Welcome to the Libido Lounge with Dr. Amie Hornaman

Dr. Diane Mueller: Welcome to the Libido Lounge, where we focus on all things love, lust, and libido. We believe that fabulous sex is as important to health as exercise and good food. Hey everybody, welcome to another episode on the Libido Lounge. I’m your host and libido expert, Dr. Diane Mueller, and I’m so excited to spend time today with Dr. Amie Hornaman, a friend and colleague of mine who does amazing work, has a podcast of her own on the thyroid, and really works to help people get to the root cause of thyroid issues, of all sorts of health issues, and sees a ton in her personal practice of the links between thyroid and sex hormones and libido issues. So welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much for being here with me today.

Dr. Amie Hornaman: Hi, Dr. Diane. It’s my pleasure. I love what you’re doing here.

Dr. Diane Mueller: Thanks so much. And so let’s talk a little bit about the sexual health component of things, the libido component of things. Can you give people a brief summary of thyroid and how it connects to everything—libido—and then I’m going to direct people to your talk on my summit that’s coming up here very shortly. This will be in the show notes, you guys, and what we’re going to talk about today with Dr. Amie, we’re going to go into much deeper on my upcoming summit with her, so make sure you check that out as well. But can you give us just, like, a little bit of an overview of what’s going on for people about their thyroid and how that is connected to libido?

Thyroid’s Role in Libido

Dr. Amie Hornaman: Absolutely. So we have—the thing of the thyroid is the master gland. It’s controlling every single aspect of your body—from the balance of the sex hormones to circulation, blood flow—blood flow too down there—and even brain function, lighting up your brain and giving you that motivation and that sexual desire and that confidence to move forward and even want to have sex with your partner. So it really starts with the thyroid.

Beyond Sex Drive: Whole-Body Impact

Dr. Amie Hornaman: We also know that the thyroid controls weight, and we talked about that on the summit as well, because when the thyroid is controlling your metabolism and your weight and all cellular functions, you tend to gain weight when you have low thyroid function. Now, as women—and I can speak for myself—I don’t want to have sex when my body is rebelling against me, putting on 20, 25, 30 pounds—because I’ve been there and done that, and I know. And in addition, when the thyroid is controlling depression and anxiety—you don’t want to have sex when you’re depressed, you don’t want to have sex when you’re fatigued, you don’t want to have sex when you can’t even focus on your own job, you can’t even get through the day. Huge correlation—huge, huge, huge—between thyroid, thyroid function, optimal thyroid function, and libido.

Dr. Diane Mueller: Yeah, thank you for that. I think there’s a misunderstanding with people sometimes with thinking that, like, low libido is a quote-unquote disease, and low libido is, like, way more of a symptom, right? It’s a symptom that’s saying, I don’t feel comfortable with my body, like you’re talking about, or there’s a thyroid problem. And so it’s a symptom of something underlying that is really at the root of that.

Getting Started: Testing and Myths

Dr. Diane Mueller: So just to give people just something that is, you know, a quick-start actionable thing—where if somebody is thinking and they’re listening to you and they have low libido and they’re, like, wow, maybe my thyroid is out of balance—where would you have people start? And with that, can you also include maybe a myth or two that people might have about the thyroid that you see commonly in your practice—like a thing that maybe they’ve been told about their thyroid, and you’re, like, they’re told that a lot, but it’s not really very true?

Dr. Amie Hornaman: Absolutely, good questions. Okay, so how are we going to start? How are we going to gain the knowledge that we have something up with our thyroid—maybe it’s a little bit off, or maybe it’s a lot off? We have to test. We have to test. Yes, you can absolutely go by symptoms—and I’m a strong proponent of a person listening to their body, listening to their symptoms—and just like you said, Diane, the low libido is a big signal. It’s a big red flag that tells us, hey, there’s something going on in the body—maybe you want to check this out and figure out what it is. And then beyond that—how are you going to know? You have to test.

Actionable Step: Comprehensive Thyroid Testing

Dr. Amie Hornaman: So if we’re talking about thyroid, we want to get all the testing. We want to go outside of what your PCP or your standard conventional medicine doctor is going to do—because I guarantee you, if you go to have this conversation with your doctor, you are going to be told you’re normal, everything’s fine—because they’re going to test one thing. They’re going to test TSH, which is thyroid-stimulating hormone. The problem with this is that it is a brain hormone—they’re not even testing your thyroid hormones. How about that? They’re not even looking at your thyroid hormones, and we’re talking about your thyroid health.

Dr. Amie Hornaman: So we have to move on from that. We have to test beyond TSH. And for that, we look at free T3, free T4, we look at reverse T3, which is a blocker, we look at TPO and TGA antibodies, which tells us if you have Hashimoto’s—that’s autoimmune, very, very genetic, very rampant in families. So we want to look at all of those markers, compare it with your list of symptoms that might go beyond low libido, and then we can have that full picture of your own thyroid health.

Common Thyroid Myths

Dr. Amie Hornaman: What are people told that’s a myth? I hear a couple different things. Number one is just what we said—that TSH is the be-all, end-all—you know, you test TSH, that’s all you need to do, boom, see ya, we’ll check you again in six months. The other thing is—and it’s a common—I would say it’s more of a misconception from the patient—is that thyroid controls your weight, period—thyroid and metabolism—because we hear it so much. And that is a very big symptom to low thyroid function—is that uncontrolled weight gain and inability to lose weight—100%. But it’s so much more. It’s so much more.

Dr. Amie Hornaman: When we talk about cellular processes of the body, when we say the word “metabolism,” it really is talking about how your cells function, how your mitochondria functions, that ATP production. So that—we could be talking about your hair growth and how slow it is or how it’s fallen out, we could be talking about your gut motility—AKA why you’re constipated—we could be talking about your erectile dysfunction because you’re not getting enough blood flow down there, we could be talking about your sex hormones going in the tank—and men and women walking around with low testosterone and wackadoodle hormones, and women going into menopause at the age of 35—that’s all metabolism-controlled, that’s all thyroid-controlled. So we have to start there, and then we can move on from there—and still, I mean, check all the other boxes at the same time. I’m not just going to check your thyroid and then go, you know what, I’ll check you in six months to look at your sex hormones—no, we’re gonna look at it all at the same time. But when we’re talking about thyroid, those tests are the most important.

Upcoming Summit and Final Thoughts

Dr. Diane Mueller: Thank you so much. And as a reminder, you guys, I know this is just kind of a short, sweet little thing we’re doing here—so make sure you check out more with Dr. Amie at our upcoming summit. There is information about how to get a hold of Dr. Amie and her clinic in the show notes from this podcast, so make sure you check that out as well. Is there any final thoughts or contact or anything else you want to leave us with today?

Dr. Amie Hornaman: Just that big old adage—test, don’t guess. Test, don’t guess. So we have to start there. And then pay attention to your own body—pay attention to all of the symptoms—because sometimes it’s not until you fill out an intake form and we’re asking you about your symptoms, and you go, oh yeah, that’s right, I am constipated, oh yeah, that’s right, I do have brain fog and memory loss—so all of that’s important for whatever practitioner you’re working with. And just to dive deeper—go to The Thyroid Fixer podcast—that’s my podcast, on all podcast platforms. I go deep into all of these topics, and we went very deep in Diane’s summit too—so that’s where you’re going to get a ton more information on all the little nuggets that we just gave you today.

Conclusion

Dr. Diane Mueller: Thank you, thank you so much for being here with us today. Thank you, everybody, for listening. Again, I’m Dr. Diane, reminding you to stay sexy, feel classy—see you on the next episode of Libido Lounge. Thank you for listening to the Libido Lounge. Please don’t keep me a secret—please share this with your friends. You can find me on YouTube, on Instagram, as well as the Modern Libido Club—for so much more!