Episode 137 |The Menopause Gut| The Hidden System Medicine Overlooked| Cynthia Thurlow

Because my publisher kept saying, we don't want to increase the cost of the book, but we do think this is important.

But really, you and I didn't train in a time where we learned about the microbiome.

And yet we now understand that it interfaces with every single organ system and cell in the body.

So When I think about the 2018 Cynthia versus the 2026 Cynthia, it's with the understanding that of course I got sick, of course it makes sense, of course women are much more susceptible, and why aren't we doing more about it? Because I think that when we focus on bikini medicine or just thinking about women as fertility agents until they're no longer fertile, We're losing out on opportunities to start women at a younger age to being bone focused and microbiome focused and heart focused instead of just waiting until everything falls apart like it does for a lot of women in that menopausal transition.

Yeah.

And so I think the the fact that you.

went back and looked at your situation so deeply, even with your conventional training, and started to see the great research that's out there that's emerging that connects the hormone health with the gut environment.

With that research, what would you predict happened, say, from 2010 version of you to 2018 in your gut environment?

Yeah, I mean, I think there's a couple things.

I mean, 2010, that was when I dipped my toe into the pond of being gluten-free, starting there, put all my autoimmune pieces, which I'm sure we'll talk about are escalating risks of autoimmunity, put all my autoimmune issues in remission.

And when I reflect, I was probably doing everything wrong.

I'll be totally transparent.

I worked in cardiology.

For anyone that works in acute care medicine or works in hospital systems, I am a former adrenaline junkie, so I spent 16 years in clinical cardiology and four years as an ER and trauma nurse, and admittedly, very stressful work environment.

Nurse practitioners here function very similarly with some physician oversight in the hospital, but we function like residents, and we have tremendous autonomy.

We're making... significant and critical decisions about patient care every day.

And so stressful job, young kids, husband who did a ton of international travel.

I did really intense workouts three or four days a week.

I probably didn't sleep enough because when my kids went to bed, I would get all those things done that I needed to get done.

And so I think it created the perfect storm of like hormetic stress, but not the beneficial hormetic stress.

So I think that the volume of stress I was experiencing internally, externally was probably driving more leaky gut, was probably contributing to some degree of catabolism of my muscles, and very likely impact my immune system.

We know that chronic stress, good or bad, however we view it, has a detrimental effect on immune system function.

And so I think I was the perfect candidate, perfect storm to not only have a very, very vibrant perimenopause transition.

By vibrant, I mean very symptomatic transition, but my lifestyle no longer matched my physiology, but no one, and I mean no one was talking to us about this.

Like my generation, Gen X, no one talked to us about perimenopause.