Ep. 490 You're Not Eating Enough! – The Shocking Truth About Hormones, Fatigue & Strength Training with Dr. Tyna Moore

Today, I am delighted to reconnect with Dr. Tyna Moore. She is a naturopathic physician and chiropractor, in addition to being the host of the wildly popular Dr. Tyna podcast, a bestselling author, and an international speaker offering a unique perspective for those seeking a stronger foundation for their health and well-being. 

In our discussion today, we dive into the importance of strength training, exploring concerns about under-fueling our bodies, and the damaging messages women currently receive about food, body size, and exercise, particularly from the health and wellness community. Dr. Tyna discusses the signs she often sees in women who underfuel their bodies, explaining how underfueling affects key hormones, including cortisol, thyroid, progesterone, estrogen, and testosterone, and the value of strength training. We also explore medications that impact bone health, including SSRIs, hormones, peptides, exosomes, and stem cells. 

You will not want to miss this delightfully engaging and enlightening conversation with Dr. Tyna Moore.

IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN:

• Why building muscle mass is essential for avoiding frailty in later life.

• The cardinal signs of health and vitality for women, as we age

• Why disordered eating and fear of strength training are common issues among women

• Dr. Tyna shares her concerns about using GLP-1s for rapid weight loss.

• The importance of eating enough food to fuel the muscles you are trying to build

• Why a healthy body fat percentage, strength, mobility, good sleep, and reduced pain are far more important than appearance-based goals

• How not eating enough can worsen hormonal dysregulation, and how long-term use of SSRIs can significantly increase the risk of osteoporosis.

• Ways to regulate your hunger and prevent overeating at night

• The value of doing strength training a few times a week to optimize your central nervous system

• How peptides, exosomes, and stem cells can be beneficial- but only once you have optimized your lifestyle and foundational health

Bio:

Dr. Tyna Moore, ND, DC, is a leading expert in holistic regenerative medicine and metabolic resilience, with nearly three decades of experience in the regenerative medicine space. Traditionally and alternatively trained in both science and medicine, she brings a metabolic-first perspective to optimizing health from the ground up.

Dr. Moore is the host of The Dr. Tyna Show podcast and an international speaker known for her direct, no-nonsense approach to strength, hormones, and longevity. With a combined following of over half a million across platforms, she has been featured on dozens of top health podcasts and stages worldwide. Through her online education programs and social media presence, Dr. Moore helps the general public and practitioners get the basics right – because without a strong metabolic foundation, no therapy, treatment, or supplement will ever deliver lasting results.

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“Frailty is the kiss of death.”

– Dr. Tyna Moore

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Transcript:

Cynthia Thurlow: [00:00:02] Welcome to Everyday Wellness Podcast. I'm your host, Nurse Practitioner Cynthia Thurlow. This podcast is designed to educate, empower and inspire you to achieve your health and wellness goals. My goal and intent is to provide you with the best content and conversations from leaders in the health and wellness industry each week and impact over a million lives.

[00:00:29] Today, I had the honor of reconnecting with friend and colleague Dr. Tyna Moore. As you may recall, she's a naturopathic physician and chiropractor, host of the wildly popular Dr. Tyna podcast, a best-selling author and an international speaker who offers a unique perspective for those seeking a stronger foundation to their health and well-being.

[00:00:49] Today, we spoke about the importance of strength training and concerns around under fueling our bodies. Some of the current damaging messages that women receive about food, body size and exercise, especially in the health and wellness community, the impact of body fat on strength training, common signs that she sees in women who are under fueling their bodies, how under fueling our bodies impacts key hormones like cortisol, thyroid, progesterone, estrogen, and testosterone, the value of strength training for bone health, sentinel events, medications that impact bone health including SSRIs, hormones, peptides, exosomes, stem cells and more. This is a really fun, enlightening conversation with Dr. Tyna, one I'm sure you will listen to more than once. 

[00:01:39] I thought today we could really talk about strength training, under fueling the bodies because this is such a huge issue. 

Dr. Tyna Moore: [00:01:45] Yeah. 

Cynthia Thurlow: [00:01:47] And you've been a true vocal advocate for strength training and fueling appropriately, especially for women. So as a clinician, as an expert in this space, what inspired you to speak about this so proactively? Because I feel like women are conditioned to believe we should be as small as possible, we should be as thin as possible. The scale is something that we should perseverate over and fixate over. And yet I feel like maybe the pendulum is swinging back where there's more acceptance of the fact that women need to be strong throughout our lifetime. We need to be able to maintain our muscle mass and not lead to frailty, which you and I both know. We know what that leads to. It leads to a lack of or ability to take care of yourself, falls, hip fractures and other such things. 

Dr. Tyna Moore: [00:02:34] Frailty is the kiss of death. Okay, so it's actually a convoluted story, but I'll make it short. I was really a skinny little thing my whole life and severely anorexic and bulimic throughout my teenage and college years, like severely, pathologically so. And I could not get a handle on it. And it was consuming me. 

[00:02:58] I have ADHD, I have later figured out, and I think it was just a control mechanism more than anything, but once that train leaves the station, you end up putting yourself into such malnourishment with zinc deficiency and others that you end up in this loop you can't get out of. And so, there was that piece. 

[00:03:15] And then compounded with the fact that it was the 1990s, late 1980s, early 1990s, and heroin chic was the look and so we were all trying to be as skinny as possible. And then I met my mentor, who was just my hero, absolute hero. He passed away from cancer in 2013. But man was just the most beautiful, fit, smart, talented physician. He was such a Jedi. And he taught me in the 1990s, he was like, “Give up on the cardio and start strength training,” and I laughed at him because I was like, “What?” He's like, “Get off the elliptical. Let's get in the gym.” And that's back when we had like weight rooms with little pink dumbbells, just special for the girls, I think you have-- [crosstalk]

Cynthia Thurlow: [00:03:53] The women's gym. 

Dr. Tyna Moore: [00:03:55] [Laughs] Yeah. And so, he was trying to convince me. And then I watched my mother go through a horrific menopause, and she went from being a true size four, like a 1980 size four, like, this big around, to gaining a significant amount of weight and ending up in metabolic dysfunction and metabolic syndrome. At the time, they called it syndrome X. 

Cynthia Thurlow: [00:04:12] Yep. 

Dr. Tyna Moore: [00:04:14] And he diagnosed her-- My mentor diagnosed her with syndrome X. And he said the solution is to strength train. And this is like 2002 at this point. Fast forward, he ends up getting cancer, and I'm in clinical practice, and he's dying. And I took over his practice, and I am-- My go to is to waste. Like, when I am stressed out of my mind, I stop eating and I waste away and that's just it. Every single time people have seen me at my thinnest, they're like, “Are you okay?” Because that's my go to. For a minute, I look really great, and then all of a sudden, I start wasting away. And I knew he was going to die. And so, I started training for it as crazy as that sounds. I started literally training for the fact that I knew I was going to lose him. 

[00:04:56] And so I went to the gym, and I was skin and bones because it had been two years of watching him waste away. And I went to the gym and I hired a coach and I said, “Don't run any body composition on me. I just want to put an ass on. I need glutes. [Cynthia laughs] and I need legs.” And I was in my early 30s and I was at the point where I was so thin that I was like a total Pilates princess at that point. And I was doing Pilates like five days a week. This is way back like before it was pretty popular. And I said, “I want to learn how to deadlift and squat and put some muscle on,” because I knew that the drivers of metabolic health-- Even way back then, I knew the drivers of metabolic health were in the big muscles and he was a big proponent. He's who taught me about metabolic health, my mentor. And so, I was like, “I got to get this under control.” 

[00:05:46] And I felt like I was going to shatter. I felt like if I were to fall over, I'm in my early 30s or I guess my mid-30s at that point, I felt like if I were to fall over, I was literally just going to fall to pieces and shatter, like, emotionally, physically, I was broken and I was so stressed out. And so, I just started training and then I became obsessed with it and I felt so good and it obliterated my eating disorder. Like I just-- For the first time in decades, I no longer was self-starving, I was not self-limiting my food intake. And so, I started researching it because I'm a nerd. And that's how I soothe my soul is through research. And so, everyone who's like, “Oh, you're such a great researcher.” I'm like, “No, I'm just actually neurotic.” [Laughs] And research is the one thing that calms me down in the middle of the night when I can't sleep. And it's like the one thing I know well. 

[00:06:31] And I realized there was not very much research out there, but what we did have definitely aligned with what I was experiencing. And so, at this point, I think I went online, it was 2016, and I was telling people, like, “Eat steak, deadlift. Eat steak, deadlift.” It was not very popular. And I'm just beating the same old drum almost 10 years later. And I'm so glad it's become popularized and I'm so glad so many people are talking about it, but I've just been like-- I'm just kind of a secret gym rat. [Laughs] And I just lift to feel good. You know, I'm not here to-- I've had the great body composition, I've done that whole thing. I've trained myself into joint injuries. I've trained myself into six pack abs. I've done all of that and I just found it-- I'm 51 years old and I feel good, I sleep well, I have a great libido, I have good function of my vagina, which I think that's always a cardinal sign of health and vitality as we age is like, “Are you lubricating? Do you want to use it? How's your tissue structure down there? Integrity.” And so, I'm not [unintelligible 00:07:30], but like strength training helps me keep all of those things that are important to me. Good heft in my breast tissue, good heft in the rest of my tissues. I do musculoskeletal medicine and so like I can tell when I touch somebody if they train or not, just by the way their tissues feel. And so just having good integrity and like not feeling like I'm going to fall apart if I trip off the curb and go down. 

Cynthia Thurlow: [00:07:54] It's so interesting because I think your story is so inspiring and then also validating because we grew up at the same time. And I just recall even being in college, being in a big sorority, there was a lot of emphasis on the physicality. But you're also young, you're 18, 19, 20, 21-years-old. And then you get older and you start to realize that there's a missing link. 

[00:08:16] In many instances, I didn't start getting serious about weight training until I was 30 and I was incentivized because I was getting married. And I was like, “Okay, I want to change my body composition. I actually want to add some muscle.” And it was the first time in my adult life that I was like, “Wow, if I'm lifting weights, I can pretty much eat--" When I say, not whatever I want, but I can actually eat real meals. I don't feel like I have to restrict my food. I can actually enjoy sitting down and having a steak and vegetables and a glass of wine back when I actually drank alcohol and I can do all those things. And I actually feel like-- “I feel like I have so much more energy as opposed to--” You know you and I grew up in the age of fat phobia. We were conditioned to believe that fat is bad. So, what did we eat? A lot of carbohydrates. And I think that was really at the basis for where we are in terms of metabolic health now. So, you were certainly like way ahead of the curve. 

[00:09:09] When you're on social media, you're talking to women, are you sometimes surprised about this kind of chronic under fueling situation? We talk about women, especially athletes that are not fueling their bodies, maybe unknowingly doing that, but I think there's just as many, you call them Pilates princesses. I love Pilates, but I understand because I had women in classes that would go twice a day, every day, five or six days a week. I think there's a lot of women that are still not properly fueling their bodies. And I wonder if that's a lack of awareness or a lack of professionals that are working with their patients and not saying like, “How much protein are you actually eating? How much carbohydrate are you actually consuming?” 

Dr. Tyna Moore: [00:09:52] I think you're so right. I finally was able to eat carbs when I started strength training and you were 10 years ahead of me on that. I mean, I was really late to the game. Even though I had great people around me telling me to do it. I just couldn't seem to wrap my head around it. I was scared of the gym, and I think a lot of women are scared of the gym. I think a lot of women are scared of food. I think they're scared to eat. I personally had spent my whole life self-starving. 

[00:10:16] And so, when I met my husband, gosh, in 2020-- We met in 2019, right before the pandemic started. We ended up quarantined together and have been together ever since. And I remember telling him, “I only recently figured out how much I'm supposed to eat.” [Laughs] I had no idea. I had no idea how much food it took to fuel my body and sometimes I overdo it. I still am not very good at it because I didn't spend my life-- I had been self-starving since I was, gosh, in sixth grade or seventh grade. 

Cynthia Thurlow: [00:10:40] Wow. 

Dr. Tyna Moore: [00:10:41] So, yeah, I mean, it's really interesting to me. I think the biggest concept is the messages I get from women when they say, “Dr. Tyna, you changed my life. I've been following you since whenever. I'm doing all the things.” And now with this GLP-1 piece that I've been talking about, they-- A lot of people have erroneously misinterpreted microdosing GLP-1 as a weight loss strategy, and they end up going to doctors who say they're microdosing and they're not, they're just standard dosing. And so, these women are like, “I lost 40 pounds on microdosing GLP-1s,” which I know is not truly a microdose when they tell me that, because that's not important possible. And then they follow it up with this line, which makes me so heartbroken. They say, “Now I'm going to start strength training.” And I'm like, “What? You lost 40 pounds and now you're going to start strength training?” And so, there's just this weird thing where it's like less calories and I'm going to lift more and it's all going to work out. 

[00:11:34] And what I really try to drive home is we have to think more like bodybuilders. There is a bulk phase and a cut phase and not literally like bulk up and gain 40 pounds and then try to cut it off. But there's this concept of you must fuel the muscle you're trying to build. And I actually think that's far more important than the fat you're trying to get off. The fat will come off secondarily to you having muscle. But more importantly, I don't think we can do both at the same time. And so, if you want to grow a donka donk and you're trying to put some glutes on your body, you have to eat and you're probably going to get a belly at the same time. This pattern that you see in the 25-year-olds on Instagram where they have huge glutes and flat abs, that's very difficult to attain. 

[00:12:18] And so for the most of us, for us to get a nice juicy booty, which I really think is a sign of vitality and health and we have good data now to support that. I used to just hypothesize it, but we now have data like having some glutes on you is a good defender of your metabolic health overall. You're probably going to have a little belly on you at the same time. And I would much rather have that than flat abs and a flat ass for metabolic and longevity reasons. So, I want to encourage women that we can do both, but I don't think we can do both at the same time always. It's not eat less, move more at the same time. It's eat more, lift heavier, build, build, build, try to do so in a responsible way so we don't want to go overboard and gain a bunch of weight. But then if we're in a weight loss phase, we're probably going to lose some muscle with that weight loss, especially if you're utilizing GLP-1s at standard doses. And so, we want to make sure that we're having a plan as we approach this and not just haphazardly like let's self-starve and strength train at the same time, it'll be great. That's not going to work out.

Cynthia Thurlow: [00:13:20] No. And one thing that I want to differentiate, you're absolutely correct. If you're trying to build muscle and if you get some subcutaneous fat around your abdomen that is different than visceral fat. Dr. Tyna is not talking about the visceral fat, which is the dangerous fat. She's just simply saying that having the goal of achieving muscle means you have to eat enough food to be able to fuel the muscles that you are trying to build. 

[00:13:42] I very transparently shared last year that my functional med doc was like, “Listen, I want you to gain seven pounds of muscle--" I think it was “Gain five pounds of muscle and lose seven pounds of body fat.” And so, we laughed about it. He said, “I don't want you to focus on the fat loss, I want you to focus on the muscle gain.” And so, I put on three pounds of muscle, which took nine months, which means I was diligently making an effort. But it was amazing to me when I started really tracking my macros, especially as someone that was intermittent fasting for years and years and years, last summer I was like, “Guess what? I can't be intermittent fasting. I can go 12 or 13 hours of digestive rest, but if I am fasting all the time, guess what? I am not going to have enough opportunities to eat enough food to be able to build muscle.” And so, I share that for transparency as I have over the past year. But I think it's really important because I suspect most women are just chronically under fueling their body so they can't build enough muscle, they can't actually stimulate enough muscle protein synthesis to actually grow muscles. 

[00:14:41] And then we have the added challenge of we're in perimenopause, menopause, and our sex hormones are petering out. And even with HRT, it becomes-- We have to work a bit harder. It's not as easy as it was at 25 or 30. And so I think that's an important just aspect to say-- When women say to me like, “I just can't seem to build muscle,” the first thing I think about is “Are you lifting intensely enough not to hurt yourself, but intensely enough? Number two, are you eating enough protein? And then number three, the other lifestyle-mediated things before we even get to HRT,” and yes, that is helpful and important. 

Dr. Tyna Moore: [00:15:20] Yeah. 

Cynthia Thurlow: [00:15:21] But I think it's helpful for women to understand like we have been conditioned to believe whether it's the toxic diet culture or just damaging messages that women receive across social media and in movies and print ads, if anyone even reads magazines anymore, I don't, about like fueling our bodies body size and just acceptance of our bodies in general. I think it's-- I don't have girls, but I am very, very sensitive to the images that young women must be seeing across social media platforms every day because a lot of its-- Frankly it's not real. And then the other piece of it is a lot of it's not like sustainable. 

[00:16:00] There was a show I watched on gosh, maybe Amazon prime that had Jessica Biel in it and Jessica Biel has an amazing super fit body and she kept saying in every interview people interviewed her about this, there's like a white dress in this show and she looked phenomenal. She said “That isn't sustainable. That was like one day at one hour of one day that I look like that and that is not sustainable.” So, helping women understand a lot of what we see is not real and/or it's not sustainable. 

Dr. Tyna Moore: [00:16:28] Right. And it's not the goal. There're so many things I want to add here. Number one is, I'm sorry, I vehemently do not believe that six pack abs are healthy in a menopausal woman- 

Cynthia Thurlow: [00:16:39] Mm-hmm. No. 

Dr. Tyna Moore: [00:16:40] -I just don't, like that is not the body fat percentage that a menopausal woman ideally should be running around at. If they are, they're taking a buttload of hormones to offset the fact that they're not making any at all because we make our estrone in our fat. Now that said, estrone is the pro-inflammatory estrogen and I don't want a bunch of it. So, I don't want a bunch. There's a sweet spot. We all have a sweet spot. My sweet spot, I have a little bit of belly fat. It's subcutaneous. My body wants to make visceral fat. That's just how I'm built. I'm built like a little apple with stick legs [laughs] and so I have to fight that. But my-- If there's anything that women take from this conversation is you having you know, a 22%, 23%, 24% like that's not the worst thing in the world to have for body fat. 

Cynthia Thurlow: [00:17:29] Absolutely. 

Dr. Tyna Moore: [00:17:30] And if you're very skinny mini, that's cool too. Just if you're not-- I'm not built that way and me trying to attain that is so challenging and so stressful and so cortisol raising which is just driving the mess further into the hole, so, I want to add that. Men too, men too. And women and men prefer across cultures. They've done studies. Women prefer men with more of a taper so they do like a broader shoulder to weight. That doesn't mean you have to have six pack abs and they've even looked at attractiveness in studies. 

[00:18:03] Now they're coming out with all kinds of attractiveness studies, which is very interesting, but women like men with a little something on them. It's a signal of strength. Men with a little bit of fat on them is a signal of strength and that's ideally what we want. 

[00:18:16] Women, it's a ratio, hip to waist ratio of about 70%, 75%, anywhere between 75% to 80% very healthy. And that you could also be of larger size and have more body fat on you and still have a nice hourglass shape. And so that's what I want to drive home. I think the other thing too is that we're comparing ourselves to 25-year-old, Fitsbo girls on Instagram who are using AI to digitally alter their photos, right?

Cynthia Thurlow: [00:18:43] Yeah. 

Dr. Tyna Moore: [00:18:44] And I just want to look nice in a dress really at this point, I kid you not, I just want to good sleep that's [laughs] uninterrupted. I want to feel sane and strong and competent during the day. I want to offset brain fog. I want to have a healthy sex life with my hot husband because that's really important to us especially as we age. And then because that's the first thing to go for so many women is their sleep and their libido.

[00:19:09] And then lastly, I live with chronic pain. I have a phenomenal amount of pain that I live with every day. And it's comes and goes, but movement, especially strength in that musculature offsets fatty infiltrate which is basically the marbling of muscle which drives so much pain for people. And this is my wheelhouse that I did clinically for so long. So just keeping strength and integrity in the soft tissues, the muscles, the ligaments and the tendons is so, so, so critical and mobility. And so, at the end of the day, those are way, way higher on my list of priorities than how do I look in a bikini? It used to be the opposite, but I really just want to not have chronic pain all the time and I really want to sleep well and I really want to feel interested and attracted to my husband and attractive to him and I want to be able to--

[00:19:59] We went to an event the other day that was on 62 acres of uneven ground and I was so sore when I got home. There were all these little old ladies out there, old men and women that were obviously farmers walking around on this uneven ground. And I was like, you know what? That's the goal, like to be able to walk around this. It was called the Great Steam Up. I guess it's like a world class event and they have all these engines and it was like old tractor, like vintage, like super old tractors and engines and all kinds of stuff. And there's all these little old people, no walkers or canes, hobbling around on super uneven farmland. And I was like, “That's actually the long-term goal [laughs] is to be able to do that and not be in so much pain the next day or fall down.” So different agendas. And I think we have to eat to fuel that. It's just stupid to think that you would spend time and money in the gym and then not fuel it appropriately, so that's as simple as I try to make it for people. 

Cynthia Thurlow: [00:20:49] Yeah, I think it's so important. And if you look at the longevity research, you actually fare better if you have a little bit of additional body fat on. And I'm not talking excessively, but whether you get hospitalized and you lose body fat and muscle mass, we know that you are going to fare better than if you're really really thin and really really frail and have no muscle mass on your body. And I know that maybe it was this birthday, I just turned 54 last week. And for me it just brought all of this home, like what do I want the next 20, 30 years to look like? And it just reaffirmed why we cannot take our foot off the accelerator. We have to continue to strength train and we have to eat enough protein. And those are two guiding principles that allow us to show up in our lives and be able to do activities independently. 

[00:21:34] There was nothing more sad for me when I was seeing patients in the hospital and it was someone that was maybe a couple years older than me and couldn't get off a bedside toilet. 

Dr. Tyna Moore: [00:21:42] Yes.

Cynthia Thurlow: [00:21:43] That is a real problem that people have just lost so much muscle mass that they can't get off the floor. Like you see all those influencers on social media that will encourage people like go from standing up to crisscross, applesauce, and then get back up again without putting your hands down- 

Dr. Tyna Moore: [00:21:58] Yeah. 

Cynthia Thurlow: [00:21:59] -and there are a lot of people that can't even do that. So, I think that functionality piece is really what you're stressing and certainly one that I encourage people like don't be so fixated on the influencers or having six pack abs which I have never had my entire life and I have been very lean at some points. It's more about like how is my sleep? How is my stress management? What is my relationship like with my spouse? Am I able to do the things that bring me joy in my life? And then not get fixated on stuff that is superficial or materialistic because it's so easy. Like as human beings we have a tendency to compare ourselves and maybe that's the blessing being middle aged, I care a lot less what other people are doing. I'm like, “You do you and I'll do me and that's what works.” And I think for a lot of people it's just reemphasizing this need for properly fueling our bodies. 

Dr. Tyna Moore: [00:22:50] Yes. Well, think of it this way. Think gym first, think strength training first. Because if you do that then everything else falls into line. So, this is what I tell my patients “If you prioritize--” And I highly encourage people to hire a coach, I highly, highly- 

Cynthia Thurlow: [00:23:03] I have one.

Dr. Tyna Moore: [00:23:05] -especially as we get older. This is a skill set and there's a lot of room for error and injury. And if you get injured then you're set back and you can't do anything and that sucks. So, we want you to have success in this, hire a coach or get into a small coaching program where maybe you and a couple girlfriends are splitting the cost, whatever it may be. Go to the Silver Sneakers group every morning at the gym, whatever, who cares? Just get yourself strength training two to three times a week, then everything else will fall in line. Because if you're not sleeping and you're not trying to--

[00:23:33] I understand that we have hormonal disruption. If your hormones are all over the map and your sleep's crazy, get your fricking hormones fixed. Just spend the money and get your hormones fixed because there's no fixing that otherwise. You need estrogen and progesterone if you want to sleep well. And you need to sleep well if you want to have good metabolic health and you want to be sane. And then the big piece is put your ass to bed like a grown up like [Cynthia laughs] go to bed like an adult, which I'm telling myself that because I have vampire syndrome and so my husband will be like, “Are you coming to bed?” and I'm like, “Yeah, five more minutes.” Five more minutes of what? Nothing good happens after 10 o'clock. Go to bed. 

[00:24:09] So put your ass to bed like a grown up, get up with the sun and then hydrate, hydrate, hydrate because you're going to want to, because you're building all this beautiful muscle. The muscle's the goal. The big beautiful booty is the goal. And you need to feed it, you need to hydrate it and you need to sleep it in order for it to grow appropriately. And so, if people could just sort of get in that mindset, it all gets much easier. Instead of worrying--

[00:24:29] Don't worry so much about the macros or protein. Honestly, some of us are big protein eaters. I am not a big protein eater. The spark, the signal and the data is really clear. The strength training is far more important than your protein macros. So yes, the strength training is going to spark the window of opportunity for you to go into muscle protein synthesis. And you ideally should hit a certain amount of grams, roughly 30 to 40 g per meal. And you want to have enough leucine in that protein to spark muscle protein synthesis, which would be about 2.5 g to 3 g of leucine, but that gets so complicated. 

[00:25:04] And I've taught group after group of women how to do this and they just get lost in it. So really easy, three times a day, try to eat a piece of protein, animal preferred, that is the size of your palm, your hand, with your fingers. I'd be like a chicken breast or a burger, try to do that three times a day. If you can't use a scoop of whey protein powder. But the really more important thing than fixating on the protein is getting your ass in the gym, going into the frigging gym.

[laughter]

[00:25:35] So many problems would be answer to so many of your problems is in the gym. And whenever I coach clients or I work with, I consult or work with patients, it's like pulling teeth to get people to do that part. They'll buy all the expensive peptides, they'll eat all the protein, they'll do all the things and they're all excited and I'm like, “But you're not going to the gym.”[Laughs] 

Cynthia Thurlow: [00:25:59] Yeah. 

Dr. Tyna Moore: [00:25:60] That's the spark to get the engine going. Everything will work better if you're going to the gym and if you're not going to the gym, none of it's going to work. That's the part no one talks about. Your peptides aren't going to work, your GLP-1s aren't going to work, your hormones are not going to work for very long. You'll have about a 90-day window and then you will bonk. And I know this because I have treated thousands of patients with HRT. I never stopped prescribing when the Women's Health Initiative told us to stop. I just kept going. Carrie Jones and I were trained by the same people. 

Cynthia Thurlow: [00:26:28] Yeah. 

Dr. Tyna Moore: [00:26:30] You have no business taking a GLP-1 for any reason if you're not going to the gym concurrently. So just know that, know that these are very expensive therapies at the end of the day and it's such an abysmal waste if you're not actually strength training concurrently. And I will die on that hill. And I know people say, “Oh, your fear mongering and you're too intense.” I'm like, “No. Literally, this is physiology 101. [laughs] There's no getting around this part.” So hopefully that's heard and understood because I would tell people constantly, “Do not buy anything from me. Do not buy services from me. Do not pay to come back here. Do not buy any peptides or any supplements. Go hire a coach. Go spend that money on a coach. It is money much better spent than anything I could supply you, I promise you.” 

Cynthia Thurlow: [00:27:15] Yeah, and I think listeners now understand why I wanted Tyna to come back and like have this conversation because I think sometimes-- Well, allopathic medicine has done this. I was part of that for many years. But we get very focused on a supplement, medication, injectable, etc., is going to fix all the other problems and really it comes down to lifestyle basics. And you beautifully and eloquently identified everyone needs to be strength trained. I hired a coach last year because I was like, “I need to get more serious about this.” One of the things that contributed to my father's death was sarcopenia and frailty and falls. And I was like-- I look like my father's side of the family. They're kind of short and they're pretty lean. And I'm like, “I will be that person. I will be just like my dad. And I don't want to be that person.” 

[00:28:02] And so, for me, I got really serious about strength training. And my trainer, I meet with her twice a week and then she gives me something to do independently another day of the week. And that has worked out really well. I do this in lieu of other things that to me is an investment in myself. And so, I think for anyone listening, it doesn't have to be that you have your own solo trainer. It could be that you're in a very small class or you and your girlfriends, as you said, do it together and so it makes it a little bit more cost effective. That is so important. Do that before you get fixated on the latest and greatest technology. I love my Oura Ring, but I would do this way before I would make that investment way before I would think about adding a piece of tech. 

[00:28:36] And certainly for those of us that are in menopause, the most important thing that you can be really focused on right now is get your sleep dialed in and then start lifting. And so, thank you for that. I think it's really important. 

[00:28:48] Now, when you're thinking about the role of cortisol and thyroid hormones and or sex hormones, how does not eating enough food exacerbate some of these hormonal changes? Because I think this is another piece of this like layering in. I think a lot of people don't understand that when you're not fueling your body properly, you are stressing your body, and we become less stress resilient at this stage of life. How does that worsen hormonal dysregulation? 

Dr. Tyna Moore: [00:29:13] Well, it's such a vicious chicken and egg. Like if your cortisol's in the toilet, you're not going to have any mojo to get up and go to the gym. And if it's through the roof, you're going to be freaking out and feeling awful. And if your [crosstalk] in the toilet, you're not going to do very well in the gym. And if your estrogen is in the toilet, you're going to tear your tissues. And if your testosterone is in the toilet, you're not going to get any gains and on and on and on. 

[00:29:39] And if you're not on hormones and your sleep's a mess, your sleep's never going to improve, although exercise will improve your sleep. So, it's like this kind of vicious mob of things that it's like a spider web we got to pull apart. 

[00:29:50] And food is so critical in there too, because if you're-- Like, you were saying intermittent fasting. If you go too long with that, you're going to crank your cortisol up. Cortisol's, it's so catabolic to your tissues, it literally melts your tissues down. And I say this as an expert like that's what I did for decades was musculoskeletal medicine and put people's joints back together with regenerative injection therapies and my hands. So, if you are chronically in this catabolic, stressed-out state and you're pumping cortisol high, you are going to have mushy tissue is the best way to put it--

Cynthia Thurlow: [00:30:25] Yeah. [crosstalk] break down your muscle, yep. 

Dr. Tyna Moore: [00:30:27] And you break down your ligaments, you're more prone to injury, you're not going to heal well, it's a mess. Again, if your testosterone is low, you don't have any anabolic. And thyroid, I would almost consider anabolic. It's not truly anabolic, but it's really there to keep the metabolic engine revving and humming. And so, you need that to have cellular turnover and tissue regeneration. 

[00:30:44] So anyway, all of that to say if you're starving out the whole system, it's just going to crash and burn. And so, if you start strength training though, and you do so regularly, your appetite will increase. And I want to really share this warning because I think this is the part where women jump ship. In the first 90 days, you will gain weight and your scale will go up for various reasons. One is you're putting on more muscle. The second one is some of us genetically have a propensity to swell when we exercise. And so, I'm always heavier the day after I lift by like two or three pounds. And so especially if I went heavy that day. So, you will get bigger before you get smaller. Your clothes will get tighter and your scale will go up and that throws a lot of people off, especially women and they're like-- I hear it all the time in my DMs and I've seen it with countless patients, like, “What is happening?” You got to trust the process. 

[00:31:39] If you carve out like a crazy person and you piggy out on carbs, you will get thicker. And so, this is where the protein that you keep talking about is so important because you do have to be somewhat strategic with how you're eating. But please do not limit yourself on eating the carbs, period. Like give yourself some carbohydrate. I really do believe-- Well, a study just came out last week, I was looking at that. Those who are in keto and those who are doing more of a carnivore, strict, they're not inducing muscle protein synthesis as well as those who get some carbohydrate in them, so we need some carbs. And we just need carbs to feel sane and be happy and have good hormones. And, I think we get a little neurotic. 

[00:32:19] Women especially as we start something new, we get a little overzealous and we get-- And it's so easy to be neurotic because the whole Internet is neurotic and it's full of neurotic people doing neurotic things. [Cynthia laughs] But then I know some people behind the scenes and they're a mess and I'm like, “Good luck with your carnivore for 30 years, lady, because you're going look old AF.” I had somebody come up to me, someone we both know who's in the space and she was like-- And I was probably-- I mean, I'm the heaviest I've been in maybe my whole life right now and she's like, “Your face looks so great. What did you do?” And I'm like, “Thanks. It's called fat.” [Laughs] It’s called actual subcutaneous fat. So, there's a place for this to be gentle and fun and an adventure and a new--

[00:33:04] Think of it in terms of-- I always try to think of it like I'm on a new journey of strength versus this whole, like, I have to lean out for this event and letting that neurosis kick in. And then we get a little more neurotic as we lose our estrogen, so it tends to-- [Laughs] I know you and I text about this sometimes it's just easy to get in these loops and so I don't want any of this to be that for women. I want this to be fun, because man when you are strong, you can take on the world and you walk into a room full of men. I was in a very male-dominated profession when I was doing regenerative medicine big time. It was all dudes. And it was like me, I was like the token check. Me and like maybe one other lady and a bunch of dudes at a conference. And you walk in there feeling strong and confident and secure and your brain is working and truly strength is a superpower. If you are not strength training, I firmly believe as you age, you are--

[00:33:57] I don't even know how to say this nicely, like you just have one foot in the grave. And your brain capacity. You are literally-- Like women in their 50s who strength train are smarter than women who do not, period. I will just say it. We have better cognitive function. We have data on this. We have better brains. We have better cognitive function. Women who have good metabolic health are smarter than those who have poor metabolic health because their brains are literally shrinking and we have the data on this. None of this is to shame anyone. It's literally facts. And so, I just think of it that way like I want all the superpowers I can have on my team, and I can hone this one myself, this is me, this is the work I put in, and nobody can do the work for me, I have to do it myself, but I want all hands-on deck. I want all cylinders firing as long as I can, because not only do I not want someone wiping my ass when I'm 80, but I want to be doing really incredible, valuable things in the world when I'm 80. I want to be contributing in a way that's highly cognitive. 

[00:34:58] I need this very expensive brain. I spent a lot of money on it. [Laughs] I need it working. And I went through a period where I was losing my brain function for a minute, and it was post Covid. My estrogen was falling out from underneath me. Stress was really, really high, and I was in a lot of pain. My autoimmune flared, and I was unable to work out for months. And I could feel my brain just melting in my skull. And I was so not sharp. And my poor team, they were like, “Tyna, we've already told you this like five times. Why do you keep forgetting?” It was terrifying. And I thought, is this a glimmer of what mild cognitive impairment feels like? Because this sucks. So, I say all that because that's the journey, like I'm trying to avoid dementia and a hip fracture, that's why I go to the gym. And I'm trying to be able to be functional, perhaps if we have a zombie apocalypse, [laughs] I need to be handy. 

[00:35:50] And I really want to be handy in the world. I want to be able to pick heavy shit off people that I love. What if something falls on someone I love and they can't get out from underneath it? I don't want to be so weak I can't do anything about it, so these are the things I think of, and then I think, “I got to fuel back. I work hard for it. I got to fuel it.” That’s it. That's as far as my brain go. Like I said, I'm a meathead, [laughs] just kind of a gym rap meathead in that capacity. And of course, I want to look good. 

[00:36:17] But over here on Internet land, we're confusing people, and I think we're over explaining things a lot of times, and I think it's like, “Get this many grams of protein and do this and do that and take this,” and the poor women that follow us are so confused. And you and I, at least I think we really try to be very ethical and how we lead, but, man, there's a lot of people who are not. And I just don't want to watch women get caught up in the confusion and then do nothing because they're so overstimulated by it.

Cynthia Thurlow: Well, and I think you bring up so many good points, like, keep it simple, stupid. Like, that was something I learned as a student years and years and years ago. The more complicated explanations we give our patients, the less actionable it is. Keeping it really clear and concise is certainly important. There was a video that Jocelyn Wittstein had out the other day, and she's an orthopedic surgeon at Duke, and she's lovely and talks about some of the changes that happen in women's bones as they're getting older. And she was talking about how sometimes the first sentinel event for women is fracturing their wrists. 

Dr. Tyna Moore: Oh, that’s [crosstalk]

Cynthia Thurlow: [00:37:15] And I thought to myself, you're absolutely right. Last November, I tripped at an event. My shoe got caught in a tree root. I was in between Sara Gottfried and Darshan Shah, and I tripped and fell forward. And I felt it happened so quickly, I literally didn't catch myself. So, I hit my chin, my wrist and my elbow. Didn't break anything. And that was my greatest concern, “Did I break anything?” No, checkbox, okay, good, my bones are still good but what it reaffirmed for me was, okay, if I don't continue doing exactly what I'm doing, I am going to be that person five years, 10 years, 15 years from now, that if I'm not working diligently about the strength training piece just like a whole bunch of other women, like, my mom fell.

[00:37:55] This is now almost 20 years ago, she tripped in Philadelphia, where she lived at the time, tripping off-- Stepped off a curb, didn't catch herself. She has plates in her wrist.

Dr. Tyna Moore: [00:38:03] Oh, no. 

Cynthia Thurlow: [00:38:04] And so I was like, how many people I know think it's not a big deal if they break their wrist. It is a big deal. It's like a sentinel event that then identifies okay, you're already at risk for breaking bones. You didn't catch yourself in time and space. And yes, it was an accident, I'm not shaming anyone. But the point of what I'm making is if we don't do the things to be proactive about those falls, we're just going to put ourselves at risk. And I want to be as strong and independent for as long as humanly possible and add in there, I want to be cognitively intact. I want my brain to work well. I don't want to be dependent on anyone else to open jars for me. I have teenage boys, and every once in a while, I'll have them grab things if they're up really high because they're taller than me-

Dr. Tyna Moore: [00:38:41] [laughs] That’s me as well 

Cynthia Thurlow: [00:38:41] -but I don't let them help me open anything. And so, we have to be thinking like what are the things we can be doing functionally to stay as strong as possible for as long as possible? 

Dr. Tyna Moore: [00:38:51] Amen. Yeah. The hip fracture and the wrist fracture. The wrist fracture is often the first-time people see their bones. And I will add, I have seen that multiple times in my clinical practice in young women. 

Cynthia Thurlow: [00:39:03] That’s so scary. 

Dr. Tyna Moore: [00:39:03] And they are osteopenic and they are like, “I had no idea,” because I can tell the minute I get the image in, I can see through the bones. You shouldn't be able to see through the bones. It's too diffuse if that's the case and I'm like, “Oh, you're osteopenic.” “But I'm 25.” “Yes. And you're osteopenic because you've never exercised in your life.” 

Cynthia Thurlow: [00:39:22] Well, it's also-- Not to interrupt you, but one of the things that I just interject this because I was in the research, writing the book, talking about bone health and the involvement of the gut microbiome. How many women are put on Depo-Provera, which we know has significant bone effects? Thankfully, it's reversible after you go off. But like Depo-Provera in a teenager or young adult, oral contraceptives in a teenager or young adult will kind of blunt that bone reabsorption and can be very catastrophic to long-term bone effects. So, my entire generation, all of my girlfriends were on the pill starting in our teen years because we had wonky periods, heavy menstrual cycles, terrible cramps, and no one ever thought to mention that has long-term bone effects. If you don't lay down bone when you're young, it is going to put you at risk for developing osteoporosis when you're older. 

Dr. Tyna Moore [00:40:11]: Yes. And SSRIs, that's a huge driver of osteoporosis, and people have no idea. I remember in 2007, I did a report in school. I was in chiropractic college, and I did a report about how-- the study I found was showing that it had the same impacts on devastation of bone as being on corticosteroids.

Cynthia Thurlow: [00:40:31] Wow, that's significant. 

Dr. Tyna Moore: [00:40:33] Yeah. Think about how many women have been on SSRIs. I'm writing my notes down for a podcast I'm about to do. I mean, that's a whole other can of worms, but man, SSRIs, long term, lots of issues. And certainly not shaming. I have used them, and they have saved my life, and they have saved loved ones' lives. But long-term use of them, your bones are-- That's the thing. This gets harder, and we don't hit muscle protein synthesis nearly as easily with the amount of protein that a 25-year-old can. 

Cynthia Thurlow: [00:40:57] We need more.

Dr. Tyna Moore: [00:40:58] We need way more. [laughs] It's just a lot of work I know. That's why I say go to the gym. Prioritize the gym. Stop worrying so much about the protein macros. Stop worrying so much about them. When should I eat? How much should I eat? Just go to the frigging gym and get your body to start working again so that your instincts turn on. And once your instincts turn on, you'll start to know how much to eat. 

[00:41:19] Now, that said, as your estrogen leaves the party, your appetite will increase. 

Cynthia Thurlow: [00:41:23] Yep. 

Dr. Tyna Moore: [00:41:23] And so that's why I'm such a proponent of HRT because it really can get away from you. And the train has left the station when my estrogen's low, I eat like my husband. [laughs] 

Cynthia Thurlow: [00:41:34] Protein leverage hypothesis, I mean, it's a real entity. I think for a lot of people, when they say, "Yeah, I do really well during the day, and then at nighttime it's like the pantry is calling to me like a siren." The first thing I ask them is, "Let's get a sense of what you're consuming during the day." But if you're eating 40 g total protein all day long and you get home, your body will specifically look to make up that caloric deficit. And it's not going to do it with more protein. It's going to have you in the chips and the ice cream and the things that are hyper-palatable, really easy to overeat. How many women don't know what a serving of nuts looks like? 

Dr. Tyna Moore: [00:42:07] Yeah. 

Cynthia Thurlow: [00:42:08] I always think about Costco. Costco is both good and bad. Good because you can sometimes get things more economically. Bad because usually the portions are massive, and you get a massive bag of nuts and you're sitting down, and next thing you know, you've eaten half a bag. That's not-- Your macros are going to be heading in the wrong direction for sure.

Dr. Tyna Moore: [00:42:25] Yeah, nuts are-- I can do some damage on nuts, and they will plump you right up. So yeah, that's the thing. We're all-- So a lot of us are trying to sort out, as I was saying at the beginning, how much do I even eat? Because I've self-starved my whole life. And then we're adding the gym in, and we're gaining muscle, and it's costly. You’ve got to feed it. And so, just trying to figure that piece out, have some grace, and go for strong. Just go for strong. At the end of the day, go for strong. Stop worrying so much about appearance and go for strong. Building a butt is going to be your best insurance against anything terrible that may come your way. 

[00:43:01] Frailty is not what you want to walk into. Having cancer, Covid, the flu, anything, you don't want to walk into anything difficult with frailty as the going norm in your body. You will have a terrible time getting through it. So, we want to walk in with some substance. And I just always say, build a booty. Start there. Start really focusing on your glutes and your thighs. So that's lower body, that's heavy lifts. Do you always have to lift heavy? Not all the time, because I think orthopedically, we're also dealing with a lot of issues at this age. I can no longer load my spine axially. Tremendous load. I have too many spinal issues, and it causes me too much pain. So, barbell back squats are gone, and it's heartbreaking. Barbell deadlifts are gone, and it's heartbreaking. Even trap bar deadlifts. 

Dr. Tyna Moore: [00:43:48] If I go too heavy, I axially load my spine. [crosstalk] I end up with disc issues. And so, I've had to find workarounds. But you do want to, at least twice a week and this is why we need a coach or somebody to help us so we don't hurt ourselves. Giving that central nervous system a whomp, that's what no one talks about. That's why you lift heavy. It has--

[00:44:08] Yes, we can talk about all the little nuances, but it's the central nerve-- Like this is the chiropractor in me, your central nervous system needs a hormetic whomp a couple times a week and then you have to rest and recover. The beauty and the magic happen in the rest and recovery. So no, we don't go to [unintelligible 00:44:20] Pilates. We frigging rest, and we refeed, and then we do it again a couple days later. But that whomp of the central nervous system, not too much, there's a fine line, it's a hormetic whomp, but it does something really magical to your dopamine and to your circuitry. And that will, I believe, have a layover into your appetite and other parts of your life, where you're starting to chase dopamine. And we don't want to overdo it because we don't want to hurt ourselves. But yes, there's utility in lifting heavy a couple times a week and we don't want to go so heavy that we get injured, but we definitely want to find that fine line. 

[00:44:56] And that's different for all of us. And I get that all the time when I'm lifting weights online people say, "How much weight is that?" “Why does it matter? That's how much weight it is for me that day. It has nothing to do with you, lady.” [Laughs] "What size kettlebell is that? It's probably too big for you. Or maybe it's too small for you. I don't know. It has nothing to do with anything.” This is why we hire help. We hire experts who know what they're doing. If you're looking at, "What do I do to hire a coach?" Find someone who specializes in training older people. Anybody can train a 25-year-old. Find someone who specifically specializes in training, masters, they call us after 40. I think anyone who can train someone in middle age is like whoever that guy or gal is, we need to blast her all over our Instagram, [laughs] because those are the talented ones. 

[00:45:43] This is a challenging age cohort. Like I said, we've got orthopedic issues, we've got hormonal issues, we've got all kinds of stuff going on and so you go in to see a trainer, and he tells you to eat 1800 calories and come in five days a week? Fire that guy. This is a slow, steady, and consistent journey so that we have ultimately, long-term success.

Cynthia Thurlow: [00:46:01] Absolutely. And it's funny-- I know when my trainer-- I'm going to tell her from now on, it's the whomp. I know when I've hit that whomp because in my head I'm like, "I want to stop. This isn't fun." And then I'll tell her, "I don't love this exercise." She's like, "That's okay. I want you to do it." So, it's understanding that we need that degree of hormetic stress on our bodies, not so that we're injuring ourselves, but so that we're telling our bodies it's time to grow, it's time to stretch, it's time to do something that's challenging. And then when you're done, you have such a sense of accomplishment. I mean, that's something I feel when I do things I don't like to do. 

[00:46:37] I mean, that's part of life, right? Like paying taxes, I don't like paying my taxes. I do it because I'm required by law to do it. Just like I look at weight training. There are some days I don't want to go. There are some days I don't want to do what my trainer is encouraging me to do, but I'm like, it's like taking medicine. I do it because it's going to make me stronger, healthier, and less likely to fall and break a hip.

Dr. Tyna Moore: [00:46:55] Yeah, I frigging love it when I get the whomp. I know I've hit it when I either want to cry or I have the shakes, and I sit down and I'm like, “yes that was so rad, what I just did. I can't believe I just did that.” And the thing about those moves is, you're only going to do a couple of them. You're only going to do like three or four reps of something really heavy. We're not talking 15 reps and so when you find a coach who can train you to do-- There are some exercises we want to do high repetition, and some we want to do high weight, low repetition. And when you get that feeling, that's the kind of workout where you have to go sit in your car for 30 minutes after because you're so like, “whoa, that was a lot.”

Cynthia Thurlow: [00:47:35] I’m shaking. 

Dr. Tyna Moore: [00:47:36] “Yeah, my nervous system.” Then you go home and you refeed and you rest, and you're the nicest person after that.

[laughter]

Cynthia Thurlow: [00:47:44] I sleep really really well on those nights, for sure. I know you mentioned whey protein. Are you a fan of essential aminos? If someone is not in a position where they can throw some powder in a shaker bottle and add water and go, are you a fan of EAAs or not?

Dr. Tyna Moore: [00:48:02] I think you need both. I don't think-- I do, I am, and I sell them in my line. I do like essential amino acids. I think in isolation you're missing the boat. So, I think the triad is the strength training to spark the signal, the whey protein, to actually get the protein which is the building blocks. And then the amino acids provide that leucine which gives you the spark to get the muscle protein synthesis going. But then you need to lay down the protein. So, I like to combine them with protein or I use them to catch up. If I didn't quite hit my leucine threshold, I'll use essential amino acids. 

[00:48:35] Again though, I feel like we can over complicate things really fast and things can get real expensive real fast for people and then they kind of get paralyzed in it and that's at least what I found when I've coached groups of women in this. Or they rely on the essential amino acids and they don't eat anything, or they rely on the protein, which I do, I rely on protein powder and I'm like, “Oh, I forgot to eat today.” [laughs] So I would say, it's the triad. Really try to go for the triad there and then what's the point of hitting the protein? Really, this is the drive home, what's the point of hitting your protein and leucine? You work so hard to do that all day and then you didn't go to the gym that way, it’s like, we got to do all three, and so yes, I think they're nice adjunctive supporters, but give me a steak-- My pre-workout consists of dark chocolate, salt and a cup of coffee. [Laughs] 

Cynthia Thurlow: [00:49:29] I love it. I love the dark chocolate.

Dr. Tyna Moore: [00:49:31] I just try to keep it simple. I want to listen to Metallica and put on a black T-shirt and go throw some heavy shit around in the gym. I like dirty gyms with grungy-- I'm not a-- I'm not a gym princess and I look at these bodybuilders-- I had a lot of patients who were older in their 70s and 80s and they were long time healthy bodybuilders. And you really-- There is a hugely significant uptick in sudden cardiac death in bodybuilders, like the ones that compete a lot really are putting themselves potentially at quite a risk and there's a lot of variables there as to why. 

[00:50:06] But the long-term bodybuilders, the one that have been added a long time, if they've made it successfully into their 70s and 80s and they're still in pretty good shape orthopedically and physically, I listen to those guys because they’ve figured something out a long time ago and they're just real simple guys. They don't overdo it. They don't make it too fancy because I feel when we start adding a lot of things we end up with diarrhea. [Laughs] People just end up with-- Especially women, women will lean on the, “Oh--” At least I find this with my audience. They'll buy the essential amino acids, they'll buy the protein, they'll buy all the stuff and that's great, but then they won't do the work, or they won't eat enough, physically eat. And so, I would just say again, think of those things as adjunctive but the work is on you.

Cynthia Thurlow: [00:50:55] I think that's an important message. And for me personally, I take essential aminos when I travel because I will always struggle to get a normal amount of food in on a day I travel, that's just a given. And I travel enough that happens enough that sometimes I'm taking essential aminos with my meal. Because I'm like, “Okay, I know that today I did not hit 110, 120 g of protein and I know how important it is to make sure I'm maintaining muscle.” 

[00:51:19] Now, I want to make sure we save enough time and clearly you have tons and tons of content on social media, on your podcast, on your website about GLP-1, let's talk about peptides in general. I'm a huge fan. Very transparently I've shared that I'm taking Thymosin Alpha-1, BPC-157, and we introduced a true microdose of Tirzepatide to see if we can lower my Lp(a) because I've been so staunchly opposed to medicine unless I absolutely cannot get it down any other way. So that is my experiment of the N of 1, I'm on a teeny teeny-tiny, itty-bitty dose. It is not enough of a dose that's going to-- If I lost weight, it would be problematic. So, I'm not looking to lose weight. 

[00:52:00] What are your thoughts around peptides? I know obviously you've been working with them for a long, long time. Do you have favorites other than the GLP-1s that you like to kind of talk about or make people aware of as a possibility? And the other thing is, if anyone is listening, that is on drug therapy for and Lp(a), I'm not suggesting anyone stop any medicines. I'm just telling you what I'm doing because I think many of you find it interesting and I like to be transparent. 

Dr. Tyna Moore: [00:52:24] Yeah, I want to hear back and tell me how it went because I love it. I love peptides. I think that peptides are truly miraculous. However, that said, they don't work in a body that isn't providing the spark. 

Cynthia Thurlow: [00:52:38] Yeah. 

Dr. Tyna Moore: [00:52:40] So you have to strength train and you have to feed yourself and ideally you get some HRT on board because they certainly do not replace hormones. I saw a slide deck carousel post from a doctor I really respect the other day and he kind of alluded that, you could maybe do peptides instead of hormones. And I was like- 

Cynthia Thurlow: [00:52:56] No, no, no,

Dr. Tyna Moore: [00:52:57] Not the same thing, buddy. 

Cynthia Thurlow: [00:52:58] They're like the icing on the cake. That's how I talk about them, is it's the icing on the cake after you've dialed in everything else. 

Dr. Tyna Moore: [00:53:05] They are. And I am snobby because I come from a regenerative medicine background where I have access-- I've been using exosomes for a long time and stem cells for longer and those things work way better and way faster. And so, I do think that peptides are something that are more accessible to the society at large, which I'm very excited about because where are you going to find exosomes, [Cynthia laughs] intravenous exosomes, you're not going to find that readily and it's very expensive and cost prohibitive. So, I think peptides are more cost-effective way of inducing regeneration. That said though, things like BPC-157. Well, shoot, pretty much all of them, you want to cycle them. We don't want to just stay on them forever because many of these induce VEGF, which is a growth factor and that cancer loves to use to metastasize. And so, the way that I think of peptides, all of them are potentially pro grow. And so, that needs to be discussed with people as part of the PAR-Q of risk tolerance because I feel like they're kind of getting thrown around way too casually nowadays. 

[00:54:11] And so, when I use these peptides, I use them for a short amount of time. I don't stay on them indefinitely. I certainly would never encourage anyone to stay on BPC-157 forever. It helps so beautifully to help heal up the gut lining and we can get many of these orally now and I think that's very exciting, but we need to be careful-- 

[00:54:27] We just need to be a little bit more careful. I do see a few doctors out there talking about this and I appreciate that because there needs to be nuance to the conversation, not to scare people away from them, but I think a short cycle done strategically under the guidance of someone who knows what they're doing can be really beneficial. And there's some really innovative products that have come out, especially the oral over-the-counter options that I think are phenomenal. They're very expensive. They're all very expensive. And so, I say that because if you're going to dabble in peptides, you better be going to the gym, you better get your HRT dialed in first. Like get those habits online first because the peptides aren't going to do a damn thing in a body that doesn't have the spark. 

[00:55:04] And I just did the World Peptide Conference. I spoke on this from the stage and I was like-- I kind of went through the basics of the foundations that you need to have online and one of them also is gut health. We can be throwing peptides and all these things at our body, but if the gut microbiome is all convoluted and crazy, then they may not stick so well. So just know that going in, it's an expensive endeavor for most people. And so just buying one peptide and hoping for the best but not doing any of the other things to shift lifestyle to improve things, I don't think they're going to work so well. But in someone like yourself, who's committed, who's already kind of doing all the things as I call it, peptides are a beautiful cherry on top. 

Cynthia Thurlow: [00:55:46] Yeah. No, I think of them as the icing on the cake. And because you had recently posted about doing that peptide conference, I was like, “Oh, I'm going to ask you.” I think the other thing that I would really caution people about is there's a lot of smoke and mirrors across the Internet. My personal feeling is you do not buy peptides not through a licensed provider or from a website that a licensed provider has actually been able to vet because, someone said to me the other day, “A lot of peptides, you don't know what you're getting, but if it's made in China, you don't know what you're consuming.”

Dr. Tyna Moore: [00:56:17] Yeah. Definitely, it’s scary.

Cynthia Thurlow: And so, this is why most stuff I like compounded, which can make it cost-- Not, I wouldn't say-- When I looked online to see what some of the bigger, like well-regarded organizations were selling peptides at. And I'm talking about oral peptides, not the injectables. They were actually more efficacious, more cost effective to get mine compounded. But with that being said, you don't want to be buying stuff from just anyone. You don't want it off the dark web. You don't want to be buying stuff from China because you don't know what you're getting and I think that's the concern. 

[00:56:48] There was a documentary that I was watching last week just for information purposes and it was talking about people who couldn’t get GLP-1s covered by insurance, so they were going on like the dark web and getting-- I don't know what they were getting and they were saying in some instances it worked just fine and they had to reconstitute the meds themselves and I was like, that's a lot for a lay public person to do. With that being said, it's like let the buyer beware.

Dr. Tyna Moore: [00:57:09] Yeah. 

Cynthia Thurlow: [00:57:10] Have a conversation. And I just echo what you're saying that we really want to be thinking about this in the context big pictures, the strength training piece. And then these are the things we do if everything else lifestyle wise is really dialed in. Peptides, exosomes, stem cells can all be incredibly impactful, but that shouldn't be like the first thing we're looking at.

Dr. Tyna Moore: [00:57:30] No. And I'll share a story to drive this home. My husband, who is a farmer, so he's out on the land all day, doing a lot. The man is strong. You wouldn't look at him with a shirt off and think that's a gym bro. But man, that man is strong and he's lean, got a little bit of belly fat, but like love-- He drives-- I love his body. I think he's just so-- He's just got that farmer strong. But he wasn't taking such good care of himself about a year ago and he was drinking too much and he was not really getting out there and he was just kind of, I don't know, he just wasn't-- 

[00:58:02] He's doing great now, but it was kind of a bad phase and I was pumping thousands of dollars-worth of peptides into him [laughs] and I finally just said, “You know what? Screw this, I'm not giving you anymore. You're not doing a damn thing to make these work. You're not doing your part. You're eating junk, you're not getting enough protein, you're not out there, like, you're not in the gym, you're not out there doing whatever.” And it was just a period. He's not normally like this. [Cynthia laughs] He just kind of fell, but I just was so mad. I was like, “Why am I spending so much money on all this stuff and you're not doing anything.” 

[00:58:39] And I had to say the same thing to myself at times, like, “Why am I taking these peptides if I'm not putting in the work concurrently?” It really, it did nothing for him at the time. It was just expensive, whatever. And I would dare to say, again, if we are concerned about a risk of these being pro grow, then are we even-- Why are we taking the risk if we're not going to be doing the work necessary to get the benefit. And so anyway, that was my story. 

[00:59:05] And I discontinued them. And then he came back to me, he quit drinking. He's been great. Everything's been so good. And he came back to me and he said, “I'd like to try those again. I'm ready.” And he is, he's doing all the things. And I was like, “Right on. Way to get your ship together.”

[laughter]

[00:59:21] So I say this to everyone out there, the peptides aren't going to save you. They're not going to be the miracle. So, the microdosing GLP-1 strategy that I tried to share with the world, truly like you said, it is truly a microdose. It is a fraction of the standard. 

Cynthia Thurlow: [00:59:34] A 10th of the starting dose. 

Dr. Tyna Moore: [00:59:35] Yeah, like teeny weeny. And unfortunately, the train has left the station on that one and the entire telemedicine world and everybody else has bastardized it. And they're calling standard low dosing microdosing, which it's not. So, people are being put on very, very high doses right off the bat that's standard. But often, like for you, a standard dose would end you up in the hospital. So anyway, all that to say, I'm getting messages from people all over the world saying “I've been microdosing and it's not working.” One, I never said it was a weight loss strategy, it's not. And it only works for weight loss if you're completely dialed in and you might lose a little bit of fluff, but it's not a long-term weight loss strategy. And two, I'm like, “Well, what else are you doing, right? Are you doing all the things?” And I teach all of that inside my course. And that's the whole purpose of the course is if you're not doing all the things, none of this is going to work. And it's heartbreaking to me to see what this has turned into. It's like everybody thinks that there's some easy quick fix and it lies at the end of an insulin syringe or in a pill that comes out of a $300 bottle of peptides and it's just not the case. Go to the gym. We should just call this episode “Go to the effing Gym.”

[laughter]

[01:00:46] There's your answer. 

Cynthia Thurlow: [01:00:47] Yes. Well, I can't think of a better way to like close out our conversation today. Please let listeners know if they're living under a rock, if they have not seen your work. Listen to your podcast, your YouTube channel or taking your course. How to connect with you.

Dr. Tyna Moore: [01:01:01] Thank you. It's everything's at D-R-T-Y-N-A and so drtyna.com will get you there. My podcast is on all the major podcast players and I have a ton of episodes there. I would love to have you guys check out. I've got a lot of free content. I've got a free GLP-1 course. Lots of good stuff. So, it's all at the website. 

Cynthia Thurlow: [01:01:19] Thanks so much. 

Dr. Tyna Moore: [01:01:20] Thank you. 

Cynthia Thurlow: [01:01:23] If you love this podcast episode, please leave a rating and review. Subscribe and tell a friend. 

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