Learn How Intermittent Fasting Boosts Your Gut Health

Cynthia Thurlow, NP

Thank you. I have been really excited to reconnect with you and your community.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

Thank you. Let us just dive right in and let us get to the heart of this issue today. We have people listening to this right now that are just getting started taking control over their health like, okay, no one in white coats going to save me, I need to figure out my chronic gut conditions, I am not going to let this bleed into another year. We have people who have tried every cleanse, every diet, every fast, every gut healing protocol, they have tried every probiotic on the market, they have multiple diagnoses, they know more than their general practitioner does about what is wrong with them. It is quite the dichotomy. I really want to feel free to speak at this very advanced level for those guys today and also make sure we give our newbies to their own health journey something to start with as well. That is to speak to that level of complexity. I would love for you to share and like, how did you get started in this space, let us get started there.

Cynthia Thurlow, NP

Yeah. I think most people know that I worked in traditional allopathic medicine first as an ER nurse in inner-city Baltimore, and later as a nurse practitioner in critical care and cardiology then so not surprisingly I am a bit of an adrenaline junkie. But what I started to see over time was patterns of lifestyle issues that were mitigating a lot of the success. I was seeing patients having with coronary artery disease, atrial fibrillation, high blood pressure, and diabetes, I mean, the list goes on and on and on. Over time I became really interested in lifestyle medicine and then most specifically, food is medicine and I dove down a rabbit hole, started a Ph.D. program which I did not love, and did a wellness coaching program which I did love and then I went down this functional nutrition path and that lit me up. 

The realization that I only really wanted to talk about nutrition and knew that if I could get my patients to change their diets they could change their lives in an allopathic model. I kind of got patted on the head like, this is our nurse practitioner who loves to talk about food, but over time, I came to the realization that after six years in cardiology in order to make a larger impact I really needed to leave that traditional model. I took a leap of faith, did not have a business plan, just knew I would be successful that can either make me sound crazy or just inherently very confident. Over time I started creating programs and one on one work and at one point I decided to do a TED Talk and then that changed everything, quite honestly, and started a podcast. Little by little I started making a bigger impact and at least initially really encouraging women to consider the possibility that all these limiting beliefs that we absorb from our traditional allopathic providers about the aging process and metabolic health and metabolic disease is rooted firmly in that lifestyle piece. 

I very proudly now say that it is evolved into this huge focus on metabolic health. Intermittent fasting is one aspect of metabolic health. But helping people understand the impact of metabolic health is pervasive. As an example, we know right now 92 to 93% of Americans are not metabolically healthy, and helping people understand that this is reversible with lifestyle and some other tweaks, helps people understand that it is accessible. I think if we can make things accessible and tangible, then we can allow patients to enact change in their lives. That is really empowering far more so than writing 50 or 60 prescriptions a day which is what I was doing before.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

God, you said it. Let us tackle intermittent fasting first, what it can do for you, and where people are getting it wrong. Because thankfully due to your advocacy and other people in space, this is becoming much more accessible as a concept. Many people in our audience may already be trying it or have tried it and potentially done it wrong.

Cynthia Thurlow, NP

Yeah. Intermittent fasting is as simple as saying eating less often. We know the average American is consuming anywhere from six to 10 meals or drinks, sugar-sweetened beverages a day. What we are really speaking to is by eating less often we are able to utilize both stored sugar or glycogen or stored fats as a fuel source. These fuel substrates are important when we talk about metabolic flexibility, when we talk about the benefits of intermittent fasting. It really speaks to the fact that people come to intermittent fasting out of an innate curiosity to change body composition, to lose weight, what they stay for, and all the other benefits to improve cognition. Because as they are able to break down stored fat they can actually eventually get these converted over to ketones. There is specific types of ketones that diffuse across the blood-brain barrier like beta-hydroxybutyrate and can allow us to have more mental clarity, more energy, especially brain energy. We think about reductions in biophysical markers like blood pressure, blood sugar, fasting, and lipids, looking specifically at triglycerides, HDL, LDL, and total cholesterol can all be improved, things like uric acid, inflammatory markers, thinking about the reduction in risk for neurocognitive disorders like Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, dementia, things like that, improvement in gut integrity. 

If you fast long enough you can get some stem cell activation. For most of us, understanding this complex in a relationship between the gut microbiome and susceptibility to autoimmune conditions is very important. It is interesting, the gut microbiome was not something that we learned about 25 years ago in school but over the last ten or 15 years, it has definitely become something that we are talking more about and understanding that there is this bidirectional relationship between our brains and our guts and how we are. The healthier our guts are, the healthier our neurotransmitters,, the improvement in our immune function, all those are directly related to this fasting, and eating less often. Probably the next question will be that, when we are talking about these things, helping people understand that if we can allow our bodies to effectively utilize either stored fat or stored sugar as a fuel substrate. 

That metabolic flexibility is the way that our bodies are designed to thrive, it allows our bodies to thrive as opposed to this kind of methodology that most of us are eating two to three, every two to three hours we are eating snacks, we are eating many meals and what we are doing is we are never allowing our bodies to have an opportunity to break down food, to properly digest process. There are all sorts of interesting mechanisms in the gut including the migrating motor complex. All these things are fully optimized when we are eating less often. I think for many people they may initially step into the pond of intermittent fasting and the first thing they may notice is they are not bloated and then they notice their digestion is optimized, then they are not constipated, maybe they are no longer having diarrhea, it could be that simple to start with. The other thing that I think is important to kind of illustrate with intermittent fasting is the process of autophagy. This waste and recycling process where our body goes in and it removes disease-disordered organelles, mitochondria that have the potential to go on and create disease or be precancerous cells or things of that nature. This waste and recycling process it is like taking out the garbage is activated or upregulated in an unfed state. Obviously, the longer you fast the more autophagy, but still beneficial for you to eat less often for even plain old digestive rest.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

It is so well said. Okay. Let us think about how this relates to the widespread metabolic dysfunction that we are seeing in the US today and of course the world over, especially in developed countries. All these exposure to herbicides, pesticides, and all these processed food additives that have really dysregulated our digestion, how can intermittent fasting help us to reclaim our own innate metabolic flexibility and our own gut resilience once more?

Cynthia Thurlow, NP

Yeah, it is such a great question. First and foremost when we are transitioning from a standard American diet where we are eating with meal frequency to eating two to three meals a day, again in an unfettered state, as our body is getting more acclimated to utilizing either stored sugar or stored fat for fuel that ability to use either type of fuel substrate. A fuel substrate is just saying the type of fuel is where the metabolic flexibility really resides. When we eat food our blood sugar will go up and correspondingly our body wants to create a hormone called insulin in an effort to bring it back down, when we are in an unfed state and insulin levels are low it allows our body to go in and free up fat from our stored fat cells to use as fuel and that is a very important distinction to be made that a lot of people do not talk about. But if we are eating all the time if we get up and the first thing we do in the morning is have a sugary beverage, and then maybe we have a pastry, or we have a bowl of cereal, I mean, the whole breakfast industry has conditioned us to believe that we need to have these sugary processed junk foods which, in essence, do not stabilize our blood sugar, they spike our blood sugar. There is a lot of physiologic things that go on when our blood sugar spikes. 

But first and foremost to understand when our blood sugar spikes too high can damage the endothelium which is actually the interior lining of the blood vessel, and can potentially go on to damaged organs. We have to secrete more insulin to bring that blood sugar back down. Because you are just consuming in the standard American diet, a carbohydrate-laden breakfast, what ends up happening is that blood sugar does not stabilize. If you get up in the morning and you have, let us just say you have bacon and eggs, you have got a protein-filled breakfast that is going to stabilize your blood sugar, and you are not going to need as much insulin to bring your blood sugar back down and because of the healthy fats, let us say you have some avocado with that, it is going to allow you to go a longer period of time in between meals. One of the first things that I talk about is understanding the fuel substrate mechanisms that we do want to be able to, our bodies be able to utilize either stored sugar or stored fats, but also understanding that we want to restructure our meals to help stabilize that blood sugar, really focusing in on protein. I would say protein is the most satiating macronutrient, very important for a number of things that go on in the body, not the least of which satiety which is what allows us to go longer. Then helping people understand that in between those meals, you have all this freed-up time, you do not have to worry about food prep, you do not have to worry about grabbing that donut at 10 o’clock, you do not need that sugary Starbucks coffee at 11 AM because you are having a sugar crash. Those are basic first steps when we are talking about metabolic flexibility, but we are also speaking to sleep quality. We know if you are not getting high-quality sleep at night and that is defined as less than six hours a night, we know that you have a 60% risk of developing insulin resistance just from one night of poor sleep, it dysregulates leptin and ghrelin which is your key to appetite and satiety hormones. I always say you are not going to crave chicken and broccoli, you are going to crave junk if you have not slept well. Stress management also feeds into that metabolic flexibility. When you are stressed and you are stressed out and it is chronic your cortisol level goes up initially, your blood sugar goes up correspondingly as what happens, that insulin level goes up and you will remain in this kind of fat storage mode. Then also thinking about the macros as I kind of touched on are very important. 

Lastly, I would say when we are talking about this internal relationship of metabolic flexibility I would be remiss if we did not talk about strength training, understanding that north of 40 we are losing muscle mass, it is called sarcopenia, it is not a question of if, but when. As you lose muscle mass you are losing insulin sensitivity. If you are losing insulin sensitivity those cells are not as receptive to the lock and key mechanism that insulin uses to move blood sugar into a cell to keep it out of the bloodstream. Helping people understand that doing long-haul cardio, for all the cardio buddies out there that they want to pound out ten miles every day and they think that is the way to keep them svelte, I am here to tell you, muscle is this organ of longevity. Dr. Gabrielle Lyon talks a lot about that. But very important to understand that metabolic flexibility is largely tied into how much muscle mass you maintain and you hold on to. 

Muscle is a glucose reservoir. Even taking a walk after dinner or a walk after a meal can help with this glucose disposal, also very important. I always think about metabolic flexibility, it ties into that. You touched on this other piece of metabolic flexibility that plays into the toxins, we are exposed to in our environment, personal care products and food absolutely impacts, our hormone receptors impacts, these endocrine-disrupting chemicals can offset the receptor sites which can lead to your body is trying to protect itself. It is frustrating as it is when you are gaining more adipose tissue and trying to figure out why that is happening can be a direct reflection of these things that we are exposed to. The other piece that I would just tell you and lastly is trauma. We know that individuals that have high A scores or adverse childhood events are more at risk for developing autoimmune conditions and weight loss resistance later in life. Understanding the role of an overactive sympathetic nervous system can drive metabolic health issues. That is something Sinclair, that I in the past year have really kind of leaned into because I think it is such an invaluable connection that many of us, myself included, were not making those connections before but now understand that complex in a relationship with metabolic health.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

I think that is so beautifully said. You just gave such a great overview of the different factors that are really plaguing us today. What I noticed too, as you were talking about this, is I am thinking about the people in this audience and how so many of them have been trained into avoiding major sections of food, they have been gluten-free for a long time, that ship has sailed, but they still have not resolved their issues or they would not be listening. I am thinking about what they need to hear from you today. I would love for you to unpack a little bit more about this given all these factors that have added to their stress that have created these persistent gut issues. Really when you think about it the gut is one of the most resilient systems in the entire body and yet when we see these recurring metabolic issues and we are not moving the needle and we are getting more and more sensitive over time. One of the things I notice is that people throw the concept of macros just out the window. The more reactive you are to certain food groups the less you are really thinking about protein versus carbohydrates and fats. I am wondering if you could help people think about that if they already have a chronic gut condition, how should they be thinking about balancing macros and intermittent fasting for themselves so that they stop unwittingly perpetuating the issue through food? It is like they are poking the bruise they are trying to heal.

Cynthia Thurlow, NP

Yeah. It is such a great question, Sinclaire. I think it is helpful just to give context. In 2019, I was hospitalized for 13 days and was on six weeks of antibiotics and antifungals, and let me tell you, my gut is still not 100%, but the first nine months afterward, the only thing my gut tolerated was meat. I am not suggesting that that is the right answer for everyone but I do think that when you feel like you are reactive to many things, and I have experienced that personally and it is very frustrating, that I went back to basics, it was like, okay, bone broth, meat, I could not even tolerate fish or chicken, it was like really like stewed meat was where I kind of started and it was not a GAPS compliant diet or anything, I did not want it to be that complicated. I think sometimes you have to go back to removing the most inflammatory foods. Kind of a big concept is looking at processed sugar and obviously alcohol, but gluten and grains, I know you have got a very sophisticated audience, but soon as they can be pulling out dairy. 

I find that sometimes dairy is the hardest thing for people to get rid of because they get this case of morphine opiate rush when they consume these foods, they love their ice cream, they want their cheese, do not tell them not to eat it. But I do think when you are in a healing phase or you are trying to heal sometimes you peel, it is like peeling an onion, you are trying to peel back one little layer to get a little bit of traction to move forward. Sometimes you have to trust the process of really saying, I really love X food and I am going to trust the process that if I remove this and I feel better in two weeks or one week or five days then my body is telling me this is the right step forward. Now I think we can get lost in the minutia of details, there are people who are like, I have to be on low histamine, I have to be on no oxalate, I have to be a no saponins and no lectins, that is overwhelming. I just say start big and maybe you just have some protein, we know that is what your body needs. Actually, as we get older, we actually need more protein. Our protein needs increase, just like my teenagers are in this mass of anabolic phase, I am on the other end and I am on this phase where I actually need more protein just as much as the teenagers to maintain. I think on a lot of levels when you understand the inflammatory nature of some of the high-level foods I talked about it is understanding that we do not want to get in a position where we only have three foods. I see a lot of that. People are so afraid to eat, they are afraid to eat outside the house, they are afraid to eat at their loved ones’ houses, they are afraid because they have lost so much control of what is going on with their body that they have got like three things they can eat that do not give them diarrhea, do not give them bloating, do not give them constipation. I think you really have to scale back and understand that maybe a little bit of fasting combined with a very simple diet, very simple, just a little bit of protein, maybe it is a cooked vegetable that you can tolerate. I mean, I started with stewed potatoes, I mean, it was a little bland. 

My life was pretty interesting for the first nine months after I was hospitalized, but helping people understand that you want to give your body nourishment, but it maybe that you are eating things that are a little bland or like salt became my best friend, high-quality salt because I added salt to all of my meals and it went from being kind of bland to delicious with a little bit of salt. But I think that the best advice I can provide, having worked with thousands and thousands of patients over the years, is number one, trust the process, trust your provider, the person you are working with. Number two, we do not want you to get so whittled down that you have three foods you eat and you are terrified to move outside that box you have yourself in. Number three, adding a little bit of salt and doing a little bit of fasting, it could be maybe you fast from six o’clock in the evening till eight AM in the morning, or maybe you have your last meal at seven and you eat at eight o’clock the following day and you are doing just like a 13 hour fast, that is great. There is so many digestive benefits. By eating less often you are going to allow your body to go in and be able to heal and mend a lot of these areas in the gut microbiome that many times they have been ravaged. 

If you have been on antibiotics repeatedly, I know for me I have six weeks of antibiotics, antifungals, and my entire gut microbiome was completely wiped out of beneficial bacteria and the diligence of understanding that. It can take 18 months, 24 months to kind of get things back online. But understanding and trusting the process and as you tolerate things like prebiotic and probiotic-rich foods. I started with little amounts of fermented cabbage. Now, sometimes people say, well, I can not tolerate the cabbage, little bit of cabbage, I would say every day I would have a forkful and then I would just kind of keep moving that needle up. I think from that perspective it is understanding the digestive rest and a little bit of fasting can help heal the gut if you are feeling up to it. We know longer fasts are very beneficial for some degree of stem cell activation and stem cells are very healing and nourishing when they are activated in the body, but also understand that you do need to eat. We do not want you to get to a point where you are cachectic which means when your body is breaking down muscle to fuel your body. That happened to me when I was in the hospital because I could not eat and I walked out 15 lbs lighter which was not a good look for anybody. But the point of why I am sharing this is to give you some sense of these things can happen to all of us and I am on this journey back and I want you to trust in the process and come back on this journey to where you are going to get to a point where you know I can eat certain foods, I feel good when I eat certain foods, I can fast when I feel like I need a little bit more digestive rest, really understanding that interrelationship. Again, that bidirectional communication between your brain and your gut is certainly very helpful. I always say healthy gust make healthy neurotransmitters. Healthy neurotransmitters allow us to see the world from a different more positive lens. I think for a lot of individuals there is so much going on in the gut that it makes it hard for them to see that.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

Yeah, that is such a great point. Thank you for speaking to that piece at the end there because it is so hard to push forward once you have created a situation, but now you are trying to survive through and rebuild from it. It is really hard not to make some deeper meaning out of it that is not positive. It really is a neurotransmitter issue, it is a biochemical bioelectrical issue. Guys, if you are listening I just, of course, you are listening, but if you are resonating with what we are talking about here, Cynthia and I have been through some deep dark moments with our health. We can tell you from experience you will climb out of this with some chopped wood carry water basics. I think in our desperation when the first few things we try to work we go more and more complex. 

I am so thrilled to hear you emphasize the basics here. Because often when we get students and clients coming into our practice they have tried everything and they are down to three foods like you said, but what three foods are those? They are veggie, burger patties, they are black bean and they are just like a lectin bomb, highly processed chemical laden foods, they are gluten-free mills, crackers, again, a bomb, it is gluten-free but it is still full of grains and it is highly, highly processed and then maybe ground beef patties once in a while.

Cynthia Thurlow, NP

Yeah. Well, the thing that is funny about Simple Mills, and I will just use that as an example, full of seed oils. We talk about the net impact of seed oils on cellular health, and mitochondrial health, and when we are trying to heal, how it can downregulate ATP production and so important. The irony is when I was trying to heal my gut, what did I eat? I unknowingly thinking, these Simple Mills, almond flour crackers, and it is an oxalate bomb. When I stopped eating those, I was like, my gosh, I did not realize that almonds were so problematic for me. But I think you bring up such a good point that if those safe foods are three, or two out of three highly processed foods, goodness, it is hard to climb back out of that because you conditioned yourself to believe that that is your safety raft and you do not want to let go of the safety raft. We are here to tell you that we are going to give you the tools to get you off the safety raft to get you to a point where you can actually heal your gut with healthy nourishing food and not hyper-palatable, highly processed food.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

Yeah. Thank you so much for making that distinction about the processed foods and also the seed oils versus healing fats. One of the things that I am not surprised to hear you say, but I am so glad you are saying it, is about the grass-fed, the ruminant proteins, of eating protein forward. Because I think people think, well, proteins are complex, I need to stay away from those when I am not feeling well, it is going to cost your body more energy to digest them. But actually, clinically, what we see and this is really hard, candidly for me to admit, having been an almost lifelong vegetarian and but clinically, it is undeniable that people who are willing to eat animal protein forward, and especially the grass-fed ruminant animals they heal so much faster. It is the vegetarians and especially the vegans that are lagging behind in part because it is the quality of the proteins and also the fats that they are relying on.

Cynthia Thurlow, NP

Yeah, absolutely. I agree with you. It is funny that. I will disclose something to your audience and to you I probably have not talked a lot about. I got a dog in 1994 and I stopped eating mammalian meat, I ate chicken, I eat fish, and I still had a wide variety of animal protein that I eat but I just decided that I was not going to eat mammals, do you know when I was in the hospital? During that 13-day hospitalization, do you know what I dreamt about? Well, number one, getting home to my family, number two, I dreamt about bloody hamburgers and when I got home my husband was so happy that I wanted to eat like cow and bison and lamb, I mean, we have the full, you name what we have got, wild boar, I had everything and I jokingly say that part of healing my gut was getting back to eating these animals. I think it is important to say like, what was my body craving? I craved meat, that was all I crave that and water, it was the craziest thing but I wanted meat. To this day it is like I eat a lot of meat, I rarely eat fish, I rarely eat chicken, I really do appreciate and understand that that was part of my healing journey. 

The irony is my Italian mother, if anyone has an Italian mother they tend to be bossy, and she stayed with me for the first month after I was hospitalized and she cooked for me every day, bone broth and all sorts of healing things, and one night she made me shrimp, and I will never forget this, I think I have been home for three weeks, my body did not want that shrimp, I mean, I was crampy and felt terrible all and I told my mom, I said, “I think the only things I can eat is like stewed meats or like a cooked burger but like a plain burger with salt, that was all I could do,” and I found it so interesting how my body was craving exactly the things that needed to help heal and how other types of proteins were not as readily accepted. Now I am fine with shellfish but at that time it did not work well. But really and truly I think if you are trying to heal your gut and you are vegetarian or vegan, or maybe you are limited, you just eat poultry and fish, being open-minded to the fact the amino acid profile of animal-based proteins is superior to plant-based proteins you are going to get a more varied type of amino acid profile, you have these leucine thresholds that are met. Just be open to the possibility. I mean, I certainly had not eaten red meat that I was aware of for nearly 20 years and my entire family was like celebrating, they were like, finally, she is eating red meat again, but it really did help heal my gut and to this day I preferentially want that over chicken or fish of any kind.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

That is so interesting. I know so many people have arrived at that conclusion usually the hard way. Thank you for sharing that. If you would not mind, I would love for you to unpack for us some outdated aspects of metabolic health. I will just give you a chance to myth us right here since you are such an expert on that and I think you might have a book coming out about that.

Cynthia Thurlow, NP

Yes, I am writing book number two right now. Yes. number one, eat to stoke your metabolism. This is something that I propagated as a new nurse, a new nurse practitioner and now I know better. I like you all to understand why it is so important to eat less frequently, that this keeps your blood sugar stable, and that it allows your body to go and use stored fats for energy. We really do want our bodies to be depending on how physically active we are and what we are eating. We want our bodies to be able to go back and forth between using stored fat or stored sugar as a fuel source. The eat to stoke your metabolism is complete garbage. Number two, I would say that eat those heart-healthy grains. Now I am here to remind you all, we were kind of starting with kind of these high-level concepts about the need for protein. Protein is the most satiating macronutrient. We also need those amino acids. We need those amino acids for repair, for helping to heal the gut microbiome, and to heal from autoimmune conditions. Understanding that we want to stack our meals as such, you want at a minimum of 30 grams of protein in each meal. I know for some people they are going to say, what do you mean? You can weigh and measure it. I kind of push up towards 50, 60 grams but I have been doing this for a while. You want to do that for a couple of reasons, you want to stimulate muscle protein synthesis. 

Remember, we talked earlier about how important it is to make sure you maintain and build muscle, especially north of 40 because we have this accelerated loss of muscle mass. Muscle is the organ of longevity, a lot helps with insulin sensitivity. Understanding we want to have a minimum of 30 to 40 grams of highly accessible animal-based protein is going to be your best option. But if you are choosing to do a plant-based option please pick like a whole plant-based option whether it is legumes, or beans, or hemp seeds, as opposed to processed soy which I am not really a fan of. Then you are adding into your meal if it is not any part of the meat, if you are having a ribeye you have already got your healthy fats, if you are having a fillet, maybe you add some avocado on top of the salad. Then depending on how metabolically healthy you are, the carbohydrate piece. I think most carbohydrates should really come from non-starchy vegetables, low-glycemic berries, tart apple, that is where you want your carbohydrates to come from. If you are more physically active and more insulin-sensitive, root vegetables and sweet potato are going to be nice options. 

But the concept of heart-healthy grains is wrong for two reasons. Number one, because most of us are not metabolically healthy, and eating more processed type carbohydrates is not a good idea. But we also know that the grains and the gluten oftentimes are sprayed with an herbicide pesticide called Roundup by Monsanto. This glyphosate actually damages and puts holes in the small intestinal lining, this is what leads to small intestinal hyperpermeability or leaky gut. We want to limit those kinds of foods and be very conscientious. That is a byproduct of our modern-day lifestyles. I could go off on a tangent talking about dwarf wheat and how that has really impacted our gut health. I would say number three is that sleep does not matter and I think we have all been conditioned that you can sleep when you are dead. I know that my faculty used to tell us that many of us told ourselves that, you work in health care, you work overnight, you work terribly long hours, and you just think sleep is the last thing I need to worry about. 

Sleep is critically important, if not foundational, not just to metabolic health but healing in the body. We know that deep and REM sleep are critically important. If any of you have an Oura Ring, a whoop band, and Apple Watch and you track those metrics I think this can be very helpful. You definitely want to be making sure you are getting 90 minutes of deep and 90 minutes of RAM, I would argue you need more but at a bare minimum. Those sleep metrics start to falter, deep sleep becomes increasingly more challenging as we get older but again, that does not have to be your destiny. But I would say those are probably three things about metabolic health that are fallacies and then kind of providing like the other side like sleep is not important, macros are not important, breakfast is the most important meal of the day or eat to stoke your metabolism, I think clearing those things up is important from a foundational perspective in terms of understanding why these three things are so important to help stabilize blood sugar, become more metabolically flexible, and set yourself up that you can optimize healing and metabolic flexibility.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

Wow, that is a fabulous overview of what is still lingering that is making people sick right now. Thank you so much. What would you like to end with today? Any last thoughts for our folks just getting started or our gluten-free yogis who know everything can still go well.

Cynthia Thurlow, NP

Here is the thing. There is a continuum of people that are participating on this summit. For some of you, this may be repeating information, for others, you might be the first time you are hearing it, for those of you that are very well versed in this terminology and some of the things that I have talked about, Sinclair has talked about, be open to learning something new. Even I would say every day I intend to endeavor to learn something new, be open-minded to learning something new, try something new, being open to the possibility that there is something that you need to be doing that you are not yet aware of. For those that are new, it is very easy to get overwhelmed, there is a lot that we talked about, but I would encourage you to do one simple thing, one simple thing, I want you to walk after a meal. We know that walking after a meal can improve blood sugar regulation. We know that your muscles are actually actively taking up that glucose to use it as fuel as you are walking. It is one of the easiest ways to mitigate a blood sugar response. If you go out and you celebrate with your friends or your loved ones and you have a bit of cake at the end of the night and you are like, my blood sugar is probably not where it should be. I definitely encourage people to buy glucometers or have continuous glucose monitors, I think they are invaluable resources, go take a walk. That is something that I always kind of fit into my day if I feel like, I am like, maybe today I have not been as physically active or maybe I a little bit with carbohydrate, I am not as busy, that is the time that walk can really set up your sleep to get your blood sugar down so you get into sleep, have better quality sleep, wake up with healthy blood sugar, I think that is probably the first step that I think for the newbies.  For those that are more seasoned, be open to the possibility that there might be some nugget of gold in this presentation and other presentations that you can take to improve what you are doing already. I think for so many of, we probably have a shared avatar in some respects. I have women that are very smart, they are very educated, they are very knowledgeable, they listen to the podcast, they do all the work and I would say there is always some new nugget whether it is the trauma piece that we talked about today, the inner relationship with metabolic health whether it is talking about changing up your macros. I would imagine most women are not eating enough protein, maybe the guys are, but I find most women undereat protein, eat the wrong adulterated fats and eat too many carbs, and just by changing that up can be life-changing.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

That is so beautifully said. Thank you so much for speaking to the range of folks listening in today. It is so important that we remember that we are not alone, that there is plenty of hope, there is so many great tools, just keep walking this path you will figure it out, it is all available just needs to be right thing right time, and make sure that it is in the right order.

Cynthia Thurlow, NP

Absolutely.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

Thanks for sharing your wisdom with us today. I hope that everybody goes out. If you have not already, pick up this book, it is phenomenal, “Intermittent Fasting Transformation”.

Cynthia Thurlow, NP

Thank you.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

Definitely keep an eye out for the metabolic one which I am sure will be out next year.

Cynthia Thurlow, NP

Yeah.