Dr. Taylor Thurston, ND

Dr. Taylor Thurston, ND Integrative Mental Health Care

also yes i’m wearing an ugly shirt and christmas socks in this photo. you don’t have to look cute to exercise - if you l...
08/06/2026

also yes i’m wearing an ugly shirt and christmas socks in this photo. you don’t have to look cute to exercise - if you like to look cute and exercise that’s fun too! but fitness was never meant to be about aesthetics.
exercise is better than antidepressants stats gets thrown around a lot. it’s real data, but it’s oversimplified. and it’s being used to make people feel bad about needing medication or therapy — or feel bad about “just” exercising instead.
depression isn’t one thing. it’s biology, psychology, and social circumstances all tangled together. so the treatment that works is rarely one thing either.
for some people that’s an SSRI. for some it’s therapy. for some it’s strength training and meditation. for most people, it’s more than one of those at once.
stop treating it like a competition

07/31/2026

skinnytok is trending and it’s terrifying.

i genuinely dream of a day where we focus on:
lifting heavy s**t
climbing mountains
eating with friends and family
our bones, the ones that’ll carry you at 80, not just at 28
your mental health
your confidence and your accomplishments
your actual health, not your look
having enough energy and fitness to say yes to things
teaching the women after us that we can’t do hard things hungry, weak, and obsessed with our bodies
and making space for food that brings us joy, because last time and everytime I check, a croissant does actually taste better than skinny feels.

🤍

I’m never judging you for skipping it. If anyone’s getting side-eye here, it’s me, for maybe giving you a plan that did...
07/29/2026

I’m never judging you for skipping it. If anyone’s getting side-eye here, it’s me, for maybe giving you a plan that didn’t fit your actual life or not providing enough support to get ya there!! you don’t need to have done it right to show up. that’s the whole point of the appointment ☺️

you don’t need to have done it right to show up. that’s the whole point of the appointment 🤍
07/29/2026

you don’t need to have done it right to show up. that’s the whole point of the appointment 🤍

07/23/2026

“Write down 3 good things” is the advice equivalent of someone telling you to just relax. It sounds like it’s coming from a throw pillow. You want to throw something at me for suggesting it.

Here’s the annoying part there’s research backing it and it can help. A meta-analysis of 64 studies found gratitude practices reduce cynicism and depersonalization aka the “I literally do not care anymore” part of burnout plus improvements in depression, anxiety, and quality of life.

It only works if you write about good stuff and it only works if you do it 3+/week. Venting about your day (“hassle writing”) doesn’t count, so no, complaining in your notes app isn’t secretly gratitude journaling.

It doesn’t have to be deep. Pick your version:
— 3 things, end of day
— A photo instead of writing
— Saying it out loud instead to somone
— Tell a coworker 3 good things, 3x/week (yes this was studied too, and it moved the needle on stress AND job performance)

Healthcare workers who did a 4-week version of this saw improvements in burnout that stuck around a month later. There seems to be a frequency thats most effective. If you do it less than 3 times it doesn’t seem to help as much. But if you do it 3-7 times a week it does :)

I’m not saying it fixes the system or enviornment that burnt you out. I’m saying it’s cheap, it’s fast, and it’s annoyingly effective. I hate that this works as much as you do haha :) Try it before you roll your eyes at me !!!

07/21/2026

There is for sure research on ashwagandha helping with generalized anxiety, stress and burnout.

But no supplement fully compensates for:

burnout,
sleep deprivation,
caregiving stress,
financial stress,
relationship stress,
overwork,
poor systems,
or chronic overwhelm.

The plan has to stay simple, or it fails. Most people suffering from burnout are already overwhelmed. More supplements, more tasks, more to-do’s is not the answer.

And it doesn’t mean stopping exercise or cutting out coffee either.

What actually helps:
goals that give you energy back, not ones that drain it further (knowing what adds/drains your bank account)
regular follow-ups and check ins, not a 16 page treatment plan,
mind-body practices,
community,
delegating,
easy meals,
movement,
sleep.

Women don’t need another cortisol supplement.

They need support, boundaries, sleep, help, community, therapy, rest, a better system, maybe all of the above. Burnout is rarely a YOU problem. It’s usually a system and environment problem.

Save this for the next time someone tells you your workout has to look completely different because you’re a woman 💕
07/17/2026

Save this for the next time someone tells you your workout has to look completely different because you’re a woman 💕

07/16/2026

I wish testing cortisol did the thing we needed it to do. I wish it gave us a concrete answer, changed our treatment plan, or provided the support people actually need to navigate the busy, stressful modern life we all live.

Sometimes what we’re really looking for is something outside ourselves that validates what we already know we’re feeling. A lab value that makes the overwhelm official so we can stop having to prove it to ourselves.

Trust me, you do not need to prove anything to me.

But cortisol is a pretty crappy test for this. It’s incredibly volatile. Stressed people can have high cortisol, low cortisol, or levels that look completely “normal.” It can’t reliably tell us who’s burnt out and who isn’t. Unless we tested you every day forever, we’re making assumptions from one snapshot of a system that’s constantly changing.

Before I’d ever think about testing cortisol, I’d ask:
• Have we corrected iron, B12, or vitamin D deficiencies? Have we properly assessed your thyroid?
• Are you actually sleeping enough and sleeping well?
• Are you eating enough? Protein, fibre, carbs, fat? Eating regularly?
• What’s your relationship with alcohol right now?
• Does movement show up most days? (You don’t need to fear intense exercise. If you’re recovering well, it can actually help build resilience.)
• Have you genuinely committed to therapy—not just one or two sessions?
• Do you have a practice that helps regulate stress—mindfulness, yoga, prayer, whatever works for you?
• Is there room for self-compassion, gratitude, joy, fun, and community?
• Do you have support?

Even if you were doing all of those things, I still probably wouldn’t test your cortisol. Not because your experience isn’t real, stress and burnout absolutely affect our health but because a lab value was never going to prove your experience, and it was never going to fix it either.
Your burnout, overwhelm, and stress don’t need a blood test to be valid.

They need support.

And yeah...that’s a lot harder than doing a test and taking a supplement. I know 🤍

07/09/2026

Your hormone levels are probably normal. (Well they might be low or high or normal). That’s not the point.

We keep testing hormone levels like the number on the page is the problem. It’s not. Your brain doesn’t care what your estrogen level is — it cares how fast it’s moving. Rapid fluctuation, not absolute level, is what drives mood symptoms in perimenopause (and PMS/PMDD, and postpartum).

That’s why two people with “identical” labs can feel completely different. And why a normal hormonal panel doesn’t rule out a real, physiological cause for what you’re feeling.

You’re not imagining it. You’re not “just stressed.” Your nervous system and brain are constantly adjusting to a moving target.

If you’ve been told your labs are “fine” but you don’t feel fine, I want you to know, that’s not a contradiction. That’s actually the whole point. Understanding this is so important for managing it :)

06/29/2026

Sleep apnea can look really different in women than it does in men and because of that, women get missed all the time.

The classic picture most people think of is a man who snores loudly, stops breathing, gasps awake. That’s not usually what we see in women (although it can definitely be!). Women tend to come in saying they’re exhausted, they can’t sleep, their mood is off, they’re waking up unrefreshed, they have headaches, brain fog. Those symptoms are easy to chalk up to stress, anxiety, hormones, or just… a million other things. So women often don’t get referred for a sleep study, and the sleep apnea doesn’t get found.

And it’s actually way more common in women than most people realize.
Then menopause comes in and makes everything more complicated. Your risk basically doubles after menopause and honestly that’s probably still an undercount. Part of it is the body composition changes. Part of it is that estrogen and progesterone have a protective effect on your airway and your breathing drive and when those drop, you lose that protection.

And here’s the part I really want people to understand: this isn’t just a quality of life issue. Women may actually be more vulnerable to the cardiovascular effects of untreated OSA than men. High blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, atrial fibrillation. Long-term, untreated OSA is also associated with increased all-cause mortality. Most of these things are often things we cannot feel. But as I say all the time in practice, if we treat sleep apnea (after the adjustment period of getting used to a CPAP machine) people feel SO much better. Energy, mood, cognition can improve drastically.

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