A Cancer Diagnosis Changed Everything - The Hidden Truth About Big Food and Metabolic Health

I am so excited to share this episode with you. We are talking with Patrick and Ashley Sullivan, who are a husband and wife. They're partners, AKA Pashley, the cutest. They are executive producers of a new documentary that just was released a few weeks ago titled Breaking Big Food: How the American Food System Went Rotten and How It's Being Revived, which was released on Apple and Amazon. They also just opened the cutest little coffee shop in Scottsdale called Firefly Organic Coffee and Market, featuring third-party tested mold-free organic coffee. And so much of this partnership, these business ventures, stems from Patrick's cancer diagnosis, specifically thyroid cancer. And we unravel and unpack a little bit about his story, his pain to purpose, taking this cancer diagnosis, turning into a way to help solve a massive health issue in our country, which is difficult access to good food. The vast majority of people are eating chemical foods that are not really nutrient-dense and don't have much to offer. And also how they are actually providing, you know, farm-fresh food, coffee, etc., at their little cute organic coffee shop in Scottsdale. So tune in to today's episode and let's dig in.

Hello.

I am so excited for Patrick and Ashley Sullivan to be here. We are going to have a very unique conversation that threads together everything from thyroid cancer to big food and agriculture and how it's evolving and organic and mold-free coffee. We're going to go through all the things. Welcome, Patrick and Ashley. To Modern Thyroid and Wellness.

Thank you so much for having us. We're excited for this conversation.

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you, McCall McPherson McCall McPherson.

Yeah. So I guess to start, I know you all had a documentary released a few weeks ago around the middle of January 2026 called Breaking Big Food. I would love for you all to tell me a little bit about how your passion and how your life kind of led you to make this movie, to be interested in this, like Give me some background. I'm curious.

We heard Kelly Means speak in the summer of 2024 talking really about how the American food system went rotten. And we felt like we have to help amplify this message. We had a documentary film crew that was like ready to make a movie. We were going to make a different movie and we thought we kind of, Ashley's idea was to pivot to Breaking Big Food. And I would say that part of the inspiration was my own health. Health journey where a little over 10 years ago I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer and it was about the worst experience of our lives. And looking back on that, I really feel like the food, the environment had a huge impact on my thyroid cancer.

Yeah. I mean, I read the book Good Energy that Cali Means and his sister, Dr. Casey Means, wrote. And then we saw them on like Joe Rogan and a couple of other places actually at a, an industry conference that we were at. And we were just so impressed with how they were able to put together and like lay out chapter and verse how the American food system truly got— went rotten, like from the cigarette companies buying big food or buying essentially like food companies in the '80s and then essentially applying their techniques to make the food— brickery. Yeah, the food more addictive. So it really— we were just like, we have to help Amplify this message. We have an amazing team who can put together a documentary. Let's just do it. We were very just inspired.

I'm curious, tell me some of like the most interesting things that you guys learned when you were moving through this documentary process about the food in our country. Like, were there a few highlights? Obviously the tobacco thing even blew my mind right now. So I had no idea.

I would say the most disturbing thing that we learned when making Breaking Big Food was what Callie talks about in the first 2 minutes of the film. In the 1980s, specifically 1985, R.J. Reynolds, the makers of Camel cigarettes, bought Nabisco for $5 billion. Philip Morris, the makers of Marlboro cigarettes, bought Kellogg for $13 billion. These were just some of the acquisitions that happened during the 1980s, some of the largest M&A transactions in history at that point. And by the 1990s, big tobacco was in charge of about 40% of the American food supply. Is it any wonder 4 decades later we are at where we're at? So many messed up thyroids, so much metabolic dysfunction. Is it maybe the food we're eating?

Right. And that just goes to show too, if they control 40% of the American food supply, how much food people are eating from a box that's inflammatory. Like these are not, they probably don't own like broccoli farms, you know, spinach and vegetable farms, right? This is like serious, serious stuff that sadly so many of our children especially rely so heavily on now. Fascinating. Okay, I want to switch gears a little bit and talk to you about your thyroid journey. I would love to know, so, you know, people that struggle with thyroid, the thing is, is it's incredibly painful to get a diagnosis. It's incredibly difficult to get someone to hear you. On average, it's about 10 years from the onset of symptoms for until people— very often women— are able to get answers for what's going on. And then it's often decades before they actually get a successful plan in place to give them their life, their energy, their vitality, you know, their healthspan, lifespan back. I'm— you have a unique journey, one as someone that found out they had cancer? Was that the first instance of anything you heard about a thyroid disorder in your case?

I remember driving home one day, kind of like just fidgeting around as I want to do. You'll see Ashley probably nudge me. We're working on my fidgeting. And I kind of just like felt a lump in my throat. And I was like, hmm. That seems weird. Like, I didn't feel the lump in my throat metaphorically. I literally felt a lump on the left side of my throat. And so I went to my doctor, and after maybe 2, 3 weeks, I was like, well, we'll just see if it goes away. 2, 3 weeks later, it still wasn't there. Went to the doctor. He kind of felt it and pushed it, and he's like, yeah, I do feel something there. Now, funny enough, at the time, my thyroid was like my— it was not like I wasn't on any thyroid medication. I was doing like my thyroid was functioning. I would have been late 30s, 38, 39 when this happened. And I was definitely in a very stressful, long-term chronic stress situation at a startup business that was kind of failure to launch. We can circle back to that. But when I asked the doctor, okay, what's worst case scenario? He said, well, honestly, worst case scenario is that it could be cancer in your thyroid, but it's okay. We would do a thyroidectomy, we would cut it out, and then you would just be on thyroid medication for the rest of your life, which millions and millions and millions of people are on thyroid medication. So it's very prevalent. McCall, that did not really make me feel very good.

It never does.

No, it never does. And so, of course, sharing the news with Ashley, we were, of course, worried. The next step was to do a biopsy where, you know, they stick a needle into it, pull out some of the fluid. The first one that came back was inconclusive, so they had to do it again. And meanwhile, this whole, you know, 2, 3, 4-week process was the most stressful I think we have ever felt.

Well, it's like the not knowing, right? And you're just kind of like waiting for a result. I mean, people can relate to this. It's just, it's very difficult.

Terrible. I mean, I remember waking up and throwing up, not because I was like feeling sick. I felt so stressed and so nervous about, oh my gosh, am I going to make my wife a widow? Like, this is awful. So Eventually we did get a second opinion, third opinion, fourth opinion. No one could really say, well, this is how it got here. Like you ate this food or you didn't take this vitamin or anything like that.

Blood work looked great for the most part.

All the other blood work was looking fine, but there was a lump in the throat. And finally the second biopsy did come back as suspicious of follicular carcinoma is what I believe it was. And I was like, what is this like suspicious of? And they're like, well, they don't know for sure until they take it out and biopsy it. But by the time it's out, it doesn't matter, right? It's gone. Your thyroid is gone. So we really stressed about it, prayed about it, and decided eventually to get the thyroidectomy. And I'll tell you why we did that. One naturopathic cancer doctor that we spoke to that kind of gave us some hope on like, hey, over time we could potentially like change the cancer, we could do some treatment to it. But thyroid cancer in particular is a very slow growing cancer, which means it's also a slow dying cancer. So it could take a couple of years. And at that point I had already been like throwing up all the time from stress. And we eventually just one day said, okay, I think we just need to bite the bullet, cut it out. Thankfully I had a really good surgeon that did a great job and removed it. There was no trace afterwards when we did the PET scan. And they did, when they finally biopsied it for real, it was positive for follicular carcinoma. So yeah, I feel like I quote dodged a bullet, but I at the same time felt like I took another bullet, just the stress and all the things that happened during that whole process. And McCall, quite frankly, I buried that memory. We buried that memory for like 10 years almost. It was so stressful that we didn't really talk about it publicly. Wow.

I'm so glad amidst like all of that stress, when people hear the word cancer, it's terrifying, right? And You know, the thing about thyroid cancer is in so many cases, most thyroid cancers are slow growing. And so people have the opportunity to go and get second opinions, third opinions, gather more information, put together a really solid plan, begin to work ideally on lifestyle, find someone to work with on the other end of surgery who really understands the nuances of, of thyroid care. And I'm so glad that amidst all of that, you still had the wherewithal and the patience and the self-control, because it's so anxiety-provoking to be able to gather all of that information. Because I think most people get so afraid, rightfully so, that they don't do that. And even sometimes they end up getting talked into surgeries that maybe they don't fully need. Maybe they could do a partial thyroidectomy or something of that nature, right? So I'm so incredibly grateful for that. How did it feel coming out the other end of that after surgery early on. How was your anxiety? How was your stress? How was your family dynamic? And then I'm so curious too, how you feel over the course, because it's been a long time, how you feel now on a day-to-day basis.

Now on a day-to-day basis, I feel good. Thankfully, I was able to dial in my T3 and T4 thyroid medication with my endocrinologist post-surgery. Really quickly, and my body has done pretty well. After the surgery, I guess, yes, there was a really big sign of relief. Kind of a funny thing that happened is that Ashley and I, back at this time, we were professional musicians, and she being the lead singer of the band, we did, we were professional musicians for about 9 years. We played cover music here in and around the Valley of Phoenix.

Lots of weddings, lots of corporate events. Oh my gosh.

It was really fun.

And one surgeon who we swore looked like Kramer and kind of acted a little bit like Kramer was like, are you a singer? And Ashley's like, what did you— how did that—

I said, well, he's just a backup singer.

Yeah, just a backup singer.

But what I really meant was, it's going to be OK. The show will go on. But it was very insensitive in the moment. And I won't ever live it down because it's too funny.

It's too funny. We can never let that go, Ashley. Never.

Never letting it go.

And what this surgeon explained is that there is a risk in thyroid surgery of clipping one of the nerves that really controls the voice. And after the surgery, I did lose a few notes of range. It's funny, you can feel like more tension there. You know, I don't know how well you can see, there's just sort of a scar that's very faint there, very faint still. But Even sort of post-surgery, not being able to sing as many backup notes as I could. Mostly there was a lot of relief. And like I said, it was also a certain amount of like, let's just bury that and put that in the past. And it didn't really come up until we began to work on Breaking Big Food when the director in my interview was asking me, okay, So here we are, first or second day of filming. Like, why do you want to make this movie? And I started to talk about the food system in America and how we were inspired about Cali Means and wanting to amplify the message of the book Good Energy. And our director Cole kind of was like, you know, after listening to me ramble for 20 minutes, he's like, why do you like want to make this movie? Like, I agree with all the things you're saying, but I feel like, like, it's not really fitting. Like, it's not really hitting the real personal— what's the real personal mission? And that's when it really kind of hit me out of nowhere. I was like, you know what, I'm a cancer survivor, and the thing that really kind of pisses me off is nobody ever explained how my thyroid cancer got there in the first place. They just wanted to take it out and put me on medication for the rest of my life. And I, being the owner of this body, wanted to make sure that we knew what happened so that we don't cause it again in the future. And I think what we have learned over the years is that thyroid environment, and even quite frankly, stress as an environmental signal, plays a huge role in the body's metabolic function, including if the body is making cancer or destroying cancer.

And I would just add stress as the, I would say, number one reason, and food can be stressful to the body depending on your choices. So that's what leads us all back to the food matters so much, right?

I think people have this idea that stress is like purely psychological, but things that stress our body, the stress response is the same. That can be inflammatory food, it can be nutrient deficiencies that are a result of inflammatory food. You know, low protein, again, a result of boxed food. We're not eating this balanced meal when we get it from a package and it's been sitting on the shelf for a year. We're getting foods that fill us up, that make us want to eat more, that don't supply us with the protein, the micronutrients in any way to protect our health. And then more than anything, I mean, inflammatory food when it comes to working on someone's thyroid function, reducing the severity of their Hashimoto's, which certainly increases cancer risk. The first thing that we look at at Modern Thyroid Clinic is food. Like, it is such an easy way to shift someone's inflammatory status, their stress. Like, it's something that is required multiple times a day, every day, and it dictates so much about our chronic health, our health right now, our lifespan, healthspan. And I think people take it for granted, you know, it either nourishes us or it's the purest form of poison that we have access to on a day-to-day basis. And throughout your journey, Patrick, did anyone talk to you about things that you could do naturally? It sounds like you went to a naturopath and maybe got some adjunctive care, but in the regular medical model, what was your experience?

Well, I did, working with my naturopath, start to do far infrared sauna, lymph node massage, upping my levels of curcumin and other sort of anti-inflammatory type things.

Nutritional IVs, things—

nutritional IVs of vitamin C. But I'll say it was too slow for me. Not that I, I guess it's like in my mind, logically, I wanted to be patient and say, okay. In fact, I remember one doctor saying, you know, you're in your late 30s. This likely, left untreated, probably wouldn't kill you until you're like mid-50s, it's— it probably would grow for 15 years. But the, like, I guess, person inside the ego was like, dude, we can't deal with this stress every single day of this, like, you have cancer, you have cancer, you have cancer, like flashing in your brain like a huge red light. So on the naturopathic side, I guess I wish I could have honored that. And I think had I had more of the knowledge that I have now, thanks to things like Dr. Joe Dispenza and his work with meditation and, and really mindset as the first most important thing. I had no good methods for dealing with stress other than like, oh yeah, I'm good with stress.

Like wine. Yeah. Yeah.

Alcohol. That was the, you know, that was the answer to stress, right? Like, yeah, I'm good with stress. We just drink a bottle of wine and we're fine. Yeah, turns out maybe not the best, uh, solution long term. Possibly good as a Band-Aid, but—

right.

Yeah. What would you add to that?

Yeah, I mean, I, I think that you going through all of the, the sauna, the IVs, all of that, like, it was very time-consuming also. So it's like all of a sudden you got to put your whole life on hold, and like, because you're sick, you got to go do all these things and spend all this money. And like, meanwhile, while you're doing the modalities you're just stressing.

Yeah.

So it's like, this isn't gonna work.

And I think I would say, like, if I would encourage the audience, like, if you do get a cancer diagnosis— gosh, this is not medical advice, obviously, this is just sort of an opinion from someone who's been there— I think it's best to start with mindset. And I brought up Dr. Joe Dispenza. He wrote a great book, several great books, about Superhuman and You Are the Placebo, and really his whole thesis is that the body under stress doesn't have time to create healing chemicals. It's just creating cortisol and the other stress hormones to sort of keep you alive. And your mind is what controls your feelings of if you're in your inner pharmacy, so to speak.

Yeah.

And so if you can quiet your mind and we all know it's so challenging to do, but with practice, it's possible to slow down. Quiet your mind, tell yourself that you're safe, that you love yourself. And the body does this miraculous innate healing thing where it's like, oh, we should fix this thing. And it knows it has, you know, science barely understands all of the chemical complex things that are happening inside of our body. But, you know, there are too many stories of people who have healed themselves from all sorts of different diseases. Starting with mindset in particular, you know, focused meditation. And kudos to, uh, Dr. Dispenza and his scientific team at, uh, Inner Research, Inner Science. They've been doing some really interesting, like, studying the research of advanced meditators, and I think it's a fascinating place where, where science is going and the power within, you know, it kind of resonates, I think, with everyone. They're like, somehow my body knew how to become what it is now. How could it heal itself? Could— can it possibly heal itself?

I think Dr. Dispenza has kind of laid the foundation for the next iteration of understanding how mindset influences our physiology. I think we're just scraping the surface. You know, and I think it'll become more and more a reality that we all understand and live by. But man, I wish he could like sell it in a bottle and I could just drink it. That would be so nice. I know.

We had an amazing doctor friend once say that she wishes that she could write a prescription and charge like $500 for meditation because then people would actually do it. They would value it because it's free and it's not external. It's not something they can get outside of themselves. They don't want to do it.

Yeah, right. Absolutely. I'm so curious too, if during the filming process— I know you got to interview so many experts, talk with innumerable people when you were filming Breaking Big Food— what were some interesting things that you uncovered about other health consequences outside of thyroid cancer that are associated with big food and, you know, the things that sadly the vast majority of Americans are putting in their body every day.

Talk about Leah Hope's story, maybe.

Well, I mean, Leah Hope was one of the people that we highlighted in the documentary. Her story is incredible. She's lost over 200 pounds the natural way by changing her food choices. It's a convenience problem. She's like, I didn't really think about the food. I just like, I don't know, I thought I was happy and it was convenient. I could stop by Chick-fil-A, I could get whatever was easiest. I didn't want to cook. And then all of a sudden she's like, cannot enjoy Disneyland with her nephews because she can't even walk without just feeling super fatigued and like getting, you know, headaches and stuff. And it's like she recognized that. And once she started to just make small changes, her story is so inspiring, especially for people that are like, I just feel like this whole thing is so overwhelming. Believe me, you can do it. And her story is a great inspiration for that because she didn't change everything all at once. She started with very small, simple changes and did it slow. But like her journey, she's thriving and it is so cool to see that.

It is interesting. I think there are parallels between thyroid and this kind of accumulative approach to inflammatory food where people just slowly feel worse and worse and worse, and they don't recognize it until, you know, it's really, really bad. But it's, it's this slow breakdown in this new normal that can really derail someone's life. I mean, I'm like a sensitive human. If I ate Chick-fil-A for like a week, I would be a non-functioning human. Like, I just can't. But I have my step kiddos who eat pretty bad, and I'm like, don't you feel bad after you eat that? Like, don't you feel horrible? And they're like, no. And I'm like, I think you do. This is just your new normal. You just don't know it. And then other people's bodies are a little more resilient, but there's no way it doesn't catch up to all of us on varying timelines.

But yes, I mean, actually, Brandon— or Landon Flowers is in the documentary as well. Very fit, early 30s, like looks like the picture of health, worked out all the time. But his story is suddenly he was starting to wake up with all these gastrointestinal issues and they became extreme very fast. And he thought he was a healthy eater because he was ordering grilled chicken nuggets at Chick-fil-A, right? But like not paying attention to what those were marinated in and like all of the ingredients that he's truly ingesting on a regular basis. And he was like on death's doorstep. He was really in a bad place. And so same story, he started to prioritize real foods, grass-fed meat, eggs, bone broth, and just slowly doing a transformative diet. And he, Within 2 weeks, he was like, I swear I was alive again. So if you don't think food matters, please think again, because it absolutely matters.

And it is one of the few things that we can so easily influence, you know? And if anyone thinks— I think I know so many people think, well, Chick-fil-A is like the healthy version of fast food. But if you go to Chick-fil-A and you order the healthiest thing on the menu and you turn over that ingredients list, it is a quarter of a mile long. Like, it is chemical after chemical after chemical, and it is not real food, period, full stop. You know, you can't go through a drive-through and get real food, at least not anywhere in Austin. Maybe there's, there's somewhere in Arizona, but not here.

Not many. Uh, not really any that I can think of.

Uh, maybe Shake Up Superfoods. It's a great little truck that we featured in the documentary. These fresh, delicious protein smoothies.

You could drive up and order one of those, but there's only like one locally. Yeah. So that's, doesn't really solve for the rest of America. I'm with you when I hear so many people say, "You know what? I've eaten like this my whole life and I'm fine." Yeah. Well, you're fine today, but it does catch up with people and they— like, the food is the last thing that anyone wants to blame because they don't want to change their diet. No one wants to change their diet.

Right.

It's hard, right? It's hard to get people to.

You're reminding me of one of the characters, A.J. Richards of fromthefarm.org in our documentary. Had this great line that I'd never heard before, and now I seem to hear it a lot, which is, pay the farmer now or pay pharma later. And his website that they are launching and building is essentially creating a more convenient way to get real food and support farms around the country. It's a really great website that I encourage anybody that may be in a quote-unquote food desert to take a look at. That's fromthefarm.org.

I love it. Well, I think it's interesting how you took your pain to purpose, your own cancer journey to breaking big food, and then I suspect you took that purpose and you kind of put it into action with Firefly Organic. Can you tell us a little bit about y'all's cute little coffee shop and what you have going on?

Yes, absolutely. Um, we're so thrilled with this project, Firefly Organic Coffee and Market. We were very much inspired by couple of the purveyors that were in the documentary. But essentially, we wanted to create a, a market where people could get items that they can't find at their grocery store. So we have raw milk, we have Arizona grass-raised beef, we have farm-fresh eggs there, and like just some supporting local purveyors with what they're doing with their clean food options and just being a resource essentially. But more than that, kind of in the beginning when we started filming, I, I had done a series of health tests myself and I did a toxin test and sure enough, 4 different types of mold showed up on that toxin test pretty high. And I was shocked. I was like, what? Like, I don't eat moldy food. And it'll tell you on there where it's, if it's likely environmental or food derived. And mine, it did show food. So I was like, where could this be coming from? So maybe my body's not the best at detoxing it to begin with, but I really need to figure out where the source is. So as I dove into that a little bit deeper, I realized, uh, coffee's actually a pretty big culprit of mold. And I drink like 4 or 5 cups a day. Could this possibly be a problem? And so I had no, you know, I would always buy organic coffee, but organic doesn't necessarily mean mold-free. So that sent us down a rabbit hole of how do we find and provide clean, organic, mold-free, toxin-free, heavy metal-free coffee to our community so that— and to ourselves, because we had this afternoon latte habit where we were like, I want to get out of the house. I want to go get a latte and just like enjoy. And there's just nothing available around here. So that was kind of what inspired us to start and open the market.

And it all kind of came together at the same time as we were working on pre-production for Breaking Big Food. Where we knew there was a couple of shops that we wanted to visit, a couple of farms that we wanted to visit. And then this health test that Ashley was receiving, we were like, okay, everything that we buy to eat for at home is like healthy, fresh, organic, natural. But then we have this afternoon latte habit because there are no organic coffee shops anywhere in Scottsdale, Arizona. What if that became part of the throughline for Breaking Big Food documentary. So it's kind of when the spirit moves and everything kind of falls into place, it just happens. And thankfully we had a great crew there with cameras to capture it.

Well, tell me a little bit about— I know I'm going to be watching Breaking Big Food tonight with my husband. It was on our list for the last like 2 weeks anyway, but tell people where they can find it, where they can watch it. And I'm also curious. If Firefly Organic Coffee is available to ship, like, could people potentially order that as well? So tell us where everyone can find you, where we can find the documentary, and about your Firefly Organics adventure.

For sure. We'll give you some links for the show notes. Yes, you can purchase Firefly Organic small batch coffee beans from jigsawhealth.com. We have it available for sale as of a few weeks ago, and also as of a few weeks ago, The documentary Breaking Big Food is available on Apple TV and Amazon Prime Video for rent. And if you watch it and you love it, we have one special request. Could you give us a rating on IMDb? We would absolutely love your rating because we feel like we're this close to the trolls finding out about this and just, you know, voting it some 1 stars so that they, uh, get people to not watch it.

I believe that. Well, guys, thank you so much for your work, for your dedication to the health of people. You will not even ever meet so many of them, and for taking your journey and really creating something meaningful from it. And it was an absolute pleasure to meet and chat with you all today. Thanks for coming on the podcast.

Likewise, thank you so much for having us.

That was wonderful. Thanks, McCall McPherson McCall.