Listen Here:

 

In this episode, I’m interviewing MY PRACTITIONER, Ryan Monahan!!

Ryan is a Functional Diagnostic Nutrition (FDN) practitioner and certified AIP (Autoimmune Paleo Protocol) Coach with a passion for uncovering the “hidden stressors” that contribute to thyroid malfunction. Ryan spent over 10 years visiting more than 40 health professionals to find answers to his chronic health complaints until being diagnosed with Hashimoto’s in 2012. His mission is to change the dialogue about chronic disease towards a holistic, functional approach.

In this episode, we discuss:

• why “test don’t guess” is Ryan’s mantra
• some of my personal journey working with Ryan
• what to expect from the functional approach
• the roots of chronic illness
• specific lab testing
• genetic mutations
• finding a diagnosis
• healing beyond the lab

Additional Resources:

Find a FDN near you

FDN provides you with cutting-edge functional lab assessment training, access to lab testing and resources, to continuously enhance your knowledge about functional health practices, so you can actually fix the health issues you or your clients are facing, which enables you to create a successful business doing what you love while positively impacting others.

COURSE: Tapping to Support Chronic Illness

Discover the immense power of emotional freedom technique! This is an effective tool for your toolbox that will help you to overcome negative beliefs, clear your energy, and even identify information from your subconscious mind so you can get to the root of the challenges you are experiencing.

PRODUCT: Autoimmune Strong

Try a 7-day free trial of Autoimmune Strong! This fitness program was specifically created for people who live with autoimmune disease, fibromyalgia, and chronic pain.

 

Episode Transcript:

Welcome to the Healing Uncensored Podcast. My name is Sarah Small, and I’m a health and mindset coach for women with autoimmune disease just like you. I absolutely love helping you tap into your self-healing power, uncover the energetic, side of healing, and release limiting beliefs around your body, and your life. Think of this podcast is everything you wouldn’t hear at your doctor’s office. It’s a place for empowered souls to move beyond food, and heal themselves on a soul level. I hope you enjoy today’s episode. Now, let’s begin.

You are in for a treat today. My guest is Ryan Monahan. He has an FDN or Functional Diagnostic Nutrition Practitioner, and a certified AIP coach with a passion for uncovering the hidden stressors that contribute to thyroid malfunction. Ryan spent over 10 years visiting more than 40 health professionals to find answers to his chronic health complaints. Until he was eventually diagnosed with Hashimoto’s in 2012.

His mission now is to change the dialogue around chronic disease towards a holistic functional approach, which I am totally on board with. As an FDN, he specializes in utilizing functional lab work. He can actually order this for you, and that helps him identify sources of metabolic stress, with the aim of restoring the body to normal function. So, these are stressors that are often overlooked by allopathic medicine. Things like HPA axis, dysregulation, food sensitivities, hormone imbalance, gut infections, heavy metals, and so much more. And today you’re going to hear me talk a little bit about some of the roots of my illness. And how Ryan has helped me on a physical side, start to heal my body in a holistic way. So, Ryan’s clients are typically those people, myself included, who have struggled with finding relief from their autoimmune symptoms. And oftentimes they feel like they’ve tried everything, and that traditional medicine hadn’t served them. And in his experience, and in my experience working with him, there is a better way. So, let’s dive in and hear everything that Ryan has to share with us today.

[musical interlude]

Sarah: Ryan, welcome to the show.

Ryan: Hey, thanks for having me.

Sarah: So, glad to have you on here. And so, for anyone who doesn’t already know, Ryan’s also my practitioner. And I’ve been working with him for, I think since last September, maybe October.

Ryan: That sounds about right.

Sarah: So, it’s not quite a year, but we’ve been through a little bit of a journey together, and I’m super excited to have him on today. So, welcome. And Ryan, I just wanted you to start by getting the audience to know you a little bit better by explaining how did you get your Hashimoto’s, that diagnosis? And what did your personal healing journey look like?

Ryan: Sure, I’d be happy to share my story with you. And thanks again, so much for having me on, I’m really grateful to be here. And to talk about autoimmunity, and Hashimoto’s, and hopefully help some people that are in your community. So, thank you for helping me to reach out to more people. So, as far as my own personal story, I would say that my health started to slide downward, probably in my college years. And what I noticed was that I was having a lot of trouble waking up in the morning. Just a lot of fatigue issues, and I would have to set two or three alarms, and it still wouldn’t be enough to wake me up. So, at that point I should have suspected that something was wrong. But I just didn’t even really suspect there being any issues. Because when you’re that age, when you’re younger, or you’re in your twenties, you’re burning the candle at both ends, putting your nose to the grindstone. And you just think, I’m just exhausted cause I’m just overworked. This is just how it goes. So, I think that there’s a general tendency for us to disregard or ignore our symptoms as being normal. When in fact, it depends on your definition of what normal is. And I think that there’s this new definition of normal is, that we’re all sick. So, this is just how it’s supposed to be, or it’s a natural process of ageing. All these stories and narratives. But of course, symptoms may be common, but that doesn’t mean they’re normal. So, in that sense, it’s not normal to be well adjusted to a sick society. And I believe that, I’m not getting the exact quote right. But, that’s one of my favorite quotes from Krishnamurti. That whole concept that we don’t want to be maladjusted to this new normal.

Sarah: I totally relate to that though. I remember in my early to mid-twenties where, it became my normal, that I would get bloated after every meal I ate. And I, for a while, accepted that. And I just said, Oh, this is just the way it is. Until I realized that there was a path to heal this. And it was absolutely not normal to get bloated after everything you were eating. So, totally relate to that, just what your definition of normal is. And also, that I think a lot of us start to settle.

Ryan: And it’s amazing how much pain we’ll take and accept.

Sarah: Yes.

Ryan: Not really. I think it takes a lot of awareness, and being a part of this whole nutrition, and functional community and educating yourself. Cause you may disregard those symptoms as just being a part of your everyday life. And I went through that myself. I went through years, and years of every day having chronic allergies, and congestion, and asthma, digestive issues, sleep issues, energy issues. There, wasn’t a day that I went through my life, where I didn’t have some kind of chronic symptom for at least 15 years. And that’s just a shame. Nobody deserves to go through that, and miss out on entire decades of their life, because they’re a prisoner to their body and they’re symptoms

Sarah: So, what ultimately allowed you to stop settling, seek support, find diagnosis, and heal? Cause I’ve seen some of your transformation photos and it’s just incredible. I mean your whole face looks different.

Ryan: I look back at older pictures of myself, and I just don’t even recognize the person in those pictures. And I think that in a lot of these photos too, when I look back, I feel I look older. Five, six, seven years ago, than I do now. Which is, I think a testament to eating a nutrient dense diet, and engaging in lifestyle practices that help to restore your health. I can tell you from experience, that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. There is a path, but it does take a little bit of faith. It takes a leap of faith to try something different. Of course, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over, and over again, and expecting results. And along those lines, my insanity was going from specialist to specialist, to doctor after doctor. And just having them look in isolation, at one symptom to the next symptom, from their specific lens, without really much discussion of diet, lifestyle, or underlying, what I call, hidden stressors. Which we’ll definitely get into at length.

Because these are things that are just often overlooked and most people wouldn’t think to look for them. So, it wasn’t until my symptoms got worse. And it’s unfortunate too, that so many of us wait until we hit rock bottom, instead of being proactive with our health. Because, not only do you have the potential to feel much better, but you can save a lot of money, I think, by engaging in diet, and lifestyle practices, before it comes to the crisis point. So, for me personally, it had been years of increasing fatigue. To the point where I was sometimes sleeping for 12 hours a night. I was so fatigued that I can only have a part time job. It affected my ability to make money, and make a living for myself.

My depression was getting worse, and worse, and I was isolating myself from people. I was ashamed. On top of that, there was this emotional aspect of shame. I felt it was my fault, that all these symptoms were happening to me. So, I really, really hit rock bottom with my health, where nothing was working. My digestion wasn’t working, my motivation was completely lacking. I had severe cold intolerance as well. I mean, it would be 80, 90 degrees outside, and I would need a sweater and a jacket. Which is a telltale sign of having a thyroid issue. But, still at that point, I had no knowledge of what the thyroid even was.

So, it took me seeing an alternative practitioner, that was licensed in Chinese medicine. And I had an appointment with him. I laid it all out for him, told him my whole story. And he ran some blood work. He came back a few days later, actually rang me up on the phone, which was a nice personal touch. You don’t often get a phone call from a doctor. So, I liked the guy, I trusted him, I trusted his opinion. And it had turned out that I had really, really high antibodies to the thyroid. My TSH levels were sky high. They were above 150. And for those of you who aren’t aware of what TSH is. It’s a marker for thyroid function. It’s actually a hormonal signal from your pituitary glands. Almost like the pituitaries, the conductor of your thyroid, to tell it to make more or less thyroid hormone. So, when that number goes higher, that’s often a sign that your thyroid is sluggish. And, we want to see that ideally, around a one. As in 1.0, is the sweet spot, and mine was above 150. So, what that tells us is that this had been an issue going back years, and years. Auto-immunity, doesn’t just happen overnight, it’s a progression. And just going by symptoms, and how I felt in my college years, my guess is that, I probably started developing this, at maybe even age 18, 19. This is that far back. And I’d gone just about 10 years with it being unrecognized or undiagnosed.

Sarah: So, I’m gonna ask you a strange question. I mostly work with women, and it’s because women, or/are more predominantly affected by autoimmune disease. So, as a man with autoimmune disease, I mean, you’re the first person I’ve had on a podcast, that is a man with autoimmune disease. Do you feel like that’s changed your experience at all? Was there any shame around it? What was your experience as a male, in this autoimmune world?

Ryan: Well, in some sense I wasn’t uncomfortable with the fact that, it’s typically thought of as a women’s diagnosis. I actually did a yoga teacher training in 2010, and I was the only male in the class. And I was proud of that. I liked being the outrider. The only thing that was difficult about it was, that at first it was difficult to find resources that were targeted towards men, in regards to hypothyroidism or Hashimoto’s. Dave Asprey, who brands himself as the Bulletproof Executive, some of you are probably familiar with Dave. He actually was diagnosed with Hashimoto’s from being exposed to mold. But, I feel he doesn’t make that a commonly known part of his story. Which I feel is too bad, because he could be this voice in the male community for Hashimoto’s. So, you have to do a little bit of digging, but he did put his Hashimoto’s into complete remission, by removing himself from the moldy environment and, detoxing mold and micro toxins out of his body. But, that just gave me all the more motivation to want to be a male voice in the Hashimoto’s community.

And, I just hope to bring the issue to light, and maybe even help more men to discover that they have a hidden health issue, like a thyroid issue. Because although it’s typically thought of as a women’s diagnosis, I feel that men perhaps are less inclined to go to the doctor to seek that kind of help. Or maybe be more in denial about their symptoms, or just maybe tough it out sort of thing. Which is definitely, the kind of advice and messages that I received from friends and family growing up. And, just eat more fiber, or lift more weights, that kind of thing. And, boy was that wrong, because my body was messed up. Which was reassuring and it was like a huge weight lifted off of my shoulders. Because I knew that all those years that I wasn’t crazy, thinking that there was something going on. I knew, intuitively, that there was a deeper issue going on. I just didn’t know what it was. Couldn’t put a name to it.

Sarah: So, you’ve made this complete transformation, and now you work as a FDN, the Mindful Nutrivore. And FDN stands for functional diagnostic nutritionist, but let’s tell the listeners a little bit more. What does that really mean? What could you expect when you work with an FDN?

Ryan: I’d be happy to add some clarification there. It can get pretty confusing because there are all different kinds of licenses and practitioners out there now. And they can all help you from a different lens or through a different healing approach. And I like to think of FDNs as being health detectives. Essentially, what we’re aiming to do is, try to discover or uncover hidden clues as a detective would. And these clues can point towards dysfunction in the body. And it’s our belief, that the body can’t heal itself if there are interferences or dysfunctions in the body. So, the idea being that by the use of functional lab work, if we can look for these clues through the lab work through symptom history, and intake. And put all these clues together, then we can find hidden stressors in the body like hormone imbalances, immune dysfunction, digestive dysfunction, energy production issues, neurotransmitter issues.

So, these are all things that we consider to be homeostatic controls. And if the homeostasis is off in our physiology, then our body won’t be able to heal itself. So, that’s all just a fancy way of saying that, symptoms aren’t the problem. They are the result of the problem. So, whereas, in the traditional model, we think about suppressing symptoms with medications and surgery. We want to be allies with our symptoms, and to try to figure out what are the symptoms trying to tell us? What are the underlying root causes that are contributing to those symptoms? Whether it be infections in the gut or emotional trauma in the past. Or exposure to toxic mold, or mercury fillings, which are off-gassing mercury. And then, those heavy metals can pass through the blood-brain barrier and cause inflammation, and depression, anxiety, all kinds of cognitive issues.

So, we’re really looking to restore balance to the system, to let the body heal itself. And then, the symptoms often resolve themselves downstream. So, as FDNs, we actually, this may sound counterintuitive, but we don’t really focus on the symptoms. The symptoms aren’t as important. It’s looking upstream, to see what might be causing those symptoms. And then you address those underlying issues, rather than asking the question, how do I address fibromyalgia? How do I address hypothyroidism? How do I address anxiety and depression? We’re looking a little bit deeper to say, well what’s going on with the hormones and the gut, et cetera.

Sarah: So, I’d love to talk a little bit about my health journey with you. So, I came to you, I already had these diagnoses. I had the celiac diagnosis, fibromyalgia, vitiligo, blah, blah, blah. But, I was having symptoms that were very uncomfortable, like anxiety. And I was still experiencing a lot of fatigue, and I was still having acne and breakouts. And things that were still bothering me, that again, they were there, they were present. And I was, okay, this probably has something to do with my autoimmune disease, but I didn’t understand the root of it. So, I hired you. We did some lab testing. Can you talk about what those first steps were, that we did together And what you would typically start off, any client doing, to try to find the answers? The root, as you said, that upstream part of what’s causing, for me, when I came to you in this specific case, anxiety or fatigue?

Ryan: Absolutely. So, typically when I start with a client, just like you and I did together, we’ll do a few, simple, intake forms. And that gives us a roadmap for what kind of dysfunction we might be looking at. And we can also change those symptoms scores, as we move along, as a means for tracking progress, which is really helpful. And we’ll also look at things like food journaling, to see how the diet might be tuned up, for your unique diet and lifestyle and your bio-individuality. And then, based on that, we’ll take a look at what symptoms might be given the most priority. And, oftentimes, with most clients, I’m going to be running a basic battery of tests, which can help give us the most information. The most bang for our buck.

And, I start by looking at what might be called or referred to as the usual suspects. So, there’s a fair assumption that most people with chronic symptoms are going to be dealing with hormone imbalances, and infections in the gut. Those are just where you often get the most payout, in terms of running these labs. And, of course, I’m sure most of your listeners know this, that, your gut has so many implications for healing. And, your gut is tied into every other system in your body, even if we’re just looking at the gut/brain access. And how your gut health is related to your mood. So, we get a lot of clinical relevance, for example, for running a GI map. Which is a stool pathogens test. And looking for things like parasites, yeast, overgrowth, bacterial infections, even viruses can show up, and worms.

We can also look for intestinal health biomarkers. So we can see is there inflammation in the gut? Is your immune system reacting to gluten? Are there enough digestive enzymes in your gut? We can actually look at all these things, through running a GI map. So, that’s definitely one of the flagship tests that I use in my practice. And then, I also like to run a Dutch test as well. And that’s going to look at the stress response, through cortisol levels. It’s going to look at the sex hormones, like progesterone, estrogen, testosterone, and a whole lot more. As you know, both of those tests are so in-depth, and give us so much information. And, we could easily talk for one hour each, on just either of those labs.

Sarah: Yes. They provide so much insight. And it’s funny because, I was fairly resistant to, especially the GI map. Because I was over here going, I’ve got, I think it’s type four, Bristol stool chart. Good group, right? My digestion is on point, it’s normal, it’s regular. I was no longer experiencing any stomach pain. I think it really just goes to show, that our symptoms can manifest in different ways. Each in unique ways, in all of our different bodies. And my symptoms are manifesting less in a very physical gut symptom. and more as anxiety, or inflammation. Because, when we looked at my GI map, we saw, and you can add to this, I’m trying to remember exactly. I know there was a lot of inflammation. We found out that I had parasites, H. pylori, yeast fungal, and bacterial overgrowth.

Ryan: The full house.

Sarah: And so it was not shocking, but shocking. There was shocking in that, I was, why am I having normal bowel movements? But still, all these things are happening? But then, it was also amazing, to have all of those answers, and start to put the pieces together. And then, obviously, working with you, just figure out the best path moving forward. We addressed the parasites first. So, going on a parasite protocol to eliminate the parasites, and checking things off the box. And, we also did the Dutch hormone panel for me. And I found out a lot of information through that test as well. But, all those pieces have been enlightening, because there’s so much information that I would never have guessed about my body, that then showed up on the lab test. Me, as a human being, I was just thinking, Oh, I have anxiety. And, come to you after trying all the different kinds of anxiety-reducing techniques, outside of the physical realm. And then, ultimately, it was, I was at my, unfortunately, my rock bottom with my anxiety. I wish I had reached out sooner. But, glad I found you, and glad that we’ve started to work to reduce some of the root causes of the symptoms I’ve been experiencing. So, thank you for that.

Ryan: You’re more than welcome. And I’m so glad that you brought all that up. Because this is the sort of cycle of trial and error, that a lot of people sort of find themselves stuck in. And you’ve probably heard, and heard me say this before, but people end up playing this game of Whac-A-Mole with their symptoms. And they’ll try some things which will have some benefit. I’ve read that, I should be taking vitamin D. Or they’ll start a yoga practice, and they’ll start engaging in those first steps of working towards those healthy diet and lifestyle habits. And those are all fantastic. And I definitely encourage people to continue going down those paths. But, what people often find is that, they’ll do the AIP diet, they’ll have the yoga practice and meditation. They feel like they’re doing all the right things, but they just are still stuck. They hit a wall with their symptoms. And I get this question a lot. When I first start talking to people, they say, I’m eating a clean paleo diet, all organic. I’m eating organ meats.

Sarah: That’s me. Well, I’m eating all this good food.

Ryan: Right. And believe it or not, it’s not all about food. Nor is it all just about exercise, nor is it all just about stress reduction. We want to look at all these things as a whole. So, that’s why it’s so important to engage in all of these practices. With the caveat that what a lot of people don’t understand is that, even if they’re eating a perfect diet, for example. If they’re not breaking down and assimilating those nutrients, from their food, i.e. there’s the presence of a parasite in their system, that’s competing for those nutrients. So are you going to get all those nutrients and building blocks in your system? Probably not. So, in that sense, that’s why we call these hidden stressors. Because there things that people often don’t look for. But, yet, without you knowing it, they’re in a sense, preventing you from reaching that next plateau, or firing on all cylinders. So, that’s where testing can be really helpful, because it helps you move from that trial and error phase, or that kind of, whack-a-mole. Like, let me just try to address this symptom now, and other symptoms coming up. Oh, what’s going on? And then, the testing can come along to provide you with some hard data, to help you stop guessing. And so, that’s where the mantra comes in, “test don’t guess”.

Sarah: I love that. And, I did a lot of guessing, and it really didn’t lead me anywhere. And to everyone listening, I can’t recommend enough, that if you are in a place where you feel like you’re eating right, and you’re doing your yoga, and you’re meditating, but you still feel like shit. Or, you have debilitating anxiety or pain like I was experiencing, look deeper, go, and get the test done. Do one at a time, if there are financial constrictions, restrictions. I started with, I think two, and I’ve slowly gone through a lot of them now. And each one has painted a more in-depth picture of what’s going on in my body at that time. So, now we’ve gone and done, we initially did a thyroid panel. My thyroid was actually fine. Just recently did more of the OAT test (organic acid tests) found out, even more information on me, that I had excess oxalates.

And I talked about this two episodes ago, Ryan. I told everyone what I’m currently eating, and why I’m currently not eating oxalates. But again, those foods that fall in the oxalate group, how would you even put those together if you didn’t know what an oxalate was or did? But was eye-opening for me. And now, I feel a lot better having a low oxalate diet. But also, I wanted to maybe talk a little bit about genetic mutation. So, another test that I had done is 23andMe. There are options on how you can get your genes tested. Physically when you looked at my 23andMe results, in a third party, Live Wello. Is, it showed that I had the MTHFR genetic mutation, as well as the COMT, C-O-M-T mutation. And those two, they sound funny. I posted about MTHFR in my Facebook group one time, and mom was, why are you saying motherfucker?

Ryan:   The first time I posted about MTHFR, I had a comment. That gene can be an MF-er.

Sarah: It is. It is an MF-er. So, those two things, I didn’t know anything about. I’ve not even heard of MTHFR, and I had clients with MTHFR. But, I was not fully aware, or knowledgeable, on how they could then have these downstream effects, as far as how your body breaks down or metabolizes in your brain, your neurotransmitters, B vitamins, et cetera. So, can you tell us a little bit, the basic snippet. A little bit of how MTHFR mutation could affect somebody. I like to put it in that warrior, warrior context. How that could affect somebody in a broad sense? I know you don’t have anyone’s lab tests in front of you.

Ryan: Sure, no. I think I could give a good, broad overview. So what Sarah is talking about here, are what we call, SNPs. Which is an acronym for, single nucleotide polymorphisms. And, that’s really just a simple term for, genetic mutations. And when we say this word mutation, we tend to freak out, cause we think we’re a mutant or something. It’s definitely nothing to freak out about, when you get your genetic results. Because everybody in the world has genetic SNPs. And, 25% of the population or more, has either the MTHFR gene, or the COMT gene. So, what’s really, really important. And I can’t stress this enough, to the listeners here on the podcast. Is that, diet and lifestyle take precedence over your genetics. I feel this isn’t talked about enough in the functional community. People want to go and treat SNP for SNP, and treat each of these genetic mutations, as though they were a disease or something.

It’s just not the case. When these genetic mutations show up, or variants, might be a better word. It doesn’t sound as harsh as mutant, mutation. So, if you have these genetic variations show up, it just means that, there is a tendency for that gene to not work as well. And I’ll highlight that word again, ‘tendency’. So, functional practitioners like Dr. Ben Lynch, and Chris Kresser, they like to say that genes are like the gun, but the environment is like the trigger,. So what’s more important to focus on, is that epigenetic component. Which says that we have the ability to determine how our genes function. Whether they’re turned on or off. And so, all the good diet, and lifestyle, and stress reduction techniques, and exercise, and all that. Those are going to help, be your best insurance policy, that your genes are working up to their full potential.

And actually, I have this book right beside me. I highly recommend this book. I love this book, ‘Dirty Genes’ by Dr. Ben Lynch. I am in no way associated with Dr. Ben Lynch. So, do not earn any commissions from promoting this book. I genuinely think you should go out and buy a copy, because, he goes over the most important genes, one by one. But he also stresses over, and over again, that the best thing that you can do for your genes, to make them undirty, is to do a soak and scrub. Which is a cool analogy. And, the soak and scrub is just all the good diet, lifestyle.

Sarah: I think, what I’ve heard, I think this is from Dr. Bruce Lipton, who I love his work, ‘Power of Belief’. And, I think the numbers he uses is 95% of our overall health is determined by our environment, lifestyle, et cetera. [inaudible 00:03:41] 5% is our genes. So yes, it’s a factor, but as you said, is it the gun or the trigger? Well, is it actually going off? It depends on the environment that we’re in.

Ryan: Absolutely. Absolutely. And, to that point, I’m going to go ahead and say something sort of off the record here, which I don’t think you’ll hear a lot of functional medicine doctors say, or FDS, or other functional health coaches. I think that we did get this question in the group yesterday, cause we had some questions there. And there was a few on what can I do on a low budget to address things from a functional perspective, or to work with a functional practitioner? And what I’m going to say here is maybe a little bit unconventional, but the best tests that you can run are… and this may seem to counteract or contradict everything we just talked about. But the best tests you can run is no tests, and to commit to the diet and lifestyle changes. Because, I can run all these tests for you, but if they’re not motivation enough for you to make those changes, to really see your health as a long-term investment. And to make your life, sorry, your health and your life, your number one priority, then you don’t need to run any tests. You need to maybe focus on the mental, emotional side, and getting to a place where you can make healing commitment, and to realize that you’re worth it. Your health is worth it.

Sarah: Absolutely. You have to make it a priority, and not everyone is ready honestly, to make it a priority, to make an investment, but to each their own. And sometimes, we have to all do it in our own timing, but that makes a lot of sense to me. If people aren’t ready then, also don’t waste your money on all the tests if you’re not going to make the changes.

Ryan: Right. Absolutely. Yeah. And I’m not dismissing the importance of testing whatsoever. I still stand by my belief that one should test and not guess, and stop playing this game of trial and error with their symptoms. But where you get the biggest payoff is, eating a clean diet, eliminating processed foods and sugars, eating organic and pasture-raised meats, and wild-caught fish, and getting optimal sleep. Doing infrared saunas, Epsom salt, baths, all those stress reduction techniques. And that’s where you get the biggest payoff. So really, if one were to choose between running thousands of dollars worth of tests, or investing the greater share of that money into a gym membership, or a yoga teacher training program, or regular visits to the sauna. I honestly, I think that the money is better spent on yourself. And then, once you get there, once you’re ready, then start thinking about running some of the tests.

Sarah: Yeah, awesome.

Ryan: So Sarah, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt. I didn’t yet answer the specific question.

Sarah: Oh, yeah. Let’s talk about it.

Ryan: And there’s so much good stuff to talk about. I love this. And I did touch upon, genetics as a general concept, and how we want to approach them. But, all that being said, if you see an MTHFR mutation for example, or that genetic predisposition, if you will, do get the book and read all about MTHFR. But what it essentially means is that your body’s ability to synthesize foliate is impaired. And so, there are several implications to that. When the MTHFR gene isn’t functioning fully, what it means is that your methylation cycle isn’t working properly.

So, imagine them like gears in a factory, and those gears produce certain end products. And if the MTHFR gene is not working properly, those genes won’t be turning. And one of the main things that the methylation cycle is responsible for is producing something called SAM-e. And SAM-e is our body’s main methyl donor. And we use methyl donors in every cell in our body, SAM-e and other methyl donors are almost just as important as oxygen. And SAM-e is actually what helps our epigenetics. So these methyl donors help to ensure that our disease genes aren’t getting activated. And it also makes sure that our quote-unquote, healthy genes are working properly. SAM-e also helps with neurotransmitter, metabolism, end products of methylation are also helping ensure that. So for example, you mentioned the COMT gene, and I hope this isn’t, I’m not making this too complicated. I’ll try to make it as simple as possible.

But when your methylation cycle makes SAM-e, or what we’re calling those methyl donors. Those methyl donors are used by other genes like COMT. So, in that sense, we often refer to MTHFR as like being the master gene, because it makes the methyl donors that your other genes need to work and to function properly. And that’s why MTHFR gets so much attention. Why it can potentially have so many implications for our health. And for just to make a specific example, if we don’t have the methyl donors we need for our COMT gene to work, that gene slows down, and then we’re not breaking down our stress hormones, our fight or flight neurotransmitters like dopamine, epinephrine, [inaudible 00:41:34] epinephrin. When those chemicals build up, almost like a bathtub where the drain is clocked. Then those chemicals don’t have anywhere to go. They can’t drain down the plug. And then, we ended up with symptoms of anxiety. But we need MTHFR to be working, to donate the methyl donors to SAM-e, or to COMT, and then we can unclog the drain, and all of the stress chemicals can pour down the drain. And there’s a lot more to it than that. Those are just kind of a couple of examples.

Sarah: They were very eyeopening for me, even within this lens of, this is only tentatively 5% of my overall health. But how is it affecting some of the downstream parts of my body, or anxiety as a symptom, that is on a surface level? So, it’s really fascinating to see what’s going on as far as genetics, and how it does play some role. But can you talk a little bit into these, some of our listener questions? So yesterday, I posted in my Facebook group, Autoimmune Tribe and asked the women in there what do they want to know? And we got lots of questions. The first, you already started to answer. So, Shandy wanted to know, someone who’s just starting their journey, what would you recommend? Where’s your money best spent? And I think you really touched on that by saying, start with the emotional. Get your mindset right before you dive in. Make sure you’re ready to make the changes, and you’re going to make them a priority. And then, Kate also wanted to know how she can find a good functional doctor, and some ways to manage costs, but still effectively learn and heal with a functional doctor?

Ryan: I’ll just touch on that really quick too, from my perspective, cause I’m the patient or the client. That I did invest in myself and it was a little scary at first, because you don’t know what answers you’re going to get. But, I also again, unfortunately, waited ‘till that kind of rock bottom with my anxiety, and I wish I had done it sooner. I really do. And, ultimately, I looked at it as my health is my number one priority. Without my health, I have nothing. I can’t run this business. I can’t enjoy time with my partner. I can’t go on vacation and trips with this anxiety. So, I want it gone. And I prioritized it and said, I’m going to make this happen no matter what. It’s so important to me. And I think that goes into some of the mindset too. And then, like I mentioned earlier when we were talking, I started with two tests. And we added one more, and we didn’t do everything at once. But, it really was me prioritizing it. But could you speak a little bit to Shandy’s question about just beginning the journey, if you have anything to add there? And then Kate’s question about finding the functional doctor, and the investment.

So, to add to some of your comments there, I often like to emphasize that it’s not just about removing your symptoms. What it’s really about is living your best life, and what would I do with my life, if I was firing on all cylinders, and I woke up at the crack of dawn every day and just felt amazing. What would your life look like? And can you put a dollar value on that? It’s hard to say. And I realized that yes, it can be expensive to work with practitioners and to run the tests. But like you said, you can run the test one at a time, and peel back the layers gradually. That’s definitely an approach you can take. I often tell people when they ask me if there’s any one lab test that I could run, which one would it be?

And I think you might agree with me here that it would be the stool analysis. That GI map is the test that I prefer to run with my clients. It’s a PCR DNA based test. It’s the only stool test that’s approved by the FDA. And it actually is third party validated, which means that they have other labs and researchers testing the validity of the testing. But there’s just so much that goes into your health, that’s related to the gut. That I can’t emphasize enough the importance of doing that gut testing. If that’s the only test you’re gonna run.

Sarah: Which is again, it’s funny, because I would not have started there. Because I felt that my digestion was on point.

Ryan: Yeah.

Sarah: I totally agree with you, once we saw the results, it was, Oh my gosh, thank goodness I did those tests. Now I know I have parasites, and we can address that immediately. Just imagining how much havoc that was wrecking on my overall health in that time. And not gone through that parasite protocol, but so many answers were just on that piece of paper afterwards. So, you can surprise yourself as well.

Ryan: Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. And , there are so many resources out there to explore, without having to spend loads and loads of money. And I’m sure you’re aware of, for example, there are constantly free summits online. All the time. I can’t even keep up with it. I don’t even have enough time, but they are free. And we’ll get 30 to 40 leading experts on a given topic, for the summits. And what is it? Health Talks is one resource to check out. Yeah. Google Health Talks, or it might be just healthtalks.com. It’ll show you some of the upcoming summits. But you’ll get specialists talking about Hashimoto’s, or Lyme disease, or mold illness, and it’ll be an entire summit. Hours and hours, dozens of free information, and actionable items that you can do, to help to address some of these things.

So, I definitely encourage people to take advantage of those podcasts. Listen to Sarah’s podcast. There are other great podcasts out there. I really love Chris Kresser’s. I really love sometimes going back, and listen to listening to Sean Croxton’s podcasts from when he did the Underground Wellness podcast. And even though he doesn’t do it anymore, there are over 300 episodes that are recorded, that he did, that are just gold. You can learn so much, it’s unbelievable, and you can do it for free. So, definitely take advantage of all those free resources. There’s nothing better you can do than arming yourself with, feeding your brain, and investing in your mind. Cause a lot of times you don’t have to spend any money to do that.

Sarah: Awesome. Thank you. Thank you so much.

Ryan: Sure.

Sarah: So Lindy wants to know what is a common theme, or is there a common thing theme that you see with all of your clients in terms of lab work, like toxins, heavy metals, parasites, et cetera? We talked about a few of those that did show up on my lab tests, but is that a common thing for you? Do you see that across the board?

Ryan: That’s a really good question. And the more clients I’ve worked with, and the more labs that I’ve run, I’ve started to find a lot of commonalities, or some common threads. So, here’s a big one. So, we all know that our fight or flight chemical is cortisol. So, if we’re being chased by a tiger, our cortisol will increase, that helps to increase our blood sugar, and it engages that fight or flight response. So, there’s nothing wrong with short-term or acute bouts of a surge of cortisol. That’s necessary for our survival. But, the problem is that in our modern world, the body doesn’t know the difference between being chased by a tiger, and being stuck in traffic, or having relationship problems, or hating your job. So that’s this daily, day in, day out, onslaught on your HPA axis.

We’re all living with the accelerator pedal to the floor. We’re asking too much of ourselves. So, it’s just too much stress on the body. So, we had this continual demand on cortisol. So one thing that happens when cortisol is elevated, is it’s an indirect relationship. Cortisol goes up and the immune system response in our gut goes down. And we can actually measure that on the GI map test. It’s a marker called, secretory IGA. So, when cortisol goes up, secretory IGA goes down. Stress goes up. We can’t defend ourselves in the gut, from incoming pathogens that our immune system would normally be able to take care of. But, since we’re all so stressed out all the time, and stress could even be from poor diet, and other things too. It’s not all about mental, emotiona. If we’re just drinking a liter of Coke every day, that’s putting a lot of demand on cortisol.

So, because of that, we are seeing more and more infections in the gut. And, I see in all of my symptomatic clients, I rarely, maybe only one time did I see a GI map with no infections. That says a lot. So, there’s this direct relationship between stress and infections showing up. Like things that we saw on your test results, H. pylori, parasites, candida, bacterial infections. We joke you have the full house.

Sarah: Yes.

Ryan: Absolutely. Another thing I commonly see is estrogen dominance.

Sarah: Yeah. That was also me.

Ryan: Right. It’s just common to see that with a stress pattern. It’s common for me to see serotonin levels be low, on an organic acids test. What happens there is that when we’re under stress, rather than making serotonin, our body uses the building blocks for serotonin, which is tryptophan. Our body uses tryptophan, it pushes it down an inflammatory pathway. So, instead of making serotonin, it says, well, there’s stress in the body. We need to go this direction and use it to address inflammation. So, sometimes practitioners call that the tryptophan steal. Our body is stealing tryptophan away from serotonin, to handle, or deal with inflammation.

So these are just some common patterns. I see. Imbalanced cortisol, gut infections, elevated estrogen, low serotonin, which of course that’s just going to make you feel kind of crummy. Serotonin just is our feel-good, hormone, our feel-good neurotransmitter. That’s just the tip of the iceberg, I can go hours and hours on this stuff.

Sarah: Yeah. But I think it’s so important for listeners to understand that there are root causes to some of the symptoms they’re experiencing. Some of these things are deeper, and maybe are not things that would have a surface to your mind right away. But could be the root of some of the symptoms that are surfacing. So I think just that basic understanding can be really helpful for people. Lindy also wants to know, aside from lab work, what other recommended approaches do you take to healing? So, I know you’ve mentioned you personally did. We’re both yoga teachers. We both did yoga teacher training, some of the emotional mindset work. Is there any other, maybe top three other recommendations you also give to clients, that you work with, aside from lab testing?

Ryan: Sure. So the first thing that comes to mind is, eating a nutrient-dense diet, especially if you have autoimmunity, I highly recommend investigating the autoimmune protocol. And, there are some great resources out there for that. One that I really love is the autoimmunewellness.com website. They have a great podcast as well. But, Mickey and Angie both have several autoimmune diseases between themselves, and they started this resource for those with autoimmune diseases. And, they helped to bring the autoimmune protocol into public consciousness. Where they’ve changed a lot of lives and people have gone into remission with their autoimmune diseases. Sometimes just doing the autoimmune protocol. So, it’s a great starting place, if you wanted to try that out before you even started diving into lab work.

Sarah: You’re the one who taught me too that, our immune system is a nutrient hog. And [inaudible 00:54:18] more micronutrients than any other part or system of our body. So, it’s so important to be eating those nutrients, consuming them, but also absorbing and digesting them.

Ryan: Exactly. So when we’re talking about autoimmunity, what we’re talking about is an imbalance of the immune system. And since the immune system is so resource-intensive, we want to give it all the fuel it needs to function properly and to regulate itself. So, that’s going to be eating things like shellfish, and organ meats, and grass-fed beef, and wild-caught fish, and seaweed, and probiotic foods. These are a lot of things that are mostly missing from the standard American diet, but so beneficial from a nutrient density standpoint. And from the perspective of reducing inflammation and helping to heal leaky gut through the diet. So, I definitely, highly recommend visiting that piece, especially if you have a diagnosed autoimmune disease.

Another overlooked one is investigating the environment. And what I mean by that is that sometimes it’s actually convened that the home that we’re living in can be making us sick. And that’s another often overlooked, under-investigated area, where we can get a lot of benefit from investigating. Go ahead.

Sarah: Actually, there’s a question about this. Maybe you can answer, just as you’re answering now. So, @hopewithhashimoto’s wants to know what the best labs are, to get tested for mold? She’s asking in your body, but also, could you speak to in your home? Cause that could be an environmental trigger, correct?

Ryan: Absolutely. I’m aware of several people that I know, that have had Hashimoto’s and discovered they had mold toxins in their home. And they were able to put their Hashimoto’s into remission after they discovered the molds and either remediated the home, to get rid of the mold or, just left and moved. Which maybe a little more work depending on where you’re at, and depending on how much remediation costs. But, sometimes if that means saving your health, it can be worth it. Cause, like I said, I’ve heard several cases where people’s antibodies went down to zero, after they left a moldy house. So, the best testing for checking out your home, and testing for levels of toxic molds is something called the ERMI test. And it’s E-R-M-I. And the ERMI test is actually just a Swiffer.

They send you a Swiffer to your house. And what you’re doing is, you’re dusting off high surfaces, the top of a blade of a ceiling fan, for example. Which are areas that often don’t get cleaned. And then, you wiped down 10 different surfaces in your house, and you mail it to the lab. And then, they’re going to give you a breakdown of 32 different species of mold. Some of them will be more benign, and some of them are the direct result of water damage from water-damaged buildings. And those are molds that are more toxic, and potential triggers for autoimmunity. So, that test is about $200, I think, offhand. So it’s a relatively affordable way to see if mold is a contributing factor for what’s going on with your health. I wanna say this too, we often think of just seeing black mold in the house. And then, if I don’t see mold, there’s no mold that that is absolutely not true. You don’t have to see it. Even if you come home after being away for several hours, and you come back, and you get a whiff of a musty smell. There’s a good chance that you’ve got some hidden mold in the house. Just like we can have hidden health issues. We can also have hidden mold behind walls, in the crawl space, in the heating and cooling system. So, it doesn’t always have to be visible. You can also do, if you Google search VCS testing. That test is less than $20. And you actually do it on your computer. It’s a visual contrast sensitivity test. And those scores can help indicate if you have the potential for biotoxin illness. Cause those mold toxins, or the miso toxins, they can actually impair the function of your optic nerve.

And so, one thing that people with mold illness often report is like blurry vision or kind of feeling like dizzy, vertigo that kind of thing. So, that visual contrast test is very inexpensive. It’s a low hanging fruit, in terms of helping you determine if you think that mold might be affecting you. You can also do urine testing for miso toxins. So, that gets a little more expensive. You can do genetic testing to see if you have genes that make you more susceptible to mold illness. So, there’s a lot of routes that you can go with it. But, I think the first place to start is addressing the home environment. Because even if you start detoxing, or addressing the internal terrain, but you’re still getting that daily exposure, then, you’re just shoveling out water out of a leaky bucket.

Sarah: Any other tools? So environment, changing food, diet, anything else outside of the labs that you often recommend to people who work with you? What did you recommend to me? I remember you also suggested EMDR.

Ryan: Yeah. EMDR can be really, really beneficial for anyone with a history of emotional trauma, and that’s actually very common in autoimmune diseases. Cause there’s a lot of research out there, showing that higher scores for adverse childhood experiences are what we call ACE scores, A-C-E. Bring your chances of developing autoimmunity, autoimmune disease to like 99.9%. So, there’s definitely potentially, an emotional component there, depending on the individual. And in EMDR, without getting too much into the specifics of it, is a way of detoxing traumatic emotions and releasing them from the body, so that they’re no longer affecting you. Because these traumatic emotions do get stored in the body, and they affect us at a cellular level. And, we want to also, think about those emotional roots as an underlying root cause as well. Because, sometimes people will do the work to get rid of gut infections, and balance their hormones. And if they don’t address the emotional side, some of these issues can actually just come back.

Sarah: So we just have time for one more question, I think here.

Ryan: Good.

Sarah: But there was a listener who says that she does struggle with fibromyalgia. And that’s something I also experienced, and you’ve helped me reduce some of that chronic pain that I have experienced since I was 16, 17 years old. So, can you just talk a little bit about fibromyalgia? Some of the people that you’ve worked with, clients and how you go about treating it, or finding the root cause of it? Because it really isn’t very well understood. We don’t really know what, as far as I know, turns on this fibromyalgia in people’s bodies. Sometimes it’s more of this blanket diagnosis. But are there any themes that you see within fibromyalgia, or ways that you would go upon helping someone to reduce pain from fibromyalgia?

Ryan:   I actually have seen themes of emotional trauma with fibromyalgia. So that’s one place that I like to try to uncover. If anyone was looking for just a quick resource on learning more about how trauma affects the body. There’s a great book called, The Body Keeps Score.

Sarah: Yeah. I have that one.

Ryan: Yeah, totally. So that one’s just an excellent book. Other common themes I see with fibromyalgia are oxalates. Sometimes viruses like Epstein-Barr. It’s really tricky because it is this sort of blanket diagnosis. It can be, there can be a lot of stones you might need to unturn to get to the root of fibromyalgia. Because wherein one person, the trigger for it might be Epstein-Barr virus, in another person, it could be Lyme disease. Or in another person, it could be a combination of heavy metals and oxalates. So, this is where we come full circle to what we talked about earlier, of not addressing the specific symptom. But looking under the hood and, seeing where there are dysfunctions, and then correcting those at a deeper level. That way we’d see issues like fibromyalgia or other forms of autoimmunity starts to resolve themselves. And this can be a journey too. It might take months or sometimes years, to peel back these layers. But each time you’ll start to see a little more improvement, or get another clue here or there. And you definitely, can’t put a deadline on your healing. I say that often because people are often looking for a hard deadline. Like when is this symptom is going to be gone? And there’s no good answer to that. A lot of that really depends on what you do, as a client. And in my role as a coach, is to teach you how to help yourself. Cause I can’t do that work for you. I can’t drive you to the infrared sauna or make you take an Epsom salt bath. So, as FDNs, as health coaches, it’s about 10% of what we do and about 90% where we do. This is not like you go to the doctor, take this pill, call me in the morning kind of thing. And this is a life long commitment to committing to your health as a number one priority.

Sarah: Yeah, definitely. And I was just relating to what you were saying about fibromyalgia too. I have a history of some trauma that I know is still kind of lingering in my tissues somewhere. But also, that as we’ve uncovered the root of some of the symptoms I was experiencing. It’s not like, Oh, this is causing your fibromyalgia a hundred percent for sure. But, as I went through that parasite protocol, did that H. pylori protocol, et cetera, my pain has slowly reduced. So it’s not disappeared yet. As you said, it didn’t happen overnight. I didn’t develop this pain overnight, so it’s not going to go away overnight. But, it’s certainly starting to reduce. and that, anyone who has fibro who’s listening, just a reduction in pain, can be a huge relief. It can so inspire hope in people because it is certainly one of those diagnoses that I think can feel literally, heavy on your body. So yeah, it’s sometimes a slower journey, but you can possibly see those improvements. So, thank you again, Ryan. Is there anything else that you want to add to the listeners today?

Ryan: I would like to add that I want to encourage everyone to commit to their health. And, seek out all those resources that I mentioned and there’s a way out of this. Don’t give up, I think that’s just so important to love yourself and to see yourself as a priority. And, we’re living in the best time possible, for getting the message of functional nutrition, and health coaching, and all of these free summits and everything. It’s just never been a better time to learn about this stuff and to really work towards a revolution in this whole healthcare system. Which is so broken and it’s not really serving people. So, get some testing done. If you can see a functional medicine doctor or an FDN like myself. It doesn’t have to be me, but there are lots of great FDNs out there. I just want you guys to help yourselves, and start looking for some of these hidden stressors. You can also, if I can plug my website. Am I allowed to do that?

Sarah: Everyone listening, if you are looking for a practitioner, Ryan also works remotely, which is amazing. It’s so, so convenient to be able to hop on, just like we are right now. A Zoom call with Ryan, and go over the lab testing, he shares his screen with you. He has several different packages that you can work with him on, and lab testing, and interpretation of the lab testing. And literally, he goes into so much detail. And if someone like me who loves that information, I love the knowledge, you make it make sense. So, please tell people how they can reach out to you and schedule a consultation.

Ryan: Yeah, absolutely. And you can find out more information on themindfulneutrivore.com or you can also just Google Ryan Monahan FDN. That should, that should bring up the website. And I’ve got more information on there about my own journey, about some of my offerings. And feel free to visit the website, email me, ask me any questions. I’ll be happy to help.

Sarah: Yeah. Awesome. Thank you again for your time, Ryan. I really appreciate it. And I know our listeners are going to have learned something from you today.

Ryan: Awesome.

Sarah: So again, thank you so much.

Thank you so much for tuning in to today’s episode. I do hope you learned something and can take part of this message home with you in your own healing process, and own healing journey. If you are someone who is feeling stuck, and conventional or traditional medicine, isn’t working for you, and you’re not seeing the results that you desire. And getting back to the life that you fricking love, then I highly recommend that you reach out to Ryan or another diagnostic practitioner. So that you can really find the root of what’s creating these uncomfortable symptoms for you, in your life. I’ll link to those in the show notes, but I hope you guys have a beautiful rest of your day. Thank you so much for listening. Bye for now.

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