In this episode, Sachin interviews Cynthia Thurlow on her early career as a nurse practitioner, and why she took a leap of faith into beginning a holistic healthcare practice focusing on the health of perimenopausal and menopausal women. She speaks of her two TEDx talks, how the second one became viral, and led to her writing her first book. She speaks of intermittent fasting and what it did for her health and her practice. Listen to learn more about how Cynthia helps women in the second half of life live in their best health.

 

Key Takeaways:

[1:00] Sachin introduces today’s guest, Cynthia Thurlow. Cynthia has done two TEDx talks and created a revolution around intermittent fasting. Today, we’re going to go through the chapters of Cynthia’s journey to inform you about the perseverance it takes to succeed.

 

[2:28] Sachin thanks Cynthia for hosting him on a past episode of her podcast. Sachin and Cynthia met through Mindshare. Sachin is grateful for the collaboration in that community.

 

[3:29] A great deal of why Cynthia does what she does is wanting to help women understand that navigating the second half of their lives does not have to be fraught with poor quality sleep, weight loss resistance, and gaslighting by well-meaning healthcare providers.

 

[3:54] Cynthia started her journey in ER medicine and then cardiology as a nurse practitioner. She got to a point where she was no longer inspired to write prescriptions. She felt that so much of what she was seeing were lifestyle-mediated issues.

 

[4:18] Cynthia says that so much of what we do in traditional allopathic medicine is focused on urgencies and emergencies and there’s clearly a place for it but where we fall short is in prevention and chronic disease management.

 

[4:33] Cynthia no longer felt aligned with writing prescriptions for lifestyle-related issues, so in April 2016, she took a massive leap of faith and left traditional clinical medicine. She assured her husband it would work. She felt there was a need to provide support in different ways.

 

[5:27] Women started coming to her who felt they were misunderstood by providers who had 10 to 15 minutes to talk to them about multiple concerns, women who were being put on anti-depressants instead of checking hormones to see whether they needed oral progesterone.

 

[5:51] Cynthia started creating programs in 2016 in response to consistent symptoms and concerns that women had, which led to one-on-one work. Nurse practitioners in her state were not autonomous. She knew she needed to be in lifestyle medicine.

 

[6:16] Cynthia’s colleagues didn't have time to talk to patients about sleep, nutrition, or exercise, so they referred those patients to Cynthia. That was how it evolved initially, and it was gratifying, but Cynthia still felt something was lacking.

 

[6:56] In 2018, Cynthia wanted another challenge. She wanted to do a TEDx talk about the issues and changes women go through in perimenopause and menopause.

 

[7:14] Cynthia did a second TEDx talk that went viral. It validated to Cynthia’s family that her work was needed and that she had a genuine business. Cynthia speaks of the stress of going from being an employee to being an entrepreneur but says that great risks have great rewards.

 

[8:22] Cynthia says she was meant to be married to her husband and have her boys. Occupationally, the work she is doing now impacts more people than being in an office or the hospital where she was seeing 16 or 20 patients a day. Now her message is amplified.

 

[8:44] Her message also serves as a reminder that you are capable of so much more than you realize. Some of what you do is a leap of faith and some of it is understanding you have a message that is worth amplifying. Aligning with that concept allows you to propel forward.

 

[9:47] As an entrepreneur, understand that things take time; they don’t happen overnight. What you see on social media are highlights. They don’t show you the tough part. They don’t show you the 80 hours a week you may be working as an entrepreneur. It’s so easy to doubt yourself.

 

[10:12] Put your blinders on and focus on your vision and impact and the people you know you can reach and inspire. Sachin adds, some days you step in grass, and some days you step in mud but you just keep moving forward. As you go, you learn and develop skills.

 

[12:07] Cynthia tells what it was like to resign from the hospital. Cynthia says in Human Design, she is a Manifesting Generator. She leans into what feels intrinsically right, viscerally. She loved her patients but she was not happy with writing prescriptions. She was mentally tired.

 

[13:41] Cynthia’s body was telling her she had to make a decision. One day, her feet hit the floor and she said, “Today is the day.” Her husband didn’t understand. She was fearful to tell her employer but once she did, it was like a weight was lifted off her shoulders.

 

[14:16] Cynthia spent six weeks mourning the decision because she loved the people she worked with. She loved her patients, but not the environment. She was no longer growing intellectually. She was not aligned with the model of treating symptoms with prescriptions.

[14:58] Cynthia felt that there was more that she could do by focusing on lifestyle and helping people understand that poor sleep, inactivity, poor eating, poor relationships, and poor spiritual practices do not lead to good health.

 

[15:40] Colleagues and her parents told her she was having a midlife crisis but she disagreed. She had put much thought into it and had a clear vision of where she saw her business going. She couldn’t do it in the context of continuing to work in that environment.

 

[16:19] Looking back eight years, Cynthia sees she is now exactly where she is meant to be. There’s a reason things happened on the trajectory that they did. She had to take that leap of faith. Now Advanced Practice Nurses reach out to her and ask how they can do as she does.

 

[17:35] Cynthia says all of us listening to this podcast need to realize our work is so needed and valuable. We have to have faith in ourselves. We need to build an army to help support people’s health and wellness needs. Cynthia says the current system is broken.

 

[17:55] Sachin quotes Dan Sullivan who said that every system does exactly what it is designed to do. Sachin’s take on that is that the system is fixed to be rigged against the patient and the practitioner so a small percentage of people benefits from everything that’s happening.

 

[18:28] Sachin is thankful that the system is great in emergency situations but eventually, it grinds down practitioners, patients, insurance companies, and governments. He can’t see how it will play out over the course of 50 or 100 years.

 

[19:12] Sachin addresses the mid-life crisis issue. For a lot of people, going into a holistic style of practice happens around mid-life. But it’s not a mid-life crisis, it’s an opportunity to be reborn. Reframing that in people’s minds can be helpful. It’s a new world, embrace you.

 

[20:36] Cynthia is the first entrepreneur in her family. Her parents instilled in her a strong sense of self-confidence. She comes from a family of people who are in service to others, both in medicine and teaching. She speaks of how she and her husband balance each other.

 

[22:17] Cynthia has a child she suspects will be an entrepreneur. He’s constantly figuring out strategies and solutions. He wants to go to business school and work on Wall Street with complex computational models.

 

[22:50] Cynthia invested early in her mindset and her business. She got a business coach early and she credits every coach she hired with helping her drive her business further. You cannot do it all on your own. Hire people who know more than you do to help you expedite your growth.

 

[23:24] Cynthia joined Mindshare in 2019, After her talk went viral, she had felt the universe telling her it was time to leap again. After joining the mastermind, she felt like a little fish in a big pond, amazed at the quality of people she was around, people she could learn from.

 

[23:51] Cynthia is a proponent of being a lifelong learner. There’s no greater joy for her than learning. She is very coachable. Give her a suggestion and she gets it done. Her business is not a hobby. She wants to make an impact and as a result, generate an income.

 

[26:33] The American Heart Association produced a document on time-restricted feeding at an epidemiological conference. It looked at two days’ worth of data, wasn’t a research study, and wasn’t peer-reviewed. It linked time-restricted feeding to heart disease and morbidity.

 

[27:45] Intermittent fasting may deserve to have more research done, particularly within women, Cynthia says you can’t draw a conclusion from two days’ worth of information that is self-reported at an epidemiologic conference. It goes back to clickbait.

 

[29:01] Cynthia did a video on Instagram a couple of days after the article came out. She told her audience it does not impact her decision to continue talking about intermittent fasting. For most of us, it is not going to change utilizing that as a strategy for ourselves or our clients.

 

[30:25] Cynthia says many organizations are designed to protect consumers but are so influenced by the pharmaceutical industry and the processed food industry that there is a lack of objectivity. Their advice is very subjective. A lot of clinicians teach that advice.

 

[31:05] Cynthia disagrees with a registered dietician working for the ADA telling everyone to have lots of heart-healthy grains and processed carbohydrates. Cynthia says that’s exactly the advice to keep you sick and misinformed.

 

[31:55] Sachin used to be a speaker for the American Diabetes Association, but he quit after a few talks because it became clear to him that their objectives were not aligned. Sachin was teaching how to reverse diabetes, and they told him he couldn’t say that.

 

[32:42] Sachin was sharing what was working clinically for people who want to get off of these medications or reduce the medications. It’s not just food that raises blood sugar. Poor sleep, lack of sunlight, our microbiome, and stress will cause blood sugar dysregulation.

 

[33:14] Sachin says the ADA was focused only on food and medicine. The asteroid that’s about to hit this country is metabolic dysfunction, which spills into many chronic health challenges. Intermittent fasting is a powerful tool to help people address metabolic dysfunction.

 

[33:57] Cynthia had never had a weight problem but found that in perimenopause she could not shed 10 pounds. Her trainer at the time suggested intermittent fasting. She thought that would be starving but she started reading about it and found Jason Fung’s book.

 

[34:41] Dr. Jason Fung uses intermittent fasting protocols with his patients. Cynthia came to intermittent fasting with the desire to change body composition but she stayed for all the other benefits. She didn’t initially lose weight but she felt so much better and was so cognitively clear.

 

[35:05] Doing intermittent fasting, Cynthia had so much more energy and less bloating. Over time, she did lose weight. She talked to her patients about it and they thought she wanted to starve them. She talked about it to any who would listen. Then she left clinical medicine.

 

[35:37] When she decided to do the TEDx talk, she was offered two around the same time. They had to be on different topics, so the first talk was on perimenopause and the second talk was about intermittent fasting. That topic became one of the most Googled topics of 2019.

 

[36:23] Cynthia’s talk was recorded in March 2019. The talk was released in May and that changed everything. She came to intermittent fasting out of a curiosity for herself, but she had so much success, that she talked to anyone willing to listen to her.

 

[37:38] Intermittent fasting is a strategy that almost everyone can use in some capacity to improve their metabolic health. Her teenagers do not fast, but they can even go 12 hours without eating.

 

[38:55] Cynthia does intuitive eating. On days when she lifts in the gym she may go 12 or 13 hours without eating. If she’s hungry, she eats. She is metabolically healthy and insulin-sensitive, so she tries to be observant of how she feels. She consumes enough protein.

 

[39:55] Some women whittle themselves down to one meal a day and chronically underfuel their bodies. It will break down their muscle and metabolic flexibility. Cynthia tells them their feeding window needs to be large enough to accommodate enough protein, whether animal or plant.

 

[40:43] Cynthia is a proponent of at least two to three meals per day. You can get to a point where you know if you are hungry or bored or stressed. Food is not the answer to being stressed.

 

[42:17] Cynthia talks about a toxic diet culture that inhibits you from having a healthy relationship with food. Nourish your body. There are extremes on either side that can be unhealthy.

 

[43:38] Cynthia sides with the camp of consuming enough protein, strength training, maintaining muscle mass, and not becoming a weakened version of yourself at risk for frailty.

 

[45:24] Cynthia finds that a lot of men and women eat too little protein and too many carbs.

 

[46:11] The first meal of the day sets up blood sugar regulation, reducing the likelihood of hyperphagia, and the desire to continue eating. Get a good amount of protein in that first meal and that will set you up for the rest of the day.

 

[46:40] Cynthia has written a book on intermittent fasting. In 2020, her book concept for Intermittent Fasting went to auction. She thinks writing a book proposal is worse than writing a book. It was super stressful for her. Multiple publishers were interested in publishing it.

 

[47:16] Cynthia’s favorite of the seven publishers was the one who ended up publishing her book. She had three months to get her first manuscript in. Revisions were done at month five and it was published the following year. Then there’s the publicity and press she did.

 

[48:05] Cynthia’s book continues to sell hundreds of copies every month. She’s still out talking about it. It’s the first book written by a woman for women about fasting. It gives a unique perspective.

 

[48:59] Cynthia just signed her second book deal. It will not be about fasting. Writing a book is probably one of the most professionally gratifying things Cynthia has done. Having a concept and having it come to fruition and having it impact lives is exciting.

 

[49:38] Cynthia hosts the Everyday Wellness podcast. She started it with a psychologist friend in 2019. At the end of the year, the friend didn’t feel she was helping her business, so she quit. Cynthia stayed with it, and she says podcasting is her favorite thing she does in her business.

 

[50:37] The podcast was like the little engine that could. It grew and grew. It’s a wonderful revenue stream. Cynthia also thinks podcasting is the best way to network with other people doing great work. It helped her to learn there was a gap her book would fill.

 

[51:36] Cynthia says there are not too many podcasts. If you want to do a podcast do it, the way you want to do it. Cynthia learns so much from her guests. She reads their books before hosting them, to get their essence. It becomes an incredible exchange you share with your community.

 

[53:22] Sachin thanks Cynthia for the amazing conversation today and the work she is doing.

 

Mentioned in this episode

Perfect Practice Live

Cynthia Thurlow

The Intermittent Fasting Transformation: The 45-Day Program for Women to Lose Stubborn Weight, Improve Hormonal Health, and Slow Aging, by Cynthia Thurlow

Everyday Wellness podcast

Jason Fung

David Sinclair

 

More about your host Sachin Patel

How to speak with Sachin

Go one step further and Become The Living Proof

Perfect Practice Live

[email protected]

To set up a practice clarity call and opportunity audit

 

Books by Sachin Patel:

Perfect Practice: How to Build a Successful Functional Medical Business, Attract Your Ideal Patients, Serve Your Community, and Get Paid What You’re Worth

The Motivation Molecule: The Biological Secrets To Eliminate Procrastination, Skyrocket Productivity, and Get Sh!t Done

 

Tweetables:

 

“A great deal of why I do what I do is wanting to help women understand that navigating the second half of their lives does not have to be fraught with poor quality sleep, weight loss resistance, and gaslighting by well-meaning healthcare providers.” — Cynthia Thurlow

 

“So much of what we do in traditional allopathic medicine is focused on urgencies and emergencies and there’s clearly a place for it but where I think we fall short is in prevention, and frankly, chronic disease management.” — Cynthia Thurlow

 

“It is stressful to leave an environment where you are an employee, in many instances, where you have a guaranteed income, to going to having the complete opposite. My prevailing philosophy is that through great risk comes great reward.” — Cynthia Thurlow

 

All of us, everyone listening to this podcast, your work is so needed and valuable, and yet we just have to have faith in ourselves to understand that the voices are needed. We need to build an army to help support people’s health and wellness needs.” — Cynthia Thurlow

 

“I’m really a proponent of at least two to three meals a day.” — Cynthia Thurlow

 

“Are you really hungry? Because if you are, please go eat. Or are you bored. Are you stressed?” — Cynthia Thurlow

 

“Podcasting is the best way to network … with other people doing great work.” — Cynthia Thurlow

 

Cynthia Thurlow

@CynthiaThurlow on YouTube @CynthiaThurlow on LinkedIn