Preconception Revolution: A Science-Backed Path to Fertility & Generational Health

Introduction to fertility and preconception health 0:00

As you may or may not know, I just turned 43 and I'm about to have a baby. This is with Hashimoto's with premature ovarian insufficiency and having told that my best bet were donor eggs and IVF. I didn't go that route, which doesn't mean that you shouldn't, but a lot of people have been asking me to share more about my fertility journey. And today, I'm super, super excited to have a fertility expert, good friend of mine that I've known for over 10 years, Dr. Anne Shipie, who is joining us to talk about the preconception revolution.

She is a physician and functional medicine expert and has an upcoming book focused on a science-backed path to your fertility and generational health, and it's called Preconception Revolution. So it is so wonderful to have Dr. Shippey here with us. We're going to be talking about epigenetics, we're gonna be taking about the male fertility piece, oftentimes possible to get pregnant after 35, even though we may not have heard that to be the case. So, Dr. Shippey, it's so wonderful to have you here.

Thank you so much for joining us today. Oh, thank you, so, much, for having me to talk about my favorite subject. I love that you have your own healing story. You went through some really, really challenging times. you look so vibrant. Every time I see you, you're gorgeous and you looks so Vibrant and You definitely do not look your biological age. But you've gone through somethings to get here. have and actually I'm so grateful for the journeys but I've my body's been my best teacher really and I think similar to you where we learned so much about health that we can help other people from but the first part of it was my switch from a career in engineering where I was climbing the corporate ladder and getting to do really cool things as a chemical engineer at IBM.

And I got super sick about a decade in and went from doctor to doctor and couldn't get help and I was really sick. People thought I had cancer or something. I looked so horrible.I just could not keep weight on and the doctors couldn t figure out what was wrong with me. And so that's when I really had to start investigating for myself and trying different things and finally came up with what I needed to do to heal. And that window into the human body just got me so fascinated about the healing process and knowing that we needed do medicine differently.

Then I woke up one morning and decided to go to medical school at 32. So that was, and meanwhile it also had some run-ins with infertility. I was not, I had thought, well I'll just get pregnant and I didn't get pregnancy and kind of got to a point where I wasn't sure if it was going to happen for me, but I knew I really wanted to go to medical school to do medicine differently. And I, I've really lucked out. I did get pregnant in, in medical schoo. Um, and then also got pregnant with a second one in residency, But, um, after residency I was kind of tired, you know, having two little ones.

So I went into standard medical practice. And a couple years in, developed a of autoimmune disorders.

Dr. Shippeyu2019s healing journey and medical path 3:34

I had a pretty severe Sjogren's syndrome and antiphospholipid antibody syndrome. So fortunately, that got me back on my path.I found functional medicine then and found that you can reverse auto immune diseases and then got the courage up to open up a functional medical practice. That was about 20 years ago. And then I had a pretty bad run-in with toxic mold about 15 years ago where I developed ALS symptoms. I won't call it an ALD diagnosis, but ALs symptoms, I got so weak in my right arm that I really couldn't have held this class without.

two hands are dropping it and my hair fell out. I had so much pain in my body. It hurt for my kids to hug me and I really thought I felt like I was dying again. And that's when I got to learn about toxic mold. and that you can heal from that completely and really severe neurological things. I'm really grateful that I have had these three big run-ins with how to really take care of my body and I do feel like the things that i've learned have helped me to help a lot of patients and then also keep my buddy vibrant and healthy because the thing that help me heal are some of the sustaining building blocks to stay healthy.

So you have your own wounded healer story because you've gone through so many things yourself. And initially, you had to be the one that figured them out for yourself, and now you take that same knowledge. I know you helped countless of people with mold toxicity. Mold toxicity is something that is very much underappreciated for many autoimmune conditions, even for fertility issues. Can you share a little bit more about when you might suspect a person might have mold toxicity? Yeah, it's really shifting over time.

It used to be my diagnosis of last resort. If I could get someone better without having to go there, I would. And now I'm learning, especially in this fertility and preconception space, that to really protect the mom and the baby, it's really not the last resort. If anybody that can test for it should, either by testing for the mold toxins in their body or in or the DNA of the mold in their space to do true prevention. But the thing that's so fascinating about mold is that it can cause so many different symptoms in different people.

So it really is one of main things. I know that a lot of people are really talking about mast cell activation now, where people having itching, brain fog, heartburn, those kinds of symptoms pretty commonly ever since COVID. And that seems to really have upregulated a lot of people's immune systems and mass cells. So I used to just recognize that as being one of the, having that kind of combination of things, anxiety, insomnia, we should look for mold. Also neurological symptoms, but then really anybody with autoimmunity, it can be such a big trigger for any of the autoimmune disorders.

I'm really shifting, especially now that I want to help parents as they're starting or growing their families to have the healthiest babies possible. It's really something to factor into our plan. It can get so expensive and it's so much work if you do fine mold. Like I just had a couple that we thought that they were all ready to go and because they had done so many work but they really hadn't want to look at the mold piece and finally they did look the the old piece. They're having to move now, like they're thinking, oh, we're ready to start trying.

They are both 35 and had been married a couple of years now and were wanting to try, but now they are kind of scrambling to find a new place to live. So we are all kind wishing that we had investigated a little bit more previously. Mold came on my radar, I want to say, maybe a little bit less than 10 years ago when I would have these clients who were just ideal clients and they would follow every health recommendation. They would be drinking green juice and would having almond milk instead of dairy.

And they'd still be struggling with a lot of symptoms. And then some of them would have oxalate issues. Then I got into testing. I started using the Great Plains lab, which is now the Mosaic Diagnostics, and started finding people would oxalyte elevations on their urine tests. They would also oftentimes have either candida or mold elevators. That's how it came across my radar. These people that were doing kind of like all the right things, but they just still weren't feeling better. That was a big red flag for me.

And I know a lot of times, I've heard from many practitioners, like multiple miscarriages can be a red Pedgman Katterai talks about how mold can even express itself in children as like developmental disabilities and even autism spectrum. I think he talks how it could be misdiagnosed and that could actually be mold toxicity. So it's like something that is so potentially problematic and Interestingly, you mentioned that you're seeing higher rates of these things since 2020. What do you think is responsible for that?

Well, I think it's a couple of things. I think that COVID itself, because you're basically getting scraped from the inside out through your whole vascular system and organ systems, pretty much everyone, depending on where you are in the spectrum of inflammation, it raised it somewhat. And then I just think the level of stress. I think just like the global collective went through so much stress, and when you're under stress that also up regulates the muscle so. And then maybe even people spending more time in their homes, like that kind of the lockdown period.

I do think we have an epidemic of just, you know, building science meets environmental, trying to save energy and just air pollution and all these things increasing the amount of mold that is actually growing in homes. So we kind of hit the perfect storm. And then, you know, these mycotoxins affect children so much more than adults.

Recognizing mold toxicity and its health effects 10:50

The toxins are being breathed in, mycotoxin, and they have a higher respiratory rate and smaller bodies and less developed detox pathways. So some of them are really, You know, in so many ways, I think about children as being so much more resilient. They can heal so quickly from so, many things, but when they're exposed to these environmental toxins that can really take a toll on them. And, and I do think it's even part of why we're seeing this increase in the pans pandas, the neuro. psychiatric autoimmune conditions is these exposures to the mold toxins.

And then kind of back to fertility piece, I've even seen men's sperm counts being heavily affected by Naltoxin is one of my patients. Before they had seen me, they'd gone and done IVF because his sperm counts were so bad. And then we dealt with the mold and then they got pregnant twice naturally because the sperm count was so much better. It's just amazing when you remove the triggers that are causing you to be sick. I know definitely for me I started with premature ovarian insufficiency symptoms in 2020. And I don't know if it was, like you said, spending more time indoors or the stress of COVID or maybe getting the infection, but I felt like definitely my fertility was really impacted then my husband and I were had a two year old at a time and we were thinking about having like a four for your age gap between our children.

But that didn't necessarily happen because of I had a lot of menstrual cycle problems and I wasn't ovulating and so on and forth. And I often, you know, it's kind of hard to put that together. What was the root cause? What were the triggers for that? But I think it's important. And during COVID times, I couldn't necessarily even see an OB or a gynecologist to see what was going on. We were on lockdown. So I feel like a lot of our health has suffered at that time. It took a few years after that for me to actually get the proper work up and get all the checkups that I needed just to even figure out what was going on with me.

Because this was definitely not Hashimoto's, right? I was like, I know what to do with Hashimoto's. But this is like a strange situation. And part of my healing was doing some supporting my detox pathways and figuring out if I had toxins in my system. Is that a big part of fertility? Is toxicity that women may be, whether it's mold toxins, you know, we hear articles about BPA and all these different plastics that could impact fertility. I'm hoping you can maybe speak to that, maybe some tests that you do or what kind of protocols you help with.

Yeah, so it's a huge factor. These hormone disruptors are just insidious. They're everywhere. It's everything from air pollution to your mattress outgassing to the packaging for food. And that's what I go through in the book or just some of the things that you can do to mitigate those things. My goal with this book is that everybody really understands this preconception period, the six to 12 months before you get pregnant is a huge opportunity to improve your fertility, but then also something called epigenetics.

So how the egg and the sperm DNA gets dialed up and dial down. is the toxins are a huge piece of that, of passing on this time capsule, especially for the sperm. It's like the father's opportunity to either pass on some epigenetics that are dialed down, like overweight, toxic, stressed. blood sugar abnormalities. Those are all like little time capsules in the sperm that get passed on. So in that period of time, I'm hoping that I really do start a revolution with this where men and women know, okay, this is my time to really gift my future child with the best epigenetics possible possible.

And a big part of that is to help the body to detoxify. So take some of the supplements that are super safe for helping the toxins get out. and liver support and some very clean binders to help pull out the toxins. It's the time to do things like infrared saunas and hyperbaric if you have access to them and even some IVs that I think are amazing so that you can really like send the DNA through a car wash. And then one of the really important things is to kind of look at something called methylation.

So methyulation, I know you talk about it all the time, but just for people that aren't familiar with that term, that's a really intricate process of how your body does repair and clear things from the body. And it's so dependent on having the right nutrients, depending on what your genetics are around the methylation. So it is just an amazing opportunity to help that methyulation of the DNA get dialed into and to really get the messages in that time capsule that you want for your baby. You and I were both at a functional medicine conference with Vibrant America this summer.

I was fascinated. It was a Dr. Cara Fitzgerald she presented about these mice. They were genetically modified to be obese and a certain color. So they have these faulty genes, quote-unquote, and they were supposed to very unhealthy mice, but the researchers put the pregnant dams on methylation support. And then the mice were born like genetically much healthier, and you could even see their fur was like a darker color. And they were like, less like they weren't like fit mice, I guess they wanted obese mice.

It's just so fascinating, because it's like the moms got nutrients, right? And what's so exciting is that those same things work for the dads. Like we need the dad's to be methylated to and having those be those methylated B vitamins for this same kinds of results. But it's like the researchers that are looking at these epigenetics and how things like nutrients and toxins can be influenced generationally, like not just your children, but your grandchildren and maybe even your great-grandchildren can be affected by having a healthy lifestyle now.

I think it's so empowering, especially when we look at these statistics around the increased rates of autism and mental health and autoimmunity and cancer in our kids. Like, this is such a opportunity and Kara did such a great job of explaining it, but then also showing us visually how from generation to generation we can make a huge impact. It's very fascinating people. I think sometimes we'll talk about methylation and supporting your methylated pathways. We do know that our methyltation pathways help us clear out various toxins.

But how would what would a person do like from a practical standpoint? How would they support their methylation? Would it be through foods or supplements you might recommend? I think it's just easiest to do it with supplementation. There are really good methylation support for people that can. I love to test. That chemical engineer scientist side of me, I'd love look at the genetics and look the detailed markers in the methyulation pathway. They're like little cogwheels spinning together. When you look measurements in the pathway, you can see, does it look like they're getting jammed or are they working smoothly?

So I think everybody can benefit from just going ahead and taking the methylation support.

COVID-era stress, toxins, and fertility impacts 19:30

It won't hurt you if you don't need it generally, but then you have some opportunity to fine tune it by doing the lab tests. Do you recommend things like methylfolate and folinic acid, trimethylglycine, riboflavin, any of these? Yes, all of those, especially the methylated Bs, the 5-MTHF, that butane or TMG, zinc, magnesium are all great for those methyl pathways to work well. And there are things that we need anyway. And then one of my favorite things is choline. So cholene is important for methylation, but it's also just so important some membranes and for helping with detox.

Colleen is fantastic. I have this one version. This one supplement that I like that is not particularly tasty, but it works wonders for brain function. And so does methylation support, even if you're not trying to get pregnant. If you are finding that you've got brain fog or fatigue or even mood-related issues, just supporting your methylation pathways can be such a big game changer. With regard to the foods. I know some people really like to use beets, because they're a rich source of betaine. And I think I grew up in Eastern Europe, where beats are like a staple in the diet.

and I ate them all the time. But I love them. but I Know they are an inquired taste for everybody. What is the pathway that you test for? Do you do a specific lab test or the methylation piece. Yeah, so I really love doctors' data. They do a really nice job of looking at the genetics with the genes. But there are several companies that do it. And that's the one that I am using the most now. Oh, you had asked me about the toxins. I really do love the Vibrant Toxin Panel. It really seems to be the more accurate and the comprehensive.

You can even do the PFAS and the plastics and thalates and VOCs. For the mycotoxins, I'm really liking real-time laboratory the best. I tend to do it with and without glutathione because sometimes you can do the microtoxin testing and it can look like it's fine. Then when you actually help the body to detoxify, that's when it actually lets go of some of the toxins. Sometimes the people that are sickest from mold, the initial test looks like it's okay, and then once you start getting the glutathione up and the methylation and liver supported, then their bodies start letting go of the toxins.

Same kind of thing can happen with the heavy metals. It's really fascinating because you can do a lab test, and it shows that somebody doesn't have mycotoxins in their urine. But when you give them glutathione, it pulls it from their bodies. And so some people call it like a provoked test. That allows the mycotoxin to actually exit out and clear out through your urine, And it's interesting because some might be feeling terrible, but they do not test for any my cotoxines. And then when we do that glutathione challenge, you can actually see that they have mycotoxins in their system and that, they were just like recirculating them.

So with the methylation genes, do you look for the MTHFR gene? Is that right? MTHFR, and then there's a whole panel of them, MTR, MTRR, BHMT, CPS. So, you know, some of us, part of why I think I've gone through my challenges is that I have a really complicated methylation gene set, so it takes a little fine tuning to get it just right. So some patients, we just give them a little bit of each of the things and all these wheels start spinning nicely together. And then other people, have to iterate a few times to get just the right amount of things, and really actually drive some of that nutrients up high, like higher TMG or higher choline to gets some those wheels to spin.

me included. Our glutathione genes are just so not optimal that no matter what is happening with the methylation, we really need to take some liposomal glutothione mistakes to keep the toxins from building up in our bodies. I'm right there with you with those jeans. So I have very high maintenance jeans and so I do need to be very mindful of supporting my body. Otherwise, I mean, like I had chronic illness in my 20s and autoimmunity and was really feeling like a fraction of myself. But once you get to know yourself and once figure out how to properly support your body, it makes such a huge difference and then you can pass that knowledge onto your children.

And, like, I guess healing just becomes really possible, whether you're dealing with auto unity or fertility challenges. You've even healed from things that are considered unhealable, right? Right. And again, I feel lucky because I was able to figure it out and get my body so that it's working better than ever, even though this is when I'm supposed to be slowing down in life. I've felt so energized and, you know, on a mission that I'm so grateful that I kind of figured out those workarounds for the genes and then it also,

Epigenetics, methylation, and detox support 25:40

you know, our children. I feel like part of the benefit of having figured these things out in my body is that i've been able to help my children live healthier lives. Yeah, absolutely. Then you know what things to not expose them to right and maybe support them through targeted supplementation targeted nutrients if as needed. What What would you say if you had a woman? It was it was really serendipitous because I bumped into you maybe like a year ago. And I had mentioned that I was trying to get pregnant, but I over 40 and you're like, I'm writing a fertility book and I have two women in my clinic that are the same age as you who are pregnant right now.

And that just gave me so much hope and encouragement that maybe there was a possibility that it could happen for me as well. What do you tell women that may have been trying for a while and Maybe they're not 25, right? I know a lot of doctors will say like, okay, try for a year if it doesn't work, then we'll do a workup or they'll refer women to IVF. What are some things that you're telling differently to help them prepare? So I really think, regardless of what age people are, whether they're 23 or 43, or I'll come back to my 47-year-old patient, that it's worthwhile just using birth control for 3, 6, 12 months, if you're feeling the push of the time clock.

and do the things that I've outlined in my book. So the careful diet, the detox, building up the nutrients, getting you methylated, and getting the mind-body spirit aligned, because it's all of that, right? And then trying. Almost all the time, I see, especially within three to six months of just really focusing on it but then also kind of putting it aside for a little bit that people get really fertile fairly quickly. Right now I have a patient who's 47 and she had come in you know, new partner, they both, you want fairly new partners.

They really decided they wanted to have a child together. And I had them both go on a protocol and so they did it for three months. And then I kind of wanted to come back and retest and make sure we, you know, we had found some toxins, found issues with the microbiome, some nutrient deficiencies, things that could have been the body saying, I don't, it's not a great time to get pregnant. But then they were like, one night. They just were like, we're just going to have fun. We're not going worry about condoms.

They followed my instructions for a little bit, using the condom with them that one night. I got pregnant at 47. So what that tells me is that their bodies were really ready in the best shape possible to have a baby. Hopefully, everything will keep going well. So far, it's going like you don't know for sure at 47 because I'll feel better once the baby's here and everything's good. But the fact that they could get pregnant on the first try without really even trying after three months, it just tells you like our bodies are, we are built to procreate.

We're built, so maybe you're going to have another one after. You could do one more, right? You're looking at, let me get this one done. But I really think, I look back to my grandmother's time and she had nine children. My mom had her last child at 44. I think we're meant to really this idea that we're advanced maternal age at 34, 35. I actually had a patient who was told at 31, she might have passed her prime. You know, I was so mad. I almost called the doctor that told her that. It's like, what are you doing?

So mostly, I just want to be encouraging to really take, to do the intensive work, both the father and the mother to prepare the terrain as best you can. And if you're having trouble, rather than bypassing mother nature and doing IVF, keep working on collecting the data on why the body might be saying no, not now, and see what you can do to actually reverse it. Yeah, I'm really glad that you said that because I know when we were kind of on our fertility journey, my husband was at first like, well, why don't we just like try it?

But I was like I am getting my menses every like two weeks, so I don t know that I want to try with like the shape that I'm in at this point. And like, I really want to work on getting everything dialed in and optimized and figuring out if I have deficiencies, if i have like hormonal imbalances, If there's things I can do to like really improve the the quality of my eggs, you know, i might not have that many left. But what can I do with the ones that i do have, right? So there's a new study that just came out recently.

It came after my book went to print. But there is a study showed that eggs don't really age the way that they thought they did. Like there are the cells in the body that really... epigenetic and aging changes just really weren't as present. So I'm thinking that this whole idea of the advanced maternal age is more like there's a nutrient deficiency, the microbiome's off, and the toxin load is up. Something's throwing off the hormones and so much less that our eggs are actually getting old. Um, it's fascinating because I went through some of those things and there's like messages that you hear, or you've been like sort of conditioned that your fertility just takes a nosedive at age 35. For me getting on progesterone was something that was incredibly helpful for actually having my ovulation get back into balance.

And it's like you can have a baby and not have be at higher risk for miscarriage if you're over 35. Because we know that progesterone, it is progeterones taking a nosedive and if can adjust those levels and support them properly, then that can actually save some of your fertility. Is that right? Absolutely. And one of the things I really love to do is work with women during the postpartum period. So let's get you tuned up post partum. But one patient in particular comes to mind, like her pregnancy at like 34 and 38, we did use some progesterone early on in the in the pregnancy.

And then she got pregnant again at 42. It was an accident, but we tuned her up postpartum and again, kind of accident. So she just thought, oh, well, if I don't take the progesterone, I might miscarry. But she was making great progeterones. Of course, she's so grateful that she had two girls and now she has a boy. luckily surprised that came into her world when she was least expecting it right and her body knew what to do. Nobody knew exactly what to do. I followed her really closely during both of her first two pregnancies and then postpartum.

Within two months post partum, we were looking at her nutrient status, looking under microbiome, her toxin load, all the things to really make sure that she really wanted to optimize her health. at 38 postpartum. And so I think that was part of it is that she really had put a lot of effort into getting her body optimal and then she was just so fertile. I know there's a lot of supplements that are recommended for like egg quality and CoQ10 is one of them. And so I think I did take that for quite some time.

Are there other ones that you might recommend as well? And I thank a of these things go for both men and women because the mitochondrial support that, you see that help the eggs also help with the sperm. So I love it when couples do this together. So, there's a special form of CoQ10 called Mitocue that actually has some good studies behind it as far as helping with hormone balance and with fertility. It's kind of interesting. They've got some additional fertility things that they're working on. And then I love Inositol.

It's also just really good for so many different things. It has a lot of different mechanisms. And then, do we have a visitor? Do you want to come say hi, Demetri? Okay, this is my friend, Ian. We're talking about babies.

Testing for toxins and methylation genetics 35:40

Oh, hi, sweetie. oh my gosh, you're so big. Very, very lucky. He was definitely a miracle and excited to have another miracle baby children just really, really bring so much light into our lives. It's like, um, You know, through the years of working with so many women, one of the most heartbreaking things for me is to hear about women who were really impacted by, you know, Hashimoto's and hormonal imbalances. They were never able to have children and they were a lot of times in their 70s and 80s, and something that they held out.

And we do know definitely hormones can play a role, but there's so Yeah. Yeah, and a lot of times it's the complexities of how things are working together, but I do like I feel like intensive 6, 12, 18 months can really make such a difference when you get all the pieces of the puzzle put together and it is like my kids are grown now and It's still like I had dinner with both of them last night and it's, I look back to that moment I decided to go to medical school and I'm like, oh my God, the risk I was taking I didn't understand at the time, right?

I might not, just the stress on the body in my 30s, it just feels so lucky. And now you're helping other women to no matter what they've been through. I know a lot of times we might not find the right partner in our 20s. Right. And it's like the the optimal fertility age versus like, the Optimal like mental age or where you actually ready for have children like that doesn't necessarily match up in today's society. And now we have all these tools in our toolbox, right? We know how these supplements work, we know a low inflammation diet, and we how to get the toxins out.

We now what to do to really optimize, so I'm really hoping that more people will do that rebuilding and re-centering in their bodies and not think, oh, I've got to go spend all this money and put my body through IVF. Mm-hmm. And a lot of times women might not even have success with multiple IVF cycles. Sometimes it's like the things they're not checked for. I know I have heard of women who had endometriosis, for example, and they would go through IVS and still have miscarriages, right? Because some of those root causes weren't looked at.

So we talked about like mito-Q inositol, some really helpful supplements that can help. What are some other things that you feel like can be very beneficial? Yeah, I think almost everybody needs magnesium. It's just deficient in our food and it runs so many important pathways. Other mitochondrial support, so the phosphatidylcholine we talked about, it's so important for baby development too, but I really think it also helps with fertility. I love NAD, carnitine, any of the mitochondrial support just can really make a huge difference with boosting fertility and also just the epigenetics and having healthier babies.

And then I'd love a period of time, three, six, 12 months of helping the body to get rid of plastics and all the different things that we're getting exposed to on a day-to-day basis. really help the body to clean out. So yeah, the liposomal glutathione and the binders and liver support can make a huge difference. I wish every woman had access to this information because there's just so many things that women can do to take charge of their own health versus just being told to like, well, just keep trying if it's not working out and it is like well what are the things out of balance?

How do I get them back in balance. sometimes it's like the toxins are there and you don't even like expect them to be. I know I eat mostly organic, but I had high levels of glyphosate because of, you know, my HOA was spraying glyphasate on community areas, right? And there's, like, all of these different toxins that we don t even don't even know that they're on our radar. And doing something like this for three, six, nine, 12 months, when you really support your detox pathways can really help you get in your best health.

It's incredible because it's not like fertility just stops. Like it can take a pause when your body doesn't feel safe. It's like your bodies overburdened. And so now you're getting the messages that it's time to put fertility on the back burner and put survival front and center. But if you get those toxins out, or you address the imbalances, it s like, okay, now it is safe to have a baby. Now it' s safe t become fertile again, right? Exactly, and that's just the normal, it's the body being in its place.

I almost think that infertility is a bit of a blessing, right? Because it is letting you know that there is something that needs to be addressed. The challenge is when people are fertile, but it isn't a great time to have a baby and they don't know it. That the atrazine or glyphosate is high or microtoxins are high. Having the baby being exposed to those things, setting the Baby up for increased risk for things is, to me, that's the most terrifying. So it's just such an amazing opportunity to press the pause button and even alcohol for men.

Optimizing fertility after 35 and postpartum recovery 41:40

like taking a hiatus for six months or at least three months from THC and alcohol and any habits that you don't want to have the epigenetics passed on can make a huge difference. There's also data with an amazing study just came out about a month ago looking at the diet of men and how it changes the sperm epigenetics and their hormonal health. So even three weeks of eating a whole foods diet compared to eating highly packaged diet dramatically changes things. If I had read the study design before they did it, I thought, oh, three week is not long enough.

You can't start to change things, but it does like dramatically enough that it's statistically significant. I also just really want to encourage the men to use this opportunity to get their bodies super clean and super healthy so that they pass on the healthiest epigenetics. It's really fascinating because a lot of fertility really focuses on the woman, right? And it's like the health of the baby. It is just very much focused on women. The women, what can a woman do? But there are some things that dads can do too, so to support their partners through the process.

It's a huge opportunity. The more I researched this and looked into it for the book, I was blown away. Even though I see it in my clinic, it's so clear that people who've actually done these studies to research things like the mouse study, but even looking I feel so lucky that there are people doing the research that supports my belief system and what can be happening. I really think we can turn this children's health crisis around. by starting in this preconception period. I really think we can have the rates of autism and mental health and diabetes and obesity and autoimmunity in our kids go down just by focusing on these things in the preconception period It's really, really fascinating.

I found some research, you know, looking at the thyroid research that maternal hypothyroidism puts the offspring at greater risk for autism and ADHD. And I believe I've found a research study with elevated homocysteine increasing the risk of Down syndrome. So, like, methylation support helps to reduce your homocysine. You can do that, and you can check that. It is like a very simple and expensive blood test. And then you lower your risks for like just so many things with the baby and then even your own health during that time.

I know there are like risk factors for preeclampsia and some of them are nutritional, right? and affected by the sperm health. Like if it's healthy enough to fertilize the egg, but not that healthy, it can impact the health of the mom and the placenta and put the Mom and baby at more risk. It's fascinating. Super fascinating, I think we had talked a little bit briefly about marijuana, I think it has been made legal in a lot of places. When I was growing up, it was very much like, you know, dare, don't do drugs, like all drugs are bad and whatnot, where now I to the point where people almost just because it's legal, they don't think it can be harmful.

But can you speak to some of the effects that you see with it on fertility? So the THC, the research is so mixed. And so you have to really go through it with how good is the resource done? Because there are studies that show that there is no risk. But what I see is that I think most men, if they understand that it can interfere with their hormones, it could actually lower testosterone and cause some hormone imbalance, would take it in very differently. And there's no judgment here. But what I see with my patients is that there's also issues with toxicity.

So I think it's very, very challenging to get marijuana without a bunch of toxins in it. There's a lot of pesticides. heavy metals, and microtoxins. Pretty much anybody that I test those things in, in people that are taking on a regular basis, it's kind of crazy what I see. I'm just drawing conclusions along with some research that shows that it can definitely disrupt hormones and then also have some epigenetic changes for the sperm. Then This also, I see things with nicotine, and I also see some concerns with a couple of other things that are floating around out there, ketamine and then also kratom, that I think that those are interfering with fertility as well.

I don't have as much hardcore data around it with patients because the numbers just aren't as high. But I think there's a lot of social groups where the nicotine, the kratom, and the ketamine are getting used a lots like the marijuana, THC. So in this preconception period, I would just ask both the man and woman, 3, 6, 12, whatever number of months you can commit in advance to also cut out

Supplements, lifestyle changes, and male fertility 47:40

the alcohol. It's kind of crazy what I see with fish intake now. There's the warnings about fish and take in pregnancy. Well, for people that are eating fish more than once or twice a week, I've seen the heavy metals, the mercury and arsenic and sometimes a few others being high fairly consistently. And it may be somewhat my patient population, but in addition to really watching the intake for these substances, be a little careful with this as well. It's kind of crazy because I don't think many people realize that impact and it might not be in their research, but when you're a, you know, clinician on the ground testing people, You can start like really making some connections there and connecting the dots and the things you are seeing clinically.

might not be available. Nobody might do a study for 10, 15, 20 years on what you're seeing. And then by the time that the study does come out, it's going to take another 10 to 20 for it to be adopted into conventional medicine. So the information you are sharing is really cutting edge. in your book and with your patients. And I really appreciate you doing all this work and putting this all together for us. I have a new appreciation for you too. Like now that I'm in the final stages of a book, I am like, oh my God, she's written great books and gotten them out there in world in such a great way.

So accolades to you for all the great work you're doing and helping people get healthy. Thank you so much. Yeah, a book is kind of like having a baby. It's like, it's very cathartic process. That's a very process where you have to push yourself beyond the limits and to go through all the research and make it approachable and put this resource together. I know it takes a lot of blood, sweat and tears. So on behalf of men and women everywhere and babies and children and really, you know, gratitude from the bottom of my heart for to you for taking time out of your schedule to create this wonderful resource that so many people will benefit from.

Oh, thank you so much. It's really a gift to get to to have the experience with the patients that I can really put these puzzle pieces together and then get So people can come to Austin to see you if they wanted to, but if their outside of Austin, they can learn from you and get a copy of your book. Can you tell us the name of you book and where people could find it? It's ThePreconceptionRevolution.com and then we're also putting a lot of information on social media through the AnneShipEMD and also EveryBabyWell.

Fantastic, I will definitely be putting a link to this in the show notes. So I'm excited to check it out. I did see a bit of an advanced copy and so I had the pleasure of looking through that and I found it incredibly helpful. You know, even whether if they're struggling with their fertility or they are just thinking about having babies at some point in their lives, I think this is a really important book that is really, really worth reading because you can actually prevent so many things, whether that's with getting pregnant easier or having a healthier pregnancy and having healthier baby.

Like this book is going to make a big difference. Thank you so much for seeing the vision. Thank you so much for reading it and everybody listening, I hope this has been healing on your healing journey.