The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #15 Featuring Cynthia Thurlow! THE ULTIMATE WELLNESS GUIDE! The role of muscle in aging and health, hormonal influences on physical activity, intermittent fasting, misconceptions on muscle gain for women, the importance of protein and more!
Tue, 01 Apr 2025
Episode #15 Featuring Cynthia Thurlow!! The ULTIMATE WELLNESS EPISODE! Get ready to improve your health and wellness today! Dylan and Cynthia dive deep into many topics including The role of muscle in aging and health, hormonal influences on physical activity, intermittent fasting, misconceptions on muscle gain for women, the importance of protein, understanding fats and their impact, the role of fiber and gut health, creatine, Urolithin A and much more!! This is an episode your health will thank you for listening to!! Listen to Cynthia's Podcast Herehttps://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/everyday-wellness-with-cynthia-thurlow/id1435214303Visit Cynthia's Homepage Herehttps://www.cynthiathurlow.com/Follow Cynthia on Instagramhttps://www.instagram.com/cynthia_thurlow_/?hl=en______________________________________________________________________Follow Dylan on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and Tiktok @dylangemelliHuge thank you to everyone for the support! Please make sure to subscribe, like and comment!!Email [email protected] PURCHASE MITOPURE visit Dylan's landing page and use code DYLAN10 to save!!https://www.timeline.com/promotions/dylangemelliRSShttps://rss.com/podcasts/the-dylan-gemelli-podcastApplehttps://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-dylan-gemelli-podcast/id1780873400I Hearthttps://www.iheart.com/podcast/269-the-dylan-gemelli-podcast-249695201/Spotifyhttps://open.spotify.com/show/3In4QlJj4IvHqq0eduKj7mPandorahttps://www.pandora.com/podcast/the-dylan-gemelli-podcast/PC:1001096187Stitcherhttps://www.stitcher.com/show/1096187FM Playerhttps://player.fm/series/the-dylan-gemelli-podcastPodchaserhttps://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/the-dylan-gemelli-podcast-5933919Listen Noteshttps://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/the-dylan-gemelli-podcast-dylan-gemelli-HDjBueWOVvG
Chapter 1: Who is Cynthia Thurlow and what is her expertise?
Welcome back to the Dylan Gemelli podcast everyone and I am extremely excited today I have a very very special guest to bring you so I've got a lot to tell you about her. She is globally recognized as an expert in nutrition and intermittent fasting. She's an extremely highly sought after speaker. She is the CEO and founder of the Everyday Wellness Project.
She's also a nurse practitioner with over 15 million views for her second TEDx talk, which was on intermittent fasting, a transformational technique. She has over 20 years experience in health and wellness. She's a globally recognized expert in intermittent fasting transformation and nutritional health. She was featured on ABC, Fox 5, KTLA, CW, and The Megyn Kelly Show.
And she has an amazing bestselling book called Intermittent Fasting Transformation. It's a 45-day program for women to lose stubborn weight, improve hormonal health, and slow aging. I could keep going on, but I'm going to stop there. So we'll get into everything else about her. But my friends, this is Cynthia Thurlow. Welcome, Cynthia.
So great to connect with you, Dylan.
Thank you so much for taking the time. I know how busy you are. And I really appreciate you putting aside some time for me and my audience.
Absolutely. Hey, I just submitted my second book manuscript. So I feel like a thousand pound gorillas off my shoulders. And so it's like my team is even excited for me because I feel like I can get back to connecting with people like yourself and being able to share really good information that helps women and men lead their very best lives.
I truly, truly appreciate it. And we'll get into your book. Well, both of your books too. So let's start with this because you've done a ton. I've watched a ton of your work. You have a great podcast. I know, I'm sure a ton of people out there listening are aware of a lot of the things you do, but you know this and I know this. We all have a story. Some of them are a little boring.
Some of them are, there's a pretty extensive background to our stories on why we end up doing what we do. I've read yours, I know it, but I don't know enough detail. I'd love to hear it in the audience. What were some things that transpired in your life that shifted your wants and desires to go in the direction that you've gone with health, intermittent fasting?
Can you kind of just get into that and explain what happened?
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Chapter 2: What personal experiences shaped Cynthia's approach to health?
It's almost nine years ago, I left traditional allopathic medicine to start kind of my own practice, if you will. And at that time, NPs were not autonomous in my state. So I really just talked about lifestyle and I could legally do that. I could talk about lifestyle measures and my practice kind of exploded. There were so many women
In middle age that felt like their needs were not being met, that they were not being heard, that the traditional allopathic model, although it has some benefits, we're not meeting their needs. And so that is like kind of where I ended up. And that's where I've humbly been the last nine years. And I feel like this is the work I was meant to do. This is what lights me up.
I get to impact more people and. One thing that many people are surprised to hear, I'm an introvert. So the thought of a talk that I did as a means to challenge myself, having the kind of impact that it does is very, very humbling. And I think for a lot of individuals, it's the realization that we have to do hard things, like we have to be outside our comfort zone.
And so the last nine years has really been... creating a platform, advocating for women in middle age, and having them to be educated, inspired, and empowered to be their best selves and to not get caught up in fear mongering. And gosh, there's plenty of nonsense that's out there. There's a lot of trickery. And I was just saying to my, I have an internal audit going on in my business.
And I was saying to this person that I've hired, Everyone has to decide for themselves within their business, what focus do they want? What's their messaging? Who are they serving? And I said, depending on the individual, it might be appropriate for a 25-year-old to be in a bikini and be on social media. And that's totally fine.
But the stage of life that I'm in, I feel like the way that I show up is very authentically. So today I'm sitting here in yoga pants and a sweatshirt because that is my real life. But I think for a lot of people, it's like remaining attuned to serving the individuals that you speak to.
And so I very humbly and very gratefully sit back and look at the past nine years and say, without question, with the exception of being married for 23 years to my husband and having two beautiful, healthy boys. The other thing that I'm most proud of is the work that I've done over the last nine years to help elevate awareness around the challenges that women deal with north of 35.
Because prior to that, there was very little to no emphasis. And I think a lot of many women, I think my mother's generation, probably our mother's generation has really suffered at the expense of, in many instances, poor information and fear.
Yeah, totally. Authenticity is one of the... And I haven't had the chance to meet you personally, but I am very good at picking out when I watch people and seeing who is probably a lot more authentic than others. And I... as I've gotten older, especially, and I'm an only child and really tight-knit family person.
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Chapter 3: How does muscle gain influence aging and health?
Like that talk going viral changed everything about my business, gave me a voice, validated to my husband that I wasn't crazy, that I left a well-paying job to kind of become an entrepreneur. And so I sit back and again, I talk about gratitude a lot, but I'm grateful for that appendix. In fact, I think it's always part of my acknowledgements in my book.
I talk about how my ruptured appendix kind of changed everything for me. And so, yeah, I think it was timing about the topic. It was becoming something that was on the radar. This is now six years ago. I think for a lot of individuals, it then became something that people were searching for. And when they were searching for intermittent fasting, my talk kept coming up. But I had like...
the first day I had almost 90,000 views. And I remember saying to my husband, I was like, something's different.
Right.
And then it was like a million views and it was 2 million views and it was 3 million. And then it just kept spiraling from there. And I was like, wow, this is pretty incredible. And in pretty, pretty impactful. I mean, isn't that ultimately why if you're a public speaker, you want to be impactful. You want to, uh, be a change agent. And, um,
That validated for me that I was not crazy, that on April 1st, 2016, I left traditional allopathic medicine. And that was a hard decision to make, but it validated it was definitely the right one.
Love how you said it, like when you were asked, what was it you did? That's why I asked you what resonated, not what did you do? Because- what you did or tried to come up with, if, if it was some kind of gimmick or you wouldn't be where you are today, it wouldn't, it would be like a one hit wonder song that was one good one that could never be, you know, replicated or duplicated or expounded upon.
What else that you said that I love now I'm highly spiritual. I understand some people are not, and that's, I don't push that on anybody, but what I will tell you is this. And I firmly believe this. We have sufferings or things that happen that ultimately put us in a position for a reason. And you have to endure to achieve. I firmly believe that.
There's no such thing as success without failure or suffering without winning. That's just part of life. And when you get tested like that and you endure it, and then look what comes out from it. I had the biggest...
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Chapter 4: What role do hormones play in weight and muscle gain?
I'm starting to sell them now, but I'm so picky and it's like my agent, it's hard to work with me because I'm like, no, no, no. And they're like, well, I don't like you. I have to believe in it, right? So I love that you're like that and vet that because sometimes when you say no, you kind of, yes, I used to feel like, man, I shouldn't be doing that because it's a blessed opportunity.
But at the same hand, all money's not good money.
No, and I think you have to live with yourself ultimately. I just wrote a blog post about a company that I have had an ongoing relationship with for several years. And they took a little bit of heat last year because of an ingredient problem. that had not been, initially was not fully disclosed. And then they explained themselves and then there was this huge fallout.
And we took a period of time to kind of think about, did we want to move forward with this relationship in the future? And I wrote a blog post about it and just said, this is where my head is. Like I finally got my book manuscript in and I have the bandwidth to actually write a blog post and shared it with my team and then explain myself and said, this is why I will continue using this product
and my family uses this product, and I feel like this is fine. There were issues with transparency, but they're working to rectify that. And I was like, as a small business owner, there might come a time and a place where I might mess something up, or there might be an error, or there might be something that was unintentionally not shown, or...
And so it invites opportunities as a small business owner, as a podcast host to try to be as transparent as possible. And that's kind of like what this blog post tried to explain was that, you know, this is how I feel about this. This is why we're continuing this partnership. And why? And I think people can respect that.
Now, there are other people that may decide they no longer want to purchase from that manufacturer. And that's totally fine. I'm like, listen, whatever you choose to do is the right decision for you. This is the decision that my family and I made as a whole. And this is our explanation as to why. And here's other options. Here's other things you can do.
If you want to avoid this ingredient, then here are these couple of things that you can try. You can make electrolytes at home. You can do this and this and this. And so I think that...
This is, again, one of those situations when you are in a position where you have a podcast or you're speaking on a platform of just sharing with your community, like just being honest, like I'll give you another probably a better example. I'm known for intermittent fasting. Well, last year was like 2019 and 2024 were kind of like the same year, but in different ways.
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Chapter 5: How can intermittent fasting affect muscle building?
So some of it is helping them understand some of their behaviors are reinforced by hormones that are suboptimal. Right. So that's number one. So it was like, let's get a baseline. And not every provider in perimenopause and menopause likes to draw hormones, but I like to have a baseline assessment of where someone is. So that's number one.
Number two, as you already astutely mentioned, women fear getting big. It is physiologically impossible for you to get Arnold Schwarzenegger circa 1986 big unless you are taking anabolic steroids. It is not going to happen. Helping women understand that As we hit about 40, we start having this progressive decline in muscle mass. Our peak bone and muscle mass for women is when we are much younger.
So as an example, you hit 40 and you start losing muscle mass. Now, at first, it's kind of insidious. You don't notice it. But you get to 45 and you're like, huh, I'm not doing anything differently. And suddenly, the scale is starting to go up and I'm starting to lose my weight. And I don't like how I have a little jiggle here and a little jiggle there.
Now, I'm using words that they use because I think of jiggle as like jello. But they'll use that word. And I understand what they're saying. But they'll notice the body composition changes. They know something is changing in their bodies. And so I always use the analogy of because I'm all about analogies. I love filet. My husband likes ribeye steak. If we're going out, I will get the ribeye.
He will get the ribeye. I will get the filet. Young muscle looks like filet. It's all meat. It's all meat. Versus ribeye has lots of marbling. It's delicious, but it's a fattier cut of meat. That is what starts happening is we start losing muscle fibers and gaining more adipocytes and more fat adipose tissue in that muscle. That's right. Now, this is weight related. This is hormone mediated.
It doesn't have to be that way. But as we get older, we have to be more deliberate with our protein intake. We have to be more deliberate with ensuring we are lifting properly. And that is not using five or two and a half pound dumbbells. That is actually lifting heavy weight. And if you are new to lifting, please work with a trainer that knows how to train women of a certain age.
That generally isn't the wonderful 20-year-old eager beaver guy at the gym. It's probably... And when I say older, 35 plus year old trainer who is going to know how to properly guide you. Yes, properly guide you. But like when I as an example, when I work with my trainer, it is we hit lift heavy for a short duration. So it's four to six reps.
And it's so that the last rep you are putting the weight down. So I think there's also this misnomer that women think if they just do Pilates, they just do yoga, they don't have to still strength train. So I remind women, I don't care if you lift one day a week, two days a week, three days a week as a starting point, you need to make it part of yourself.
You have to prioritize it and you need to commit yourself to doing it week after week after week, because those choices in your forties impact the way you age in your fifties, your sixties, your seventies and beyond. And the really cool thing is we have muscle memory. Yeah, that's right.
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Chapter 6: What misconceptions do women have about lifting weights?
Well, I think it's been part of the nutritional dogma for 60 plus years. So it's hard for people to understand. I mean, I feel like my parents' generation, like my mom is in her late 70s and it has taken years to talk to her about healthy fats and how important they are because we had been conditioned to believe.
And in fact, I looked at, I mean, a long time ago, probably five years ago, I came across handouts that I was required to give my patients in cardiology that were encouraging avoid butter and Avocado. I mean, because they had been standardized by the cardiology practice I worked for. Bromelain brown. I mean, all those vegetable oil spreads.
I mean, that was what we taught patients because we had this diet heart hypothesis, which we know now was a direct influence by a gentleman called Ansel Keys, who unfortunately had a huge impact on not just... The diet hard hypothesis, but impacted the medical community, patients, the processed food industry, et cetera. But getting back to your original question, carbohydrates.
This is my gestalt about carbohydrates. If you are metabolically healthy. Unprocessed carbohydrates are not a bad idea. This comes from someone who was paleo then carb cycling for a long time. I eat more carbohydrates now at 53 than I have probably in the last 10 years. Because I figured out when I start lifting heavy and I'm working out that intensely, what does my body need?
It actually needs protein and carbohydrates. And that is what works for me. So when I am working with a patient or a client, and we have a sense of what her metabolic health is, means she's insulin sensitive, she's at a healthy weight, she's exercising, she's sleeping, she's managing her stress, that person can tolerate more carbohydrate.
And again, when I say carbohydrates, I'm talking about fruit, vegetables, sweet potatoes, root vegetables, things like that. lentils if you tolerate those kinds of things. Then someone who is obese, not insulin sensitive, probably pre-diabetic. Maybe this is someone who's got fatty liver. Maybe this is an individual who has a history of polycystic ovarian syndrome.
Maybe this is someone who has borderline high blood pressure. that person needs to restrict their carbohydrate intake. And by that, I mean, stop drinking soda, stop eating sugary foods. You know, you can probably get away with, I always say it's a three to one ratio, three vegetables to one piece of fruit. So if they'll say like, I really need that piece of fruit.
I'm like, okay, but here's the deal. You have your broccoli, your asparagus, your Brussels sprouts, then you get to have your piece of fruit. And by that, I mean low glycemic berries. I'm not talking about the tropical fruits unless you like. I love just green bananas, which makes me weird. They're great for resistant starch.
But like my whole family makes fun of me because I'm the person we go to the grocery store. I'm like, I want the greenest banana I can see and I will eat it because it's not sweet. So carbohydrates are dependent on insulin sensitivity. That is my feeling. There's also a role of bioindividuality.
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Chapter 7: What strategies can help women overcome barriers to lifting?
Um, one thing I, not to interrupt you. One thing I do want to mention that I noticed for myself is when I was in my early feast, my intrinsic hunger changed enormously. Now, whether or not that was a byproduct of changes in muscle mass changes in estrogen, I'm not sure, but I remember that that was such an enormous shift.
Cause I would jokingly say like when I was younger, I could eat just like my kids could. Like I never, I never had a I could eat anything and I ate healthy. So let me be clear, I wasn't eating like McDonald's five days a week. It was more like I was hungry all the time and felt like I was always chasing that hunger. And then there was this little blip in my life where I was like, oh, that changed.
And so I have not been able to find research to suggest, but I certainly spoke to a lot of experts that talk about, yes, that does start to change with the aging process as people will become less intrinsically hungry. So I think we have to remind ourselves like this is one of the reasons why fasting is one of many strategies, but it's not ever a reason to under eat habitually and chronically.
So I think that's one of the things that women will say to me, well, I can't possibly eat 50 grams of protein in a meal. I'm like, okay, aim for 30. and then slowly increase it. Because I like you like fish to me is not nearly as heavy in my stomach as eating a steak.
Like for me, I get to, you know, eight ounces of steak for me, I am full, but like my teenagers could eat 1215 plus ounces of steak, and you know, they'll be hungry two hours later. So I think like, at least like reminding people that you do get these changes and hunger patterns as you're getting older. But to me, it's really that much more important to make sure like I'm
very conscientious about making sure I get enough protein like that is a very conscious effort. Now, sometimes when I travel, and I'm sure this probably happens with you, I generally don't eat while I'm traveling.
And so sometimes on those days, I have to kind of buffer what I'm what I've done to make sure that I've, you know, I'm not going through a day where I'm just totally catabolic and just breaking down muscle trying to buffer the lack of intake that I've had over the course of the day.
I literally don't travel without, I will only travel where we have our own kitchen and literally before we go check into our Airbnb or whatever, we go right to Whole Foods and stock up what I can. I do my best. It's hard when you're traveling and working, but I tell you what, I do my damnedest to stay as on point as I can.
I have everything measured out and brought and weighed out with me that I can. I'm one of those people, but not everybody can do that. Let me ask you this. This is kind of an obvious thing, but I think that one of the things I've noticed with the far more fat intake, I am far more less inclined to ever be
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Chapter 8: How does stress affect physical health and muscle gain?
because that helps to cross that blood-brain barrier. You need a higher dose of creatine to be beneficial for that. But it is easily one of my favorite supplements, and it is a supplement that has very few contraindications, very few concerns that I have.
But the most common concerns expressed to me are, I gain weight or I'm bloated, and my first question is, what quality of creatine are you consuming? Because unless it identifies either on the website or the package or the product that it's CreaPure, You might be getting the cheap stuff that is made in China that is acid extracted.
And if you understand anything about the processing, quality is important, just like the quality of pharmaceutical agents are important. So you want to work with companies that have very stringent standards for how they extract their products and bring their products to market.
Absolutely. Creopure too. I've been on that and some people argue it's not necessary and yada, yada, yada. And you know, all of these things that we have to overcome that people do. I mean, and you can always feel free to test it out yourself and just see how it works for you. Yeah, absolutely. I'm really big on how I've felt. Cause I've taken creatine forever.
Cause I've known, you know, it's gotten more popular and, I, what do you think? I'd say in the past, like three to four years, it's especially gotten more popular, like biohacking community or just more prevalently used or like more study or accentuation has been put on it.
What's funny is when, when I was always talking about it, it was so cheap and it was like the cheapest thing in the world to buy. And now the price, it's not expensive, but it's certainly gone up now, the more popular it's gotten and been taken advantage of. So the, the urolithinase side of things now, you know, I'll keep it very short. I want your opinion on it.
But just so people understand, it's stimulating mitophagy. So when, especially as we age, the mitochondria is the powerhouse of our cells and these start to degrade and they will basically either be damaged or destroyed as we get older. And so in short, urolithin A is stimulating that repair, which is of course then slowing down the aging process. It's obviously giving us more energy.
I have noticed definitely the endurance help. I'm doing 15 miles to 20 miles a day on the elliptical or when I am running, it's 10 miles a day. So trust me when I tell you, I know if anything helps me or hinders me. And even on my bad days, it's helping me. I'm not saying it's shaving a minute off my mile time, but I can certainly tell the difference.
And I can tell it, I would tell you more energy. And then the cream side, I can definitely tell. My wife keeps asking, can you get some more? Can you get some more? I'm like, shit, man, I can't buy everything we try. But I guess the point is, is that is one of the, to me, beyond the fact that it's so well studied, one of the more innovative and like,
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