Thrive on Plants

Melatonin isn't just a sleep aid. It might be one of the most misunderstood molecules in your body, and understanding it could impact your healthspan.

Most of us know melatonin from the supplement aisle: something you take when you can't sleep. But Dr. Deanna Minich has spent years making the case that this "sleep hormone" is actually a primordial, multitasking molecule she calls the "mother molecule," made not only in your pineal gland but in your gut, skin, ovaries, and even inside your mitochondria. 

In this conversation, Dr. Minich and Dr. Daphne get into what melatonin really is, why your own production drops sharply as you age (a decline she calls "melatonopause"), and the practical, plant-forward ways you can protect it starting tonight.

Dr. Deanna Minich is a nutrition scientist with a doctorate in medical sciences, a Fellow and past president of the American College of Nutrition, and Chief Science Officer at Symphony Natural Health. She spent a decade working alongside Dr. Jeffrey Bland, the father of functional medicine, and is the author of The Rainbow Diet and Whole Detox. In 2022 she published the review "Is Melatonin the Next Vitamin D?"

Read Dr. Minich's full bio: https://deannaminich.com/professional-bio/

In this episode:

• Why melatonin is far more than a sleep hormone, and what it does in your mitochondria
• "Melatonopause": how your levels fall from childhood to your 50s and 60s
• The single most important lever for your circadian health (hint: it's free)
• Why so many of us have a "darkness deficiency," and how to fix it
• How your plate builds melatonin, from tryptophan to the cofactors you need
• The dosing "sweet spot," and why more is often not better
• Why you might feel groggy on melatonin, and what caffeine tells you about your own metabolism
• The plant-based melatonin conversation, and what the early research actually shows

A note on the science: Melatonin is a true hormone with real interactions, so please talk with your own clinician before starting any supplement. This conversation is educational, not medical advice.

Learn more about Dr. Minich: https://deannaminich.com (visit the Resources tab for free downloads, including a melatonin summary)

Explore the plant-based melatonin discussed: Symphony Natural Health at https://symphonynaturalhealth.com

Disclosure: Dr. Minich serves as Chief Science Officer at Symphony Natural Health. Some research referenced involves their formulations.

#Melatonin #Menopause #Healthspan #CircadianRhythm #PlantBased #FunctionalMedicine #Longevity #Perimenopause #SleepHealth #WomensHealth

Additional resources to help you thrive on plants:

🌱 Access the free Plant-Powered Body course: Access Here

🌱 Take the free health assessment for women 40+: Start Here  

🌱  Watch every episode on YouTube

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What if the missing piece of your menopause care isn't a hormone at all?

Cynthia Thurlow, NP, has spent more than two decades in clinical medicine. But no one, not her training, her colleagues, or her own doctors, prepared her for what perimenopause would do to her body. Or for how much of it would trace back to her gut.

After a serious infection, a 13-day hospitalization, and weeks of antibiotics, she had to rebuild her microbiome in the middle of perimenopause. That experience became The Menopause Gut, which she calls "the book I wish I had had 10 years ago."

In this conversation, we talk about why the gut microbiome deserves a seat at the center of midlife care, and what you can start doing about it now.

You’ll learn more about:

• Why women can do everything right, including HRT, and still not feel well
• How chronic stress and early-life adversity may influence ovarian aging and the timing of menopause
• Why sleep and stress can't be fixed separately, and simple daily ways to calm your nervous system
• What progesterone and estrogen can and can't do for sleep
• Why heart disease remains the leading killer of women, and which labs (ApoB and Lp(a)) to ask your clinician about
• Why Cynthia calls fiber "the new F-word," and how it may help protect your bones after menopause

Connect with Cynthia

• The Menopause Gut: https://www.cynthiathurlow.com/the-menopause-gut
• Website: https://www.cynthiathurlow.com
• Everyday Wellness Podcast: https://www.cynthiathurlow.com/podcast
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cynthia_thurlow_/
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/cynthiathurlow

This video is for educational purposes only and is not medical advice. Please talk with your own healthcare provider before making changes to your health care, medications, or hormone therapy.

#menopause #guthealth #perimenopause #gutmicrobiome #womenshealth #hormonehealth #midlifehealth #plantbased #longevity #lifestylemedicine #longevitylab #longevityathlete

Additional resources to help you thrive on plants:

🌱 Access the free Plant-Powered Body course: Access Here

🌱 Take the free health assessment for women 40+: Start Here  

🌱  Watch every episode on YouTube

⭐️ If you loved this episode, please leave a review! ⭐️

Here’s how to do it on Apple Podcasts:

Go to the Thrive on Plants Podcast page: Click here

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She was born vegan. Her mother had been vegan for nine years before Anne arrived. Her father founded the American Vegan Society the year John F. Kennedy was elected president.

And now, at 56, Anne Dinshah is the CEO of that same organization, taking up springboard diving for the first time since high school, rowing fifteen miles at a stretch on the Schuylkill River, and building bridges between people who think differently and a philosophy she has lived every single day of her life.

This is not a conversation about protein.

It is a conversation about ahimsa: the Sanskrit word for non-harming that Anne's father translated as dynamic harmlessness. Doing the least harm and the most good, every day, with whatever options you have available.

In this episode, Anne and I explore what that framework offers people navigating midlife. We talk about what her father understood about behavior change that the modern wellness world has still not figured out. We talk about why so many people who go vegan eventually step back, and what community has to do with staying the course. And we talk about what it means to keep saying yes to life at every age, whether that means returning to a sport you loved, leading an organization your father built, or simply getting out of bed and doing five minutes of movement before the day begins.

One line from her father has stayed with her for decades, something she may have read rather than heard him say directly:

"I can only do what I can do. But I can do it every day."

That is what this episode is about.

Contact Anne Dinshah

American Vegan Society: americanvegan.org

Instagram: @AmericanVegans

Additional resources to help you thrive on plants:

🌱 Access the free Plant-Powered Body course: Access Here

🌱 Take the free health assessment for women 40+: Start Here  

🌱  Watch every episode on YouTube

⭐️ If you loved this episode, please leave a review! ⭐️

Here’s how to do it on Apple Podcasts:

Go to the Thrive on Plants Podcast page: Click here

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What if the way you eat is directly shaping how you think, feel, and cope?

Serotonin, dopamine, norepinephrine- the molecules your brain uses to regulate mood, motivation, and stress response- are synthesized from essential amino acids. Amino acids that come from food. That means what you put on your plate every day either supports your brain health or quietly undermines it. 

In this episode of Thrive on Plants, I sit down with Dr. Elizabeth Winings, Psychiatric-Mental Health Nurse Practitioner, Diplomate of the American College of Lifestyle Medicine, Assistant Professor of Nursing at Jacksonville University, and founder of Winings Wellness, a seven-provider integrative mental health practice built on a premise most clinics still haven't adopted: mental health care should be preventive, not just reactive.

Dr. Winings' path to this work started at the VA, watching patients lose limbs to poorly controlled diabetes and asking a question most clinicians don't ask out loud: when do we stop treating the consequences and start addressing the cause? That question led her to a doctoral internship at TrueNorth Health Center in California, years in inpatient pediatric psychiatry, and ultimately to founding a practice where nutrition, lifestyle medicine, and mental health care operate as one.

In this episode, we discuss:

• The concept of preventive mental health care: what it is, why most people don't know it's possible, and how to start building it now
• How emotions work as neurobiological signals and why learning to read them changes everything
• The grief, identity, and psychological weight of cancer survivorship that medicine rarely addresses
• Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), nervous system regulation, and the long arc of mental health across a lifetime
• Breaking down cultural and systemic barriers to mental health care access
• What Dr. Winings actually asks her patients about food at every single visit
• How to know when your intuition is speaking and how to stop talking yourself out of it

This is a conversation about eating, thinking, feeling, and building a life that is not just longer, but genuinely more whole.

Connect with Dr. Elizabeth Winings

Website: https://winingswellness.com/

Additional resources to help you thrive on plants:

🌱 Access the free Plant-Powered Body course: Access Here

🌱 Take the free health assessment for women 40+: Start Here  

🌱  Watch every episode on YouTube

⭐️ If you loved this episode, please leave a review! ⭐️

Here’s how to do it on Apple Podcasts:

Go to the Thrive on Plants Podcast page: Click here

Scroll down to the ‘Ratings & Reviews’ section. Tap ‘Write a Review’ 

(you may be prompted to log in with your Apple ID). 

Thank you for your support!

Most women over 50 are doing everything they were told to do. Eating less. Exercising more. And getting nowhere.

In this episode of Thrive on Plants, Dr. Daphne Bascom sits down with Debra Atkinson, an exercise physiologist, former Iowa State kinesiology lecturer, and founder of Flipping 50, to discuss why the old fitness rules stop working in midlife and what actually builds a strong, capable body for the long haul.

Debra spent more than thirty years in the fitness industry before realizing that almost everything women had been taught about exercise was built on research done on young men. So she built what was missing: a science-based, hormone-smart approach to training, nutrition, and recovery for women navigating menopause and beyond.

This is a practical, myth-busting conversation about strength, sleep, stress, and what it really means to age on your own terms.

What we cover:

• Why "eat less, exercise more" backfires in midlife, and what to do instead
• The two at-home tests (grip strength and the sit-to-stand) that tell you more than your scale
• Why body composition matters far more than the number you weigh
• The sleep research showing better-rested women lost more fat and kept more muscle
• Why your ability to recover, not your ability to work hard, becomes the key to aging well
• The one strength move Debra would keep above all others
• Building a legacy of health that ripples out to the people who are watching you

Whether you are 40, 50, 60 or 80 years young, this conversation will change how you think about aging racefully

Debra Atkinson, MS, CSCS

Founder of Flipping 50, TEDx speaker, and bestselling author of You Still Got It, Girl! and Hot, Not Bothered.

Website: https://www.flippingfifty.com

Instagram: @flipping50tv

Podcast: The Flipping 50 Show

#DebraAtkinson #FitnessAfter50 #Flipping50 #MenopauseFitness #WomenOver50 #StrengthTraining #MidlifeHealth #Menopause #HealthyAging #Longevity #WomensHealth #BodyComposition #PlantBased #ThriveOnPlants 

This episode is for educational purposes and is not a substitute for personalized medical advice. Always consult your own clinician.

Additional resources to help you thrive on plants:

🌱 Access the free Plant-Powered Body course: Access Here

🌱 Take the free health assessment for women 40+: Start Here  

🌱  Watch every episode on YouTube

⭐️ If you loved this episode, please leave a review! ⭐️

Here’s how to do it on Apple Podcasts:

Go to the Thrive on Plants Podcast page: Click here

Scroll down to the ‘Ratings & Reviews’ section. Tap ‘Write a Review’ 

(you may be prompted to log in with your Apple ID). 

Thank you for your support!

Everyone worries about losing muscle as they age. Almost everyone is worried about the wrong thing.

Dr. Brad Currier has spent his career studying what actually keeps us strong and functional into our 70s, 80s, and 90s. He earned his PhD under Professor Stuart Phillips, helped write the latest ACSM resistance training guidelines, and now leads clinical research at Timeline in Switzerland.

In this episode of Thrive on Plants, Dr. Daphne Bascom asks him the questions most people never think to ask. The answers reframe how you should think about aging, from your muscles all the way down to the power plants inside your cells.

No hype. No overpromising. Just a clear-eyed look at what the science supports, what it doesn't yet, and what you can do about it starting this week.

Here's what you'll learn:

• Why the number on your DEXA scan may be lying to you about how well you'll age
• The difference between muscle mass, muscle strength, and muscle power, and why the last one decides whether you catch yourself when you trip
• A strength test you can run in under a minute, no lab required
• What mitochondria actually do, beyond the line you memorized in high school biology
• Mitophagy: the cellular cleanup crew you lose with age, and why it may matter more than any supplement
• The pomegranate problem: why loading up on the "right" foods may not give you what you think
• The truth about urolithin A, including where the evidence is strong and where it's still an open question
• The single longevity metric Dr. Currier calls unreliable and clinically useless

About Dr. Brad Currier:

Dr. Currier leads clinical research at Timeline, a Switzerland-based company studying cellular and mitochondrial health. His background is in muscle physiology, aging, and nutrition.

Website: https://www.timeline.com/

Blog: https://www.timeline.com/blog/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bradcurrier.phd/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brad-currier

Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=SxVmAooAAAAJ&hl=en

Additional resources to help you thrive on plants:

🌱 Access the free Plant-Powered Body course: Access Here

🌱 Take the free health assessment for women 40+: Start Here  

🌱  Watch every episode on YouTube

⭐️ If you loved this episode, please leave a review! ⭐️

Here’s how to do it on Apple Podcasts:

Go to the Thrive on Plants Podcast page: Click here

Scroll down to the ‘Ratings & Reviews’ section. Tap ‘Write a Review’ 

(you may be prompted to log in with your Apple ID). 

Thank you for your support!

Beta-hydroxybutyrate, the primary ketone your body produces, is turning out to be one of the most compelling molecules in longevity and healthspan science. It fuels your brain when glucose falls short. It influences gene expression. It signals your cells to burn fat more efficiently. And a single dose has been shown to improve cardiac output, ejection fraction, and stroke volume in patients with heart failure.

Dr. Latt Mansor grew up in Malaysia surrounded by chronic disease. His father died of a stroke when he was 17. His half-brother died of a heart attack at 43. His mother's side of the family carries decades of obesity and diabetes. That personal history took him from Oxford, where he studied the diabetic heart under low-oxygen conditions, to leading a $6 million Department of Defense contract on exogenous ketones and elite military performance. Now he has come full circle, using what peak-performance science has revealed to help build the case for prevention.

Dr. Mansor holds a DPhil from the University of Oxford and serves as Research Director at H.V.M.N., the company behind Ketone IQ. 

In this conversation, we cover:

• What exogenous ketones actually are and how they differ from the endogenous ketones your body already makes
• How beta-hydroxybutyrate acts as a signaling molecule that binds directly to DNA and why a recent transcriptomics analysis showed it affected up to 300 genes
• The brain energy implications for women navigating perimenopause and menopause
• Exogenous ketones and GLP-1 receptor agonists: can they work together to protect lean mass and reduce brain fog during weight loss
• New unpublished appetite suppression data showing Ketone IQ's direct effects on GLP-1, ghrelin, and leptin
• Why Dr. Mansor calls it "the adaptive fuel" and what that means for how you use it

The research on exogenous ketones is still catching up to the biology.  The long-term human data is incomplete. But the mechanistic rationale is compelling, the early clinical signals are hard to ignore, and this conversation will give you the scientific foundation to decide whether any of it belongs in your longevity supplement stack.

Connect with Dr. Latt Mansor:

Social media: @lattmansor

Website: ketoneiq.com

Thrive on Plants:

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/thrive-on-plants/id1793550910

YouTube: youtube.com/@drdaphnebascom

Instagram: @WingmanDaphne

Linktree: https://linktr.ee/DaphneBascom 

This episode is not sponsored.

Additional resources to help you thrive on plants:

🌱 Access the free Plant-Powered Body course: Access Here

🌱 Take the free health assessment for women 40+: Start Here  

🌱  Watch every episode on YouTube

⭐️ If you loved this episode, please leave a review! ⭐️

Here’s how to do it on Apple Podcasts:

Go to the Thrive on Plants Podcast page: Click here

Scroll down to the ‘Ratings & Reviews’ section. Tap ‘Write a Review’ 

(you may be prompted to log in with your Apple ID). 

Thank you for your support!

Most women are told menopause is a hormone story. The science suggests it is also an energy story, one that starts inside your cells decades before your last period.

Dr. Siobhan Mitchell is a neuroscientist with a PhD, 80+ peer-reviewed publications, and 25 years of research on how nutrition shapes brain aging. She started this work after watching her grandmother die of Alzheimer's and she has spent her career trying to make sure that never has to happen to anyone else. She currently serves as Chief Science and Technology Officer at MitoQ. This episode is not sponsored.

In this conversation, we go deep into the science that most physicians are still not talking about: how estrogen loss during perimenopause and menopause triggers a cascade of mitochondrial changes that affect your brain, your metabolism, your muscles, and your cardiovascular system, all at once.

What you will learn in this episode:

• Why your mitochondria, not the calendar, determine how fast you age
• How estrogen acts as a master regulator of cellular energy, and what happens when it disappears
• Why women's brains start to struggle with glucose during perimenopause and what the research shows about preserving cognitive function
• What S-Equol is, why only 25% of Western women can produce it from soy, and how to change that
• The biomarker GDF-15 that most doctors are not ordering, and why it should be on your radar
• How plant-based fats, MCTs, fiber, B vitamins, and polyphenols feed your mitochondria in ways no supplement can replicate

Dr. Mitchell also addresses the honest evidence base for MitoQ, including where the data is strong and where more research is still needed.

If you are navigating perimenopause, postmenopause, or want to understand how to protect your healthspan, you will enjoy learning from Dr. Mitchell in this episode.

Connect with Dr. Siobhan Mitchell:

MitoQ: https://www.mitoq.com

Research: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=s6LruaUAAAAJ&hl=en

Additional resources to help you thrive on plants:

🌱 Access the free Plant-Powered Body course: Access Here

🌱 Take the free health assessment for women 40+: Start Here  

🌱  Watch every episode on YouTube

⭐️ If you loved this episode, please leave a review! ⭐️

Here’s how to do it on Apple Podcasts:

Go to the Thrive on Plants Podcast page: Click here

Scroll down to the ‘Ratings & Reviews’ section. Tap ‘Write a Review’ 

(you may be prompted to log in with your Apple ID). 

Thank you for your support!

What if the cleanest, most complete protein you could eat wasn't made from animals, plants, or soil at all?

In this episode, Dr. Daphne sits down with Walter Ross, founder and CEO of Spacemilk, to explore a category of protein most people have never heard of: single-cell yeast protein, grown in a closed-loop tank of water, free of heavy metals, pesticides, allergens, and the resource footprint of conventional agriculture.

Walter is not a food scientist. He studied economics, went to law school, and grew up watching his father pioneer hydroponic heirloom tomatoes in South Florida. The through-line? A relentless drive to find a better way. That instinct led him to baker's yeast, one of the oldest organisms in human food history, and to building what he believes is the cleanest protein powder on the market today.

We cover a lot of ground in this conversation:

• How yeast protein is actually made, from a molasses-fed fermentation tank to a finished isolate, and why that process naturally removes purines, histamines, and heavy metals that accumulate in soil-grown proteins.
• Why Walter named the company Spacemilk, and the moment at a space conference that reframed everything he was building.
• The randomized controlled trial data comparing yeast protein to whey for lean muscle mass, and what the research actually shows.
• The environmental math: 40% less water and land use than soy, 97% less than beef, and a certified upcycled supply chain where nothing goes to waste.
• Why he third-party tests every single batch for heavy metals, 77 pesticides, molds, mycotoxins, and allergens, and why he thinks most companies simply do not.
• The formulation decisions behind every ingredient, from monk fruit and thaumatin to acacia fiber and algae-based omegas, and what is changing in the next product version.
• What living with purpose means to him, and why he believes the root of all meaning is in giving back more than you take.

This is one of those conversations that quietly shifts how you think about where your food comes from.

Spacemilk: https://spacemilk.com

Spacemilk third-party testing: https://spacemilk.com/pages/testing-1

Try Spacemilk for yourself at spacemilk.com and use code SPACE50 for 50% off your first subscription from July 2 - July 5, 2026, only! 

Additional resources to help you thrive on plants:

🌱 Access the free Plant-Powered Body course: Access Here

🌱 Take the free health assessment for women 40+: Start Here  

🌱  Watch every episode on YouTube

⭐️ If you loved this episode, please leave a review! ⭐️

Here’s how to do it on Apple Podcasts:

Go to the Thrive on Plants Podcast page: Click here

Scroll down to the ‘Ratings & Reviews’ section. Tap ‘Write a Review’ 

(you may be prompted to log in with your Apple ID). 

Thank you for your support!

What if the most powerful cancer-fighting tool isn't a drug, it's your muscle?

Exercise oncologist Sami Mansfield spent 23 years building programs inside cancer centers and co-authoring ASCO guidelines before most oncologists were willing to have this conversation. In this episode, she joins Dr. Daphne Bascom to cover what your care team probably hasn't told you about movement, muscle, menopause, and what it actually takes to prevent cancer and thrive after it.

Whether you have a diagnosis, are caring for someone who does, or are simply committed to protecting your health in midlife and beyond, this conversation will change how you think about your body.

In this episode, you will learn:

• Why "rest and eat whatever you want" is one of the most harmful things an oncology team can say
• The minimum effective dose of movement Sami starts every patient with (it's 5 minutes and it works)
• Why muscle loss during treatment may occur and how to prevent it
• How to track your muscle health at home for under $35
• The difference between cancer detection and cancer prevention (and why 364 days matter more than your annual screening)
• Sami's "bookend" method for protecting sleep during treatment and menopause
• ….and more!

Connect with Sami Mansfield

My Lifestyle Shift (her survivorship and lifestyle program): https://www.mylifestyleshift.com

Cancer Wellness for Life: https://www.cancerwellnessforlife.com

#CancerPrevention #ExerciseOncology #WomensHealth #Menopause #PlantBased #Longevity #LifestyleMedicine #CancerSurvivor #MuscleHealth #ThriveOnPlants 

Additional resources to help you thrive on plants:

🌱 Access the free Plant-Powered Body course: Access Here

🌱 Take the free health assessment for women 40+: Start Here  

🌱  Watch every episode on YouTube

⭐️ If you loved this episode, please leave a review! ⭐️

Here’s how to do it on Apple Podcasts:

Go to the Thrive on Plants Podcast page: Click here

Scroll down to the ‘Ratings & Reviews’ section. Tap ‘Write a Review’ 

(you may be prompted to log in with your Apple ID). 

Thank you for your support!