An Intermittent Fasting Update with Cynthia Thurlow

Real quick before we dive into this episode, I have a little sleep secret I want to tell you about. Look, sleep is crucial for your fitness, but it's crucial for just plain old everyday life and function. And I find I sleep great unless I have a migraine and I've had more than my fair share since perimenopause all the way through post menopause. My secret weapon was Blue Sky CBD sleep gels. Each gel contains 25mg of CBD and 25mg CBN for deep restorative sleep. Something about it helps to reduce inflammation, which I believe for me was key in helping me get to sleep. But the biggest thing is so many of the over counter solutions, whether for sleep or migraines, can ruin your gut health and liver health. Neither one of those did I want to be problematic for me. So this option is recommended by health care providers worldwide and backed by thousands of happy customers, many of whom come from our flipping 50 community. There is 0thC so it's non habit forming. It's made by a trusted family owned company that we all can feel good about. Third party tested for purity and potency. And if you're interested, you too can try a sample for just $6. But even better, you can get 30% off forever with discount code. Flipping 50. That's flipping 50. Just go to flipping50.com blueskycbd we'll put that link in the show notes and you'll find it everywhere on flipping 50 at my favorites.

What are you waiting for?

Good night.

Whether you love intermittent fasting and swear by it or you hate it, or it's still a source of confusion for you.

Should you?

Shouldn't you?

If you do, how do you do it?

How long do you do it? What do you eat in between?

If you're asking any of those questions, I want you to tune in today. Let's look. Intermittent fasting is no secret. It is a source, a tool for longevity, for bettering life, for potentially support

with your gut microbiome. It may or may not be the best solution for weight loss and weight control. And then again, it is one of

the reasons why people are drawn to it. What about you?

We're going to answer a ton of

questions and some that you may not

have been thinking to ask with Intermittent

Fasting expert Cynthia Thurlow in this episode.

This is an intermittent fasting update on how experts evolve their thinking and actions and use the n of 1 you

studying you or me studying me?

And data to inform decisions both for ourselves and for our clients. In this episode with returning guest and fan favorite Cynthia Thurlow, we discuss updates on Intermittent Fasting. If you are craving a behind the scenes more than science geek relay of the power of autophagy and an episode that gives you the insider information on

intermittent fasting, this would be it.

Cynthia is widely known for her two

TEDx talks, one with millions of views,

and has since written a book, Birth the Podcast. And coincidentally with us is also doing

life sending kids off to college, raising

puppies and losing parents. And what is this health business pro found true for herself and now compared to five or six or seven years

ago and what her thoughts and her actions and lifestyle habits were then?

How might this impact and influence your own thoughts?

I'm looking forward to sharing this one with you.

My guest today is Cynthia Thurlow, a good friend, colleague and respected expert in the intermittent fasting area. Cynthia is a globally recognized expert in nutrition and intermittent fact, highly sought after speaker and the CEO and founder of Everyday Wellness Project. She's been a nurse practitioner for over 20 years as a two time TEDx speaker. Her second talk on intermittent fasting has been viewed over 7 million times and

I believe that number may need an update.

She's been featured on ABC, Fox 5, KTLA, CW and in Medium and Entrepreneur. Cynthia was recently listed in Yahoo. Finance as one of the 21 founders

changing the way we do business.

She's also the host of Everyday Wellness Podcast, which was listed as 20 podcasts that will help you grow in 2020 by Entrepreneur magazine and in Business Insider 21 podcast to expand your mind in 2021. I'm Debra Atkinson. You're listening to flipping 50. I started this podcast over a decade ago to answer questions about fitness in menopause and beyond before you knew to ask them. The goal to help accelerate your results with science and the practical application of proven protocols while living your best life. There's no more powerful health insurance influencer in the world than a midlife woman and it's not just about you, but the three generations that you influence. My unique 40 year career, including being a university Senior Lecturer in kinesiology, an industry subject matter expert and an international speaker to founder of the first and the only exclusively made for menopause and beyond fitness membership in the world. Every week I interview experts behind the scenes and the science of optimal hormone balancing fitness and longevity and share answers

to our community's questions so you can

have the vitality and the energy that you want, need and deserve.

Foreign.

Cynthia Thurlow thank you so much for

being here and coming back, really.

Of course. Always a pleasure to connect with you, my friends.

This is so good. So I think many of our members that we've been talking about, our members, our listeners, our students, are going to be a little bit surprised about what you might say based on what we talked about in the green room. So first of all, what I'd really like to do is give everybody a little update. We've had you here. We've talked in back and forth, talked about fasting and exercise, and now it's 2024. And I think there are more and more people talking about fasting and either taking a side one way or the other. But I think every woman in midlife probably comes to this or comes back to it and asks again, should I be doing this? Is this the answer for me? So what's new? Is there more research? Is there new emerging research in fasting that we need to know that?

Yeah, it's such a great way to start the conversation today because I think one of the things that I know you and I both embrace is that I can I'd be very changed my mind. I still believe fervently and fasting as a strategy, an appropriate strategy for the right person, right time of their lives, even if it's temporarily because we know the average American is consuming food for 12 to 15 hours a day, which is not the way our bodies are really designed to thrive. As it pertains to me personally, I was sharing with you before we started recording over the summer, I lost my dad. And one of the things that contribute, contributed to my father's demise and death was lack of muscle mass. So sarcopenia. And as people start losing muscle mass, they become weaker and more frail. And frailty is a risk factor for falls. And my father had a series of falls and on his last fall, he got two head bleeds and ultimately passed away. And it has reignited in me the desire to be very, very conscientious about strength training and macros and how I eat and what I eat. And so for me, personally relevant to your listeners because I know we share a lot of the same the same tribe is the fact that I gave myself permission this summer to have 12 hours of digestive rest, which is really what I think everyone should be doing as a as like a baseline. Even my teenagers that are active and athletic do this 12 hours a day in which I do not eat. And so in that 12 hours, I am able to have more protein. For me personally have more carbohydrate. I do better with more carbs than I do more fats. That's just how my body does best. Same. And what's been fascinating to me is as I have navigated all these change this summer was, you know, now I have a personal trainer because I needed to get my button gear. And it wasn't that I wasn't exercising, was I wasn't exercising as intensely as I needed to be doing. And when you have someone with that degree of accountability that's watching you and fine tuning you and form and all these other things, I've come to realize that I actually do better with a fed workout. And so I've been working out in the afternoon, which is different than what I normally do. I'm a, usually I'm a get out of bed and go girl. And I still do some zone 2 and other things in the morning. But when I'm lifting weights and lifting heavy, it is a fed workout. It is three hours before I have a fairly good sized meal and I just feel like not only do I not get tired, but I feel like I can push myself. And I think it's important to share these insights because maybe not everyone has the ability to be as flexible as that. Like, yes, it is I'm privileged that I can work out in the middle of the afternoon. However, I would encourage everyone, if you've been fasting for a while, if you've been in a chronic caloric deficit that you change things up and it doesn't have to be per se forever and you don't necessarily have to reverse diet. But I've been tracking my macros and I've been really conscientious about protein intake because I ideally want to put on about five pounds of muscle. And so I share that very humbly to say as someone who has been intermittent fasting for almost 10 years, I do a lot less fasting and a lot more digestive rest. And that is still conferring benefits to my body. And if I'm in the midst of, you know, we're getting ready to go to an event at the end of the month and I it takes me a whole day to get out to the west coast or close to the west coast, I will fast most of the day because airport food is generally pretty icky. But having said that, there's a lot less stress structured fasting in my life right now because I'm being very intentional about exercise that is fueled as well as protein intake. Like protein intake. I've never been this conscientious before, like I always have a sense of where I am, but I think it's making a big difference not only in how I feel, but how I sleep. Obviously there is a degree of reflection on my father's life and how things could have been very different for him. And so if my father's death has taught me nothing, it's the fact that I don't want the same for myself, that I do not want to be frail and having falls. And this is my fall prevention plan. That's the point I'm trying to make, is that what I'm doing right now is helping to ensure that I am less likely to fall as an older adult. You know, I'm 53 and I feel like it has to be a big focus of my life right now because it is a very slippery slope, especially in menopause. Even with hormone replacement therapy. It can be a very, very slippery slope if you're not actively working against sarcopenia.

Yeah, I so love that I have scribbled so much on a little tiny post it note. I should apologize to it. But first, so I want to come back to a couple of things. So have you been doing those changes long enough, do you think? Are you seeing body composition changes, muscle mass, absolute muscle mass changes, or generally first we'll see strength changes even if you don't see the other two.

Yeah. So right now seeing strength changes, I do have a baseline bioimpedance scale. So our mutual friend Aaron Hartman, who's my internist, we came up with a plan which he was very supportive of. And so we said in three months time we will do another bioimpedance scale. To be completely transparent, I was shocked with how much lean muscle mass I had lost in two years. That's even with strength training. And so it's, it goes back to, it has to be enough volume and has to be enough intensity to stimulate those myocytes to, to build muscle. And very transparently, if you saw me with clothes on, I probably wouldn't look any difference. But what I can tell you is I'm adding weight every week in the gym. And that's something my trainer tracks. And so I use that as a metric. But what I love is that when I lift, I'm far more tired before I go to bed. I mean I sleep really well. And that added support of knowing that deeper sleep, I mean I'm getting anywhere from 90 minutes to 120 minutes of deep sleep. And that's something that most middle aged women really struggle with that they just don't attain those metrics. And we know how important deep sleep is. So in three months time I'll be able to say definitively and I'll have my pre and my, you know, my three month bioimpedance scan results and be able to look at those objectively. But the goal is to be there and very transparently the only way I can get there is to make sure I'm very conscientious about training and volume and then also the protein and macro frozen piece as well.

I love that. So you mentioned the deep sleep, which to all listeners, just to review this. First of all, you may be lifting weights, but not noticing that you sleep that well, that even could be a sign you don't have quite enough stimulus. Because when you get that what I say, good tired and that could be lifting weights in the gym or you go out and you have a big excursion and it was hard, you're gonna sleep better, not just longer be tired, but deeper. That's gonna be there and that comes back to help your release of testosterone and growth hormone when you're in those deep cycles of sleep and if you don't hit those, you're just superficially, yes, you're sleeping, resting, there's a missing opportunity there. But the other thing I'm gonna come back to, this comes up pretty frequently when I talk to somebody. It's like my antenna goes up when someone will say I work out hard and I always want to ask, particularly if I'm talking to somebody who's doing it when they're fasting, talk to me about your speed and talk to me and you're, you've been on one side and then on the other, but that changes dramatically. Fitness happens when you're working at your capacity, going faster if it's speed related or lifting heavier or more repetitions, depending on what your protocol is. And I know most of us are thinking heavier, not more reps, but either a applies and by comparison something that feels hard could be hard simply because there's no gas in the tank. But yet it's slower, it's not as many reps or as heavy. I think that's such an important distinction. So when you are looking at your, you said you're gaining strength. Are you doing any speed work? Are you noticing speed changes too?

Yeah. So it's interesting for me, I Unbelievably I ran 800 meters in high school and so I, I was not a huge ye. 800 meters is pretty miserable and I played field hockey because that was before lacrosse was a thing for girls. And my trainer has me on days I'm not working with her. She's very specific. It's like these short bursts of intense exercise. So my neighbors. Probably because there's nothing flat in my neighborhood, central Virginia is very hilly. So when you're sprinting on a hill.

Yeah.

You get gassed really quickly. And so I have my husband timing me outside to see how far I go, how quickly do I go. And so, yes, I've started seeing some improvement. It gets very hot and humid here up until probably mid October. So I'm hoping that I'll be able to do more of this outside work as the temperatures start to. To decrease quite a bit. But, yes, and here's the other thing that I would say is I've always loved flow classes for flexibility purposes. Posterior chain work. I love Pilates. I did a lot of Pilates the last three years. I cannot tell you how many women in those classes were about as thin as my shinger. Yeah. And they would do, I don't know, seven, eight, ten classes a week and.

Wow.

Yeah, exactly. But the eye women that I knew that did two classes a day, and I. That. That seemed a little intense. Anyway, I would explain why I was doing it, but I assumed that I wasn't losing muscle by engaging in Pilates. But I do think, like my gestalt is, for me personally, as an ectomorph, I have to work very hard to put muscle on. I'm not an esomorphic. I do think that for me personally, it's not that I shouldn't do politics or. Yeah, I think it's important for me.

Yeah.

But it is not a. It is not a replacement. I don't care how intense it is because I took the top level class at the studio I went to. It is not a replacement for strength training. Full stop. And I think we need to stop kidding ourselves. I know I'm speaking your language. We need to stop kidding ourselves when we go on autopilot in a class that somehow that is replacing the intensity of those strength training workouts. And that is why I think it's so important for me to share this, because I love Pilates. I do. I mean that. I. I love the way I feel while I'm doing it. But it is an adjunct. It is not a replacement to stretch training.

Amen. I love that. And I'll tell you an observation I had. So we just took. I had worked with a group of women for the last seven to nine months, depending on when they came preparing them for rim to river to rim at the Grand Canyon. So it's about a 16 and a half mile hike. That may not sound like a big deal to some of you, however. The last nine miles is all up, and it's kind of the heat of the day, or if you're trying to beat it, and if you're not as fit, you're in the heat longer, so you deserve more badges. But in the last, you know, mile and a half, it's the most brutal. You have a cumulative effect of the fatigue and the day and the heat, and it's the steepest. And so a mile and a half may sound to you, well, that's 20, 25 minutes. No, it's about an hour and a half at least, because there's a lot of sitting, there's a lot of resting, and then there's a few steps in between. So I met a couple from Tampa who were there, and they actually were just going down a few, a couple of miles and then coming back up. But nonetheless, it's, again, it's work. They chose the steepest of that to do it. And so they were self described as. She was the hair, you know, and so she kind of went ahead real quickly and then she would wait for him, and he was the tortoise, and just slowly prodded up and kept going steady. I was watching her, and then we would sit together and she said, you know, I do pilates five days a week. And I was like, yep. So she was very agile. She, you know, moved herself. She was small and slight, moved herself. But I couldn't help but wonder, what's her next 20 years? What's 30 years like for her, you know, and if I could just take. Take one of those days away and say, let's put some energy or two of those days, let's take you into the weight room as well and get some heavy lifting done, you'll be so much better off. But like you, she doesn't. She can't afford to lose any muscle. There wasn't much visible, but yet, by our standards, or those that have been in Green for 30 and 40 years, she was slim, she was fit, is the way she'd be seen. Yeah.

Yeah. I think that fall prevention plan is very much embedded in my brain. And I think that for so many people, you don't have to have a loved one have a bad fall. But I can tell you that when I was caring for patients for the large cardiology practice that I worked for for 16 years, you know, it disturbed me enormously that most of the patients I saw in their late 40s, early 50s, could barely get themselves off a bedside toilet, as we used to call it, bedside commode. And that troubled me enormously because I kept thinking, if you don't have the quadriceps strength or upper body strength to push yourself up right now, it's not going to get better. You know, that slippery slope of sarcopenia and the resultant frailty that comes with it is an enormous concern. And what's interesting about the training that my trainer does is she has me on and off the floor all the time. Yeah. If I do something on the floor, I'm back up again and I'm back on the floor. And. And she says that a lot of her. A lot of her clients will complain about that. And she's like, fall prevention plan, part of the work. Do it. Yeah, Fall prevention plan. So very similarly.

So I. All of our workouts are at home. And. And I have never, ever. Well, I take that back. I've had a bench, but not in the way that I can use it really easily. Since I've been creating videos, no bench. And I actually don't recommend lying on a ball when you're going heavy because you're creating an unstable surface, and that's going to prevent you from lifting as heavy as you could on a stable surface. So I'm constantly up, down, and again,

get that complaint every once in a while.

Suggestion would be super helpful if you didn't do that.

Yes.

Well, and.

And the other thing that I think is important and. And it may not be that everyone has the ability to work with someone that has a kinesiology background. I know that's your background.

Yeah.

But one side of our body is not always as flexible as another side. I mean, she was able to zone in on my hip being tight. And then, you know, all the flexibility work that we do together, because she'll say, you know, I'm noticing that because this H is tight, you know, you're putting more pressure on your other. So it's been interesting to kind of humbly sit back and be a student because I. I'm like, I'm there to learn. And I. As I tell my husband, we have a puppy, the puppy is mentally exhausted when the trainer is gone. And I am generally mentally exhausted. Not physically, I am mentally exhausted. Like, my brain has been pushed all over the place. But I'm doing that for a purpose.

Yeah.

Because I think we have to think very comprehensively about, you know, we're happy, healthy, mobile right now, and we want to remain happy, healthy and mobile for the rest of our lives. Right.

And you are so you are 53.

I'm 60.

And when you're working with your community, which is uber large, are you seeing,

is there a point where you're seeing.

There's a shift from the concern of maybe wanting to intermittent fast because really my goal is to be slim or to get rid of the menopause, belly fat and issues that have come. But there's a point where we tend to flip and maybe it's an incident like for you or where do you see that? And is there a common denominator there? You think,

Hey, this is Debra Atkinson, and there is one thing you can't do in the gym at all your age, and that's get all the protein that you need. You've got to do that in the kitchen. To make it easy for myself not only to get the protein, but the fiber, the fruits and vegetables I want daily, I started drinking a smoothie a day 30 years ago. But when I realized all the junk, the sugar and the extras that you don't want that I don't want hiding in my most protein powders, that's when I finally caved in after years of saying I will never, ever, ever sell supplements. Stop skipping skimping and sabotaging yourself in the morning after workouts by always being prepared. Look, yep, I agree, real food first, but it's just not convenient to carry a turkey sandwich sometimes the protein, and don't forget the fiber, they kill cravings and they boost satiety. And you've got to make it easy to do the right thing. You can use code podcast for 10% off your first order at flipping50.com today.

Well, I think obviously personal experience has a great deal to do with our trajectory of learning. And I was part of that generation where, you know, you couldn't be too thin.

Right.

You know, I was in a popular sorority in college. I had very close girlfriends in my 20s and 30s. I had many girlfriends who are now recovering from eating disorders. I never had one, but so I was very much. It was always kind of in my experience that I was around a lot of women who have unhealthy relationships with their bodies and with their. But to be totally transparent, I think for a long time I was more concerned about the number on the scale than I was about was I healthy and strong. And I think that, you know, going through what I have in the last three months with my dad has really reaffirmed for me what are my goals. And it wasn't that I wasn't conscientious before. I think that I'd been in that mindset of I intermittent fast. This is just what I do to now saying can I nourish my body adequately for the types of physical activity that I am, I'm training. I look at it as I am training, right? That is, I am training for the rest of my life. That mindset shift is so powerful. I think things as sad as it is that my father is no longer with us, my father's legacy has reaffirmed for me why it is so important to talk about how I have changed what I'm doing, how I will continue to serve women, but actually encourage women to think beyond what they already know. As an example, I've never been a proponent of omad ever for the purposes that you just can't fill your body. I take a lot of heat for that. I get a lot of hateful messages across social media, as does my team.

I'm going to pause for a minute just in case you're a newbie to fasting. Omad is one meal a day.

Yes, thank you. Yes, one meal a day. And unless you are a unicorn, most individuals cannot get enough food into one meal. I certainly can't get 120granks protein. I just can't. I might. I would feel like I was going to explode and. And I think that it's so important to help people understand that what worked at one point in our lives may not serve us in another point. Like when I was in the throes of perimenopause and I was really frustrated, Deborah, that I'd never been weight loss resistant and suddenly I was. And when you're five foot braid three quarters that three quarter matters. I get you.

I. I got a half over here.

Yeah. So it's like it does make a difference when you're not as tall of a person. I just don't distribute weight quite as well. It shows up in certain spots and that was very distressing. And so I came to intermittent fasting with initially a desire to lose weight. And so through a bunch of lifestyle things along with fasting, I did. But I think that I'm now at a point in my adult life where I've started to shift again and I'm having three meals. I am fueling two hours, two and a half hours before my workout. I feel like I'm getting a lot more out of it. And so I, I think for all of us us. It's so important as public figures to share with our communities transparently. These are the things that are starting to make me second guess whether this is what I want to do forever. Does it mean that I. I might intermittent fast on occasion? Absolutely. I give myself the. The flexibility to do that. But do I think that if you're really working actively against fault prevention and lifting heavy enough weights and being conscientious about those things, I think it makes it much more challenging. And certainly there's a lot of research that suggests that getting enough protein and carbohyd in pre workout and even post workout, you have a lot of benefits, not just physiologically, but, you know, with recovery. And that's what I think about, like, I want to be able to recover. I don't want to be so sore tomorrow that I can't feel like I can walk my dogs up, up and down hills in my neighborhood. Because that's again, goes back to functional training. I want to remain active. I don't want to fall. So it just kind of reaffirms for me. I want to ensure that I'm sharing that so that people understand you can change your mind course.

Y so love that. And I think, you know, we're all going to go through that. We're all going to go through certain times and phases in our life where, okay, here's the biggest problem presenting, here's the solution to it. This solution now is not going to be the same solution as life evolves. I love that.

I.

What do you want, like bucket list activities? Is there anything that also inspires you? Not so you could look at, you know, fall risk reduction. I don't want to fall. And there's that. Fear's a big motivator. But, you know, especially if you just had your yourself in it and emerged, it's like, that's emotionally painful. But then what about. What do you want to do?

Yeah, no, I, I think I'm half an empty nest right now. So my husband and I just sent our oldest off to college. So I'm starting to see, you know, in two more years my youngest will be off to college and we put off certain trips because I didn't want to be that far from them. God forbid something happened. And you know, we've had some bucket list trips in New Zealand and Asia and other such things, but I think it's going to be more like active and like, not that we're not active on vacation, but not only for things that I do with the boys when we're on vacation because I am a boy mom and I'm a fervent believer. I mean, we went to Costa Rica to years ago for the second time. And I did things I never wanted to do because I did not want to be that mom. That's like, I don't want to be wet, I don't want to be cold. I don't want to be doing crazy, you know, cave diving and all sorts of craziness. So I think it's a twofold thing. Eventually my kids will. They'll settle down after they get out of college, have a job, and they'll have their own family. I want to be able to crawl around the floor with my grandkids. I want to be able to do fun things with them. I want to be able to also do, you know, hiking and backpacking. Like, my husband has talked about wanting to go to New Zealand for as long as I've known him. And I look at it as, we've got lots of adventures I still want to undertake. And so it is. I don't view it as I'm fearful of falling. It's not going to happen because I'm doing all the things that are going to ensure that that's much less likelihood, much less likely. And I want to be proactive about it. I don't want to be reactive. I want to be proactive. And so that's how I choose to kind of buffer and live my life Now. I can tell you, my youngest just started taking mixed martial arts. That is not what I had an intention of doing. But I was saying, my husband, I used to love riding. I mean, there's just a lot of things I used to do that I kind of fell out of favor of doing. And I said, I think, you know, now that you've gotten back to doing a lot of golfing, because that's his, like, thing. I was like, I think it's time for me to find some active hobbies that I kind of put on the side when we became parents. And it just wasn't enough time in our week to be able to facilitate that. And I think hiking will definitely be one. And we did a lot of hiking in Switzerland and loved it. And. And we want to talk about a great, great workout. Although cooler, not as warm as Arizona, but, you know, just being physically active. Like, I want to carry a backpack. Like, I've been wearing a weighted vest.

Yeah.

For the past six months. And that's been fantastic. You know, not only do you get your heart rate up and you Know, kind of push your workouts and, you know, I'll wear it outside. I was telling my neighbors, they're like, what are you wearing? I was like, this is my way of best because I want to protect bone mass. That's the other thing. I think not. Not enough of us think about until we get a DEXA scam that says, oh, by the way, you're osteopenic. Like, okay, well, I don't want to become osteoporitic, so what are the things I can do? And so that's. I, I think being active throughout my lifetime and just continuing to push myself. Like, when I get comfortable, I get bored. So for me, I'm like the, you know, we both have very smart having activities for them so they don't get bored because then they get into trouble. I think about it the same way that, that it's important that we're constantly challenging ourselves physically and intellectually.

Love it. Absolutely love it. Let's talk just for a minute about. So you've talked about 12 hours. You're eating a little bit more than used to three meals to get that protein.

You're probably.

Your weight is 120. You're getting 120 grams of protein. What about supplements? I know we both have kind of an affinity for creatine, so talk about that. Anything else that you're doing, you're making sure you're taking or that's sufficient with testing. You're double checking.

Yeah, I would say, you know, creatine is, is definitely one of these foundational supplements. And, and I've been able to hack jet lag 100%. So creatine has helped with muscle strength and also it's helpful with sleep architecture, brain and bone support, and jet lag. So I'll just insert this, that 10 grams of which is more than what I normally take. It's usually five. Five is what the most research. But 10 grams because you need more to cross the blood brain barrier. So I'll just put that there. 10 grams across the blood brain barrier. I start three days before with 10 grams a day. 10 grams. Every day I'm away, 10 grams for the first three days I come home and I have zero jet lag. This year I was in Portugal and I was in France almost back to back. It was. I think I had two weeks in between the trips and my cousin and my husband and kids were disgusted. They were like, this is unbelievable. Like, I got on, you know, six hours ahead, got on effortlessly, easily, and had no jet lag. When I Came home. So I just plugged jet lag. Sorry, I just plugged creatine for multiple reasons because I like simplicity. I also have been enjoying using mitocure, which is urolithin A, which is actually a signaling molecule. But that has been helpful for me for energy. Like we could talk about the value of intermittent fasting for upregulating something called autophagyne. And urolithin A is something that is, is important for getting rid of disease, disorder, mitochondria, which are the powerhouses of our cells. I would say beyond that, you know, obviously magnesium is always important. Most of us are deficient.

You know, this question is going to come up, so I know my listeners are going to nail me if I don't ask this. Is there a type of magnesium you specifically like or prefer? Or how do you advise someone else who might be asking that fantastic question?

So you have to remember I worked in cardiology for 16 years, so I did a lot of electrolyte management. So number one, I think that most of us need both transdermal, which means skin absorbed magnesium as well as oral magnesium to get our levels where they need to be. And I think for anyone who is middle age, not sleeping, there's a lot of stress. I mean, certainly with my dad's passing over the summer, there was a lot more electrolytes on board. So transdermal magnesium, like ancient minerals, I have no affiliation with them. Ancient minerals is great. You can spray if you have sensitive skin. They have a sensitive skin formula. So it's a magnesium oil. You do four sprays into two cup tans. You rub it on your trunk, your arms and your legs. You leave it on for 20 minutes, you wash it off and it's that easy. I think that in conjunction with oral magnesium, now there's a thousand different. Well, not. I'm exaggerating. There's a lot of different types of magnesium. What I can tell you is if you are someone that is prone to constipation, magnesium glycinate or B glycinate can help you with bowel movement. So that can be twofold. That's never my problem ever. So I actually will take either a chelated form of magnesium, which means that the magnesium is combined with some other minerals to help with absorption. But I also like magnesium. L threonate at night because if you cross the blood brain barrier and helping everyone to understand that the blood brain barrier is not easy to cross. So we know that there's specific formulations of magnesium that are effective for doing this. So if you need sleep support, but I think more often than not, when I'm looking at lab work, my patients need a combination of both. Does that mean that you do this, the transdermal magnesium, every day? Maybe you do it a couple of times a week. I also like soaking in magnesium. So I will do, you know, two cups of magnesium flake with a cup of baking soda and two tablespoons of borax. Now, everyone always asks, isn't Borax toxic? Not if you are using it outside your body. So you can soak your feet, you can soak your body, but the borax and the baking soda actually potentiate the absorption of magnesium. And during winter, I like to actually soak in magnesium for that purpose. You just need about 20 minutes, or if you don't like the idea of a bath, you can just soak your feet. So that's where I think magnesium is really, really beneficial. I also think about, you know, sleep support in general. You know, if you're dealing with a lot of stress, do you need some adaptogenic herbs? We know things like ashwagandha, rhodiola can, or relora, which is magnolia bark, can be very helpful for quieting that autonomic nervous system. I feel like I've been living, living on these things over the summer just to kind of, you know, keep my cortisol levels balanced. For anyone that's listening, cortisol is not a bad hormone, but if your cortisol levels are really high, it's going to interrupt your sleep, it's going to, you know, elevate your blood glucose, it's going to impact your insulin, it's going to impact fat loss as well as, et cetera, et cetera. So those are probably the things I think about the most. I do like inositol, which is you can't get enough from your diet, but very beneficial for sleep support. Very beneficial because it can be used for other things like blood sugar regulation. Yeah, I just like it because it helps me sleep. I have hacked my sleep enough that I know that I need about 2 to 3 grams a night, and that that has really made a big difference. And so the, the other piece that I would add is there's emerging research coming out about the gut microbiome. And hint, hint, this is what my next book is about. It's really focused on women in perimenopause and menopause. And what's changing. There are certain types of probiotics that can be beneficial for sleep support in conjunction with, like, Lemon balm or L Theanine. And so this is the thing that I'm like really interested in right now is I'm always like, the power of bny. I'm like, ooh, if this works for me, it might work for other people. I'm doing a lot of experimentation right now on that. But sleep is very important. And then also that strength training piece, making sure we're doing things to support, to support muscle strength. And the other thing about creatine that I want to just interject is people always say, well, can I eat it good enough for my diet? Most people can't. And if you're still menstruating, there's actually research to demonstrate that there's times in your cycle where you actually need more creatine, amazingly enough. And there's a lot of good research that's emerging about menopausal women and the use of creatine not just for muscle strength, but also bone and brain health. So I think it's just kind of the, like a multi purpose. That's what I love about creatine is it's not just about strength training. It's so many other things. And if you want to think about, you know, being efficient like I am, I'm like, I want to take 20 supplements a day. It's like, what's a supplement I could take that has multiple per, multiple things that will help me or help my patients? Then I'm like, I'm all for it, love it.

Okay, two questions I want to ask you. One will go quick, one will not. You mentioned sleep. You have a new puppy. Our puppies could actually be siblings. They look so similar, but puppy sleep with you or.

No, no, puppy has not. Although he would like to. So we have, we are crazy people. We have a golden doodle and a labradoodle that are senior. So at 12 and 11. And then we have this, this Bernie Doodle puppy who's the cutest thing ever. He's six months old. The senior dog should earned a spot at the foot of our bed. Bernie Doodle would love to sleep on our bed, but actually he doesn't mind

going to his crate.

Like he, he will actually go in there on his own.

Safe place. Yeah.

So I think, you know, for him it's kind of identifying like now it's time to go to sleep. Now it's quiet. And now, you know, thankfully we've got to the point where he sleeps until 7 o' clock in the morning because we had be many, many, many months where I Looked at my husband and said this is why middle aged people don't have babies because I can't handle not sleeping enough. So I mean, so one of us was going to bed at like 7:30 or 8 just to be able to buffer waking up with a puppy. But yes, no, he does not get a spot on the bed. And I think it's better that way because he just, I think he still needs to be on that cave. You know, he enjoys his crate. He doesn't save it to be thing.

Milk.

Milk. That okay. Yep. It's not the way things go in our house anymore.

You have one dog, I have one dog who might be different, but with three there has to be some organized chaos.

So good.

I want to ask you to come back to something that was really just very brief. But you said you spent a lot of time doing electrolyte management. You're perfect person to ask. This, you know, element is like so very, very popular and there are some who really opposed to it and think, okay, the, the proportion is wrong, percentages are wrong. The, there are some who fear the sodium is so high. What are your thoughts on the distribution and the proportion? It's a thousand milligrams, It's. I can't tell you what the potassium is, but the magnesium is 60. And a lot of times potassium and magnesium are actually inverse. They're, they're opposite. So what are your thoughts about it

to give listeners some perspective. So in cardiology we do a lot of electrolyte management and most, most allopathic training providers never even think to check magnesium. So we would have patients, we would be giving them potassium. Potassium, Potassium. Couldn't get their levels where they needed to be and it was because their potassium was, or excuse me, their magnesium was low. So until you got them kind of in the equal distribution, you couldn't get them managed properly. I think this is a very bio individual circumstance and I'll tell you why. I have mild dysautonomia and so for my entire adult life I've not craved salt in an unhealthy way, but I've always been drawn to salting my food. And when electrolytes came around, I was like, dang, I feel so much better. I generally encourage people to do some degree of due diligence, meaning maybe do some experimentation. Obviously if it's hot summer weather and doing a lot of sweating, you are going to be losing extracellular stores of not just sodium and chlorate, magnesium, potassium and probably a few other trace minerals. And so if you Feel better. Like even my teenagers who balk at using electrolytes when they're not playing competitive sports, they know. Even my college student took a couple boxes to college with him and he uses it for lacrosse practice. He also uses it, he also uses it on nights that he drinks alcohol. And so I'll just say that I don't condone underage drinking. However, I'm a realist and I'm like, if you're going to drink the electrolytes and that makes you feel better, you don't have a headache. So I think that more often than not, most people benefit from some degree of, you know, even if it's half a packet of elements, some people will tell me they know they found their right balance when they have good natural clarity when they're sleeping really well. If I told you how much I can easily take of salt a day, easily and effortlessly, I'm not suggesting this is right for everyone, but I could easily have three packets of element a day and two of the sparkling waters. And I do really well with that same thing.

Yeah.

So I think that it's a very individual thing. But I find most, most women, when I talk to them and we talk about what they're doing to support their bodies, they need a little bit of salt. And unfortunately we have fear mongered salt for such a long period of time that people are fearful. Like someone reached out to me on social media and said, oh, I have borderline high blood pressure. And my doctor said I need to eliminate salt. And I said, well, you probably have borderline insulin resistance and it's actually not the salt that's the problem. And so entering into those discussions to help educate people, I think for anyone that says, you know, whether it's that brand or any other, if it feels salty, dilute it with more water. I mean, that's the easy way to get around it. I actually element with a squeeze of lemon in it. I mean that for whatever reason, that's like the perfect. It's just delicious. I love it. I can't travel without it. But I think for those of us it's figuring out like, what is your NF1. So for me, I could probably have 5 grams a day of sodium. And actually in conjunction with my functional medicine provider, he actually is very supportive of it because it helps my dysautonomia, which is pretty mild, but still it explains why my blood pressure and pulse run pretty low most days. I thought that was just, you know, I was like, it's because I'm So fit. And he was like, no, it's actually because you've got this imbalance in your autonomic nervous system, which is probably a byproduct of these other things. So very much a bio individual thing. I'm never concerned that someone's going to have too much salt. More often than not, your body will let you know if it's a little too much. You may feel a little puffy. You know, the goal is not to be urinating excessively. You know, people will sometimes tell me, oh, I had a couple element. I'm like, well, element's actually going to cause you to hold on to some of the water. And I'm thinking, why, like, especially when you're training with people, getting them through the Grand Canyon, where it's very hot and very rigorous exercise, we do need. When we're sweating, doing a lot of sweating, we do need to replace those electrolytes.

Yeah, absolutely.

And.

And another telltale that you probably need a little bit more salt is you get done. And harder to tell somewhere where you are where it's hot and humid. But I was sitting at the end waiting for others to finish with one of them, and somebody said, you have something on your arm. And like, I know it's salt. It's like I look like a French fry when I'm done, you know, so I could tell I do lose a higher percent of salt with my sweat than the next person does.

Yeah, no, and I think it just goes back to, you know, knowing your body, knowing how physically active you are, how much you're sweating. I mean, you know, central Virginia summers, you sweat. Like, it makes you realize this is how the south actually was able to be. You know, get to a point where we had a large population with the advent of air conditioning, because without air conditioning, most people in the south would not be doing a whole lot. It's just very, very, very humid. Very interesting.

Well, it is always a pleasure to have you friend. We could go on for days, but let's tell everybody where they can find you and follow you and anything that you have new coming up they should know about.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Always a pleasure to connect with you. It's probably easiest to start on my website, www.cynthia thurlow.com for full disclosure. I did write a book on intermittent fasting, but again, I feel like it is very important for me to be able to share the nuances of what I learn as I go. I'm pretty active on Instagram as well as YouTube. We're actively growing our YouTube channel where we actually post all of everyday wellness podcast episodes. What's new in my world is I'm working on my second book. I was mentioning that it's going to be gut centric, which is exciting because I'm kind of uniquely in this position where I can see so many different experts on the podcast and I can see where maybe people are putting connections together that are very relevant for women in perimenopause and menopause. So that will be out in 2026. You're more than welcome to reach out and find me and I'd love to connect.

I love it.

Awesome.

It's been so good to see you listeners. You're probably going to want to push

replay and listen to this one again.

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