This is the complete transcript of Sarah Kleiner's conversation with Dr. Tom Seager on the Evolving Wellness podcast. Click any timestamp to jump to that moment in the video.
Sarah: We did two very expensive emotional rounds of IVF and both of them we got zero viable embryos and uh it was kind of like now what? Um and it was during the IVF process that I actually interviewed Dr. Jack Cruz. I was given that opportunity and he is the one I always I've only had one conversation with Dr. Cruz that was the one and only. Um, and I went on a different path after speaking with him, of studying with a lot of different people and understanding it through this other lens. But he did put me on this path of like you need to understand, he told me you need to understand leptin, circadian biology, quantum biology, and how your mitochondria work. These are going to be the keys for you in getting and staying pregnant.
Sarah: There's a lot of talk about peptides, MTHFR, hormones, red light therapy, cold therapy, diet. And what it comes down to in a lot of these conversations is that it's either good or it's bad. That there is one particular formula that's going to work for everyone. And if you're a human being living on the earth these days, you know that's not true. And if you're like me and work with a lot of different people from a lot of different backgrounds with a lot of different health scenarios, you know firsthand that what might work beautifully for one person could be a complete disaster for the other.
Sarah: So today I have my friend and returning guest Cash Con back on the show to talk about this and to talk about peptides, hormones, cold therapy, diet, the MTHFR, all of these things that there's a lot of nuance missing in the conversation. What works, what doesn't work, why NAD or glutathione or even a GLP1 might be a bad idea for you or a good idea. I hope you enjoy today's episode. Of course, none of this is medical advice. It is just for informational purposes only.
Tom: Sarah, thanks for joining me on the Uncommon Living podcast.
Sarah: Thank you for having me. It's always a pleasure to chat with you.
Tom: Well, um, we met in Tennessee at, uh, Oxana Hansen's return to nature, even though we sort of known one another for a few years through ice baths and metabolism. And what I didn't appreciate when I met you, is how much you've been working on your own metabolism and the reasons why. I think this is super important to share with our audience because ever since Stacy Sims made the rounds on some of the most popular podcasts in the world, saying, "Well, ice baths aren't very good for women and they should really be careful with ketosis" and saying a lot of things that contradict the experience of women who have been doing ice baths and going in and out of keto and changing their lives with metabolic interventions.
Sarah: My own health journey has taught me so much. And then I've also been working with people for about the last 15 years in some capacity. I come from a long line of diabetic, overweight, metabolically kind of compromised individuals. Was overweight for most of my life. I lost 100 pounds three separate times and I just struggled. I've done genetic testing—I have multiple markers genetically for obesity, diabetes, heart disease. So, the cards are definitely stacked against me. I started this world of metabolic intervention by way of the carnivore diet. And at first it was amazing. It worked really well. And then there was the whole issue of metabolic down regulation and starting to see a lot of those hormones flatlining and trying to get pregnant and realizing that was not an optimal diet for fertility long term.
Tom: What age were you when you lost your first pregnancy?
Sarah: 41. So I was, you know, they'll tell and that's what the doctors say.
Tom: They will call you geriatric. Maybe they don't do that anymore, but 41 is not geriatric. But in the United States, the decline in metabolic health and mitochondrial function is so rapid in men and women that typically by 41 a gynecologist would consider a woman high risk.
Sarah: I had two pregnancy losses and the doctors were like well you know maybe it's time for you to go to reproductive endocrinology and I said fine. We did two very expensive emotional rounds of IVF and both of them we got zero viable embryos. It was during the IVF process that I actually interviewed Dr. Jack Cruz. He told me, you need to understand leptin, circadian biology, quantum biology, and how your mitochondria work. These are going to be the keys for you in getting and staying pregnant. That really put me down this rabbit hole studying with the Quantum Biology Collective, going through their program levels one and two, getting the board certification.
Sarah: Someone who was a coach in kind of Jack's group told me, "You're an H2 haplotype, which means I'm a northern Haplotype. You need to be getting cold along in this." And I was like, you're no, I don't want to do the cold plunges. I really don't want to.
Tom: Nobody wants to do the cold plunges. Joe Rogan doesn't want to do the cold plunges. Professor Seager doesn't want to do the cold plunges. I don't know anybody who wants to do the cold plunges.
Sarah: I just looked at him. I was like, you're crazy. And then you have the other voices saying Chinese medicine says you need to keep yourself warm and nourished...
Sarah: I really cold plunged up until I got that positive ovulation sign and then I said, "Okay, that's it." And I was like, I won't cold plunge again until if I get pregnant, I will wait, but if I'm not pregnant, then I'll wait until like cycle day one to do it again. And that's the month I end up getting pregnant. So, I always say I probably could have gotten pregnant a month sooner if I had known that.
Tom: It is a good tip for women who are trying to replicate your results. You can keep this in mind 3-4 days when you know you're ovulating. Let your immune system back off. This is a foreign body that has yet to attach itself to you and you don't want your immune system to get confused.
Tom: But then what did you do with your cold therapy during your pregnancy?
Sarah: I honestly didn't do any. What I did do is I saved up for a Morosco forge so that I would have one ready when my son was born. I was a little bit nervous because I had had so many losses. I was like, I just don't want to do any stressors during pregnancy. I probably could have and would have been fine because I have a good friend of mine, Amy, who cold plunged through both of her pregnancies. I will say though that it was a ridiculously easy labor.
Sarah: My blood sugars would run in the 90s sometimes low 100s and I had very low ketones when I was doing carnivore the standard carnivore way. I did all kinds of iterations of carnivore in the two years just trying to make it work. I did go through a period where I took the protein level down a little bit, took the fat way up to make keto, like very good ketones. Unfortunately, I end up gaining a good amount of weight from that strategy, which I see happen with women. A lot of women go with this deep ketosis carnivore approach. They lose weight initially. But many women that come to me do that and they end up gaining weight because the satiety factor isn't necessarily there.
Sarah: It wasn't until I really got deep into changing to a more seasonal approach and understanding leptin and how to become more sensitive to leptin that the weight came off without me even dieting. You have to find an approach that works the best for your body. Carnivore, to go back to your original question, a lot of times is not by default ketosis or ketogenic. And ketosis or ketogenic diet is not by default a weight loss strategy for everyone. It can be, but it's not as black and white as some people would have you believe.
Tom: I really admire what Shawn Baker is doing. He's the carnivore doctor. On the other hand, I think Mike Muscle's pretty great, too. And he's the one making sourdough pancakes. The seasonal approach is the one that makes the most sense to me.
Sarah: I'm not going to eat those blueberries that are flown in from Argentina in January in Phoenix. But try to tell me in the middle of the summer I can't have a peach when I'm living in Georgia. That's not going to be a fun conversation. It's appropriate to the light environment that I'm in, to the thermal environment that I'm in.
Sarah: I'm leaner now at 46, almost 47, than I was when I was constantly trying to adhere to carnivore, to keto. I was trying to do it all the time. And what I found for myself and then literally with hundreds of students, people who come through my programs and are in my membership community, it's the same. They've just gone through these regimented programs and it's ended up causing a rebound effect and they're kind of just left feeling restricted and a little bit depressed. And then we go to a more seasonal approach.
Tom: Sarah, thanks for sharing your story. I hope that your experiences are going to encourage other people to do their reading, to fix their metabolism, to seek alternative medical or clinical teams when they do become pregnant. There's so many things that people seeking to conceive or start a family or grow a family really need to know. And I think the most important one right now is 41 ain't old. 41 isn't geriatric. 41 doesn't mean that you are instantly a candidate for IVF. There are a lot of things that you can do to restore your mitochondrial function, restore your metabolism, and restore your fertility.
Sarah: Yeah. The oldest client I've had so far had a healthy baby boy at age 47, 100% naturally. It's possible.