Introduction
[00:00:00] Detective Ev: Well, hello my friends, and welcome back to another episode of the Health Detective Podcast by Functional Diagnostic Nutrition. My name is Evan Transue, aka Detective Ev. I will be your host for today’s show on thyroid problems. And boy do we have a show for you.
But something I want to touch on really quick first is, if you are not signed up for March 2023’s Health Space Unmasked event, then you gotta get signed up for this. This is something that you guys have been waiting for a while. Everyone always talks about FDN and functional medicine for your pets, and we are finally bringing it to you. We have special guest, Dr. Ruth Roberts, and then Reed Davis, of course will be on.
If you do not know what our Health Space Unmasked Events are, it is basically something that we only do once a month. It is completely live. You can actually interact with us, and easily a hundred plus practitioners, trainees, and just people who are interested in health hop on. So, you’re part of a like-minded community. They usually run about an hour and a half to even three hours from my understanding, because I’m not on all of them, but I’ve been on a lot. There’s some really cool stuff here.
The topic for this one is actually titled Unlock the Secrets of Functional Medicine for Pets and Discover Why Conventional Approaches Are Falling Short. Now, we all love ourselves because we’re humans and that’s great, but we love our animals even more. So, we definitely want to make sure that these guys and gals are taken care of.
Just go to fdntraining.com/unmasked, get signed up there. Learning about pets and how functional medicine can help them, pretty cool.
Our Stories are Personal
Today we are not going to be talking about pets. We are going to be talking to a woman named Sarah Loman. She is an impressive individual. This is one of my favorite podcasts that we’ve ever done on this show. I do not say that in terms of making this a competition.
A lot of what we talk about on here is very story-based. We mix in some cool science and business stuff in also, but a lot of it’s story based. Stories are, they’re personal things. They’re things that we resonate with or don’t resonate with. If I go share my story on this podcast or in person, some people will think it is the best thing ever and others don’t relate to it at all. So, it’s not a competition. It’s just there’s a few factors in it that really resonated with me for certain things that my family members have gone through. We’ll talk about that in the show itself. But this was powerful, man.
Just know we will be talking about thyroid today. I am going to be having Sarah Loman back on because we spent so much time on the story, and rightfully so, that I wanted to pick her brain for even more of the things that she’s learned healing wise. We really only get to that at about the 30 minute mark.
I hope that you guys enjoy this one even half as much as I did, because that means you will absolutely love it. Without further ado, let us get to today’s episode. All right. Hello Sarah and welcome to the Health Detective Podcast. How are you?
[00:02:48] Sarah Lohman: Hi, I’m doing great. Thank you so much for having me.
[00:02:52] Detective Ev: Thanks for coming on.
Thursday Thyroid Talks Podcast
One thing I actually want to jump into right away and shout out is you just had Reed Davis on your podcast, founder of FDN. I feel like Reed has a bunch of knowledge, but on podcasts he seems to say similar things and yet these people love going and listening to him. I’ll obviously shout out your business at the end too. But where can people find the podcast at least.
[00:03:09] Sarah Lohman: Yeah, thank you for saying that. I had a wonderful interview with him. He is such a cool guy. So, my podcast is Thursday Thyroid Talks. I just posted a new episode this week, so it’s actually the second episode back. Definitely go check it out, because I talked to him about what he felt like were the root causes of thyroid illness. It was really cool to hear his feedback from all his years of practicing.
[00:03:36] Detective Ev: Thank you. We were talking about this off air, the amount of people that listen to us or that go through the FDN course. Thyroid issues are almost par for the course. I don’t know anyone almost that hasn’t had this. Even if they don’t consider it their main issue, this is still a problem overall.
I’ve had experiences, too, personally that we’ll talk about later. But the indirect personal ones, the reason I’m particularly passionate about this is because my mom was diagnosed with Graves’ Disease. Before we found out about any of this stuff, she ended up getting her thyroid removed.
Thyroid Problems: Graves’ Disease
Looking back, it is clear as day, to her and I, that this never needed to happen. But I really appreciate that you talk about that and include that in your media kit. That’s something that you add in because it’s not as common. Of course, more people are going to talk about Hashimoto’s, but you can find Hashimoto’s and hypothyroidism all day.
I talk to people all the time in our space that don’t even know what Graves’ Disease is. I’m like, all right guys, we gotta get on top of this cause there’s a lot of people struggling with that. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
So, how I would like to start is pretty much the same way we always start on this show. I’m curious, and I try not to look this up beforehand, so I actually don’t know this about you because I want it to be genuine. Did you have health symptoms before that led you into this space or was there something else that led you here?
[00:04:46] Sarah Lohman: Oh my gosh, I was a health train wreck.
[00:04:49] Detective Ev: Let’s explore that then. What did that look like?
[00:04:53] Sarah Lohman: Let’s, okay, get some popcorn. My train wreck started actually September 29th, 2008, also known as the infamous economic crash, the 2008 economic crash. So pretty much anything that could happen to a person during that crash that you heard on the news and everything I went through, it was brutal.
Sarah’s Health Train Wreck
My husband lost his job. My landlord just decided to not let us know that he was letting the house go, even though we were still paying rent. We woke up to like an auction notice taped to our door. My husband also didn’t let me know his plans after he got laid off, while he was on unemployment, was to party and start to sleep around with the majority of the girls in the neighborhood.
I was working as a full-time receiving manager for a big retail company. It was like a thing that all of a sudden these companies were doing. After the economic crash, it was like they were forcing people from full-time to part-time and then taking away all of their benefits. That happened to me. It was basically like either accept this part-time position with no benefits or forfeit your position. It was like, holy crap.
So, all of these things just like boom, boom, boom, boom, just took me down. I ended up packing my whole house up into storage one weekend and moving in with my in-laws just with me and my son. My husband decided that he needed to go explore some other avenues with other people. As you could imagine, going through so much trauma and loss in such a short amount of time, I just lost it.
From all the stress, my appetite was suppressed. I had no desire to eat. I’m just naturally tall and thin to begin with so, me dropping 35 pounds, I was like scary, skinny, like skeletal. I couldn’t sleep because of all the stress from my husband. I was a walking zombie. I was still trying to keep up with being a mom, working, and it just took a toll on me.
Thyroid Problems: Hypothyroidism
One day, things started happening to my body. I’m straightening my hair and I’m like, why are clumps of my hair falling out? Why do I have these weird pains in my arms and my knees and my legs? These mystery things started happening.
I truly thought it was from my work, cause I lifted a lot of heavy things. I did a lot of data entry on the computer. I’m like, well maybe I have carpal tunnel trying to justify it in my mind. Because I just lost my benefits, I was like, hey, to the manager, I think I need to go to the doctor. Do you think you could workman’s comp me?
And she’s like, sure. So, I go to urgent care and I’m rambling everything off all my symptoms, like we do. This doctor came off just very arrogant. He was like, hmm, let’s check your thyroid. I was like, okay.
Oh, I forgot one huge piece of this. In the middle of all of that fallout in my life too, my brother, who was two years older than me, did some stupid things and got sentenced to 12 years in prison. I suddenly became like his prison advocate and lifeline, which was crazy all within itself cause that system is just crazy.
So, I’m sitting with a doctor, and he is like, let’s test your thyroid. They have a lab in the urgent care. And I’m like, okay. The results come back 30 minutes later, and he is like, your TSH is at like a seven point something. I had no idea what that meant at the time. He’s like you have low thyroid, you have hypo. Follow up with your primary care doctor in the morning, get some medications.
Thyroid Problems: The Vague Doctor Shuffle
Then he pretty much just walked out of the room. I’m sitting on the crunchy paper, that’s what I like to call it. I’m sitting on the crunchy paper, just kind of in shock. You know that moment of diagnosis for anyone is very, very scary. You go into almost like slow-mo. I was like, what just happened?
It was just like a whirlwind. Naturally I go out in my truck and cry. I drive home and I start googling everything, you know, good old Doctor Google.
Things started progressing really just strangely after that because I had no insurance. It was like, well, what do I do? He said meds and all these things are going through my head. By this time, like a severe level of fatigue had set in that I didn’t even know existed. I was so weak I couldn’t even shower. I couldn’t stand up in the shower. I didn’t have the strength barely to wash my hair. I didn’t care about shaving my legs. It was really scary, you know?
So, I called the urgent care back in the morning and I’m like, well, I don’t have a primary. I talked to the new doctor on duty, and he was like, sure. He sent over some Armour Thyroid, 60 milligrams, to the pharmacy. I’m like, okay, so I gotta take a pill the rest of my life is basically what I was just told. Right?
This is like the number one thing that most women go through. It’s like, okay, so I just gotta take this pill and I’ll be okay. Right? There’s no information given to you. It’s just such a vague thing that we all go through.
Thyroid Problems: Battling Self
I’m like, okay, well now I have a medication that I need a doctor to manage, so I guess I need to find a doctor. Since I was already into the organic scene and would go to my local health food store, sit, and eat lunch, I was looking through their magazine one day. I found like an alternative doctor that did cash patient stuff, like for hormones on Wednesday nights.
So I started there. That really was the beginning of 10 years of just trial and error of all systems. Every year I was trying to find the path to help myself, whether it was a new functional medicine doctor, a new alternative medicine doctor. I’ve been through them all, all the titles.
I remember the day where I found out what an endo (endocrinologist) was. I was like, oh. I was thinking the heavens were like parting. I was like, finally someone that’s going to fix me. You know, because they have that term specialist behind their name. You’re just like, oh my gosh and have all this hope, right?
My introduction to my endo was, she came in the room, slammed the door, said if you don’t switch to synthetic, I refused to work with you and stared at me. I was like, holy crap. So, I walked out on her.
It was just like all these kinds of situations. Like, oh, let’s put you on this compounded medicine that put me into hyper. I thought I was going to have a heart attack; you know? Every year I kept getting sicker and sicker and sicker. No matter how much I tried to get myself better by eating better, green smoothies, like tons and tons of supplements. It was like I was battling myself.
Thyroid Problems: Being Put on Disability
I cut gluten out, cut dairy, corn, soy. It was just like the food scarcity. I was cutting so much out of my diet thinking it would help that I was putting myself into this food fear, almost like a place of, what am I going to eat? I would stand in front of the fridge crying because I didn’t know what I could eat.
2015 rolls around and I was so sick. At this point, I pretty much had about 25 symptoms. I was so weak I couldn’t turn the steering wheel. The low energy gave me such bad panic attacks that I couldn’t function at work anymore. I was having multiple panic attacks on the floor as a customer service representative. With my account reps and stuff, I couldn’t function.
I was so scared for myself. I’m like, okay, something is seriously wrong with me. So, I go back to my primary and I’m like, I need to get taken out on disability. I’m not okay. They love sending you through tons of hoops because they just want to always say it’s mental, stress, or depression, or something.
I feel like he tried to deter me from it by saying, you need to go see the shrink, talk to the therapist, and all these things. I was so determined to have him take me out, that I did everything he asked. I passed and he kind of was like, okay, fine, I’ll take you out. I was so relieved.
I turned around and took all my disability money and dumped it into another doctor. I was thinking, oh, this is going to be it. I researched and I was like, I’m going to just find that one amazing doctor that’s going to help me.
Thyroid Problems: Hashimoto’s
I started working as a cash patient with this younger doctor. I loved her because she had all the drive that you want. Like, let’s pull every test under the sun, you know, and find out what’s going on with you. I was like, yes. So, she starts doing that. It’s all blood work.
She’s like, oh my gosh, you’re Hashimoto’s. Oh my gosh, do you even eat protein? You have no protein on your labs. Oh my gosh, you’re so deficient in your nutrients. It was just kind of like this bomb after bomb. It was exciting and it was like, yay, I’m finding things out. At the same time, you almost go through this head trip of, oh my gosh, I’m so faulty and defective. Look at all these things wrong with me.
And like, well, no wonder. You almost get the validation, but then you almost feel like crappier about yourself at the same time, you know? Does that make sense?
[00:13:34] Detective Ev: Well, and it’s in that order too, right? Because initially when you’ve been going through something like you’ve been through, it is initially validating. Then it’s usually like that drive home, or when the doctor leaves the room, wait a second, this sucks, you know. Not that you didn’t know it sucks before. But yeah, that’s tough. Wow.
[00:13:51] Sarah Lohman: Yeah, especially when you get the autoimmune label dropped on you. You’re just like, oh no, my body’s attacking me. That’s what puts you into the like, faulty genes, defective, I’m screwed for life.
Thyroid Problems: Succumbing to Illness
I think that particular diagnosis of the Hashimoto’s really plays a number on women’s mindset and starts really robbing them of their hope. We can talk more about that later.
But so, I worked with her for six months. She was doing all kinds of IV pushes and all these things, but really nothing got me over the edge. I ran out of money, and I wasn’t better.
I’ll never forget this day, I consciously said to myself, well, I’ve done everything I can do. I’m at the end of the road, you know. I guess I’m just screwed. I made the decision in my mind that whatever this thing is, I’m just going to let it kill me because obviously I’ve tried to fight against it as much as I can, but it’s not working. So, okay, fine. You win. It was this really depressing moment of succumbing to illness.
I just sort of fell into this depression. I did my best to cope day in and day out. No one around you, when you’ve been chronically sick for a long time, they don’t want to know. They don’t want to hear about it. They’re tired of hearing about it. You really do start suffering alone, you know. And that is really, really hard for women as well. That isolation is terrible.
So, while all of these years have passed, my brother serves 10 years in prison and gets released. It was a very obviously exciting moment for me and my brother, I’m very relieved. And he was diagnosed with Hashimoto’s.
Thyroid Problems and Family Problems
So, while I was going through my situation on the outside, I was advocating for him on the inside to get him desiccated medication and doctor’s appointments and labs. It was crazy how much between the two of us, I was doing. Still, I was so relieved, and it was nice to have someone to talk to.
But then he had everything on his plate with reacclimating to society and all these really hard things he had to go through. Long story short, it didn’t work out for him in the long run. I’ll never forget one of our last conversations, he was like, Sis, I don’t know how I’m going to continue my job. He did HVAC. He is like, I have to work 14-hour days installing air conditioners in a hundred degrees on roofs. He was like, I don’t have the energy to do this. I was like, oh my gosh, I so understand.
It was shortly, like within weeks of him telling me that, his friend calls me and tells me that my brother’s on drugs and there was some drama going down. I was like, oh my gosh. I call his girlfriend and I’m like, what’s going on? She’s like, yeah, he’s been acting really weird.
We kind of pieced things together and tried to do an intervention to get him clean and okay. It didn’t work, he just more or less got mad at both of us. We got in a big fight that night and the next day I woke up super worried about him.
Thyroid Problems: Learning How Precious and Short Life Is
I couldn’t get ahold of him all day long. So, I just go about my day. Next thing I know, it’s six o’clock at night. I get a call from a gal he was renting a room out from. She said, Honey, I have to tell you something. I’m like, what’s wrong? She’s like, your brother’s dead. She’s like, it’s all over the news too. Go look at the news. I was like, what? You know, like next level slow motion, altered reality.
Sure enough, he was high on meth, he was working on his truck cause it was broken down. He was trying to fix it in the middle of the night. He went to some mechanic shop looking for a part and someone called the cops on him. It turned into this chase, they shot him 14 times in his vehicle, and he went off into the ravine and died. So, that now fell on my plate.
I had to take care of everything. I was being investigated by the detectives. It was insane. That was six months long. But I want you to know that this was the most miraculous thing that ever happened to me because his death ended up saving me. Even though I miss him, obviously, in my life, I don’t regret this for a minute.
What happened was, losing him so tragically, it showed me how short and precious life truly is, and how I was wasting my life away, just miserable. I had a miserable outlook. I was in a miserable marriage. I didn’t like anything about my life, and I was just going through the motions, trying to do whatever to keep my family together so my son could have a stable home. In the meantime, it was killing me.
Thyroid Problems: Rediscovering Self
It was like a veil was lifted off of my eyes and I could see life for the first time. What I saw I was not okay with. I was like, this is, nope, nope. The way I describe it is I dropped a nuclear bomb on my life. It was like the funnest thing I’ve ever done. I still had no job, no money.
My first plan was, I’m going to start selling everything so I can make some money and move out. I decided I was going to divorce my husband. I was going to change every aspect of my life and I was going to find me again. So, I started selling my blender, my juicer, my beach cruiser, and I saved up $500 bucks.
I started texting anyone and everyone I knew and I was like, can I move in? Can I rent a room? My neighbor across the street, two houses down was like, sure, you can move in. So, once I had a place to go, I told my husband, I was like, we’re done. I don’t want to be with you anymore.
I moved out. And the first thing I did is I enrolled in college. I was so excited. I was like, yes! I knew I want to do something in the health and nutrition aspect, but I wasn’t sure. I just knew. That is my degree is health and fitness. Then I just started re-exploring what I liked and what made me happy.
Thyroid Problems: Spiritually Sick
You know, like I love riding bikes and I hadn’t ridden a bike in 20 years. Why? You know? I was doing cartwheels with my daughter, and I was just blasting music and dancing and just trying to find happiness in everything. It was incredible how just these changes, just the change of knowing I was going to divorce my husband and move out and start a new life, my energy levels started coming back. I had more energy.
Throughout all of this, one of the terms that I’ve coined as one of the root cause factors, cause I’ve narrowed it down to 10 Root Cause Factors of Thyroid Illness, this one right here that I’m talking about, I call it spiritually sick. I was spiritually sick.
All of these things that I did when I started rediscovering who I was and not around the identity of a sick girl, right? Because we get so stuck in that chronic illness that that’s who we become. And it’s sad. So, I had to find myself again and I did.
I moved back home to San Diego. I thought I was going to be a registered dietician. Then I took one look at the food guide pyramid, and I was like, no. Heck no. Not going that route. So, I didn’t know what I wanted to do. Then through divine guidance, I heard the Model Health Show in Cynthia Pasquala Garcia one day talking with Sean Stevenson. I heard about the Institute of Transformational Nutrition and that it was accredited.
I got so excited, I called my counselor and was like, I found it. I found my next path. So, I actually enrolled in that school. I was doing two schools at the same time. Couldn’t have been happier.
Thyroid Problems: Setting Up Personal Protocols
I had a dual graduation. So, I got my certification as a transformational nutrition coach and my degree in health and fitness. But while I was also studying and going through all of these, I was hell-bent on fixing myself. So, my divorce was underway, I moved back home.
This was like probably a year, a year and a half later, I started dating a boy I had a crush on in high school. I was doing all these things for me, and I was already feeling a lot better spiritually and emotionally, but I realized I was still having a significant amount of physical symptoms. So, it was like, okay, well why? Right?
I ended up buying this program where I had access to a practitioner’s labs, and I didn’t know what I was doing. I was all by myself. I was so tired of the doctors. I was so tired of wasting money. I was just like; I’m going to figure this out myself.
So, with my grant money that I would get each semester, I was buying tests. I went test crazy on myself and it was so fun. But you know what? There were some monumental moments where I would get back a piece of my puzzle from the test results and I would set up my table and just weep because I knew that I was figuring out my whys.
Before I had any training or anything, I didn’t realize I was setting up protocols for myself. I was figuring out, I was taking these answers, and then I would research, herbs, foods, and supplements and all these different things that I could do to counter what I just found out.
Thyroid Problems: Just Hitting the Top of the Healing Iceberg
I did my gut, adrenals. I was doing everything, infection panels, and it was just absolutely incredible. I was able to actually reverse all 25 of my symptoms really quickly. It was actually shocking to me how fast I was able to get rid of these things. But then what I realized was left over after that, was all of the mental and emotional and spiritual healing that I needed to go into.
I had the grief from my dad’s death, which I realized I didn’t process the grief from my brother’s death, all of the abuse from my narcissist husband. And then you kind of go, whoa. I just hit the tip of the iceberg; you know? That’s basically what led me into starting my own company, Coach Sarah Joy.
I’ve been coaching other thyroid warriors now for three years. I love it. I absolutely love it. Like Reed and what you do, I am a root cause coach. I don’t believe in not providing answers, you know, because I know what no answers do for women.
[00:24:10] Detective Ev: Wow. All right. Do you speak on this subject professionally?
Sarah Lohman: I don’t.
Detective Ev: We should talk about that afterwards, but that’s beside the point.
This is incredible because there’s so many different aspects here. Obviously, when you’re going through these labs and learning this stuff, I’m sure there was plenty dietary changes that occurred and all those types of things.
But initially, when this all started, I mean, this truly is a result. At least it was the final straw result. Maybe your body was already building to this, who knows? But it was a final straw result of serious crap going on then leading to this type of stuff.
Thyroid Problems: Women with Autoimmune Conditions
This is a perfect example of what Reed talks about in FDN. You might have heard his perspective the other day. He believes very few thyroid cases are what he calls quote/unquote “primary thyroid cases”. Most of them are secondary in tertiary.
When I hear your story, I’m like, okay, stress overload through the roof. Then an oversimplification, but we have this hypothalamic pituitary thyroid axis and yours is just getting bam, bam, bam. There’s just punch after punch. Of course, you’re going to have these symptoms. There are so many things to touch on.
But I have to acknowledge this cause this is so validating for the people out there. I really in particular appreciate your sharing of the doctor’s experience because we’re not against doctors here. We have doctors that go through the FDN course. I always have to reiterate that in case it’s the first time someone’s listening.
But what you experienced isn’t uncommon, unfortunately, in terms of like, hey, it’s in your head. There is no population I see get screwed worse than women with autoimmune conditions. Unless you literally have something, I suppose I could be wrong, but I’m going to guess something like vitiligo, psoriasis or whatever, clearly, we can see this now, right? The second that you take away the visual aspect of the autoimmune condition, they are the most screwed group with this.
Similarly, timeframe wise, my mom was actually probably going through the early stages of this at the exact same time as you.
Thyroid Problems: Final Stage of Healing is Helping Others
It took seven years to get a diagnosis of Graves’ Disease from the professionals. She had no affiliation with a natural side of things. Whatever, didn’t care, just wanted to get help for this. So, she is going to doctors, is going to actually relatively good ones, and no one could even tell her what the diagnosis is.
This is what happens to people like yourself, like my mom and many other women out there. I think it’s getting better, but it’s still not anywhere where we need it to be because it’s happening all the time and it’s scary. Look at what you did with all those years of dealing with it. What could we do in the holistic space if we found this two weeks in with the person? Right? Okay, yeah, this is what it is. Let’s do this cause we can focus on this naturally.
Seven years or years of this without like proper diagnoses and proper understandings, the person can’t even begin to start, half the time, what they’re needing to do because no one’s ever told them what the problem is. I find it so cool how you have turned this around.
One of my favorite quotes is, the final stage of healing is using what happened to us to help others. You’re the embodiment of that. I suppose with what you’ve went through, it’s almost like there’s no other choice. It’s like, I can’t even picture you. Are you going to go back do a customer service stuff? No, you have to do this. This is your purpose here, clearly.
What did this look like in the initial stages of business? Had you run any businesses before or was that a new concept for you?
Thyroid Problems: Sarah’s Mission was Born
[00:27:09] Sarah Lohman: So, I cannot tell you. I am pure passion. I can’t tell you how hard it’s been. I have no business experience, entrepreneurial experience, nothing. Like you said, I sat there and got all those test results, facts back, and I saw with my own eyes why I was sick.
It made me angry that it took me this long. I wasted so much of my life. I begged so many doctors, I did so many things to get these answers. I just wept, because like you said, this is happening to so many women. My mission was born in that moment. I’m like, I have to do something about this.
I love everything you said. I literally cannot picture myself doing anything else because this is so bad. You know, everyone thinks COVID, COVID’S been terrible, but this is an absolutely crazy silent pandemic that is happening day in and day out. No one is talking about it. Nothing is being done.
I’m not going to lie, like I see myself as a leader that’s emerging in this community as a spokesperson. I would love to get bills passed. I would love to get testing changed. In fact, even though I was going to save this for the end, I’ll just tell you guys now. I just started, because this is so bad and I am hell-bent on fixing it, that I just launched a worldwide community called The Butterfly Gang. Right now, that’s my main focus.
Yes, I have clients. Yes, I work one-on-one. But it’s interesting how this year my passion has been turned to education. There’s so much gaslighting, misinformation online.
Thyroid Problems: The Aloneness Has to Stop
The number one thing that I see with my clients is like, while I educate them, there are so many aha moments that they’re forever changed on how they take care of themselves and how they are going to move forward with doctors and labs and maintaining the health that I help them regain. The empowerment, I have to provide this empowerment through education and support.
Because like I said earlier, the number one thing, women DM me every day on Instagram and they say, thank you so much for what you’re doing because I have no one else to talk to. No one understands their pain and their suffering, and they feel so alone. Yet there’s millions of women that are going through this, but they feel so alone. I’m like, this stops. I’m like, this aloneness is not okay. Because that’s how I felt. I was so alone and sad and I just wanted someone to talk to.
So yeah, I’ve started my community. I’ve already got wonderful women from all over the world to join. It’s going really great. I’m really excited for where this is going to go and how I can help empower and change women’s lives.
[00:30:14] Detective Ev: How can people join that? Because I have one person for you at the very least. My mom’s going to love this. There’s a lot of people that I know that go through this and then do the work one-on-one. There’s very few that I know that go and turn this into almost advocacy work.
It’s uncanny the similarities in the stories. Well, it’s not my place to share. It’s not the same traumas, but you’d be shocked like the overlaps here.
Where to Find Sarah Lohman
I know her whole thing is like wanting to start an autoimmune nonprofit eventually. She’s got a lot before that. But I already know that she would join this. So where can people go to be a part of that?
[00:30:43] Sarah Lohman: Absolutely. On my Instagram page, it’s on the link on my Instagram page, which is @coach.sarah.joy, or my TikTok page, which is just coachsarahjoy.
I actually am in the middle of setting up a new website, so I don’t have that. Otherwise, for people that hear this in the future, you could try coachsarahjoy.com.
[00:31:06] Detective Ev: Perfect. Thank you. I can adjust the show notes accordingly or just put both. Our listeners are, thankfully, pretty intelligent people. They should be able to figure it out.
You’ve probably learned so much in terms of how to address this stuff. So, you’re more than welcome to take any route that we want cause we got about 16 minutes left. We’ve went through this story and, clearly, as you talked about the spiritual side to it, that’s obvious. I believe that wholeheartedly.
But we all know that there are people that go through certain things that never get Hashimoto’s, that never get Graves’ Disease, they never get cancer. There are other aspects, biochemical, genetic, whatever, that go into this. So, what are some of the things now? You talked about like the spiritual is one. I don’t know what you listed it as. I apologize. What did you call it?
[00:31:48] Sarah Lohman: The 10 Root Cause Factors.
[00:31:48] Detective Ev: 10 Root Cause Factors.
Perhaps we don’t have time to get through all of them, but let’s talk about some of your favorites. What are some of the other ones that people should look out for?
Thyroid Problems: Mineral Depletions and Heavy Metal Toxicities
[00:31:56] Sarah Lohman: Well, my favorite that was the most life-changing for me and my health that I still keep up on consistently has been the mineral depletions and heavy metal toxicities.
When I discovered the hair tissue mineral analysis, do you guys do that in the FDN program?
[00:32:16] Detective Ev: Not in the main course, but we do have access to it as graduates, yes.
[00:32:19] Sarah Lohman: It’s incredible. I stumbled across that, as with everything. Stumble is the wrong word. I was divinely guided to this particular test.
It was when I pulled this on myself that it doesn’t go any deeper root cause than your hair in what you get back on that. But you have to use the right lab because some labs will wash or bleach your hair and skew your results. What I have found is, a very important factor is the mineral deficiencies.
There are so many reasons why the mineral deficiencies are occurring. We could have a show just on that, you know. It goes into the crappy soil and the poor food that’s malnourished in itself, right? But then the stress factor that you were talking about, when we’re under stress. We burn through our minerals, well, nutrients in general, five times faster than we do when we’re not stressed.
So, like what you said with all of those, stress, stress, I got hit, hit, hit, hit. Now looking back, I’m like, well, no wonder I started having symptoms because I was burning through all my nutrients, and I wasn’t eating. I wasn’t eating properly, so I wasn’t replenishing from all of the stress.
Thyroid Problems: History of Infections
What I’m seeing is the majority of women are deficient in the main minerals, just magnesium, sodium, and potassium. Sodium is a core mineral that we need for adrenal function. A lot of people, they want to say that it’s the thyroid going slow first. But really what I have found is the adrenals kind of tanking out first and then bringing the thyroid down with it.
Then I’m also seeing, with my people that have the nodules, their calcium displacement because of the low magnesium and other minerals is really severe. As our minerals deplete, our body will put metals to fill in the deficiencies and we accumulate metals as well.
As I bring the mineral to metal imbalance back into place with my clients, it’s incredible how I can start getting the organs and granular systems to start operating properly just by bringing those together. Because what people don’t realize is minerals really are the foundation to health. It really does start in the minerals. They’re the catalyst. So, that’s my first favorite root cause.
My second one is infections. So, with your mom, when you said your mom, it took her seven years, the gap that I’m seeing in all medical fields with thyroid warriors, this is where one of the things that I do with every single one of my clients is I run strep. A lot of my clients will show up and say, I had strep throat my whole life to the point where my tonsils were removed. They have a history of infection.
Thyroid Problems: Infection Within the Thyroid Gland
The majority of them, they’ll have herpes or Epstein-Barr, and they don’t even know it. They will have a bad infection going on. Their white blood cells will be elevated. I mean, all markers are maxed. The doctors will see like your VCA, EBV, like was out of 600 and they’re not really even putting them on like a basic antiviral. They’re just ignoring it.
So, one of the things that I started testing after I figured it out for myself, I was like, well, I want to see. I started testing all my clients for infections. Sure enough, I find the majority of them highly infected in their blood and in their organs and glands.
I think right there that, that’s one of the key factors to actual thyroid illness is there is a true infection happening within the gland that’s causing damage. Then you add on the stress, then you add on the mineral deficiencies, then you add on the gut imbalances, then you add on the gut infections and it’s just like this pile.
That’s why they can’t uncover it cause they don’t even use the testing to uncover it.
[00:36:21] Detective Ev: Do you find, is parasites ever involved in this as well?
[00:36:25] Sarah Lohman: I don’t know if you know who Kiran, I would say his last name wrong. Kiran Krishnan.
Detective Ev: Yeah, he’s been on the show.
Sarah Lohman: Oh, I love him. I am a big, big fan.
The gut test that I use is his BiomeFx. It’s sad to say, but right now he doesn’t have parasites within it. I really hope he will. But I don’t ever discount mold or parasites. I just do the minerals and the gut and the infection.
Thyroid Problems: Hydrochloric Acid
I focus on those right now and I have a lot of success with restoring my client’s health and stabilizing all of their labs just by focusing on those.
You know, one of the things, when we start restoring the stomach, rebuilding the hydrochloric acid, getting the liver detoxed, proper bile flow, we open up the detox pathways and people are going number two more than once a day or once every other day, a lot of things naturally start resolving.
Your first line of defense to protect yourself is your hydrochloric acid and the majority of people don’t even have enough of that. So, they’re suffering with a severe heartburn, reflex, and then that just goes into the poor absorption.
So, yes, I would love to pick up those tests and get even more geekier with my clients. But so far, I haven’t needed to.
[00:37:41] Detective Ev: Gotcha. I only ask cause, and it’s completely anecdotal, it’s like one case really. But the one guy, Ryan Monahan, he is a huge FDN practitioner and one of our clinical advisors, this is crazy. His TSH when he originally got tested was a 150 and it stopped at 150 because the test didn’t go any higher. That was the highest that the doctor had ever seen.
It’s pretty cool because he’s like you, he’s turned this all around and now really helps people that are struggling with this and not getting any resolution. He was a young man at the time too. He went to a Yale Clinical Grand Rounds with 40 doctors, and no one tested the thyroid. He ended up going to this naturopathic guy that finally did it.
Thyroid Problems: It’s About Lessing All the Stressors
I know I’m biased because I’ve learned from people like you and my mom, but this is 101 to me. Like, why would you not? This is a blood test for God’s sake. This is not hard to do. It is simple and I can include a bunch of other markers on there if I really want to. But again, we’ll spend another hour on that. It’s just amazing cause it’s really simple to test for.
I only ask cause he genuinely believes that when he got rid of Blastocystis Hominis, that was like the final thing for him. However, I love what you just brought up because it’s like, okay, the virus, the parasite, whatever, it’s never just one thing anyway. So, if you start nailing down all of this other stuff, you are going to have a client in front of you that starts feeling a lot better because the body, our human selves wouldn’t be here today if we couldn’t handle some level of stress or if we couldn’t handle parasites.
I’m not saying it’s ideal, I’m not saying I would wish for one. But to act like we can’t handle this stuff, to some degree, that’s asinine, right? We obviously can, that’s how we got to this place today. It’s just more about lessening the stress to the best of our ability instead of having a parasite, a virus, gluten in the diet, traumatic stress that hasn’t been dealt with. There’s so many different things.
And if I may ask, I’m just curious cause I know so many people in the thyroid space are pretty adamant about the gluten-free thing. Have you found that to be something that is pretty much required in these clients or are you not as big on that?
Thyroid Problems: Food Addiction Stressors
[00:39:29] Sarah Lohman: You know, one of the first things I do with every single one of my clients is what I developed .It’s called food and symptom tracking system. Because a lot of people are eating gluten and don’t realize that it’s causing unnecessary symptoms. So, I will go through the tracking system with them, and I’ll see what’s harming them basically and what’s not.
To answer your question, yes, I do find that majority of my clients feel better off of gluten and off of dairy, especially dairy. I know ladies, I know. They all say to me, Sarah, don’t take my cheese. I love my cheese. So, if you just said that in your head, then please go listen to my episode called Cheese Crack on my podcast and understand why you’re addicted to cheese.
[00:40:19] Detective Ev: Most people do not know. I’m not an expert but I do know that cheese does a certain thing to a certain part of the brain, very much associated with addiction in many people. So, there’s probably some good things to learn over there if you guys don’t know that.
Anything that we love obsessively and don’t want to give up for our own health, you can probably guess that there’s going to be some type of addictive nature there. It’s so weird, right? Because we say it out loud and it’s such a common thing that we don’t think twice. But how silly is that? And I’ve been there myself. Oh, I won’t give up a food, but the promise is, your chronic disease could get really better or even be gone. And I’m sitting here debating a food. It’s really not logical, but there’s gotta be clearly then something deeper if we can’t give it up.
Thyroid Problems: Alternative Food Industry
[00:40:53] Sarah Lohman: But you know what, okay, let me speak to that really fast. Those 10 years that I was sick, and I was doing all of my food elimination, I got to a place, like I told you, I would just cry. I missed pizza and I missed ice cream. I just wanted to have a regular latte that wasn’t with soy milk, you know, and all these things.
As the years have gone on and now, we have this fabulous alternative food industry that has saved us all gluten-free, dairy-free folks. I wholeheartedly believe in not ever putting my clients into food lack. So, if I’m like, okay, I see this food is causing you unnecessary symptoms, let’s replace it. A part of everything I provide is like, check out this brand and ooh, look at this bread and you know, look at this cheese. It’s like everything in moderation, obviously. But I’m like, yes, let’s make some nachos. I’ll show you how, you know, gluten-free, dairy free.
But just to speak to that gentleman that you mentioned, the Blastocystis Hominis, that actually is a gram-negative bacterium that is covered on the gut test. There are 35. The test goes into protis bacteria, fungi, and viruses. Even though parasites per se aren’t listed on there, there is everything else.
I see C Diff infections all the time and these really bad gram-negative infections or overgrowth, which is really easy to repair because you just have to start shifting the diet and bringing up the good bacteria.
Thyroid Problems: Functional Lab Testing
But one of the other things that really has bothered me about sort of the alternative spaces, they’re using outdated tests, too. So, I had a PCR test done on myself, on my gut, and it’s seven pages long and it did provide some answers, but really not a lot. Where this new test, this breakthrough state-of-the-art gut test by Biome called BiomeFX, is a game changer.
[00:42:48] Detective Ev: Cool. For whatever it’s worth for FDNs listening, because I think they get confused sometimes, especially if they’re new and we have a lot of new ones that listen. So yes guys, we have our main stuff in the FDN course. But what’s cool about what Sarah’s saying is that you actually can get access to this as an FDN practitioner because we can create accounts directly with Microbiome Labs, like many health professionals. You can actually do that there if you’re interested.
And we always say too, just make sure you get the proper training on whatever you’re doing. Because any test is useless if it’s in the eyes of someone who doesn’t know how to analyze it.
But clearly, absolutely at the highest levels, there are just objectively better tests. Like there are objectively better food sensitivity tests for certain things if the person knows what they’re looking at and how to do it. Better hormone tests, if the person knows what they’re looking at.
I love that you use that one. Admittedly I don’t hear about that one as much, but now I’m starting to see a lot more spread in a variety of places. We got people repping Vibrant Wellness a lot. GI MAP is still a standard, of course. I know some people that still do the classic stool culture.
Thyroid Problems: Personal Experience Based Programs
I don’t know necessarily what the advantage of that would be in today’s world with all the other stuff that we have. Like, I don’t know how that would be a good standalone, but I get it. Some people like doing their thing. Whatever we can do to find the most things for the client is great. And what’s kind of nice, I guess, in a sense about gut testing is we’re still at a point where even though we’re getting so much more advanced, we’re never going to find everything, most likely.
There are core principles that are most important to focus on, that you probably can do with just about anyone regardless of the test or not. Never get too overwhelmed about it if you’re a new practitioner.
You’re clearly, extremely well versed in this. Something I wanted to ask you. Basically, I know that you have certifications, but you kind of came up with your own system though, is that correct?
[00:44:22] Sarah Lohman: I did, yeah. I have created everything based on what I did to myself. And then there’s been some developments along the way. But I have an OG whole program and system. I didn’t know cool people like you existed out there in all these programs. I really just was like, I am going to figure this out myself, and I pioneered everything. So, yeah, I’m really proud of what I’ve built and it’s very effective.
[00:44:49] Detective Ev: Yeah, you should be. This is impressive.
Thyroid Problems: Sickness Can Be Debilitating
Reed, basically, did a similar thing, right? I know plenty of people who have certifications. You would now be the second person that I know that has come up with, okay, I’m going to actually figure out an intelligent system here myself. Reed’s the only other person I know. I don’t know, you guys are both impressive in different ways.
On one end I’m impressed with Reed since one, he did it a while ago, and two, he did it in the sense that like he didn’t even have the motivation of his own health issues. So that’s cool. But then on the opposite end, we have someone like you who was super sick and trying to figure this out.
I don’t care how passionate someone is when you’re sick. I’m a motivated guy. It’s hard to get stuff done when you’re sick. It’s very motivating in moments, like you get the lab results back, awesome. The new supplements come in, great. But then there’s a day to day. There’s 24 hours in that day and it can be near debilitating sometimes, depending on what the person’s dealt with.
So, just props to you. I think it goes without saying, cause somehow we have gotten 50 minutes. I’d love to have you back on. We have had part twos with people. It’s only been a few times, but sometimes the story’s just phenomenal and it’s like we have to have you back on to go through the rest of these 10 pillars. So we’ll talk about that when we’re off here.
Who Would Like to Work With Sarah?
Two quick things then. One, I think we kind of already have the answer, but just to be clear, where can they find the rest of your business stuff? You still will actively take clients right now despite your new project, right? Like they could still work with you?
[00:46:01] Sarah Lohman: Yes. I only have two spots open before I’m maxed out. I don’t want to overwhelm myself because I pour everything into my clients. I’m sure you know the feeling. They are just, they’re like my sisters.
Thank you for all of your kind words. I really appreciate that. It’s so nice to hear your compliments. You know, it wasn’t easy. So, yeah, like I said before, I mainly live on Instagram. I’ve tried to switch to other platforms, but I just have an amazing, beautiful community there that I’ve built. And I talk with my thyroid warriors constantly.
So, that’s just @coach.sarah.joy. I do post on TikTok and sometimes go live. But it’s my secondary, so you could also find me there just coachsarahjoy. I do have my podcast Thursday Thyroid Talks. You can watch all of the replays on my YouTube channel, again, which is just coachsarahjoy.
My podcast is really cool because I started it to actually touch on thyroid warriors’ stories, but then it was really hard to always get a thyroid warrior to come on with me every other week and share their stories. So, then I started inviting other coaches on, and now I have a lot of different guests.
The Butterfly Gang
But that’s one of the core things of my podcast is I invite women, everyday women just like me, to come on and just share what they’re going through because we need to hear these things. We need to know that there’s other people out there that are going through similar things like this and that we’re not alone. So, you can go check that out, all major platforms.
Then my community, the Butterfly Gang, it’s very beautiful place. I know it’s just going to grow and be so incredible over the years. I have my five-year vision for it already, and I can see myself doing meditation, leading meditations, and cooking classes, and juicing, and smoothies.
Right now, I’m just focusing on the core education of my 10 Root Cause Factors. I just posted my first lesson, which was just Thyroid 101. Next week I’m posting Thyroid Malfunction 101, then I’m going to go into the 10 Root Cause Factors. The rest of the year I’m going to really pinpoint in on the education of each 10 Root Cause Factor. It’s a really incredible place. It’s only $40 a month.
Right now, they can try it for free for seven days, like a seven-day free trial. Come in, check it out, decide if we want to stay. Then there’s going to be the video vault. So, no matter when they join, they can have access to all the replays and, of course, the community.
Signature Podcast Question
[00:48:27] Detective Ev: This is awesome. Alright, well even though we will have you back on, I will still ask you our signature question for today and it’s my favorite question on the podcast. This is a tough one too, cause you’ve learned a lot, so it’ll be interesting to hear what you say.
The signature question is this, if I could give you, in this case, a magic wand and you could wave it and get every single person in this world to do one thing for their health, so you can choose literally getting them to do one thing or you can get them to stop doing one thing, what is the one thing that Sarah would get them to do?
[00:48:55] Sarah Lohman: That is such a good question. Oh my gosh. I could wave a magic wand and get everyone to do one thing, what would I have them do? Oh, there’s so many avenues to tolerate illness.
[00:49:11] Detective Ev: And it can be health in general too if it makes it simpler for you.
[00:49:15] Sarah Lohman: You know, I would definitely have everyone start requesting when they go in and they’re so adamant over their thyroid panels, I would have them start requesting infection panels too. I would have them start taking these herpes, cold sores, all these different viral infections more serious.
I would have them look at those as in, okay, this is something seriously going on in my body. What can I do about it? Regardless of if they aren’t going to take it serious with you, you can still research of like, okay, this is what I see. What can I do to help myself?
[00:49:51] Detective Ev: Got it. Sarah, this was excellent.
Conclusion
Thank you so much for coming on today.
[00:49:56] Sarah Lohman: You’re welcome. Thank you so much.
You can always visit us at functionaldiagnosticnutrition.com.
To hire an FDN practitioner, go to fdnthrive.com.
For a Free eBook, go to fdnthrive.com/steps/.
