There’s No Unexplained Infertility

Nashat Latib, DO, FACEP, IFMCP

Absolutely. Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you for that very kind introduction. Thank you so much. I’m so happy to be here

Edward Levitan, MD, ABIOM, IFMCP

And it’s our privilege to have you because we really want to talk about hormones. We want to talk about detox weight loss. So I guess let’s start with your ear doc. What does an ear doc have to do with detox and hormones? How’d you get into this?

Nashat Latib, DO, FACEP, IFMCP

That’s a great question and something that I get really, really commonly. Yeah, it’s funny, you know, over the course of my journey I realized in the, er, that I was basically this perpetual band aid, a plier and even though, in the, er, you would think that we’re doing life saving stuff, most of the time we really aren’t kind of a revolving door and we kind of become a primary care doctor for a lot of people. And so what I saw over the course of my many years of experience is the same chronic diseases coming in the door over and over and the same struggles over and over but not really applying a clear solution. So it was band aid after band aid. And then, you know, the first thing that happened was my own battle with my infertility. I was infertile, went through medical school. And as you know, we all, most of us who went to medical school got a very late start in life. And so by the time I started to, you know, create my family in my mid thirties, it wasn’t happening.

Edward Levitan, MD, ABIOM, IFMCP

Oops.

Nashat Latib, DO, FACEP, IFMCP

Yeah. Oops, did I miss that boat. So I went through a series of II and IVF, which is where my passion for natural fertility comes along because in retrospect now, looking back, I didn’t need any of that.

Edward Levitan, MD, ABIOM, IFMCP

What is IUI and what is IVF? just make, make foundation baseline.

Nashat Latib, DO, FACEP, IFMCP

Absolutely. Absolutely. So IUI is intra uterine insemination and it is, you know, commonly used as one of the first steps when a woman is having trouble getting pregnant. And one of the parameters, usually if a woman can get pregnant and she’s below the age of 35 she’s tried over a year, she kind of put in that infertile category most of the time, unexplained infertility, which I don’t believe there’s any such thing as unexplained infertility. That’s a side point. Or if she’s over the age of 35 then we’re looking at, she says she’s having tried for six months or more before she’s put in that infertile category. And like I said, the first step is usually intra uterine insemination or if that doesn’t work, the next step would be IBF which is in vitro fertilization. And the difference is I think of it as like, you know, the sperm getting closer with you. I think of it as basically putting the sperm into the uterus and letting them find their egg. IVF is taking the egg and the sperm and putting them together in a Petri dish and then putting the embryo back in the uterus.

Edward Levitan, MD, ABIOM, IFMCP

Cool. Thank you. So I didn’t mean to interrupt. So

Nashat Latib, DO, FACEP, IFMCP

No worries.

Edward Levitan, MD, ABIOM, IFMCP

You had your own struggle.

Nashat Latib, DO, FACEP, IFMCP

Yeah, I had my own struggle and then that was kind of struggle. Number one and then struggle to

Edward Levitan, MD, ABIOM, IFMCP

Did you overcome it? You have kids.

Nashat Latib, DO, FACEP, IFMCP

I have three.

Edward Levitan, MD, ABIOM, IFMCP

Okay.

Nashat Latib, DO, FACEP, IFMCP

Yes, three babies. One from IUI and twins from IVF. So not natural but artificial pregnancies, I call them but still gave me my beautiful blessed babies. So yes, that will struggle. One struggle to was of course the struggle that a lot of us professional space in our lives, whether where the medical field or non medical field. And that was, you know, the effect of stress in my body. I started, you know, gaining weight, struggling with sleep, brain fog, mental clarity and all of those things. And really couldn’t believe that it was just because I was getting older, you know, and I’ve never even heard of the term detox by the way at that phase in my life. So, you know, that was struggle to struggle three was probably the one that hit the ball home for me. And that was the loss of my mom. 

And she went from spending five days a week with me to being this very vivacious woman in her mid sixties to gone seven months later. And it was a neurodegenerative disease that took her away from me. Lewy body disease specifically, but she had a very rapidly progressive form of the disease do. And it was at that point in my career that I realized that traditional approach to medicine and the understanding of medicine that I had come to embrace in medical school had completely failed me and failed not only my own body and my, you know, fight to have a family, but also my personal health. And then now it was impacting my family members too. And that’s when I said okay, that’s it. There is another way and I turned to, you know, back to my normal type, a go getter personality and said, what else is out there? I went back to medical school, basically. Yeah,

Edward Levitan, MD, ABIOM, IFMCP

Because they teach you so much medical about nutrition and functional medicine and medical school.

Nashat Latib, DO, FACEP, IFMCP

Right. Right. Yeah. Basically. Discarded all of my medical education and started over right in a new medical school which was the field of functional medicine and all the related fields which I think are the future of medicine. And you know, the one thing I always tell my patients when they come and see me is they’re asking me, well, you know, why doesn’t everybody know about it? And I was like, well, there is this thing called the standard of care, right? And student of care takes what like 50 to 100 years to come into being, you know, and what we do, what you wanna do and our practices are really based on research that is much more current. So research in the last 10 to 20 years and we keep evolving as the research evolves. And so I think that is the most fundamental difference between, you know, the functional approach to health and of course, the traditional approach to health. Now, I just want to say one little caveat here, I’m not anti traditional medicine. I just believe that traditional medicine has its place in acute care and really acute care only. And I’m sure you would agree.

Edward Levitan, MD, ABIOM, IFMCP

Yeah. No, I mean, I think I want to highlight the one thing that you said that So important when, right now I think, I don’t know the actual number but medicines that at least 17, if not 30 years behind science and what we do is right there at the leading edge of what is most available. And because scientists so speeding up so quickly and things are moving so quickly. Regular doctors without this training just can’t keep up and it’s not their fault, it’s not that they’re wrong or bad, they just never learned. And there’s just so much out there, so many cool things coming down the line. Alright.

Nashat Latib, DO, FACEP, IFMCP

Absolute. We’re on the same page. I love it.

Edward Levitan, MD, ABIOM, IFMCP

Yeah. Now it’s exciting. We live in very exciting times and this is the future of medicine because people get better and we all want to live to be vibrant. So,

Nashat Latib, DO, FACEP, IFMCP

Right. And we reverse disease, right? And we get people off pharmaceuticals which I think is so powerful. You know, the positive of knowledge, I think in the, in the, you know, traditional medical world of the fact that there are so many things that we can do with food and natural supplements that have exactly the same biochemical mechanism of action as pharmaceuticals. I mean, I’m like, why don’t more people know this? I mean, we all know why they don’t. But

Edward Levitan, MD, ABIOM, IFMCP

Yeah, we’re not gonna go there we’ll leave that alone. So let’s go back to what is the connection between hormones and detox? What did you find out in yourself? And with your, with your infertility, with your, with your mother? What? Tell me cause your first talk, I mean it’s a little bit of a line to, from your own struggles to your mother. There was a very, two very distinct things. How are you blending them together? How are you, how is it working?

Nashat Latib, DO, FACEP, IFMCP

Yeah. Yeah, that’s a great question. And gosh, I could probably sit and talk about that for like an hour, but I’ll really try to pare it down. So, I mean, obviously we live in a toxic world, right? I mean, just the act of waking up and getting ready in your own home, typically exposes you to over 200 chemicals. You know, many of which we know are carcinogenic and many of which are what are called Zeno hormones, right? Which are chemicals that mimic the natural hormones in our body. And, you know, pair that with the amount of, you know, stress that we are exposed to on a daily basis just by living in this industrialized world. All of it just culminates and it’s basically just this huge assault on our bodies and our bodies are not designed, you know, from an evolution perspective to withstand this level of stress. And I’d love to just take a second and talk about like how I categorize stress because I think that’s really important for our audience to understand that when I talk about stress, it’s not just, you know, the stress that we all identify with as far as like emotional stress or, you know, the stress of a hard day or stress of a conversation with somebody that you love or loss stresses so many different things. 

There is, of course, the emotional stress, which is what we’ve already talked about, then there’s stuff like dietary stress, which is, you know, based on the fact that I mean, it could be something as simple as skipping a meal or yo yo yo dieting or eating too many processed foods or too many refined sugars. So there’s that type of stress and then there’s all the hidden stress that most of us are not aware of, right? And so that may be a pathogen in the gut or maybe you got leaky gut or, you know, imbalance in the bacteria of your gut or maybe you just have chronic pain or some sort of, you know, sensitivity to food that you don’t know exists that is causing this baseline level of inflammation in your body. And I think the simplest way that I explain it to my patients is I always talk about our bodies essentially having, you know, a cup.

That kind of catches are inflammatory cells because all of us are going to have some level of inflammation just by being alive, right? But the question is, can you keep that in check? Right. Can you keep your cup from flowing over in terms of inflammatory cells? And I’ll tell you that, you know, during the pandemic as an, er, doc, I did feel like it was my duty to work the front line and, you know, in the beginning stages, when everybody was talking about, you know, the people who were too old or people with lots of comorbidities were the ones that were, you know, really, you know, getting critically ill and maybe, you know, dying, I came to find that actually wasn’t the reality. And I think we all know better now that that was not the reality at that time. 

That was definitely a piece of it. But I was also finding that these people who were quote unquote healthy, we’re getting critically ill because there was probably this, at least from what I see, I don’t have any scientific basis for this other than, of course, my clinical experience, which of course, I sell lots and lots of patients, but there was this underlying level of inflammation based on the amount of stress. And like I said, stress can be all those different categories in their body. And the people that maybe have their cups more full were the ones that were more likely to get ill and have, you know, a poor, you know, progression versus the people who had healthier lifestyles, maybe eight more whole food diets, you know, we’re getting better quality sleep. We’re understanding how to read an ingredient level label and stay away from unnecessary toxins. Had a less toxic lifestyle in their homes. Those are the people that seem to fare better in terms of their progress. And I don’t think it’s just COVID, I think it applies to pretty much all diseases across the board because obviously literature as well illustrated the of toxins to, you know, of course, you know, infertility related conditions. That could be things like, you know, male factor, fertility, meaning for sperm. You know, PCOS and ovulation, meaning women who don’t ovulate women who don’t get regular cycles. And that, of course, all the autoimmune diseases, which we both treated our practices regularly like, you know, Hashimoto’s which is the thyroid antibody disease or any of the other diseases. So you know, the the link between our toxic lifestyles and our outcomes in terms of, you know, both acute and chronic disease are very closely correlated. So not only did I find links to my journey with infertility when I started to uncover all of this. But then I started to think, well, my mom had this neurodegenerative disease. I know she was probably in a highly stressed fighter flight state. 

Her whole life were the things that she was eating that she didn’t even know were harming her. You know, you know, what are the things? What are the common denominators here that are causing kind of all of these problems. And with respect to myself, I realized that as soon as I started to make some significant lifestyle shifts in my life, all of a sudden, I was looking through the night for the first time without waking up multiple times, waking up without brain fog, way more energy and so on and so forth. So I just started to see all these connections between every single condition and realized that it all came down to pretty much, you know, the varying stripes of stress, varying levels of inflammation. And then at the fact that I was able to basically autocorrect all of it with really just food and maybe some natural supplements and lifestyle modifications.

Edward Levitan, MD, ABIOM, IFMCP

All right. So what you got my interest because what are the, what did you do for yourself that helps you sleep because everybody’s gonna want to know and knowing that it’s gonna be different for our audience because everybody is unique. But what did you do for yourself? What’s kind of the big broad picture that you changed from being an E R doc to a functional medicine doc? Like what, what are the shifts you talked about? Your thoughts shifting in terms of how to think about health and what did you shift in your life? What else did you shift? What were the stressors that you shifted?

Nashat Latib, DO, FACEP, IFMCP

Absolutely. That’s a great, great question. Well, first and foremost, I was never a meditator. Ever, ever, ever, ever, I mean, try to get an, er, doc to sit. Still. Almost impossible.

Edward Levitan, MD, ABIOM, IFMCP

It sounds like you didn’t necessarily want to be a meditator. At that point.

Nashat Latib, DO, FACEP, IFMCP

I never wanted to be a meditator. I was like meditation. Yeah, that’s really not my jam, not my jam at all, but I embraced it. And I realized and by the way, because I am so scientifically driven, I, you know, did you know, some labs and myself, which our audience may not know. But I did a Dutch test on myself which basically looks at your cortisol levels. Of course, over the course of the day and all my cortisol levels were tanked. I was like in the red zone pretty much across the board, meaning that my body was so burnt out. It really wasn’t doing anything efficiently. And so that’s kind of, that was like my wake up call and I was like, okay, well, clearly, you know, I have to practice what I preach, right? And so I started to learn to meditate slowly but surely. And honestly, I started with something really simple that everybody can do, which is just get one of those apps out there. There’s so many different ones out there headspace. Calm. I mean, there’s a million, you know, I’m not really loyal to anyone in particular, but

Edward Levitan, MD, ABIOM, IFMCP

No, and I want to pause, pause for a second because this is an area that I like to talk a little bit about because everybody thinks, first of all, the meditators want to meditate and I think the majority of us don’t necessarily want to are interested in etcetera. We want the benefit of it. The other part is, it’s a practice, it’s not a destination necessarily. So the way I kind of describe it when I talk to patients is if you foot throwing a football, most people know how to throw a football. But the first time you didn’t throw a football probably didn’t do it very well. So it took practice and Tom Brady up to recently was probably practicing every day. 

The Dalai Lama still practices twice a day. So it’s a matter of making like, I 100% agree with your, what you’re saying in terms of apps are the way to go to start and it’s a matter of sitting your butt down and just whether your mind goes doesn’t go, whether you’re getting benefit, not just doing it, just sitting there at some point, your mind will calm down and maybe it’s once a week or once a month and then becomes once a week, maybe it becomes every three or four days, but it will happen and to practice. So I apologize, but you’re harping on the area that I really feel strongly about because everybody’s like, oh, I should meditate in my mind should be clear and I shouldn’t be thinking about it, I should stay with the breath. And if I’m not, if I can’t sit down for more than three seconds or three minutes, I just can’t sit for three minutes. And the reality is you can, you just sit down and you might be fidgeting. That’s okay. Just sit down and do it for five minutes or maybe you start with two minutes, whatever it is, whatever. Right for you. I apologize. Keep going.

Nashat Latib, DO, FACEP, IFMCP

No, you’re good. You’re good, you’re good. But that’s perfect. And I’m just going to add to that a little bit that I even tell some of my patients who I get a little resistance from, you know, what do you like to do? I mean, I, one patient in particular she loves to garden was like you can meditate while you’re gardening, you can meditate while you’re walking, you can meditate while you’re running. You know, it’s not, you know, I feel like people often put meditation in a box, but meditation is really a state of mind. You know, and the goal of meditation of course is to supercharge. Our parasympathetic switch are kind of the opposite of our flight or flight. So our rest and relax phase and it has such profound effects on your biochemistry of your body. And I know I’m preaching to the choir here. We both have the same, you know, belief system. But you know, the benefits are just for me have been transformational. And I was one of those people that really, I put 60 seconds on the clock to start, to be perfectly honest. Yeah. I mean, 60 seconds and, but now my Children, I have 2 10 year olds and, and, and, And an 11 year old and, you know, they are used to doing five minute meditation every night before bed. We haven’t quite worked into the school morning routine. I still have that to figure out. But eventually, I mean, hopefully they will fall into a twice a day practice, Maybe even three times a day. Maybe it’s kind of thing where, and I always say like it’s your tool in your back pocket that you can use if somebody upsets you, I teach my kids, even if you have a difficult confrontation at school or, you know, a friend says something that’s not nice to you, you know, before you react, you know, just take a minute and it could be just even 15 seconds, counting backwards from 15 is also, you know, sort of like another form of meditation. 

So, yeah, so meditation was huge for me. The other thing that was really big was, well, there were multiple things I did right off the bat and the other one was of course swapping out a lot of things in my household once I sort of realized how many toxins I was exposed to in my own home. You know, simple swaps that people don’t often think about or of course your nonstick pan. You know, we all love nonstick pans who doesn’t want to cook with a nonstick pan. But the beautiful thing is that now we’ve come so far there are nontoxic versions of exactly the same thing that work the same, if not better. There are amazing body products now that we can use and I also really don’t tell my patients to go live in a bubble because that’s impossible. But I say, you know, pick and choose your battles. 

So, you know, what are the toxic things that you do in your life that you absolutely can’t live without? There’s probably a couple of them. I know I have a couple, you probably have a couple, you know, I do those toxic things, but I do make sure that I do a very, you know, specific quarterly detoxification program for myself to make sure that I really stay on track and that at least whatever I’m exposed to, I’m empowering my body to be able to eliminate it in a healthy way. So it doesn’t cause all the side effects and so forth. So.

Edward Levitan, MD, ABIOM, IFMCP

Awesome. Awesome. So I’m gonna go back to you piqued my interest when you said you don’t think there’s any unexplained infertility. So, say more about that and how do, how do we find, how do we find the explanation when it’s quote unquote, unexplained? 

Nashat Latib, DO, FACEP, IFMCP

Yeah. Yeah, that’s a great question. Well, you come and work with me obviously. But, but yeah, no, all jokes aside. So unexplained infertility is basically in the same category of some of those other, you know, medical terms that basically mean, I don’t know. Right. Unexplained infertility just means I don’t know, just like fiber amalgam means, I don’t know why you I B S I don’t know why, you know, your gut is acting up. So we have all these, you know, standard of care, medical terms in our traditional system that are basically a glorified way of saying, I don’t know and I am not the type of person that believes that there is, you know, ever not an explanation, there is always an explanation. It’s just a matter of figuring it out and and I’m gonna highlight something that you mentioned a little bit earlier. Which was that, you know, our traditional system and the way you and I were traditionally trained, we were not taught to be detectives in the way that we are now in our respective, you know, functional medicine practices in the treatment of our patients, right? We’re learning to turn over stones that we didn’t even know existed or even needed to be turned. And so when it comes to unexplained infertility, there are so many different factors that play a role with fertility. For instance, gut health, you mentioned by B S Gut health and the literature is clinically linked to infertility there are numerous, numerous toxins that we’re exposed to on a daily that are also clinically linked to infertility. 

You know, conditions like PCOS or as a sperm oea where guys don’t have sperm or in ovulation where women don’t ovulate or, you know, it could be as simple as altering the length of your menstrual cycle. And the reality is that we know that if the latter half of a woman’s cycle is not long enough or it doesn’t sustain an appropriate level of progesterone, she’s not going to be able to implant. So, recurrent pregnancy loss is also linked to you know, a lot of these different factors related to inflammation. It could be, you know, something related to. There are a lot of ingredients and foods that are inflammatory, right? So inflammatory foods, there, there are, of course, we all, you know, this as much as I do that, I’ll just repeat it for the benefit of our viewers. But, you know, things like gluten dairy are well known in the literature to be highly inflammatory foods that people may be consuming and not even realize that their body is struggling with it. 

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had a woman walked into my office and tell me she’s unexplained infertility. And then we come to find out it’s subclinical hyperthyroidism that is preventing her from being able to get pregnant. And so when I say there’s no such thing as unexplained infertility I personally, I have like an online map master class where I talk all about this in our four step system on how we kind of solve this. But I talked about the fact that unexplained infertility is really a lazy diagnosis and it’s not meant to be an insult to any of our traditional minds out there, you know. And again, just to reiterate, I’m not against traditional medicine, I just feel like there is more to the picture that we offer by doing a deeper dive into these very various aspects. 

The other thing that I find with most of the couples that walk into my office or trouble, have trouble getting pregnant. And by the way, these are people who sometimes have failed 3457 rounds of IUI and 345 rounds of IVF meaning they have spent probably well over $100,000 on fertility treatment And then they come and work with us and they get pregnant in the age of 12 weeks. It’s, and it’s pretty amazing because all we’re doing is figuring out what that one thing is fixing it usually naturally with diet, lifestyle modifications and occasionally natural supplements to kind of, you know, move me a little faster. But yeah, I mean, it’s and oftentimes we can do it really with just basic serum labs, we don’t even necessarily always need the functional labs because obviously people who are coming to us and that child bearing age range tend to have a little bit, you know, less complicated of an issue than people, you know some of the patients that come to me in my practice specifically for functional medicine.

Edward Levitan, MD, ABIOM, IFMCP

Yeah. No, I mean, that makes sense. So what is you mentioned toxins? So what, what do you recommend to get rid of those? Because there’s so many things out there. Talk to me about what, what, what’s your program, what’s kind of your ideal scenario?

Nashat Latib, DO, FACEP, IFMCP

Yeah, that’s a great question. I think it’s so there’s two different categories, right? There’s the detox that I kind of recommend for anybody and everybody. And it’s the same detox that a woman could put, you know, potentially do in her preconception period as long as she’s like at least six months out from trying to get pregnant at least three months, three months, it’s kind of my minimum. But, you know, there’s a lot of myths out there. The talks is like a big buzzword right now all over social media. And so I think it’s really important for our audience to understand that all the toxins are not created equal. I know you guys, you know, strongly and wholeheartedly believe in detox too. And, you know, my approach to detox is really has to do with a very balanced whole foods diet. And we look at actually the biochemical pathways that support the natural detoxification organs in the body and basically flood the body with what it needs to basically make those organs a lot more active. 

I will say the easiest way to explain it to some of my, you know, newcomers that kind of come into my world is that your liver is your laundromat, right? So you’re basically, you know, feeding, you’re basically putting all the detergent into, you know, the machine to make it work a lot faster and pump out more of the toxins and kind of supercharge their excretion process. You know, by doing a proper detox. And what does the proper detox look like? I mean, my personal program that I run, is a four week program and we do it and you eat food, by the way, there’s no calorie restriction. You eat as much as you want. So everyone thinks detox is about deprivation and starvation. We just could not be, you know, more opposed to that. You know, if you’re eating right, a chance to chat, it’s gonna be really hard for you to overeat because you’re not eating junk food and junk food and all the nonsense that’s out there is really where all the calorie density is foreign. Whereas if you’re eating whole foods, you know, it’s very hard to overeat, it’s hard to eat too many calories because you’re going to get full, you know, before you overeat. 

And honestly, that’s one of my biggest complaints that I get in my program because I have them on, you know, a pretty big eating plan. And then once they get two weeks, two and three there on some shakes and supplements that of course, have all the nutrients, minerals and everything they need to support the natural detox organs in the body. And then the fourth week is really back to food. And my biggest complaint, like I said is that they can’t eat all the food. So, like I just can’t eat it all. And I’m like, well, that’s a good problem to have. You know, that’s your complaint. I’m good with that. Keep complaining. So if they tell me they’re hungry, then I’m, you know, upset. I think it is important for us to talk for a minute. You know, because on social media and everywhere you always see people talking about, oh, well, my body detox is naturally and I think you and I would both agree. Yeah, our bodies do detox detox naturally. However, the nutrient density available to us, some food has plummeted over, you know, the past several decades. And so it’s almost impossible for us to eat exactly what we need to support our detox organs without a little bit of support unless we’re like, you know, really, really, you know,

Edward Levitan, MD, ABIOM, IFMCP

But it’s not only other nutrient density is plummeted. It’s that our toxins have skyrocketed. So you’ve got those things that nutrient nutrient density has definitely decreased. We used to as a species forge and have huge amounts of very variety and everything else. Now we’re eating, even if it’s organic, it’s organic broccoli. The same species grown in the same field over and over. There’s only so much you can do

Nashat Latib, DO, FACEP, IFMCP

Right from the foreign companies that exist in the world.

Edward Levitan, MD, ABIOM, IFMCP

Right. Exactly. So it’s funny when people come in and say, I want to do this, I’m really sick but I want to do it all with food. And I say great, if you’re gonna live up on the mountaintop, meditating 24/7 and eating a little rice, we can do that. Otherwise we gotta get other support.

Nashat Latib, DO, FACEP, IFMCP

Right. Absolutely.

Edward Levitan, MD, ABIOM, IFMCP

It’s just, it’s not realistic in this world right now.

Nashat Latib, DO, FACEP, IFMCP

Yeah a 100%.

Edward Levitan, MD, ABIOM, IFMCP

Hopefully that will change. Hopefully we can species clean up this earth, clean up how the food we eat and the toxins we, and then that may be possible. But

Nashat Latib, DO, FACEP, IFMCP

Wouldn’t that be amazing? Oh, my gosh, that would be the day. That would be the day. I mean, the other thing is we’re not eating seasonally, right? And I think seasonal eating is another thing for the audience to really understand is a huge impact on health. They actually did a study getting a little bit off track but they didn’t study on women in the, from, I want to say it’s three months, preconception to one month post conception. And I think one group was eating, you know, a standard American diet and the other one was eating more seasonally and of course, eating more seasonally just for our audience and benefit means that food is growing at the right time and in the environment that it’s meant to grow in, so it’s not being forced to grow. And the reality is if you force food to grow, it’s going to be less nutrient dense and have less nutrient benefits. And what they found was actually the incidence of autism in the group that seasonally was substantially decreased. So, yeah. Yeah. So seasonal eating I think has, you know, and of course, you know, I, I tread lightly on topics like that but, you know, it’s just a little, it’s a data point.

Edward Levitan, MD, ABIOM, IFMCP

I actually don’t tread lightly. I come my background, my first love and learning and medicine with traditional Chinese medicine. I feel like functional medicine is traditional Chinese medicine with modern tools. And they talk all about, well, okay, let’s just think if you’re in a cold climate, do you really want to be eating a lot of salads or do you want to nurture yourself with warm soups? It’s just a hot cold. What are the properties that you want in this season, this season of the year and this season of your life, you might be able, maybe as we get older, as you know, the digestive enzymes go down a little bit. So maybe we do a little bit more easily digestible food as we get older or we have to supplement. Everybody wants the answer. And the problem is the answer is what your body is. What’s right for your body today because tomorrow might be different.

Nashat Latib, DO, FACEP, IFMCP

Absolutely. That’s a great point. We’re, you know, we’re evolving every single day and our knees are changing. Somebody asked me that were like, well, you know, if I come with you and work with you and your concierge practice, you know, am I gonna be in maximal health in a year? And I’m like, you’ll be better, but I never say optimum because you can never get there, right? I mean

Edward Levitan, MD, ABIOM, IFMCP

Right? there’s always the next layer, right? There’s always the next layer, you’ll be in great health and then there’s gonna be the next level and then there’s the next level, next level.

Nashat Latib, DO, FACEP, IFMCP

Right. Right. Exactly. It’s a lifelong project, right?

Edward Levitan, MD, ABIOM, IFMCP

Yeah, absolutely. So how can people, you have amazing information? How can people find you? How, where can people get more information?

Nashat Latib, DO, FACEP, IFMCP

Yeah, that’s great. Well, thank you. So I have, I am on Instagram. I do respond to messages very actively on Instagram. So I encourage everybody to find me there. I’m your functional duck. Really easy to find such by my name there too or my website is www.nashatlatib.com. So yeah, really easy to find.

Edward Levitan, MD, ABIOM, IFMCP

Thank you so much. This has been incredibly eye opening and thank you and thank you. Again for another, for joining us in this episode of Environmental Toxicants, autoimmunity and Chronic Disease. And I’m your host, Dr. Ed Levitan. And we’ve really had the privilege and the honor of being with Dr. Nashat Latib. Thank you.

Nashat Latib, DO, FACEP, IFMCP

Thank you Ed.