You're welcome to the euro Experience Podcast. I'm Louisa, I'm the host being a woman comes with its own unique challenges and while we strive for equality in many areas such as equal pay and representation, there are still aspects of our Womanhood that require special attention without clear. Warning signs. I do believe that women's health is one area where our hormones and our biology differ
From men, emphasizing the importance of dedicated medical research and studies focused on women. Joining me today on the podcast is Cynthia, Thurlow she's a former RN in cardiology and emergency medicine. She's now transitioned into a new role of the founder of the everyday Wellness project and she's also the best-selling author of intermittent fasting transformation today. Cynthia and I
Law. The general benefits of fasting. But we go into many issues about women and fertility. It turns out that fertility rates are linked to the negative impact of the food industry, and also metabolic dysfunctions factors, such as poor dietary choices, metabolic issues, sleep, deprivation, happiness negative thoughts and chronic conditions.
Caused by our everyday lives are contributing to poor fertility, outcomes. You guys know that I speak about education, education is the way forward and I truly believe that there is so much misinformation out there as it relates to females, hormones and fertility. In this episode, Cynthia is going to share, many practical insights on implementing these lifestyle interventions emphasizing a progressive and long-term.
Approach for sustainable success rather than a sudden and difficult overnight solution. Let's get into it. This episode is also brought to you by element. Element is an electrolyte drink. That has everything you need. That is the electrolytes sodium, magnesium and potassium but nothing that you don't, which means no sugar guys. It's really critical that we get electrolytes because every cell of our body, in particular, our
neurons, our nerve cells rely on electrolytes in order to function properly. So with element, it's very easy to ingest the correct. Ratios of these electrolytes. They come in these little packets. They're really delicious. You mix them up with anywhere from like 8 to 32 ounces of water for me the best times to ingest. These are through the work day. When I know that I need to be drinking water and I get pretty bored of drinking water, to be honest. My favorite flavor are the Kiwi ones and not just that.
Just traveled to LA and back and found. It was super easy to consume these little guys on the plane. So if you'd like to try element LMN T, just go to drink element.com. / neuro to claim, a free element sample pack with your purchase again, that's drink element.com / neuro this episode is brought to you by a G1 at the supplement industry.
He has gone insane with so many powders and pills and vitamins. It's very hard to know what is good for you. I get asked, often do you take a basic greens? I say without a doubt, a G1 is the best one there, 81 is a daily, foundational nutrition supplement, that supports whole body Health, it's a science driven, mix that replaces all of those multivitamins and probiotics.
Products with one simple drink. All you have to do every single morning. Put a scoop in a glass of water and just drink it and then you're set, it couldn't be easier to start feeling better. I drink a G1 every single morning and then again at around 2 to 3 p.m. because it's a way to get the nutrition. I need that my body can absorb and use effectively. Guess what? If you order now you'll get a free one-year supply of
Immune supporting a G1 and vitamin D3 and K2. You're also going to get five free ag-1 travel packs with your first purchase. All you have to do is go to drink, AG, one.com /, neuro and grab this. You do not want to miss out on this one. It's drink. AG one.com neuro. So let's let's get right into it and now you're trying to, you know, help
Women kind of may be optimized even fertility as well. I'm I presume
it's not at all uncommon to see women in their early 40s that will start navigating. You know, they may not be ovulating every month, they may ovulate twice in a month. You know, the what I would say about perimenopause is that it's predictably unpredictable and for a lot of these women they assume because their Cycles are becoming less regular that they must also not have not be as able to conceive a child and
Cousin is a great example of this, you know, she had been trying for a period of time and then lo and behold. She had the surprise pregnancy. And so I think for a lot of women it's helping them understand that even though you're your Peak ovulation years, your Peak fertility years, or behind you, at this stage, you are capable of still getting pregnant. And that's why contraception and talking about contraception or, you know, if their partner or significant other is interested in, having a vasectomy is something
It is pretty important to talk about. I would say don't assume because I there was a woman on my street in my last neighborhood who was 15 years older than I was. When I had my first child, she already had two teenagers. She was in her late 40s. She got pregnant. Didn't think it could happen and she in her 60s. She's got like a child as old as my 17 year old and she also has grandchildren. And so I think that it really speaks to the fact that we have to help educate women that are
active of where you are in that perimenopausal Journey, you may still be able to conceive a child and so helping people make choices that are aligned with their philosophies
you said something interesting, you know, ovulation and I think I want to talk about that because I think that that's a something that especially, you know, women who are athletic and who are going to the gym and who are, you know, very metabolically fit, what is the is it the same as, you know,
You said that not everybody? Ovulates every month. And why is that?
Yeah, well I think about the PCOS patients. Oh polycystic, ovarian syndrome, which is actually the most common endocrine disorder here in the United States. It is far more common and really under-diagnosed. And so these are women that more often than not because of, and it's not just, you don't just have to have cysts on your ovaries. I think there's this misconception that, that is the diagnostic indicator for this.
It's more often than not a degree of insulin resistance and inflammation at the basis. Also, oxidative stress. These are women who may not actually produce enough progesterone and so they get, what is called a luteal phase defect. So, they have these very long Cycles because they don't have this balance between estradiol or estrogen and progesterone. So they don't trigger that same ovulatory mechanisms in their bodies that a woman. As you mentioned, you this athletic lean
Metabolically. Healthy individual. The thing about PCOS, it's interesting. It's about 25% of women with PCOS Earth in phenotype, which means thin women can also have PCOS. You don't necessarily have to be obese, and this is why it's so under diagnosed, I myself had PC at have PCOS and was under diagnosed and had to go down the rabbit hole of reproductive Endocrinology to actually ovulate. And so, when we talk about these women in particular, or you know, in many
census, maybe they don't have PCOS, but they may be insulin resistant, they may not be metabolically healthy, and they may lose these triggers, you know, if our body perceives that we are under too much stress. So high cortisol, lots of chronic stress if our body perceives that there's too much stress and might not be in our body or the fetuses best interest to become pregnant, that can impact fertility, quite significantly. So I always think starting the conversation and making sure women understand that
You don't just have to be insulin-resistant significantly, insulin resistant for you to have PCOS. You can have thin women that have this, but chronic stress, lack of sleep, over-exercising, I call it the, the Triad is, what I'm starting to see emerge and helping women, understand that our bodies are exquisitely, sensitive to the cues in our environment. So if you're as for an example, if you're over fasting over-exercising, you lose your menstrual cycle, your amenorrhea,
Eric that can be problematic because our menstrual cycle is really an indicator just like blood pressure or pulse or pulse. Oximetry is equally important information to let us know if we are undergoing too much stress, perceived
stress, but you can obviously induce ovulation as well, outside of, you know, pharmacology.
Yes, absolutely. And I think it's interesting to me that, you know, 20-plus years ago, there was a lot less information, I think.
Me kind of Rise of social media. I think that there's more information available to women and in terms of being able to empower themselves and in terms of being able to properly educate themselves and to be able to also take information to their healthcare provider and say, hey, I think I might be suffering from X or can we test for this, you know, 20 years ago, even as a clinician, it was a lot harder to get good information. I think people are tend to be much more educated about their bodies and I
Think that's, that's certainly a really good
thing. So you said, so let's just say somebody, it's a, you know, a woman's tracking her ovulation and it's not happening. What are some natural ways? I know that you mentioned, sleep is a really big indicator of if a woman is ovulating.
Someone yeah, so I think an easy way to see as if you take your basal body temperature. So you know, this is something that doesn't require any, any extraneous gadgets, really other than a thermometer and you should get a rise in body.
Temperature around the time of ovulation, I think about getting adequate sleep. I think about the nutrition piece being quite significant, you know, most Americans right now. We know are not metabolically healthy, but helping people understand that healthy fats, enough protein, the right types of carbohydrates, can be really instrumental in queueing our body that we're in a position where we could have the potential to have an egg fertilized go on to to sustain a pregnancy. I also think about the
ER, size piece. And this is, you know, as someone that's a former competitive athlete, I see a lot of women that have been athlete very athletic and they're, you know, maybe they're in high school college age. They still enjoy rigorous physical activity, and helping them. Understand that, if we're looking at her menstrual cycle, as a whole, there's optimal times in our menstrual cycle, to push the push, our bodies. And then there are times in our menstrual cycle where we want to still be physically active, but it's not the time to be.
You know, doing CrossFit or doing a long endurance, race doing really intense hit, or things like that, you know, and that luteal phase when progesterone predominates. So those are the kinds of things we're working on a very basic level helping women. Understand that those lifestyle pieces really do have a tremendous net impact on our ability to not only ovulate, but also to conceive if that's our desired, long-term
result. Yeah I often think about, you know, I've been listening
NG to you and dr. Stacy Sims around. What is the best time to optimize training around around your cycle? But you know what, I've been thinking about. What about the woman who wants to optimize her work environment? Like I've got clients who are high-level high-powered CEOs and what about them? What you know is it the same thing? Like because I know that hormones can really mess with your decision making in your cognition as
well? Yeah, it's a great question. I think it is equally important I think.
Probably something that we don't speak enough to because we kind of say, oh, here are the athletic women, here are the women that are trying to conceive. But also understanding, if you're a you know, you as an example you have this tremendous brand and business and I do too and understanding if I were to have the ability to determine when in my menstrual cycle, if I were still cycling, when would be the best time for me to be on a stage? When would be the best time for me to be doing a lot of podcasting, when would be the best time to, you know, launch a program
am, you know, be in front of other individuals. I think that, you know, optimization for executives would really be a great way to help them understand. Like, why am I so tired right before I got my menstrual cycle? That's not the time. I can do a lot of, you know, of thinking of you with all your international travel. That's probably the time. It's going to be harder to manage jet lag. It's going to be harder to mitigate not getting enough sleep because you're up late entertaining clients or you're up late at events and then you're up early in the morning and you have to do presentations. So I
You really bring up a good point about understanding that where we are in our menstrual cycle. Can have a huge net impact on the success. We perceive we're having in our occupation as well.
One thing that you speak a lot about is fasting. And I don't know, I, I want you to convince me that this is the best thing to do for women. And the reason being is that because I hear so many male doctors who are out there, and they're really speaking about the benefits of fasting and
Autophagy and cellular repair. And while I think that's true. I want to understand whether this is for women, also?
Yeah, it's a great question and I think it's really the, the power of the end of one helping. Women understand where are you and your lifestyle? So are you and your Peak fertile years? And if you're a competitive athlete, I would say no, I don't want you fasting, you know, if you're really putting your body under a lot of physical stress and strain and your
At a high level. I don't want your restricting. The amount of food that I want you to be eating high quality food, but I don't want you fixated on. Oh, I only have an 8 Hour feeding window in which to get my food in because more likely than not with the amount of training that someone's doing. They may lose out on opportunities to properly fill their bodies. The other thing is about younger women that I always worry about is even if they're choosing opting not to have a child at that point in their lives. Their body is really primed for fertility and I think when they're over.
Fasting. And I see this almost every single day. At one point I was co-host of another podcast and we used to get a lot of listeners questions and I would remind people. I'm like, I really want you to be cautious. I really want you to be careful. If you are a thin woman and you say to me, I go on vacation Cynthia. I overate I want to come back and I'm going to have a day or two of doing one meal a day. I'm probably. Okay with that. But it's very different than an obese. Individual of the same age who is trying to
Kind of spurned. Metabolic flexibility is trying to, you know, get to a point where they are no longer diabetic. They're no longer insulin resistant and they have quite a bit of weight to lose. That's very different. So helping people understand in your unique circumstances is this appropriate to do. And again, I would not have been someone that would have embraced fasting and my 20s and probably early 30s because I trained a lot. I ate a lot of food as I've gotten older and I haven't needed as much.
Food. It's been a whole lot easier and I think it's very different as women are navigating. The, the physiologic changes north of 40, you know, as we're becoming more Stark, Pina, canned and your listeners are very Savvy. Understanding this muscle loss with aging is a question. It's not a question of if, but when, if you're now actively working against it and helping women, understand that you can't eat the way you did at 18 and whether that's a piece of the
cookies, don't I know it. Don't I know
it the beer.
All those things start to really shift. And so a woman that's 42 that starting to slip slide into that those perimenopausal years May benefit from having a breastfeeding window because you're trying to kind of maintain this metabolic flexibility or trying to make better choices. Again, it's always that reframe. And then looking at women in their menopausal years when I think fast things a whole lot easier because you're not dealing with this tremendous hormonal fluctuations day,
To day week to week and I think perimenopause and many ways is this unique time in a woman's life, it's reverse puberty. Like I have teenagers at home. I laugh about how they're in this massive anabolic growth phase. And I look at a lot of women that are in the stage of life, I'm in and helping them. Understand like we have to change our lifestyle. We have to focus on sleep. We have to change our nutrition. We have to lift weights. We've got to manage our stress.
You said something really, you spoke about individuality? Okay everybody every
Cool person is different, and you, and I spoke offline. And I was telling you about a woman who, you know, she was trying to conceive. She is 39, and her doctor said, she's got a low amh and, you know, she basically gave up and this is my best friend, and then she fell pregnant, she's got two kids now. And what I think is happening here in our culture is, you know, 20 years. 30 years ago, maybe you'd have kids in your early twenties, we're seeing a large culture especially here in New York and
And all throughout the world. Now, women are conceiving in their late thirties. Now, I'm also seeing a lot of women being Miss educated, okay? Maybe they just don't understand what's happening and it's created a lot of fear. You know, I was sitting down with one of my girlfriends yesterday. She's 39 and we're just doing the general chitchat. She's thinking Louise. I think I might have to get rid of the, you know, she's with this boy, I'm thinking about it, get rid of him because I need to have kids and I'm scared. I'm not going to have kids and it was like this huge
White and I feel like women are petrified, okay? Because they just do not have the information, because sometimes even their, their general practitioner is saying to them, hey, you've got a low amh, which it's not going to work out for you and then it just does. So, what do you believe in that? Do you think that the, where is that, the we're moving into a culture, where it's more accepted to have kids in your later. 30s
I do and I and for folder transparency, I had my oldest at 34 in my
My youngest at 36 and even then, you know, I was labeled a, you know, AMA Advanced maternal age. And my OB said to me, I wish my whole practice was filled with women, like, yourself who are active and you didn't, you know, you took really good care of yourself. During your pregnancies. I fervently believe that we have a culture that is allowing people in their 20s if they want to travel, or they want to have a just really invest in their job or graduate school or whatever it is that they're doing.
And I think women are taking those cues. I spent my entire 20s in crotch 08 school and living in a different city. And so I'm so grateful that we had those experiences but I think a lot of women now want to live very fulfilling lives until they're ready to have children, they don't feel the pressure at 22 or 24. Like my parents talked about how you were old back. When I was born, if you had your first kid at 25 like that was considered to be really old. Whereas now, I have plenty of friends who had kids into their early
40s. Many of whom without infertility treatments. Wow. And so yes. And so it really speaks to the fact that we know and understand more about how our bodies operate. I think that, you know, if you look at it it's generally easiest to conceive. You know, when I talk to my friends who are fertility specialists physiologically in our in our teens and 20s, and so that can certainly be, it's kind of Against the Grain. I think most people are thinking about children later in their lives in many ways.
I think as technology is catching up with us, meaning, if we can extend the fertile periods, either with technology or not, I think it really speaks to the fact that, you know, we as a culture really in many ways, we think we can put off having children as long as possible. We know men continue to make sperm throughout their lifetime and women are born with a finite amount of eggs. And so helping people understand that like, as we're navigating, these changes and fluctuations.
In ages and, and our desire to live different lives. I think that I see more and more women that are waiting to have kids. I it certainly has been my experience and certainly those of us that were in graduate
school, what women around 39 to 43 doing to damage their fertile window?
Yeah, well, I think not fully understanding the way our body works. So we have a whole generation generations of women that certainly enjoyed the benefits of being on oral contraceptives and
Anyways, it can suppress our understanding of the way our bodies work physiologically. So we're missing out, if we're on synthetic oral contraceptives for 10 15, 20 years, we're keeping our bodies in a very low estrogen state. With these synthetic hormones, or missing out on Peak bone, mass Peak muscle mass years. In many instances, I'm starting to see the sequelae of that. I'm seeing women that are osteopenic before they even go into menopause. I think that you're also starting to see the
Product of these harried Lifestyles. We leave, you know, we don't sleep enough, we don't eat wheat hyper palpable, highly processed foods we don't exercise. And when I talk about this is in general is the average person is not exercising, not moving their bodies and we don't manage our stress. I think the pandemic is really showed us, if we look at the research of what we're most people, in terms of metabolic, flexibility was the percentage of Americans. It was like, 88 percent of Americans were not metabolically healthy. Now it's 92 to 93 percent through, you know,
Neck. And when you look at those statistics, you understand that we have a culture of very hedonistic, we like everything right away. We want to binge flick. We want to binge Netflix and don't get me wrong. There's a time and a place for those things we're eating food like substances. We're not exercising. We're not sleeping properly and it's because we go to bed with our devices were super stressed out and we certainly aren't aware of what's going on in our in our endocrine system or a menstrual cycle because many
of us and myself included. I want to be really transparent and say that I was on the pill for a long time, which is what hid the PCOS, which then LED 2-0 surprised when I come off oral contraceptives. I'm not ovulating at all. And so, helping women. Understand that, a lot of our modern-day lifestyles are impacting, our fertility and in negative ways, it doesn't mean that it's irreversible. But I think it's helpful for women to understand that lifestyle and interplays, with fertility, quite significantly.
What is your views on?
The correlation between alcohol and fertility because I say that because every time I bring up alcohol on social media, it just it just blows up into something like people think it's a personal attack.
It's very triggering and that has been my experience as well. I think we don't, we don't talk enough about what alcohol does to our brain, what it does to our body, how it impacts our estrogen metabolism. How it impacts our wrists?
Certain types of cancers how it impacts our, you know, hippocampus our brain health. And we as a culture think of alcohol is being completely benign. I remember when I was in my medical training, we were told that we should encourage our patients to have 4 to 6 ounces of red wine every day. That was, you know, courage in Curacao, encourage our patients. It's really heart healthy. Remember, I worked in cardiology and it was part of our handouts that we had created for patients. And I kind of cringe. Now when I think about
That because maybe we don't realize in our 20s and 30s. The net impact of what alcohol is doing to our bodies, but women in their 40s, it's a different litmus test. Yeah, their sleep is disrupted. We know it disrupts, REM sleep, it impacts our ability to to manage our glucose and are left in our ghrelin and not to mention the fact that, you know, if you're on for example, if you're taking HRT. So if you're on hormone replacement therapy, it can one drink can raise your estrogen levels for four to five hours.
After that consumption of alcohol. And so I think that the more that we talked about this, the more I believe that people will start making some different choices, it's not to suggest, you know, if you're going out for a celebration, you want have a glass of wine. That's fine. But to suggest that alcohol has been 92 except to suggest in some ways that alcohol related behaviors and we all know that when if you drink too much alcohol, you lower your inhibitions sometimes you don't make good decisions. Some of them could be benign.
Decisions. Maybe you fall down the stairs, but maybe you end up, you know, making decisions that have a lifelong impact on your health. And so, I've started to speak out much more openly about how alcohol should not be considered to be this benign entity that there's more to it than that. And we have to have the courage as providers as scientists to start that conversation so that people can really be can really provide really have informed consent. Like if you're choosing to drink, do you understand the net impact? This has on your health and
And the last thing I would say is the the community that I lived in before I moved where I'm in my state. Now there was a very there was a very much a mommy drinking culture. You know, it was the way to deal with the stressors and let me be clear is it is stressful to raise children? It is stressful. You know day-to-day we all have stress right. But there were women that would just use it as an excuse to drink excessively. You know what's best wine? I think a bottle of wine for one person is awake or
I'm watching people that will finish a bottle of wine every night. You know, they'll have two or three glasses of wine every night. And that is their norm and they would call it. That's their wind down time. Yeah, you know, kind of glamorizing alcohol consumption as a way for dealing with your lifestyle. And I think that's there's so many other options for us but we don't talk about that enough. And we actually have a questionnaire that we would give patients. We would or let's call the cage questionnaire. And so if a patient says,
That they drink, they have two glasses of wine a night, they probably drink for, so understanding that there's also this component of Shame. You know, many people are uncomfortable talking about their relationship with alcohol. Certainly, if they have a problem with a suspect, they have a problem, but I don't know if you saw this living in the city, but in the suburbs and we would drive through our neighborhood. When it was a recycling day and the recycling bins were filled with bottles of alcohol, like whether it's, you know, Spirits or wine or beer,
My husband and I would comment out there. Like, wow. I mean, I think that was, how many people cope during the pandemic was to drink?
Yeah, yeah, no. It's it's, it's unbelievable. Especially what it does to the brain. So I'm so happy that you said that. So we've got sleep. Okay, we really we, you know, we hone in, on sleep, we need to be sleeping deeply. We need to increase Total Sleep time in my, in my honest opinion. What are some other lifestyle factors that women should be taking on board? You know what about
Ecological. I don't know, we've spoken about stress as well, but stress is not just, you know, stress at work or stress with like, how about like emotional stress or, you know, just negative thought patterns, is this all adding up
as well? Yes. And I think 2022 really demonstrated for a lot of us that, you know, the work of like a burr mate. As Anna, guess, you know pivotal book. If you haven't read it, if it's a big board. It's a very big book, and
Took a lot of effort to get through the book and I did have the opportunity to connect with him. So things like adverse childhood events and there are scores online, you can go and look people that have high scores as a child are at greater risk for autoimmune conditions, their greater risk for weight loss. Resistance there, a greater risk for persistent behaviors and it could show up as alcohol addiction. It could show up is promiscuity. It could show up as, you know, using illicit drugs, Etc, over
Exercising, maybe food, restriction. Addictive patterns can show up in many ways so I think, you know, when I'm working with women, one of the kind of intake questions is getting a sense, are you in a position where you feel comfortable talking about? Have you experienced and it's not just Big T trauma? I mean, I was trained with oh, unless you've seen a murder or you've had some significant trauma, it's not trauma but little T. Trauma are the benign, things The Bullying, maybe you were verbally abused. Maybe you were physically
active and
Why are you bringing this up in your questionnaires? You know it does this impact fertility,
it definitely can. So you know talking about helping women understand how those internal stressors. You know many people aren't talking about the abuse that they went through. Maybe they're meant making good, partner choices. Maybe there. They are attracted towards Lifestyles that are not allowing them to make good choices that are going to impact their fertility. I think the emotional well-being,
Of women in particular really needs to speak to the fact that women need to talk about their experiences and I speak from personal experience. When I say this, that it wasn't until probably a few years ago that I realized the net impact of those. Chronic reoccurring reactivation or heightened sympathetic response in the body over time. Your body doesn't feel safe. Your body doesn't feel safe because maybe you experienced these things as a child, but it keeps you at this.
Heightened sympathetic response throughout your lifetime and can that impact fertility. Absolutely. Oh yeah, absolutely. And so those are the kind of connections and I always say like I'm not a clinical psychologist, I'm not a psychiatrist but it's people like Gabor maté that have really brought to the Forefront these conversations about trauma that I think are so important to have and some women are not ready to have those conversations. But many are there, like, finally someone's asking me the questions.
And, you
know, I actually put out, something just came to me last night, and I put it on Twitter, saying you cannot heal from trauma, in a poor, metabolic State. And I want to know what your take is on that. And basically, what I mean, is, I'm talking from a brain energy, metabolism State. And what I see a lot of my, a lot of my patients are coming to me and they're trying to heal from something, you know, does you know childhood trauma? Whether it's a
Work stress, related a divorce. And I always tell them I'm like, why are you drinking? I start with that and they said because it helps me I say yes. But you're just lowering your, you know, your Energy and Metabolism. We need all of that because it's going to take a lot for you to get over this. So, we need to get you sleeping, we need to get you exercising, we need to get you sunlight and I need them around green nature, which is hard here in New York City but you know, I need them to be metabolically fit and once they are there then we can
In deal with the stress up, the you just got fired from work, you just lost x amount of dollars, you can deal with that but you can't deal with it. When you're a sleep-deprived and when you are full of alcohol you just can't. I want to know what your take is on that.
Yeah. And I couldn't agree with you more, and I'm so grateful that you're having those conversations because in many ways, a lot of us are not having those conversations with our patients. We start with, let me give you something to sleep. Let me give you a medication. I'm just going to give you some Igloo tied. I'm going to give you some insight.
Going to help you, that's going to help, but that doesn't actually fix the root issue when I think about the impact of trauma on or chronic stress or the divorce, the job loss the you know, stressful circumstances a bad diagnosis. Someone in your loved one that goes through something catastrophic, helping people understand that if we are not working on quieting that cortisol response if we're not you know, the hormone hierarchy of cortisol
Owen and insulin and helping people understand that. If you have this heightened response to stress, that's not being managed. When cortisol goes up, your blood sugar goes up. When blood sugar goes up, your insulin goes up. When you think about, if you're dealing with a chronic habitual stressor, that is not getting better and you're not dealing with it in a, in a healthy way, you know, the connection to Nature the exercise, the food changes, the Sleep Quality, then it makes it very, very hard to try to help someone really become met.
Lockley flexible if they're in the situation where they're becoming increasingly insulin-resistant maybe they're in perimenopause and we know that you start losing this. You start losing metabolic flexibility as you. Get fluctuations and estrogen has another kind of tie in with that and you're losing muscle mass. I mean, all these things, kind of thrown together for many, women can really impact that quite significantly. So I agree with you that helping people understand that, that lifestyle piece is not only going to impact their brain chemistry. How they
Perceive their world, how they perceive themselves, their their lifestyle, what's going on around them. But helping them understand that, that part of that healing piece really has to incorporate not, you know, just this physical emotional psychological perspectives on their health and and to me addiction or unhealthy habits. However, we want to Define it in terms of looking at alcohol, alcohol. In many ways is and Gabor maté talks a lot about this.
Alcoholism is in many ways. It's a symptom of a larger problem, so there's something you're not dealing with this trauma. This wound that you're too uncomfortable to deal with the alcohol. The illicit drugs, the shopping addiction, the promiscuity, whatever it is that someone's doing, is really a symptom of uncomfortable feelings, that you're just not in a position to be able to deal with and it allows you to kind of smooth it over. It's like, alright, I'll deal with this later. It's kind of like, you know, bearing it down
God. How many times do we? How many times? How many I'm
Guilty of doing that a lot of the
times. Yeah, it's human nature. It's human nature and certainly, I'm not perfect, but I recognize when I start seeing certain patterns and clients or patients or friends or family members, I'm like, oh, you know, they're just not ready to deal with those uncomfortable feelings. That's really at the Crux of when you're ready to kind of have those uncomfortable conversations, whether it's in therapy or you're talking with a loved one, that's where real healing comes in. And I find for a lot of people, they need to forgive themselves first
And then they have to work on you know, healing those those those wounds that are that are raw
if only we could all be walking around and have a psychiatrist that we've you know, that were all going 2 to 3 times a week that would be just bless the world would be a better place. Yes. Okay let's move further towards testing. So what are some of the tests that women can do to just help? Understand hey where am I at right now and what can these tests reveal? So
Let's start with a, would you do a hormone test? For
example, I mean, I think it's reasonable, you know, unfortunately, there's no specific test. That is going to give you 100% accuracy, to say, okay, you are in early perimenopause middle perimenopause or late perimenopause. I mean, because there's so much hormonal, fluctuation, and it can be day-to-day with estrogen. As an example, we assume your progesterone levels are going to be lower in perimenopause, I like to look at a follicular stimulating.
And that is one of many tests that you can run. If you look at an FSH and the kind of rule of thumb, when I trained was that, if it's greater than 40, you're probably at the tail end of perimenopause. Now, the research is suggesting 25 and so
forth and I have a low FSH. Yes. I guess what range would be good,
you know, it depends on where you are in your menstrual cycle. I think that's really, you know, that that's really the Crux of it. But let's say, for example, you're 42 years old and you say to yourself
or your GYN your nurse Midwife your auntie whomever you're working with. I haven't had a period while I'm not pregnant. Of course the first thing you do is pregnancy test but probably part of that work up will be an FSH and if the FSH is like 80 well well that's a sign that yes um we're definitely much closer. And there are people under the age of 45 that will occasionally develop premature, ovarian failure. And they actually do worse in terms of cognition and brain health as they age because of those
Loss at such a young age of the sex hormones. And I'm sure you probably have had experts talking about the role of sex, hormones and brain physiology. But other labs that I like to look at I like to look at luteinizing hormone, I want to look at estrogen and, you know, free and total testosterone. I want to look at sex hormone-binding globulin. I'm probably going to look at progesterone fasting insulin. This is one of those labs that everyone's drawing the a1c's. Well, that's great for the last 25 years we've been doing that. That's
It's a 90-day snapshot of overall, kind of blood sugar control but way before that starts dis regulating a fasting insulin to me as the canary in the coal mine. You know, how aggressive do we need to be about managing insulin resistance? If that fasting insulin is not optimized and I like to see that between 2 to 5 milligrams per deciliter fasting glucose. You know, when I was training a hundred years ago, we used to talk about. We wanted to see a fasting glucose under 140. Now, they say under 100, I would make the argument I want it lower than that maybe 75
85 or 75 to 90 Max because we're missing all these opportunities. I like to look at uric acid because that can often times be one of those biomarkers that can be helpful for metabolic flexibility. You know, looking at a plane lipid panel, what is, what is someone's triglycerides? You know, that can often times be a really good indication. How much carbohydrate are you eating? You know, what's their HDL? I worried a whole lot less about total cholesterol, unless it's really low. We know that a total cholesterol under 100 can be a poor prognosis.
Agnostic indicator. And we used to do a lot of that in cardiology, we would get it as low as we could get it to go. If someone's LDL is abnormal, sometimes we'll look at particle size to kind of, take a look at that high sensitivity. CRP can be helpful. That's a good starting place, maybe thyroid function, like a full thyroid panel can be helpful looking at, you know, Iron panel, especially if someone saying they're having heavy menstrual cycles. I think that's a good starting point and then from there, there's more things that we can add. If we're looking at functional medicine to us, we can look at a Dutch
And I know that can all watch down the shot. Yeah. Yes. I like the Dutch I like doing looking at the dried urine and saliva. So I want to look at the Dutch plus may be looking at stool testing can be helpful, maybe looking at a notes. Wow my area is not my area of expertise is not genetics. I usually refer out if someone wants genetic testing but that's a good place to kind of start from and I find for most women, if they're curious about finding out where they are in terms of
Could I potentially be an early perimenopause now? You just say, usually if you think you are, you probably are, you know, if it's starting with the trouble sleeping, having menstrual cycles, very symptomatic around your cycle, you
know, heavy menstrual
cycles. Yeah. And it's because you get this relative estrogen dominance because you have less circulating progesterone. The ovaries are producing as much progesterone. The adrenal glands kind of step in to help support their like a backup quarterback. But helping people understand that you can get these very heavy periods for many women.
In, this is when they start being offered things like oral contraceptives. Yes, an IUD and ablation or you know, if you're done having kids. Let's just get rid of your uterus. And that happens more often than not and in some instances, if the ovarian arteries have been damaged, when you have that hysterectomy, women can be in full-blown menopause. So sometimes that even happens this whole concept of informed consent and I'm not a surgical person but I do occasionally have these women that end up in my practice and so
Helping women kind of navigate how to make these changes but I think those kinds of labs are certainly reasonable. But there's no one test that's like the gold standard. This is the test that tells you your definitively there and what makes my Marcus. Yeah. And what's even more confusing? For many people is if they're on an IUD. Yeah, you have no idea where they are. Oh yeah. Maybe they're no longer having a menstrual cycle or if they're, there are women that are still taking oral contraceptives because they do not want to be in their 40s and get pregnant. Maybe they're done having their family and they
Don't want to get pregnant maybe their spouse or significant other is not willing to get a vasectomy. Would we could have a whole conversation about that but I think that you know for many of these women it's like helping them navigate the best choices available at this time, period. But those labs I think are a good starting
point. It's funny that you said heavy menstrual cycle because I always thought it was the other one. And what's funny is mine changes when I get acupuncture, isn't that weird? Like it will go through a period of. I'll have a very light
I love that. I'm actually speaking about this openly, but will be a very light period And I think to myself, what is wrong, what have I done? And then, you know, I love acupuncture. I never used to really believe in it. I started getting a now, I love and every time I get it done, maybe I'll do two or three times. Depending on where I am in my menstrual cycle, then I'll have a heavier period than last month. So I do, truly believe there is a correlation there.
Yeah. Oh, absolutely. And I think there's complimentary complementary therapies are things that we
We should be talking or encouraging, our patients to consider because when you have traditional allopathic medicine, and then you have Eastern medicine or complementary medicine. I mean, they're meant to be their mental work together. And if you're not getting the results that you want, there are traditional allopathic lens, whether it's functional, or integrative medicine, that kind of marries, the best of both. I think that's really impactful because people don't have to suffer. I mean, I went through years, I used to call him crime scene periods because they were so heavy.
And, you know, I was always offered those poor thing here is hijacked, well, I but I, but I used to be one of those. Those people that I would pray, I would not get my cycle starting when I was rounding on patients in the hospital. But those were always the options that were given to me. And I just said, there has to be a better way. And so I think for a lot of women, they don't realize the net impact of their lifestyle on these hormonal changes that are occurring and understanding that, you know, if you choose to have an IUD or use oral contraceptives or
An ablation. There's no judgment but knowing that there's other options available
Cynthia. You're just I'm just so happy that you and I have connected Can most people come and see you. Like, if, if somebody's listening to this, I don't know how many men have probably dropped off this episode by now, but if they're even listening, but like, if a woman is like, I really want to see this amazing practitioner, can they come and see you?
I am in the process of kind of pivoting. My practice, I'm just doing group programs, where
People can still do diagnostic testing and work with me. I feel like after 25 years of working in medicine, I'm starting to Pivot a little bit and pivot into different directions, but I would love for your listeners to connect with me if there's some way that I can help support them and happy to do. So,
and you've got a podcast and you got an awesome social media and we're can everyone find you?
Yeah. Probably easiest to catch me on my website so it's www.cynthiagleich.llyndamoreboots.com g. I do have a Twitter account but
Be forewarned, I can be a little snarky and I have a free Facebook group called The intermittent fasting lifestyle. Backslash, my name, it's for men and women. There are plenty of men in there and then my book which is behind me, intermittent fasting transformation which is talking about women and fasting and metabolic Health.
Thank you so much for being part of the Euro Experience Podcast. Thanks for having me.
