and more report of things that could be Potentially impacting the hypothalamic pituitary ovarian axis or hypothalamus pituitary gonadal axis. So we're talking about Communication between the brain and our testes or the brain and our ovaries and how that might be dysregulated by vaccines. I I think a lot about The fact that we're not living the kinds of lifestyles that our grandparents did. You know, our grandparents got out in soil. They got in they got out in nature. And now we live in a society where many people don't even have to leave their homes. They can have Uber Eats. I don't know if you have Uber Eats where you are. Yeah. Yeah. We are. Say, like, that that is the, it's just it's Baffling.
But, you know, we can essentially live our lives and never have to leave our homes ever. Yeah. And so I think it's these unnatural, unaligned ways that many of us are living our lives. I think that has a lot to do with it. But I but I would imagine if you were looking at what is categorically having The largest impact on fertility, it is very likely our exposure to toxin. And, you know, looking at As an example, we're looking at men, understanding that the number 1 and two reasons why men have lower testosterone levels is endocrine mimicking chemicals. Number 2 is insulin resistance.
And so helping people understand that if those aren't in check, it can impact not just men, but also women as well.
[00:25:22] Barry Luijbregts:
So let's let's talk about these endocrine mimicking chemicals. What, are some examples of that? Like, for instance, Sunscreen. Right? There's lots of stuff in sunscreen that is highly toxic and, endocrine, disruptive. What are other things?
[00:25:39] Cynthia Thurlow:
Yeah. So you think about parabens, you think about phthalate. They both begin with p's that they're, you know, these kind of goofy phthalates is like PHA. You know, it's it's one of these words. Like, I always say, just take the p out and just pronounce it. Thales, I think about bisphenol a. These are things that are not well regulated, and I can only speak to United States. United States does a really crummy job protecting consumers From, ingredients that we know based on research are not particularly safe. You know, it's it's I think there there hasn't been a law passed in the United date a substantive law since the 19 thirties to protect consumers. So I always say you have to read labels and you have to question things. I I think on a lot of different levels, the assumption is made if it's in my grocery store or if it's in a mall or if I can find it online, that it has to be healthy. And I always say we have to be fastidious about looking at ingredient lists. Like, I know when I go into some of the website and I maybe I'm Searching for body wash for my teenagers who use copious amounts of it, and it's like I check off the no phthalates, no paraben, no, you know, BPA. But understanding that if we're exposed to plastics, we're still getting exposed to these things, so try to limit plastic exposure. And I say limit because I'm a realist. I think it's Probably unrealistic to have no plastics exposure, but we wanna limit it as much as possible.
But understanding that these estrogen mimicking chemicals, or forever chemicals or whatever kind of moniker you wanna give to them, they're not benign. And we wanna limit as much as we can, not so that we become paranoid about our lifestyle and how we live our lives, but I know that it makes me much more thoughtful, you know, about How I go about purchasing things for my home. You know, I think about the fact that most shampoo is in plastic, that, you know, a lot of things you go to the grocery store, A lot of things are in plastic. And so I was just talking about this the other day. You know, avocado oil is supposed to be such a great alternative to, You know, seed oils, which are rampant here in the United States. And I was saying the other day, I was in Costco, and I was like, great. They carry the avocado oil that has met my patient, but now they put it in plastic. And so I said, we'll just go back to buying the smaller bottles in glass, you know, just to limit that plastic exposure. But I I think it seems benign, but it's not because it's cumulative over time. You know? The food, the environment, personal care products. I think the average woman Uses 12 to 15 products on their face and body every day, and that's average. So there's women using more. And you think about if every product has 10 ingredients, that's, You know, hundreds, if not thousands of chemicals we get exposed to every day just from our personal care products.
[00:28:13] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah. Yeah. So that's, that's bad news, and that's also good news. So you said a lot of things there. Let me, summarize and and then go back. First of all, about the vaccines, I listened to a, Joe Rogan episode where he interviews Robert Kennedy junior, which is episode, 1999, June 15th. Definitely, listen to that. He explains how that whole industry is essentially captured. And, unfortunately, that all of the, people that Create vaccines are never liable for whatever happens even if they are, negligent and do the bad thing. Anyways, I'm not an expert. Go listen to that. So that's vaccines.
The endocrine disrupting thing, obviously, that's all bad news. Right? That's in all of our stuff, including everything is in plastic. But that's also good news because that means that you can pretty easily do some things. Like for instance, I used to, use deodorant that I just spray in my armpits straight into my lymph nodes right there with lots of chemicals, aluminum. I don't know what's in there. Just read it, and you'll you'll be scared. But I just got rid of that. And I'm sure in the US as well, there are probably lots of companies that make a, You know, a natural deodorant for just a couple of ingredients, some oil, some essential things might not work a 100% as well as your chemically, deodorant.
But if you just switch that out, you do that once, and then you never have to think about that again, and that's one less thing that you are exposed to. And you can do that with all of these things. So that's kinda good news. You just have to start thinking about what are the things that you can easily replace. You don't have to do that all at once, of course, but just just pick 1 today, for instance, and just replace that. And then that's one less thing to worry about, and you might start to feel better.
[00:30:00] Cynthia Thurlow:
No. It's such a good point. You know, we don't wanna feel powerless. And so I I think that the message is always find 1 or 2 things. Like, I usually start with toothpaste, body lotion, and deodorant. And I agree with you. I laugh. I spent years using this prescription strength Dove deodorant, You know, because I would be in the hospital and, you know, sometimes you have really sick patients and you're flying in helicopters and you have all the stress. And I came to realize when I made the transition, I didn't actually need the super strength deodorant antiperspirant. What I really needed was just something that was clean. And the transition now, I tell people all the time, it's amazing to me how much product I felt like I needed whenever I got stressed. And I'm like, I was inhibiting A natural function of my body. My body was trying to sweat, and I was inhibiting my body's ability to to sweat underneath my you know, in the axillary underneath their armpits.
And I'm like, that is completely contrary to what our bodies are designed to do effectively, detoxify, know, you know, get rid of, toxins and and sweat and you know, it's just fascinating to me that, you know, we get too we make things too complicated. We try to suppress things that are otherwise natural, and so that in and of itself create problems. But I love that you made the switch as well. But, helping people understand, it's not you don't have to change everything all at once. Pick 2 or 3 things that are within your budget
[00:31:18] Barry Luijbregts:
and make those changes and then move on and make more. That's actually I think deodorant was the very last thing I changed because I was so convinced I would not have any SaaS. And I was so humbled and surprised and grateful to find out there were lots of clean companies out there. Yeah. Well, there you go. And you just have to run into one of those companies or in in your local store. And and then the other point that I would like to, add on there, as you said as well, people assume that if you go to the grocery store, Everything there that you find is safe, has been tested, and is made to be healthy for you. Well, unfortunately, that is really not the case Because those people are just trying to sell you something, and they don't really care that it hurts you or is unhealthy. They're also not actively trying to hurt you or Anything like that. They just try to sell you as much of that stuff as they can.
So you have to question everything. And if you listen to some of my other episodes as well, It's really depressing, you know, how the environment, is against us when you think about health, but that's just the reality of it. So you have to question everything. You have to Read labels. And if you can, just buy things that do not have labels on it, that you can recognize as actual food that an animal would eat, when it would be outside.
[00:32:30] Cynthia Thurlow:
But No. And and it's interesting because I think for a lot of people, they We overcomplicate thing. You know? We make it far harder than it needs to be. I was on a flight recently, and I never ever ever eat the food on the plane. I just either fast or I bring, like, Something clean with me. And surprisingly, on this one flight, they gave out pistachios. There's pistachios and sea salt. That was the only thing that was in Really? The package, and I actually told them I was like, can I take 2 of those? Because I'm gonna keep 1 with me in my bag in case I get hungry at some point. But I was saying I said I'm so glad. I mean, I know there's there's lots of nut allergies out there, so I wanna be sensitive to that. But I was delighted to see there was an option other than, like, Cheez Its and Goldfish crackers and, you know, crappy stuff. You know, the the carby stuff that we don't need more of, although it tends to be like, my husband would say that's fun food for travel, and I'm like, great. But it's not food that's healthy for us. Like, the pistachios and sea salt, 2 ingredient, both recognizable.
It's not gonna, you know, get spoiled in your bag. Mhmm. I was delighted to see that. I was like, okay. Maybe we're making a little bit of progress.
[00:33:33] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah. Oh, that's that's very, yeah, positive. So let's get back to, to the hormones. So we we see that All of these lifestyle factors can impact us in in early age, women as well, and later. And later also, know, there's an independent factor for women where you go to this menopause. So besides all of the lifestyle factors, we've heard about lots of them In this podcast about how to sleep better, how to eat better, besides all of that, what can women do when they are starting to creep into that zone of menopause?
[00:34:08] Cynthia Thurlow:
Yeah. I think the probably the most important or 2 most important things that women at this stage of life can do is number 1, Lift weight. And I know women, as a rule, they like to do their cardio. They don't wanna get off that treadmill or I call it the treadmill. They don't wanna stop running. And I'm not telling you to stop doing cardio, but you are going to be better served by building and maintaining muscle. And the reason for that is Muscle is the 1st area in the body that becomes insulin resistant. So the more muscle mass you have, the less or the more insulin sensitive you will be and less likely you are to become insulin resistant. This is very, very important. I always say metabolic health is wealth, but understanding that Not only has it become a little bit more challenging as you're getting older to maintain muscle mass because our hormones are sometimes working against us and I can explain why, But you have to work harder.
Absolutely critically important. If you wanna think about what young muscle looks like, half Filet mignon. It is delicious. It is almost all muscle meat. Right? Yeah. Ribeye. The ribeye is a fatty, marbly, fat cut laden piece of beef. That is what old muscle looks like. If you wanna think about it, you wanna look you want your muscle to look more like that thin muscle Because or the house, like, that healthy muscle because what starts to happen after the age of 40 is something called sarcopenia. Not a question of if, but when, if you were not working against is muscle loss with aging. You also lose strength if you are not actively working against it. So number 1 is lift weight. Number 2 is eat enough protein. And I know that this can sometimes be polarizing. It's not meant to be, but you wanna eat at least a 100 grams of protein a day. And what I find is most of them at this stage of life are eating teeny tiny portions of protein and too many carbohydrate, then I remind them you have to hit enough Protein in your meals anywhere from 30 to 50 grams of protein in a meal to actually stimulate 30 grams is the minimum.
To stimulate muscle protein synthesis in your muscles. So lift heavy weights, eat enough protein. And the third thing that it's important for women to understand is that as we are losing estrogen, as our follicular stimulating hormone is going up because our body our brain is sending an SOS to the ovaries, Release an egg. Release an egg. Release an egg. And our body is just, you know, kind of it's it's on hiatus. It's going on vacation. Mhmm. Understanding that that high FSH, That low estradiol, that in and of itself is catabolizing and breaking down muscle.
This is why it is so, so important. So big takeaways, Lift and eat enough protein. Now a lot of women will ask, you know, I'm plant based. I prefer eating plant based protein. What I find for a lot of women at this stage of life is they eat too much carbohydrate. It is very hard to be a 100% plant based and get your protein needs met without having a, detrimental amount of carbohydrate intake. So If you if you're an omnivore and you eat plants and animals, great. You wanna shoot for 30 minimum 30 grams of protein with each meal. I like to push it. I usually say to my female patients and clients, I want 50 to 60 grams in a meal. You slowly work your way up.
Most men probably would not be phased by 50 grams of protein. But for a lot of women, it seems overwhelming. It could be the difference between 6 ounces of chicken versus 8 ounce. And so it's really not that much more. But helping people understand that that that lifting a weight and that protein consumption is going to help you maintain muscle mass, and that's going to be so so important because this is when women and men, quite frankly, men go through andropause, they are also at risk for developing sarcopenia. And you think about it, how many people you see that are in their forties, fifties, sixties, and they have a pancake butt. They've got skinny little sinewy muscle because they have no muscle, and they'll tell you I can't lose weight to save my life, but I'm skinny. They're skinny fat. You know? They call it toffee than on than on the outside fat on the inside. And a lot of it has to do with that muscle mass loss. So when I go to Pilates, I'm always amazed at how many women, They're probably a little bit older than me, and they're thin, but they are so sarcopenic. They have their little muscle mass on their bodies, And that is that is a poor prognostic indicator. So if you wanna age well, you wanna make sure that you maintain that muscle mass. So so important.
[00:38:25] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah. Yeah. I think that's very important. I always hear from my guests here as well that, cardio is not for weight loss. Doesn't work. Nope. It just doesn't work. So lift weights. That's that's very helpful.
[00:38:37] Cynthia Thurlow:
Lift weights and do zone 2 training. I think that, you know, I I think You do something for your mind, so whether it's yoga or tai chi or, you know, whatever you enjoy, if you stand out in nature and ground your feet. But Zone 2 training is usually that kind of steady state where you can you can talk. You're not breathless. You're not winded, but that don't 2 training is very, very important.
[00:38:59] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah. What about, hormone replacement therapy? Is there a place for that as well?
[00:39:05] Cynthia Thurlow:
I a 100% agree that every, female and male for that matter should be should have a discussion with their health care practitioner. Obviously, the lifestyle stuff is very important to do first Mhmm. Because I see a lot of practitioners that, you know, they have someone that has a terrible, Excuse me. They have a terrible diet. They don't exercise. They don't sleep, and then they give them hormones, and they gain a bunch of weight, and then they're mad. And so I I think it's important to understand that The lifestyle stuff is foundational. When that's been dialed in, then we think about you know, maybe someone starts with oral progesterone The week before their menstrual cycle is a starting point.
Maybe that progresses to towards the latter stages of perimenopause. Maybe they have a little bit of estradiol. It could be by a patch or it could be compounded. And then as they transition into menopause, they may have additional need. They may need a little bit of testosterone therapy. Remember what I said earlier about 75% of women do need or would benefit from? That's probably the caveat. Testosterone is controlled substance here in the United States. There's no FDA approved testosterone therapy for women, so it has to be compounded, Which is a whole separate tangential conversation, but I do find that, you know, progesterone along with estrogen And testosterone can be very, very helpful.
I do think that there's also a place for thyroid medication depending on the individual. In fact, a lot of my female patients, that's the first they start with their thyroids are really underactive. More than likely, it's it's an autoimmune condition called Hashimoto. So Mhmm. Addressing that, you know, I'm I'm starting to see more and more individuals prescribing low dose naltrexone therapy, which, if anyone's familiar with what naltrexone It's used in microdoses, but it can be very anti inflammatory. Used in conjunction with thyroid replacement therapy can be very helpful.
When it comes to men, same type of thing. You know, the number 1 and 2 reasons why men have low testosterone, it it's not just The fact of andropause is more gradual. It's not like women kinda get shoved off a cliff and then everything stops. But helping men understand that if you're insulin resistant, you gotta fix that first. If you are exposed to a lot of endocrine mimicking chemicals and your testosterone's low, you have to address that first. But I do find that if someone is insulin sensitive and they are mindful of their exposures environmentally in their personal care products and in their food, that men can do really well on testosterone therapy. I think that there's still this stigma about men and testosterone therapy, which I think is criminal.
There's also this stigma from the Women's Health Initiative that came out in about 2002, that extrapolated that all Hormone replacement therapy would cause cancer. And what was used in the study were women that were 10 years into menopause were not healthy to begin with. Some of them were former smokers. They were obese Yeah. Or overweight, and they used a synthetic progesterone called progestin, and they use a synthetic estrogen, oral estrogen called Primerin. And that is not the same as what most clinicians are recommending now for women for HRT. So I'm very pro HRT. Obviously, there are always exceptions. But more often not even the women that I know in my practice who are working with, like, an oncologist or a integrative medicine provider.
There are even instances where women who have gone through cancer treatment may benefit from Very targeted hormone therapy. But, again, that's not my area of expertise. But even women who have gone through cancer treatment, that's not in and of itself a total contraindication.
[00:42:36] Barry Luijbregts:
Okay. So let's stay on the hormone path a little bit more and and just talk about, the pill. So the pill that women are on to not get babies, a lot of women are on that for decades. What do you think about that? Should people do that?
[00:42:57] Cynthia Thurlow:
This is a big topic. So oral contraceptives, obviously, I am a pro women's choice. And I am someone that had very mild PCOS, and my doctor put me on oral contraceptives when I was a young adult. And so I thought it had fixed the problem of having irregular cycles. I think that the lack of informed consent is something that I now counsel women to have conversations about because oral contraceptives, By many people's estimation are endocrine mimicking chemicals. We're talking about synthetic hormones. We're talking about hormones that if you use Oral contraceptives for 10, 15, 20 years. As you appropriately said, a lot of women stand for that long.
You're you're essentially put into this Menopausal state with very low estrogen levels, very low progesterone levels. Women's bone health is impacted. Their muscle health is impacted by being kept in a low estrogen state. That's not something that I even knew about. It wasn't something that was talked about. The women understand that if they they need this for contraception, that they want to be on oral contraceptives for as short duration as possible. Now there's lots of other options. You've got, nonhormonal IUDs, that you can certainly if if someone's in a monogamous relationship, you can obviously work On family planning methods where they're assessing cervical mucus and temperature changes.
I think for a lot of younger people, they don't want the they don't want the responsibility, understandably, because they have busy active lives. They don't wanna have to monitor their blood, their their, temperature. They don't wanna monitor cervical mucus. So I understand why they would be attractive, but I I think most clinicians are not fully explaining What can happen? And then coming off of the pill, a lot of women are going through long periods of amenorrhea where they're not getting a a menstrual cycle at all. And so I I think that The average person, if if their clinician would take a couple minutes to explain to them what the long term effects can be beyond contraception, I I think that would that would allow women to make better choices for themselves. I certainly if someone had said to me, you're going to be osteopenic in your thirties because you missed out on these, you know, peak bone building periods of time in your life that might have caused me a little bit of pause. And so I always like to be transparent, say there's no judgment on my part. People have to do what what in the best interest of them and their sanity.
But I do think that Royal contraceptives have a place, but I think full disclosure and fully informed consent needs to be part of that conversation As opposed to just putting women on birth control, that's going to be the most reliable when ultimately it may actually end up being detrimental.
[00:45:46] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah. And I think that's probably the main, problem at the moment that most people just don't get the information. They don't get that from their from the GP Or, you know, from the news, from the Internet, it's just this is what everybody does, so you do do it too. And then, you know, you find out that you have all these consequences later in life. Yeah. Which is why I'm saying funny. All those years of being on the pill, I used to think I had a horrible PMS.
[00:46:10] Cynthia Thurlow:
And for anyone listening, you're not actually you're suppressing your normal Hormonal communication between your ovaries and your brain and you're put on synthetic hormones, I didn't actually have bad PMS. I just had bad PMS because I was on the pill, and that withdrawal bleed was just because I had stopped taking, you know, the the last, you know, the last week of your cycle, you're not taking you take either a sugar pill, you can take placebo or you're not taking anything at all, and that's why you get a withdrawal bleed. But I think for a lot of individuals, you know, certainly, I I trained in inner city Baltimore. I'm acutely sensitive to making sure women have access to good contraception if they choose to be physically physically excuse me, sexually active, but I think Also helping women understand the long term implications of what choice of contraception they're using, what can can be of issue in the future.
[00:46:59] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah. Okay. So we've covered a lot of ground, so far, hormones, lifestyle factors as well, including a and having enough information about it, perhaps we can end on some, let's say, practical tips. We've already had some, that people can use to, especially women, to become more hormonally healthy and to, you know, get rid of that weight.
[00:47:26] Cynthia Thurlow:
Yeah. So, again, the most common pain point for my patients and clients for sure, I would say number 1, you know, focus on eating real food. You know, if you as an example, you know, I I like my my new patients to kind of do a Whole30. Whole30 is no gluten grains, dairy, soy, alcohol, sugar. For a lot of people, that's daunting to kind of cut those out for 30 days, but it allows us to really assess the net impact of processed on our health. And so if you're really focusing in on more nutrient dense whole foods, you're less likely to overeat because your those key satiety mechanisms are will be triggered, in the body, I would say, you know, make an effort to be more physically active. You know? I love having an Apple Watch. I like to track how many steps I take a day. And, You know, usually, by this time of the morning, I've got close to 10,000, and I tell people, you know, park further away when you go to the grocery store, take a walk in the morning, take a walk, you know, In the evening, try to get in more physical activity. We know that walking is hugely impactful. And in fact, we know walking after a meal will help lower your blood sugar.
If there's any concerns about potentially being insulin resistant, you know, having a glucometer or a continuous glucose monitor, At least here in the United States, you can purchase those things without a doctor's prescription. Obviously, if you're diabetic, you can get it covered by insurance. I think having glucometers and CGMs is really invaluable for seeing your net impact of sleep and stress and nutritional choices. Lift weights. You know? It doesn't have to be that you are a power lifter. It could be that you start with bodyweight exercises and slowly kind of Work your way up to doing, heavier heavier lifting.
Gotta prioritize sleep. I know it's not sexy, I try to get into bed 30 minutes earlier. It really does make a big difference. Don't try to catch up on your sleep over the weekend. I I feel like in a lot of ways, A lot of women try to do that and you can't make up for 5 days of crappy sleep, which is 2 days of sleeping more. That's not the way the body works. I would say the other thing is, you know, being really proactive about managing stress, and finding something that you like doing. I personally really like Walking in nature, that's become something, you know, during during the pandemic, there were lots of new habits that we, learned to embrace, and one of them was walking outside nature with My dogs every day and my husband.
I love, meditation. I really like laying on I have a PMF mat, so that's, pulse electromagnetic, frequency, and it's very relaxing. But, obviously, each one of us, you know, find something that that works for us. I would say the other thing is, You know, the ability to start saying no to things that no longer serve you, I think mindset's really important, and women tend to be more prone to people pleasing. Ironically enough, Estrogen is one of these key hormones that kind of plays into that. So as women are in, you know, middle to latter stages of perimenopause and menopause, they find their voices. And in many ways, they will articulate what they do and don't want, much better than they might have done in their twenties, thirties, and early forties. So The ability to say no and then just learning to do things for pleasure, like whether it's reading, whether it's going on vacation, whether it's connecting with loved ones, You know, really, like, those things are all super important, and then find a practitioner that you are comfortable working with that will have the conversation with you about whether or not Hormone replacement therapy in one capacity or another might be beneficial for you. I think every man male and female deserves to have that conversation.
And it's not just a female centric thing. It's not just a male centric thing. It's just the reality of we are living longer, and you don't have to white knuckle it through Menopause and andropause, if you're not feeling like your quality of life is where it needs to be. I I think that I would say that to anyone, irrespective of Where you live or how old you are, get the answers you deserve and find a practitioner that's willing to help support them.
[00:51:18] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah. I think that's very powerful, especially the part of, being able to say no to things. So choosing yourself, Choosing, to do things for yourself, especially as women, as you discussed, are are more, prone to stress. So where can people find more about you and your work?
[00:51:37] Cynthia Thurlow:
Thank you. So www.synthiathurlow.com, you can get access to my book, The Intermittent Fasting transformation. You can connect with me through my podcast called Everyday Wellness. You can find me on YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, be forewarned, I can be a little snarky. I also have a free Facebook group that's for men and women called the intermittent fasting lifestyle backslash my name that Anyone is welcome to joy. It's an anti drama zone, so you don't have to worry about any drama because I have zero tolerance for it. Talk about boundaries. I have healthy boundaries even in my groups.
[00:52:09] Barry Luijbregts:
It's good. Okay. Excellent. I will put all of those things in the show notes so that people can find that, easily and can connect with you. Well, thank you very much for talking with me today. Thank you. It's been a pleasure. Alright.
Introduction
The importance of lifting weights and eating enough protein during menopause
The potential benefits of hormone replacement therapy for women and men
Discussion on the impact of synthetic hormones on women's health
Practical tips for hormonal health
