IVF Isn't Fixing Fertility – Here's What Actually Works

Unfortunately, there's this narrative making IVF to be expected. So, the way that I'm thinking about IVF these days is the check engine lights on, the body's saying, "Hey, there's something going on, and then women are encouraged to do IVF. " That's like taking a car that has the check engine light on and trying to drive it at 200 mph across the country.

country. — One in seven couples is infertile. Sperm counts and sperm health is going down globally. Historically, women had babies in their early 20s and now, you know, women are delaying it and there's sort of some challenges with that and that's why we're seeing a lot of women struggling. But you also talk about this idea that it's not your chronological age, but it's your biological age that — matters. Dr. Anne Shippy is a former IBM chemical engineer, functional medicine leader who uses a datadriven approach to help couples conceive healthy babies well into their 40s, even after they've been told IVF is their only option. My oldest patient right now is 47 who got pregnant naturally on the first try. — I want to kind of emphasize it because it's generational and what you do now actually couldn't affect your grandchildren. — We can't change what genes we actually give to our child, but we can have a dramatic change on how those genes are being dialed up and dialed down.

— I actually have a true confession here. — Hey, it's Dr. Heyman. I'm so excited to share this episode with you today. But before we dive in, I want to get your help. Please take a minute to hit that subscribe button. Whether you're watching here on YouTube or listening on your favorite podcast platform, it truly means the world to me and it helps my team and I bring you this podcast every single week. Plus, I don't want you to miss a thing. So, thanks so much for being part of this community and I'm glad you're here and welcome to the podcast. — It's so great to be here with you. There were a few days where I was wondering in our recent past. What Ann's talking about, if you're wondering, is that a year ago or so, I was sick and uh she took care of me and helped me as one of the doctors helping me sort through this horrible health crisis I had. And uh I'm grateful for you for doing that. — Well, it's I just adore you and it was pretty scary at the time, but your body's amazing. All the things that you've done to heal, like — you look — better than ever. It looks so vibrant and healthy. It's so great just — Yeah. You know, there's life after death or almost death. — Well, and you after that you appreciate it even more each day, right? — Yeah. It I don't take a minute for granted. That is for sure. I came to the edge. It was close. Close call. That was close call. — Way too close. No more of those. — No more close calls.

— No more. We got that bubble around your — bubble wrap for Dr. Heman. And we're talking about a back surgery I had that was I got a back infection and I was, you know, in the hospital for weeks and on a deathbed for about a month and kind of a Hail Mary saved me, but uh here I am — on the way and — you know and that kind of goes to you know this sort of both unfortunate but also blessed um experience that we both had of having very serious debilitating ating quote chronic illnesses that were quote incurable but that we recovered from and who knew that the body is this miraculous thing that actually wants to be healthy. — I and I felt kind of lucky at this point to have had those experiences where I could witness in my own body what potential we have for healing. — I mean it is kind of amazing you know the body is like you crash your car and it doesn't heal. You know, you break a window and it doesn't repair itself. But your body is this intensely powerful healing machine, right? You cut yourself, you burn yourself, you break something and like you wait a little while and you know, you don't really have to do much and the body just kind of knows what to do. And today we're kind of diving into a topic where the body's been pretty messed up by the load of crappy food, the environmental toxins we're exposed to, the stresses we have, the change to our microbiome, and all the insults that come from living in today's modern world that have massively affected fertility. and your new book, The Preconception Revolution, a sciencebacked path to fertility and generational health, which is a great subtitle, for which I wrote the forward. Thank you for asking me to do that.

— Thank you so much. — Thank you for asking me to do that. I only write the forward to very few books and this one I felt compelled to write a forward to because — it's a topic that I think has been much neglected, which is thinking about how do we create a healthy baby? What are all the inputs that we have to think about to ourselves and our partners, men and women both because you're there two people involved in making a baby. How does that impact one your ability to get pregnant and two the health of the baby once it's in uterero? And you know I practice family medicine and I was trained in OB and gynecology and I delivered 500 babies. — Lucky you. And I learned all the tricks and tools of like, you know, how to deliver a baby and all the things that go wrong and how to, you know, do C-sections and how to deal with all kinds of complications. But I was never once taught about how do we create a healthy pregnancy and how do we create a healthy baby and how do like it get vaccinations? Like that was it, right? And I was it's just sort of stunning to me how it's this massively important area and it's massively neglected and we're seeing this massive fertility crisis. One in seven couples is infertile. Sperm counts and sperm health is going down globally. Kids are sicker than ever. One in two kids has some type of chronic problem whether it's ADD or depression or allergies or eczema. Whatever is going on with our kids is unprecedented. 40% of kids are overweight. 20 plus% are obese. — The autoimmunity, the cancer, — autoimmune disease, everything. So, — if we were starting our families right now, we'd be scared to death because we'd be like, "Oh my god, how are we possibly going to have a healthy kid without this conversation that we're having today? " Because I think it really will give people hope. And I want to create a sense of urgency around this. It's like most men and women have no idea that there's anything they can do other than starting a prenatal vitamin and start trying. They have no idea

this period before conception and between babies too can make a huge impact to their fertility and the health of their babies. So excited to have this conversation with you. — Yeah, it's an important book. I mean, everybody needs to go grab a copy if you want to get pregnant, if you know anybody who's going to have kids, if you it's a great present. It's like this is the book that you should be getting for anybody who's thinking of having a family or for your kids if they're having a family. I got it for my daughter. She's pregnant. So, I want her to read it. Uh, and I think, you know, I want to dive into the problem, but I just first want to sort of take a little step back. We sort of hinted at the beginning. You know, you came to understand the body in a very different way. You were a an engineer. You worked for IBM. — I was on a fast track. I was getting to do such cool things with getting chemicals out of our environment in the manufacturing area. And I thought I was going to be a chemical engineer executive for IBM and retire after 30 years. — Yeah. And get your gold watch. — Little did I Oh, exactly. You know, you've worked with IBM. Little did I know I was going to take quite a detour. — And so what happened? You got sick and then that led you on a different path. — I went on vacation and when I came back I couldn't find a doctor to help me. I couldn't absorb my food anymore and I got so skinny people thought that I had cancer. Like I looked terrible and felt terrible too. And so that's what made me start thinking about things outside of traditional medicine. Um I did all the workups, all the things through traditional medicine, but then I had to start changing my diet. I went and started found a naturopath and a nutritionist and started building my body back and suddenly my body was healing and better after 6 to n months of doing this additional work and I got so inspired with how my body healed that during the night one night I think my decision was made I wanted to change careers and uh go to medical school so I could do medicine differently at 32 — and I never taken a biology class. — Yeah. No, me neither. I studied Buddhism and I didn't it was sort of an afterthought and I think that there's a whole bunch of us out there who have been um you could say fortunately unfortunately have been sick and we've gone into medicine or we've been in medicine and we got sick and we had to wake up to something different to a different way of thinking about the body about health and we had to question our training the paradigm we were all exposed to and we had to think about doing medicine quite differently and you know You're also like me, a functional medicine practitioner. We've known each other a long time. Your work really is around this particular area is so inspiring because you really break it down for people in terms of the way to think about handling all the things you need to handle to create a healthy baby. And it's not like you start when you get pregnant. The book is called the preconception revolution, meaning before you get pregnant. And it's not just like a day before or a week before. It's you're talking anywhere from 3 months to 36 months, 3 years. You have to start thinking about what it takes to prepare yourself to have a healthy baby. And I was just reading an article, you maybe you're aware of some of this data, but there was a really interesting article about rapamy and fertility and egg preservation in women, which this is a kind of a longevity drug. It's it modulates immune function. Has a lot of interesting effects. But, you know, I think we're seeing increasing ways of how do we preserve increase improve fertility and healthy pregnancies

pregnancies — and especially as it applies to women. There's um there's a study that just came out on uh the mitochondrial DNA being preserved mo more than any other cell in the body that they could test. And so that was one of the things that I think really gives me hope. And what I see happening with patients is that even for women in their mid to late 40s, if they've really taken care of their bodies and they've done these steps that I've described, even if they've had infertility issues where they've gone an IVF route in the past, that they can actually um improve their ovarian function and have healthy babies well into their mid and maybe even late 40s. My oldest patient right now is 47. And I just got pregnant naturally on the first try. She had a couple kids. They're about uh 10. And she met the love of her life and decided that they decided they wanted to have a child together. She knew about my work. So she came in right as she was turning 47. We found some things. I was like, "Wait, let's test you and make sure it's a good idea. " So we found her microbiome was off. She had some environmental toxins we needed to clear out some inflammatory markers. We worked really hard for three months and then they had one she was supposed to come back and retest some of these things, but they had one night where they weren't careful and um got pregnant and now she's doing about 6 weeks and she looks and feels amazing. um super happy, easy pregnancy, super everything's going very well and um she's actually going to be 48 by the time that the baby's born. And then I just right before I left the office to come talk to you today had follow up with a patient of mine who's 44 and we had kind of decided maybe they shouldn't have another baby. She had done she came to see me about a year ago. She had done IVF to get her 3-year-old and the IVF was really hard on her body. She had endometrius that just went rampant and she actually ended up losing a kidney from it. So she's down to one kidney. It triggered autoimmunity. So she ended up with autoimmune hepatitis and we were like, "Okay, maybe one is good. " She's 6 weeks pregnant right now, not trying at 44. — Yeah. I mean, we know we talk in medicine about geriatric pregnancy, which means if you're 35 and older, you're a quote geriatric pregnancy. And I think, you know, historically, you know, women had babies in their, you know, teenagers and early 20s and but now, you know, women are delaying it and there's a there's sort of, I think, some challenges with that. And that's why we're seeing a lot of women struggling. But, but you also talk about this idea that it's not your chronological age, but it's your biological age that matters. Talk more about that. I'm starting to think about the ovaries as they're like little sensors in the body, like continuously monitoring. Is it a good time? Cuz we're basically built to keep the species going, right? So, if the body senses it's not a good time, the check engine light comes on and it's like, nope, we're not doing this right now cuz you might not be safe and might not be a good time to have a baby for them as well. And so I I'm really thinking about infertility as just the body's sensing it's not a good time. The male side of things is a little bit different because we're continuously um producing sperm. So it's more about the sperm quality. But that's another thing I see too. Um

we see when there's environmental exposures, when there's nutritional deficiencies, um weight and blood sugar abnormalities that the body's not producing healthy sperm. And so a lot of times what I'll see is even a patient who has um issues with their sperm quality or quantity when we do these same things for the man. — Yeah. — They get an increase in sperm count and quality. — Yeah. — And um also in resume to be super fertile. — Yeah. That's so important. you talked about like this sort of problem infertility as sort of a not like a moral failing or some terrible thing wrong with you but like as a check engine light like if something's going on with fertility it means it's not just about fertility. It's kind of a clue that there's some biological disturbances that are upsetting your hormonal regulation and ovarian function and sperm health and production and quality. All those things are modifiable and we don't think about them. We don't address them in traditional medicine. We don't think about how to look at it. — Well, and unfortunately, there's this narrative. There are more and more books coming out by reproductive endocrinologists that are just making IVF to be expected, right? — In order to get pregnant, you have to go to the doctor. — And you So, the way that I'm thinking about IVF these days is the check engine lights on. The body's saying, "Hey, there's something going on. " And then women are encouraged to do IVF. And it's that's like taking a car that has the check engine light on and trying to drive it at 200 miles an hour ac across the country. It's like — it's putting the body through super physiological efforts rather than being like wait what's going on? Why is it something simple like we're a little low in some nutrients or is there some inflammation because there's a low-grade infection or is there a mold exposure or what's going on that's causing the body to put the check engine light on? — Exactly. You know, and I've seen this so much in my practice at the Ultra Wellness Center. I've helped so many women get pregnant by just addressing the fundamental like terrain. And it's like if you're going to plant, you know, a vegetable in the garden, you want healthy soil. And so, how do you create metaphorically healthy soil in a human body, both for the man and the woman? And it's not something that most of us know how to do. And there's ways of measuring, testing, evaluating, and learning about what's going on in ways that are not done in traditional medicine. And that yet are extremely effective and that I think are increasingly being thought of by some fertility specialists. It's like hard to ignore, you know, like I think I just had um Michael Eisenberg who's from Stanford who's a urologist specializes in fertility and men and so forth and he's talking about these issues. So I'm like okay you know this people are in academic centers starting to think about you know toxins about nutrition about stress about the microbiome and how all those play a role in affecting the basic hormonal systems and important sort of regulatory pathways allow us to have a healthy baby. How do you start to think about like evaluating someone and when someone comes down say well I'm having trouble getting pregnant or I want to get pregnant like what do I do how do I start you know maybe I'm not having trouble but I want to clean house and get myself ready or maybe I am having a problem what do I do so let's start with like just as a general idea that preconception time matters and what

should we be looking at measuring what should we be testing and what are the kinds of things that people should be doing to actually improve their health so that their eggs and their sperm are as healthy as they can be at the time of conception. — That's such a great question. So, I know not everybody can do the testing like that's ideal to take inventory. Um, so you know, I wrote the book so that somebody could pick up the book and understand what the testing is, see how much they can actually go get done, but if they can't start to lay a really solid foundation. So the first thing is to get the diet dialed in. So you and I find we've had so many of our patients heal by just changing their diet, right? So, um, I would start there by taking out the highly processed foods and add in the most nutrient-dense foods that we can. So, I really like a paleo or Mediterranean diet where people are already taking out the gluten and the dairy that can be so inflammatory, depending on the person, see if they can take out the grains, but mostly put the really high quality good things in and get out the processed. But the truth is that sugar and starch is huge driver of infertility. Well, I mean Walter Willard wrote a book called The Fertility Diet and was all about the phenomena of insulin resistance driving infertility. — And that leads to one of the things that really led me to write this book that I want to segue on for just a minute and that's epigenetics. So how we dial our genes up and down. can't change what genes we actually give to our child, but we can have a dramatic change on how those genes are being dialed up and dialed down. So then where our metabolic uh state is when we get pregnant actually gets passed on to the baby. What our toxin levels are especially for men can have a huge impact on how those genes are being dialed up and dialed down. Um even can determine is it a successful and healthy pregnancy once you get pregnant. But then there's intergenerational studies now that and that's why I called it the um know for generational health because the um the state of the nutrition in the body, toxins, the microbiome, the sperm is like a time capsule. So I really want to inspire men to be not just thinking about their own health but do as much as they possibly can in this 3 6 12 months. takes about 74 to 86 days to make a sperm. So, get things really dialed in around three months before you're starting to try to conceive with as many of these factors that are going to influence the health of your baby.

So, hopefully that's going to really inspire men to prioritize their own health and make these changes. you know, eating super healthy and getting their weight at a good place, uh, eliminating the toxins, doing a detox period where they are getting the toxins out. One of the interesting studies that came out actually after the book was written, so I didn't get to include it, was they took men and they gave them highly processed foods for 3 weeks. and another group that they gave just mostly whole foods like healthy meat, healthy vegetables. And then they looked at sperm quality and hormone levels. In just three weeks, they could see a change in sperm quality and hormone levels. Then they flipped the groups and they saw the same thing. So when they took the men who had their sperm looked pretty healthy, their hormone levels were good, they did a little wash out period and then started filling them, feeding them highly processed foods and saw the same kind of decline in as little as 3 weeks. — So Twinkies and Pop-Tarts are bad for your sperm. — Well, exactly. And I think it's somewhat too the containers that these highly processed foods are. — Like the takeout I think is really not good for men's sperm health, right? um the PAS and the plastics that get leeched into the food from the takeout containers and the frozen containers that the highly processed food in is then as part of the um the story here on what's going to actually move the needle to have people have men have healthier sperm. It's important that you're talking about this because I remember a book I read a long time ago called Our Stolen Future by Theo Cobburn, which is sort of like a Rachel Carson Silent Spring book about the role of these environmental chemicals and pesticides and plastics and PAS and fiber chemicals and their role as endocrine disruptors and how they were affecting fertility and the and she went deep into the animal kind of uh research around this and I think you know we don't realize iz that that's all affecting us. So the toxins do affect both women and men in terms of both their — it's just easier to study it in men because we have this quick turnaround. It's harder to know what's going on with ovaries. But I'm sure it's the same thing. — Yeah. — As with the men with the ovaries, it's part of why the ovaries are saying, "Ah, check engine light. There's a problem

here. " — So how do you start to think about just let's just sort of dive into the whole preparation of how do we like clean house, right? Because, — you know, health is just about removing the things that are causing a problem and also adding things that make you healthy, but they the it's the overall load of things over time that tend to cause problems. — So, most people when I do their toxin testing, they have they think they're doing everything right and then we'll test and like find out that they're high in atrizine or high in BPA or heavy metals or all these things. So, if for the people that can test, great. And if they can't getting the starting to minimize the exposures by you know using things like environmental working group and looking for where the chemicals are eating the healthy foods that actually support the detox pathways but then I think most people really benefit from uh doing some liposal glutathione and some liver support and some binders for at least 3 months and I describe a lot of that in the book. But — so what you're talking about is basically a systematic way to help upregulate your body's own detoxification pathways through specific foods, certain supplements, certain lifestyle practices, saunas, all kinds of things that binders to bind the toxins. And there's a method to it. And it's not something we learn in medical school, but it it's something that I think I've used personally when I had mercury poisoning — and other various kinds of toxic stuff. — Me, too. When I had toxic mold. — Yeah. And so we you know it works and it's something that you know requires some level of education, awareness and — uh specificity but it actually can help you reduce your total body burden quite significantly. Uh and I think it's there are even more advanced protocols like introvenous protocols of IVs and things like phosphylcoline but there you know those are harder to access and they're more expensive. But honestly in a perfect world I would like put everybody through a six-month detox program. get their metals out, get their pesticides out, — you know, put them on an aggressive detox program, you know, IVs, saunas, gut binders. — I think that's the next thing we do is we just open these centers that — that have this level for people that need to. But what I see with my patients and cuz not everybody can do that and what I wrote the book for is so that people know how to do it safely. And I'm, you know, I'm starting to even think about how I'm thinking about this because so many young women that I'm running into, they're like 28 or 30, they haven't met their person yet or they're deep into starting their career and they want to wait and they're seeing everything on social media and what's happened with friends that are a little older. And so I'm I also think that rather than going and putting your eggs on ice kind of thing, if you do take some of these steps, you can preserve your fertility based on what I'm seeing in my mid-40 year olds. Like I sure — I mean it is sure I mean the body has this incredible capacity to kind of repair, heal, and to renew. But also, you know, I think it's important not to wait too long. — Yeah. No, I mean — I think a lot of people struggle and they wait and they and then they end up, you know, just — it's a lot less stressful if you do it in your if you have your kids in your late 20s or early 30s. — Yeah. — But I don't want people to feel like there's this pressure like save for IVF or, you know, make sure you get your eggs harvested. And I want to change that conversation. And I'd rather people are actually putting their efforts into lowering inflammation and toxins in their body and you know really supporting their fertility with some of the supplements. You talked about the repomiasin. I think some of the supplements that work on some of those same pathways like CoQ10 and NAD and um some of these supplements that are so reasonably priced and very available for most people can do a lot of those same things without the level of risk and cost. Yeah, there's I mean Michael Eisenberg, the Stanford professor is involved with a company called Swim Club, which is basically about supplements that help male fertility and sperm health — because there's so much good data around this now. Like there really are supplements. So that's the So we talked about getting the diet dialed in, making sure the toxins are taken care of, and then there's Yeah, there's so many good nutrients for enhancing. — Are they different for men and women, or like how do you think about it? And testing? evaluating what people need and what the things that are most evidence-based that are out there? — So I really feel like this area is evolving like as I was writing this book there were a number of studies that came out to look at this and um and there was actually another one even on ashwagandha that came out recently for sperm health. So it's such an evolving area and the quality of the studies can be mixed but I really find that there's so much good research around the mitochondrial function. So most of the nutrients that support mitochondrial function uh the little organels and the cells I'm sure your audience is very heard about mitochondria and nauseium but yeah the few people that might be listening that don't know what mitochondria are. Yeah, — they're the little energy makers and they squelch inflam certain types of inflammation in the body. Pretty much everything that supports mitochondria supports fertility. So, CoQ10, B vitamins, NAD, you and I both have had such a dramatic assistance from this supplement uh phospatylcoline in our bodies. Uh, it turns out there's a lot of really good data behind phospatidylcholine being good for both men and women's fertility that like if I could just beam out a supplement to everybody who wants to protect their fertility or enhance their fertility, everybody would get ostet. — That's basically like a fatty substance that's part of your cell membranes that helps both your regular cells and the mitochondrial membranes, right? So you've got it's basically providing the infrastructure like the building blocks the bricks for your cells to work — for cells and the mitochondrial membranes and that's such a fun area to be able to measure and see the difference in how the cells and the mitochondrial performing. So you know you and I have both seen such turnarounds from our patients that are super sick with autoimmune disease and neurological diseases and all the things. Oh. — Um, and then of course it works for healthy babies and fertility too. — Yeah. Well, energy is everything, right? If you don't have energy, you can't do anything in the body. And if your energy system isn't working, then you know

it's tough. So, I think it's really important that people understand that this is not like a passive process that it's really requires some thought and planning and preparation and it's not to guilt trip people or to have a moral judgment, but you know, having a healthy baby is unusual today. I mean, one, getting pregnant is hard, and two, having a healthy baby. So, it's not just about the conception part, it's also about, you know, what you mentioned a little earlier, which was epigenetics. And I want to sort of double click on that a little bit because in, you know, people may not really understand the implications of that. Everything we do washes over our genes. Every thought we have, every bite of food we have, every our sleep, exercise, environmental toxins, emotions, all of it is communicating in real time with our genes in ways that program them for health or disease. And so the good news is it's changeable. The bad news is if you don't do anything about it, it can be a problem. — It can be devastating. — And you mentioned generational effects. I think, you know, you talked about generational health as a subtitle of your book. I wanted you to talk about that. — Yeah. You're making me think of a really um powerful patient uh example. So, you and I both love taking care of families and multiple generations. So, as you were talking about that, you made me think about this couple that brought me their children like 10 years ago when they had one child with autism who was about four and you know, fairly severe um verbal but you know, lots of issues. And then another one who uh was a year and a half and had developed pretty severe autoimmune and sephilitic encphilitis. So pans pandas we found

that they were in toxic mold and had you know methylation so you know some genetic predispositions to not clearing toxins very well some glutath we found a lot of things with them and we got them out of that dilemma right so now this little girl is she's like leading her class kind of thing and the little boy doesn't have any signs of autoimmunity but in the meantime then I got to help the parents and they had to go through some IVF to get these kids but we got the parents tuned up. And so then at 42, — they ended up with the surprise number three. — Whoops. That they weren't expecting cuz they had gone through infertility with the first two. And then also, — you know, it was a little alarming like were we going to get a healthy baby at 42? Well, this little girl, she's um she's five now and she uh she is so unbelievably healthy. Like, — wow. every — because you kind of got them healthy — because they got healthy. So, they were some of my teachers and like what's important when I was writing the book among many of my patients. But it's so inspiring because infertility issues, sick children get their bodies tuned up and they accidentally get pregnant. — I see that a lot. I see it a lot. people don't think about how that they have to get themselves healthy first. But it it it's a great story because I think it sort of speaks to the reversibility of a lot of these problems. — Well, and I think so many couples, they're going into this seeing, you know, their either their siblings having children with health issues or their family or their friends having infertility or problems. So, they go in already thinking, "Oh, we might fail. " And so that's why I love sharing these st stories because just having that hope that if you put this effort in and actually press the pause button, take the time, — don't rush into getting pregnant, take the 3, 6, 12 months to really prepare your body. It can really make a difference between what you have to go through with your kids because it's so hard to have a child with the neurodedevelopmental delays or the autoimmunity. And — it's a little disturbing. I mean, one in six kids now has some type of neurodedevelopmental problem, whether it's learning disabilities or asperers or ADD or autism or anywhere in that whole — spectrum escalating. I think without this kind of effort and that's why I really I called this book the revolution because I want people to really start like it's non-negotiable to think about this period of time so that we can start to see the autism decline the autoimmunity the cancer rates that we're seeing in the kids like have you seen the studies on uh the numbers that came out on colon cancer you know really going up in 20 and 30 year olds — yeah it's frightening we're basically threatening our whole future generation if we don't address this. And I think this is one of the most consequential books because of that cuz nobody's really talking about this. We're talking about the rise in autism, what's the cause, and what's going on. And we know like it's not like a freaking mystery. Like it's not that hard. I mean, we might not know everything about everything, but we know a lot of the foundational principles about how to create a healthy human. And that means, you know, dealing with nutrition, dealing with stress, dealing with environmental toxins, dealing with the microbiome, dealing with — mitochondrial dysfunction. All the things that you talk about in your book, they're like foundational for everybody's health in general, not just sperm and egg health, because like you said, it's just like a check engine light. It means everything else is not good, too. And I think by doing this work before starting or growing your family, you also change the trajectory for your own longevity. Right. I think you're less likely to get cancer, to get autoimmune diseases, to have all these things that are also looming for people. — Yeah. Right. It's not like you're doing this just to have a baby. You're actually getting yourself healthier. And there is benefits to that. You're going to feel better. You're going to have less chronic disease. Well, and the other thing that I've seen is that when uh couples do this, the women are less likely to have the postpartum issues. Like they just sail through the postpartum period. I still like to do some testing and make sure they're getting — tuned up and, you know, after the first month or two or replacing nutritional deficiencies and double-checking to see what all the hormones did to their microbiome and things like that. But it just it actually helps people to be in a place where they can enjoy their families more and be present and have, you know, delight in growing their family. — Yeah. I mean, if you're not healthy, it's hard to show up for your kids, right? — Exactly. — And just kind of looping back a little bit to the epigenetic stuff. I think I want to kind of emphasize it because it's it's generational like what you do now actually could affect your grandchildren. I think that the PAS testing is one of the biggest things. I think you offer it through function health. We do it at function health. I think that's one of the most interesting pieces of epigenetic data for generational health that's out there now. We know that the PAS can dramatically like just exposure to the sperm and the egg can dramatically affect the possibility that the child's going to have to deal with obesity. — Yeah. And those are forever chemicals, right? And they they're obes. — So, and probably for future generations. Like it's looking like those epigenetic switches that get passed on at conception can impact not just the baby, but their children as well. So, the best analogy that I can think of are the dees children, right? The children that were exposed to the dees chemical in uterero. M — it's a similar thing where you know I just had a new patient the other day where her grandmother had the exposure and now we're like oh well let's kind of look at how this might affect your fertility. So she's just starting to think about having babies so we're going to delve into that. — We see that I mean we see this in animal studies because you know it's hard to poison a human on purpose. purpose, — but we're all poisoned anyway, but on purpose. And they do this with animals like with mice. And they see that there's transgenerational effects. If the grandmother mouse had glyphosate or is a weed killer or Roundup, their grand little baby mice are affected. The risk of hormonal dysfunction, of cancers, of kidney issues. It's kind of disturbing and we're not really addressing this as a medical profession, as a society, and we h we have to cuz if we don't, we're going to see a very sorry generation coming up.

— So, you and I both love data. We're so nerdy, so we love to test. But what I know not everybody has access to that. So, if you can at least, you know, follow the checklist of things. I mentioned the packaged foods, but it's, you know, in the clothing, it's in the our sofas, our um carpeting, all those kinds of uh like just nonstick surfaces. I'm not sure that any non-stick pan is healthy. Don't feel safe with them. I think we need to be using — cast iron. — Yes. Or stainless steel. Um so eliminating the exposures that we can figure out and then helping our bodies to detoxify that 3 6 12 months before and between pregnancies I think is going to give people a much uh lower likelihood of passing on those epigenetic changes. — And are there ways that people like thinking about okay what are the tests that we need to do? What are the biomarkers you know, functional health, we create a panel of bioarkers that includes a lot of the foundational things that you need to know like a lot of the core nutritional things that are important, a lot of the hormonal factors that affect fertility, um the immune factors, checking for inflammation, and also we can look at PAS, you can look at BPA, heavy metals. Should people be doing that? — Absolutely. every test they can possibly do as well as looking at their microbiome as well as um if they can do mitochondrial function so they know if they need to uh do something there uh autoimmunity there's so many people that have the autoimmune process going on but they don't have any — low grade right — disease yet so I really like people to do a detailed autoimmune panel — it's incredible we I don't I told you this but in function we back you know 400,000 members go through it and a good third of people have some degree of autoimmune disease or pre-autoimmune disease. — It takes years with a positive ANA. It's kind of a lot of people — tissue damage to happen. I pretty much screen every patient because it's usually fat dysfunction. It's the immune system just being confused and as it's working on something, a low-grade infection or these environmental toxins that are building up um and then it gets confused and attacks itself like the thyroid or the DNA or you know I had a run in with sugars after um I had my second baby. Um totally gone now along with um basically antifphospholipid syndrome also completely gone now. This is important. What everybody but everybody should pay attention to is — what Anna is saying is she had a whole bunch of auto antibodies. And by the way, so did I. — And we're trained in medicine that once you have them, they never go away. But that ain't true. That ain't true. — Well, so what we're trained in medicine to do, so I you know, I'm 2 years into my internal medicine practice. I can't have a conversation without having some piece of gum or mint in my mouth. Then my eyes were so dry I couldn't wear contacts anymore. And I so I did an autoimmune workup on myself and I found I had those antibodies along with the antiphospholipid antibodies which means I was at increased risk for having a heart attack, stroke kind of thing, right? And so I, you know, I've had my

training and I know I still go see the um the specialist, the rheatologist and get the answer I expected. like the only thing to do is to put you on imunosuppressants and then go away, right? Um, so that was actually perfect because I had a baby in med school, a baby in residency in my 30s and I was kind of had a one-year-old and a 5-year-old when I was done. So I went into standard internal medicine practice. I was off my path. I hadn't found functional medicine yet. So it was perfect because I was like, "Oh, wait. I've got to solve this. " So that was right around the time that IFM started um being a little bit more visible. Found them, went did my first course. It was all they offered at the time is just the one week. — When was that? — About 21 years ago, I guess. — So then I started implementing everything I learned and reversed my autoimmune markers, which was great because then I could hold that for my patients, right? Just because you have Hashimoto's thyroiditis or lupus doesn't mean that you should just bandage your system with the imunosuppressants, we need to figure out why your immune system's confused and help your body get your immune system back into balance. — Yeah. — So, it's been really fun. And then every once in a while, I'll just double check myself because I know I don't have to have symptoms, right? And my immune autoimmune markers are like perfect. — It's true. It's important like the diagnostic workup to like make sure you're okay before you have a kid is important and that's why with function health we do include autoimmune biomarkers which are not typically part of your checkup cuz we I think they should be screened because there is a phenomena pre-immune just like it's like pre-diabetes or prehypertension and it's not that they're really pre anything they're just — just don't have fullblone disease yet — something's going on it doesn't mean it's normal and most doctors will dismiss and say well you don't have any other symptoms it's nothing it doesn't mean anything. It's not true. It means — it's so your immune system's confused and attacking itself. — Yeah. It's like if your blood sugar is 99, but 100 is pre-diabetes. Like is 99 actually okay? No. — And it is one of the things that can be the trigger for infertility. — Yeah. — And I think there it's also letting us know that there's epigenetic markers that are not going to be great for the baby. So, I've had a number of patients now where I what I'm thinking about one in particular where she had failed IVF so many times that they told her, "Don't do it anymore. " And she came in, we uh worked her up. She had an undiagnosed uh autoimmune thyroid situation um along with some shits in her microbiome, some toxins, you know, worked up the whole thing. She ended up getting pregnant. um naturally and then she was nursing that baby and ended up getting pregnant with twins. — Wow. — Didn't learn the lesson. Got pregnant with number four. So she ended up with four children under the age of four after failing IVF. Like to no — I hope you talked to her about birth control that her husband finally they decided for it was good. What if the greatest threat to

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That really taught me about how important the autoimmune piece was in the infertility and then how incredibly fertile because right you're not supposed to be that fertile while you're still nursing. But yeah, I have several of the I have actually have two of those patients right now that are we did a little tuneup postpartum, you know, looking at your nutrient status and got them really dialed in with their nutrients and then they were they weren't quite ready for the next one. — It happens, right? The healthier you get, the more fertile you are. That's the whole message here is that if you want to be fer, you have to be healthy. — Exactly. — Infertility is not a disease. It's just a sign that something else is going on in your body that you can address. And it's not directly treating your hormones, which is basically what happens with IVF treatment. They just plow these hormones into you. They overpower your system. They cause all kinds of havoc. Often women have long-lasting consequences from that. And I'm not saying IVF is bad cuz you know if people really want to have a baby and they can't otherwise okay but like they're still — do this first because the if you do end up needing IVF you'll have a healthier baby and you'll have better chances at the IVF working. So it should be like prep for IVF cuz a lot of times then you don't even need it. I just a new patient last week. They had failed IVF. um I've just seen her for the first time and that our husband came and they had been reading the book and learning about him. So he had done a traditional sperm test for them when they were doing the IVF piece and it had looked okay. So they were just pointing the finger at her. Well then they did this. Have you heard about the sperm QT test yet? Yes. So he

did sperm QT. It's terrible. And so now they're both patients and we're going to get them both tuned up because the sperm QT looks at the epigenetics of the sperm and can detect deeper problems than what a traditional — and what is it measuring? — It's measuring um epigenetic markers. So methylation and histone markers of the sperm. Um, and I this is another thing that I hope just becomes really common as part of this um probably the longevity conversation like is your can we use sperm as a — a biomarker for men? — Okay. All right. I I actually have true confession here. I wanted to figure that out and I did that sperm QT test. — You did? — I did and I got excellent. So, I was happy to see that at 66 years old. And that's unusual. — I mean, I think that's going to kind of be one of the mixed blessings of what you've gone through the last two years, right? Because it got you to even dial in your health even more. — Yeah. — Wouldn't you say in some ways you're healthier now than ever? — For sure. — And so, that's so great that you can see that in that — bio. I I understand that it's a biioarker even if you're not wanting to have a kid or not planning to have children. You know, it's like checking your blood pressure, checking your sperm health is a way to see if you're otherwise healthy or not. And actually, Michael Eisenberg from Stanford on the podcast, he talked about exactly this issue. He said, you know, it's a it's a biomarker of your health, not it's like a vital sign. — It may be an easier way to even know is there a toxin we need to go look for. Is there a disruption in your microbiome? Do you have a low-grade infection someplace? Do you have some autoimmunity brewing? It can it I think it's kind of an easy way to see what's going on. — Yeah. I mean, I'd encourage everybody to listen to that podcast with Michael Eisenberg, but I think your message is very much the same. It's like don't just look at the woman. The guy's half the problem. And often the woman gets all the hassle and the blame. And it's — and half the opportunity for this preconception period, right? It's like part of how we have a healthy pregnancy, baby. It's like such an untapped potential for couples to help them actually have a healthy family. — Yeah, it's so true. — That's so great, Mark. I'm just I love hanging out with you. I love that you did that. — Oh, yeah. Whatever. I try everything. I want to know like I want to test everything because I'm just curious and it's what my job is anyway. So, I want to learn about tests. I want to do it for my patients. So I always do it myself and I learn a lot and you know I see areas that are problematic. You mentioned something earlier I want to kind of come back to um and see if you can dive in a little bit on the research on this and we've heard a lot about Naman NR NAD as this longevity supplement. My um David uh Sinclair has done a lot of research on this and I heard him once talking about this and I read about it in his book uh lifespan where he basically talked about these female mice who he gave NAMN to which is a precursor of NAD which is some helps mitochondrial function and DNA repair and inflammation and blood sugar regulation and a whole bunch of stuff. and he said these mice reversed menopause or he called their mouseopause but you know — what is the data on these — of course I'm not doing anything in isolation like I don't have the mice that I can look at and just see what NAD does but I so many of my patients for so many different things I use uh the best form of oral NAD that I can and for the patients that are willing to come and do the NAD IVs I found a source for that I get just such great results Um, and then I combine it with phosphatidylcholine, um, orally and IV if we can, um, really good forms of CoQ10, the B vitamins, all the things that really support the mitochondria. And I think this is part of why I'm seeing such good success because the mitochondria are such an important piece of the sperm itself. I was show I'm doing a an online course for you know kind of the people between me the people that want more of me than what they can get just from reading the book and uh and yet they can't come see me as a patient. Um so I've just started this and um you know showing them the picture of the sperm that have all the little mitochondria lined up after the head so they can you know be inspired to support their mitochondria. And then um and then the ovaries like the ovaries just need so such good mitochondrial support. And then I just see this like I had a patient uh today who's 55 and she's doing all the mitochondria support you know she's taking the mito the CoQ10 the NAD and she's 55 and she's still having regular periods like every 28 days and I think it's because we've really um you know she had some family history for things that we wanted to really get ahead of with some dementia heart disease and those kinds of things. So I'm like, okay, let's really have your mitochondria be some of the focus. So I think the NAD is really a powerful piece of this. And then there

are some there's a study that came out where they did the NAD IVs, you know, like a 10ack of them and showed that it did help significantly with fertility. And again, I don't want people to feel like they have to do the NADS, but if you're in a situation, you know, you're 40 and you want to have a baby next year, then think about — Yeah. — doing the NADVs. — Yeah. All such important information, you know, the importance of nutrition, the role of toxins, your microbiome, mitochondria. But, you know, there's another piece of this, which is this stress of trying to have a baby when you can't have a baby. And it I I've seen this over and over again. And as soon as couples give up, they get pregnant. Like as soon as they deal with cuz it's such a stressful process. — I personally in one of those babies, my mom had the like she the papers to sign for adoption and then she got pregnant at 32. — Yeah. And I think, you know, I remember before I even back in early 90s, I took a course at Harvard that was — the mindfulness one. — Yeah. with Herbert Benson and he had a woman come and speak who was a Harvard professor name was Ally Domar — and she wrote a book about this and it was really this mindfulness based stress reduction essentially meditation group for 12 weeks where they learned about stress management stress reduction and their results in terms of pregnancy were the same as IVF like or better than IVF so basically I thought that was Fascinating. And I'd love you to sort of speak a little bit about that piece of it because I think — families, couples, women especially, get very burdened by this feeling of not being able to conceive and it actually makes it all a lot worse. And how do you help them think through that? — I think this is important for everybody listening, not just for people that want to start to go with their family. Like it's such an important driver for health. So, and it it's something that I really do address in the book, but um you know, we have something called the cortisol steel where when we're stressed, we make more cortisol, and it basically slurps up the estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, and uses the precursors for making our hormones into cortisol. And so, one of the best things that we can do is to meditate. Um, I it's so funny because I was just having a conversation with one of my office staff today when we were both grabbing a cup of tea um about the importance of meditation and she's like, "But I can't do it. I'm not good at it. I start stressing out about whether I'm doing it right. " And I reassured her — that just the intention of meditating will start to change your biology. Just letting your body know that it can be for a moment without doing will start to change the brain waves that you make. — Me even thinking that you could do meditation, not meditating or actually meditating — actually meditating. But you know you're it's so normal for your brain to get distracted and start solving a problem or making a grocery list or reflecting on a previous conversation. But that's okay. That is normal. If you just when you notice that you're in a little different place, if you just gently bring yourself back — to the meditation, whatever, and it doesn't really matter whether you're doing mindfulness, centering prayer, Joe Despensza, like any kind of meditation — has really good research behind it. So, it's a matter of just finding a type of meditation that you like and actually doing it. — Doing it. Yeah. — And it doesn't even have to be long. Even 5 minutes will start to change your biology. Yeah, — ideally it's 20 minutes once or twice a day.

day. — And then for people that really want to get more nerdy about it, you could um you can do neuro feedback. I personally find neuro feedback fascinating and have invested a lot of time and money and equipment and you know going and doing um week-long neuro feedback. — Great. 40 years. — 40 years is that I've done four or five times. Um — and I have a Muse a um a sensei which is one of the newer neuro feedback devices. I have the — equipment that you spend 20 grand on because I find it so impactful. Wow. — Um I think you know sometimes when we go through these health crises or um like almost dying or like we both of us have done um multiple times that our brains can really get stuck in something called limbic state where we can't like we're just stuck in high beta and can't get into the alpha theta — brain states very easily. Um, one of the best things that we can do is go and do some neuro feedback to help our bodies know that we're not running from the tiger anymore. We're not — needing to be hypervigilant and we can actually start relaxing and enjoying our lives again. So important for — for fertility, healthy pregnancies to find something that you really enjoy. It can just be a guided meditation. And it can be a prayer, a mantra, something that gives your body a few minutes every day to relax. — Well, it's just such a hopeful conversation, you know, from just the simple idea that there's actually something you can do rather than just going to fertility doctor, crossing your fingers, and going through tens of thousands of dollars worth of treatment with all kinds of pokes and prods and injections. And it's like, wait, stop. Like, let's try something else first. Not that we can't use IVF as a last resort, but it shouldn't be the first step. And I think, you know, your book really lays out very carefully how to think about all the different things that you can address from fundamental lifestyle factors to detoxification to addressing mitochondrial function to identifying all those pieces in a very simple way that people can use. So, and I thank you for writing this book. Where can people find out more about you, about your work, about the online course. Like tell us more. — Uh so my website is anshippmd. com. Uh the book is available any place that books are sold. It's easiest probably to get on Amazon and um and we're just constantly putting information on Instagram and any place that I'm found. So thanks so much. What about this course for people listening like I can't see you and what I — Oh, the course is uh we've started a separate website called Every Baby Well, cuz that's my dream is that all babies are born healthy. Um I was pregnant with my first son. Oh gosh, this makes me feel really emotional. Like this is what I wish I had known before I got pregnant. I was in medical school. I was doing my first rotation, third year of medical school, eight months pregnant at Herman Hospital in Houston. And it was devastating to see these children suffering when the hormones were just flowing through me. Like, — yeah, — this is what I wish I had known and what I want every parent to know before they get pregnant on what to do. So, — every baby weld. com, — every. com, you can find information about the course. And I'm so I'm loving it so much. I love seeing patients individually, but what's really interesting is how um the people in the course are wanting to help each other already and be encouraging of each other. So, I really feel like we're going to build this community of uh parents to be or people that are growing their family that all want to really um be implementing this healthy lifestyle, have these tools in their toolbox so they can have healthy families. Love it. Well, thank you Ann. Thanks for your dedication and all the work you do and the book and everybody definitely get a copy. Thanks for being on the podcast. — Thanks Mark. Thanks so much for supporting this mission of healthy babies. — If you love that last video, you're going to love the next one. Check it out here.