Why IVF Isn’t Fixing the Fertility Crisis (and What Actually Will) | Dr. Ann Shippy

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 miles an hour across the country. One in seven couples is in fertile sperm counts. This sperm health is going down globally.

Historically, even women had babies in their early 20s. Now, you know, women are delaying and there's some challenges with that. And a lot of them are struggling. But you also talk about this idea that it's not your run-lodge glaze, but it's your biological age.

That's a matter. Dr. Ann Shipy is a former IBM chemical engineer,

“functional medicine leader who uses a data-driven approach to help couples”

can see healthy babies well into their 40s. Even after they've been told IVF is their only option. My oldest patient right now is 47. You've got naturally on the first try. I want to kind of emphasize it because it's generation.

And what you do now actually could affect your brain children. I 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. One of the biggest challenges I see as we age is our body's ability to repair and heal.

That's because your body's repair system stem cells naturally slow down over time. These are the cells that can become bone, muscle, skin, cartilage, even brain and immune cells. When stem cell activity declines, recovery, healing and energy all take longer. But there's a way to support them that I trust called Qualia stem cell. You take it just four days a month.

And it's backed by the award-winning Qualia Science team and includes 15 non-GMO ingredients that support all aspects of stem cell function like survival, renewal, proliferation, migration, mobilization, and differentiation. Ingredients like Royal Jelly and Seabuck Thorn Extract are included because research shows they can help support and mobilize stem cells.

For me, this is a simple, accessible way to support youthful healing, recovery, and overall vitality. Go to qualialife.com/highmen for up to 50% off Qualia stem cell and use code highmen for an extra 15% off. That's qualialife.com/highmen and use code highmen to help your body repair and recover at any age. Over the years, I've cared for thousands of patients and one thing always surprises me. We often wait too long to take care of our health.

We tell ourselves I'll start tomorrow or I'll deal with it if something goes wrong.

“But the truth is, real wellness starts at the cellular level.”

Every single day and how we nourish and protect ourselves really determines how we feel, how we age and how resilient our bodies are over time. That's why I'm so excited about C15.

It's the first essential fatty acid to emerge since Omega 3 and it plays a critical role in keeping

our cell membrane strong and healthy. In fact, research suggests that not having enough may actually speed up cellular aging. That's why I take fatty 15 every day and it's become a non-negotiable part of my routine. It's simple, it's easy and it feels great knowing I'm supporting my cells and long-term health in such a meaningful way. If you want to try for yourself, head to fatty15.com/highmen and use

code highmen to save an extra 15% on a 90-day subscription. That's FATTY15.com highmen and use code highmen. 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 I'm talking about is that you're a ghost, so I was sick and she took care of me and helped me as one of the doctors helping me sort through this horrible health crisis I had. And I'm grateful for you for doing that. Well, it's a disorder 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's so vibrant and healthy and so great. Yeah, you know, this life after death or almost death. Well, after that, you appreciated even more each day, right? Yeah, I don't take a minute for granted. That is for sure. I came to the edge. I was close. Close call. I was close. Well, to close no more of those. No more. I've got that bubble around your mobile wrap for Dr. Ryan. We're talking about a back surgery I had. I got a back infection and I was, you know, in the hospital for weeks and

on the deathbed for a month and kind of a Hail Mary saved me, but here I am. Down the way and you know, in that kind of kind of goes to, you know, this sort of both unfortunate but also blessed experience that we both had of having very serious, debilitating, quote chronic illnesses that were quote incurable, but that we recovered from. And who knew that the body is a miraculous thing, they actually want to be healthy. 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.

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 to 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 chains 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 science-backed path to fertility in generational health, which was a great subtitle, for which I wrote the forward. Thank you for asking me to do that. Thank you for asking me to do that. 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. One of the inputs that we have to think about to ourselves and our partners, then in women, both sisters, or two, who 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 utero. And you know, I practice family medicine and I was trained in OB and psychology and I delivered 500 babies. 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 see 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 to like, it gets vaccinations like that was that right. And I was, 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 it's massive fertility crisis, one in seven couples is infertile, sperm counts, it's 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

eggs or whatever is going on with our kids is unprecedented, 90% of kids are overweight, 20% of obese. How do immunity, the cancer? How do immunity is 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, 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 consumption in between babies, too, can make a huge impact to other fertility in 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 wanting a pregnant, if you know anybody who's going to have kids, if you, it's a great present.

“And it's like, and 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. 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 hint at the beginning. You know,

you came to understand the body in a very different way. You were 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, I get your gold watch. A little bit. Oh, exactly. I know you worked at IBM. A little bit. I know I was going to take

quite a detour. And so what happened? You got sick. And 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. Okay, I looked

“terrible and felt terrible too. And so that's what made me start thinking about”

things outside of traditional medicine. I did all the workups, all the things through traditional medicine. But then I had to start changing my diet. I went and started on to natural path and a nutritionist and started building my body back. And suddenly my body was healing and better after six to nine months of doing the traditional work. And I got so inspired with how

careers and go to medical schools so I could do medicine differently at 32. And I've never taken

a biology class. Yeah, no, me neither. I studied Buddhism. And I didn't. It was an afternoon after thought. And I think that there's a whole bunch of us out there who have been, you could say, fortunately, 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 body, about health, and we had a question, our training, the paradigm we were 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're known each other a long time. Your work really is around this particular area, it's 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 Pre-conception Revolution" meaning before you get pregnant. And it's not just like a day before, a week before, it's, you're talking anywhere from three months to 36 months, three 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, maybe you're where I was from the state, but there was a really interesting article about Rapamisen and fertility and egg preservation

in women, which is to say kind of a longevity drug, it's a martial arts and immune function, has a lot of interesting effects, but you know, I think we're seeing increasing ways of how do we how do we preserve and increase improved fertility and healthy pregnancies. And especially as it applies to women, there's a study that just came out on the mitochondrial DNA being preserved, to move 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 improve their ovarian function and have healthy babies well into their mid. And maybe even like 40s, my oldest patient right now is 47, and I just got pregnant naturally on the first try. She had had a couple kids, they're about 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 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 need to clear out some inflammatory markers. We worked really hard for three months, and then she was supposed to come back and really tell us some

of these things, but they had one night where they weren't careful. And I'm pregnant, and now she's

she's doing about six weeks, and she looks and feels amazing. Super happy, easy pregnancy,

super, everything's going very, very well. And 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 together, three-year-old, and IVF was really, really hard on her body. She had an endometrius that just went

rampad, and she actually ended up losing a kidney from it. So she's down to one kidney, a triggered autoimmune disease, so she ended up with autoimmune hepatitis, and we were like, "Okay, maybe one is good." She's like, "Sweaks pregnant right now, not trying at 44." Yeah, I mean, we know we talked in medicine about geriatric pregnancy, which means if you're 35

“and older, you're a quote geriatric pregnancy. And I think historically, women had babies in”

their teenagers in early 20s, but now you know, women are delaying it. And there's sort of, I think some challenges with that, and the left-over seeing a lot of women struggling, but but you're also talking about this idea that it's not your bronological age, but it's your biological age that actually matters. And 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? Is it a good time? Because 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, 'cause you might not be safe, and I might not be a good time to have a baby for them as well." And so I'm really thinking about infertility as just the body sensing, it's not a good time.

producing sperm, so it's more about the sperm quality, but that's another thing I see too.

We see when there's environmental exposures, when there's nutritional deficiencies, 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 issues with their sperm quality. You're quantity when we do the same things for the man, they get an increase in sperm count and quality, and also in a resume to be super fertile.

As we head into a new year, a lot of us feel that natural pull to reset, to feel lighter, clearer, and more energized. And it makes sense, our detox pathways take a hit this time of year

“from stress, disrupted routines, and environmental exposures. The truth is, sometimes eating well”

isn't enough to fully support that reset. That's why in my 10-day detox, one of my favorite

tools I always talk about is infrared sauna therapy. A high-quality infrared sauna helps your body

eliminate toxins more efficiently by boosting circulation, supporting lymphatic flow, and creating a deep, productive sweat at a lower, more comfortable temperature. I personally love Sunlighten's infrared saunas. Their patented technology delivers the highest quality infrared and is backed by over 25 years of research. Saunas sessions can help reduce inflammation, balance cortisol, support metabolic health, and restore energy. If you're ready for a

fresh start visit Sunlighten.com, you can save up to $1,400 plus get exclusive year-round savings with the code Hyman. I travel a lot across time zones, through airports, in and out of events, and as you know, travel can be incredibly hard on the body. It also makes it tough to stay consistent with eating healthy. Between long flights, delays, and limited

“real food options, it's easy to end up in what I call a food emergency. That's why I always keep”

paleovalis 100% grass-fed beef sticks with me. Their grass-finished naturally ferment to support the gut, and completely free of gluten, artificial flavors, and preservatives. Having a clean, high-quality protein source in my bag keeps me grounded when everything else is unpredictable, supporting my blood sugar, muscle, and energy while I'm on the move. The original and garlic summer sausage are my go-to's, simple, clean, and reliable,

exactly what I want when I'm traveling. If you want to avoid food emergencies on busy travel days,

check them out at paleovalis.com/hyman or use code Hyman for 15% off your first order.

Yeah, it's so important. You talk about this sort of problem with fertility as sort of a not like a moral failing or some terrible thing around 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 going to have a clue that there's some biological disturbances that are upsetting your hormonal regulation and no-bearing 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 Trishmas. 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 interconologists that are just making IVF to be expected, right?”

No, I mean, you already get pregnant if you go with the doctor. Look at the doctor. 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 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. And I've seen this so much in my practice at the Dr. Mama Center and have helped so many women get pregnant by just addressing the fundamental terrain. It's like if you're

going to plant, you know, investable in the garden, you want healthy soil. And so how do you create metaphorically healthy soil, any human body, both for the man and the woman? And assess 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 the ways that are not done in traditional medicine. And and 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, I think I just had Michael Eisenberg who's from Stanford, who's a urologist, specializes in fertility and man and so forth. And he's talking about these issues. So I'm like, okay, you know, there's people in academic centers trying to think about, you know, toxins about nutrition, about stress, about the microbiome, and how all those play a role in infecting the basic hormonal systems and important sort of regulatory pathways allow us to

start to think about like when someone comes to say, well, I'm having trouble getting pregnant or

“I want to get pregnant. Like, what do I do? How do I, 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 I do. So let's start with like, just as a general idea that preconception time matters. And what should we be looking at? What should we measuring? What should 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. 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, you know,

we've had so many other patients, guilt by just changing their diet, right? So, um, I would start there by taking out the highly processed foods and adding 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 up the grains, but mostly put the really high quality good things in and get out the processed.

“But the truth is it shoulder and starst is a huge driver of infertility. Well, I mean,”

Walter Willard wrote a book called The Fritility Diet and was all about the phenomenon

I've been some 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 dialer genes up and down. 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. So then where our metabolic 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. 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 called it the no-for-generational health because the the state of the nutrition in the body, the state of the 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 to 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 3 months before you're starting to try to conceive with them 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, 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 3 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 look pretty healthy, the hormone levels were good, they did a little wash up period and then started filling them, eating them, highly processed foods, and saw the sink kind of decline in as little as 3 weeks.

“So trees in pop cuts are bad for your sperm? Well, exactly. And I think it's somewhat”

to the containers that they had highly processed foods that take out, I think, is really not good for the sperm health, right? The PFAS and the plastics that get leached into the food from the takeout containers and the frozen containers that the highly processed food in is in as part of the the story here on what's going to actually move the need all to have people have men have healthier sperm. It's important that you're talking about this,

because I remember a book that I read a long time ago called our stolen feature by Theo Colburn, which is sort of like our Rachel Carson sound spring book about the role of these environmental chemicals and pesticides and plastics and PFAS and environmental chemicals

and she went deep into the animal kind of researcher on this. And I think, you know, we don't realize that that's all affecting us. So the toxins do affect both women and men in terms of the book. It's just easier to study it and men because we have this quick turn around. It's harder to know what's going on with ovaries, but I'm sure it's the same thing as with the men with the ovaries. It's part of why the ovaries are saying, "Uh, check engine light, there's a problem here."

So how do you start to think about just this sort of dive into the whole preparation of how do we like clean health, 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 it's the overall load of things over time that tend to cause problems. So most people when I do their talks in testing, they have, they think they're doing everything right. And then we'll test and find out that they're

high in atrazine or high in EPA or heavy metals or all these things. So for the people that contest 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 have really”

benefit from doing some liposomalgluted thion and some liver support and some binders for at least three months and I describe a lot of that in the book. So when you talk about it,

it's basically a systematic way to help up regulate your body's own detoxification pathways,

there's specific foods, certain supplements, certain lifestyle practices, tallness, all kinds of things that binders that bind the toxins and there's a method to it. And it's not something we learned medical school, but it's something that I think I've used personally when I had mercury poisoning and other various kinds of toxins. 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 where

awareness and specificity, but it actually can help you reduce your total body burden quite significantly. And I think it's, there are even more advanced protocols. I can intervene as protocols of IVs and things like functional polling, but there are, you know,

“there's a heart of access and they're more expensive. But honestly, in a perfect world,”

I would, I would like put a rebate to a six month detox program, get their metals out, get their pesticides out, you know, put them on the aggressive detox program. You know, IVs, sauna, good binders. I think that's the next thing we do is we just open these centers that have this level for people that need to, but what I see with my patients and because not everybody can do that and what I wrote the book or is so that people know how to do it safely. And, and I, 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 the 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 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 to look. I think a lot of people struggle”

on the way and then they end up, you know, it's a lot less stressful. If you do it in your, if you have your kids in your late 20s or early 30s, but I don't want people to feel like there's this pressure, like say, "Privia," or, you know, make sure you get your eggs harvested and I want to change that conversation. I'd rather people are actually putting their efforts into lowering your inflammation and toxins in their body and, you know, really supporting their fertility

with some of those supplements. You talked about the rep of myus and I think some of the supplements that work on some of those same pathway is like cookie tin and an AD and some of these supplements that are so reasonably priced and very available for these people can do a lot of those same things without the level of risk. Yeah, I mean, Michael Eisenberg, the standard professor

is involved with a company called Swim Club, which is basically that supplements that help

male fertility and sperm health. Because there's so much good data around this now, like, there really are her supplements. So that's the, so we talked about getting that 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 from men and women or like, how do you think about it? How do you think about testing and how do you think about 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.

and there was actually another one, even on Ashwaganda 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 at the little organelles in the cells, I'm pure your audience.

“It's very important to help my mitochondrial anatomy. Yeah, I mean, a few people that might be listening”

that I don't know what mitochondrial, they're the little energy makers and they, well, it's certain types of inflammation in the body, pretty much everything that supports mitochondria supports fidelity. So coputen, b-bidemons and AD, you and I both have had such a dramatic assistance from this supplement, uh, phosphatital colon, and our bodies, uh, it turns out there's a lot of really good data in behind, phosphatital calling being good for both men and women's fertility,

that like, if I could just beam out and still come into everybody who wants to protect their

fertility or enhanced infertility, everybody would get us into this whole. And that's basically like a

fatty substance that's part of your cell membranes and helps both your regular cells and the mitochondrial membrane, 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 both see such turn around from our patients that are super-settoic

with autoimmune disease and neurological diseases and other things. Yeah. 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 stuff. So, I think it's really important that people understand that”

this is not like a passive process that it's really across some thought and planning and preparation, and it's not to guilt your 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, such is about the conception part. It's also about, you know, what you mentioned earlier, which was epigenetics. And I want to sort of double click on that a little bit,

because, you know, people may not really understand the implications of that. Everything we do washes over our genes. Every thought we have or you might have, who do we have or we we're asleep, exercise, environmental toxins, emotions, all of it is communicating in real time with our genes in ways that program them or help her 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

“devastated. Yeah. And you mentioned generational effects. I think, you know, we 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 powerful patient example. So, you know, 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 is about for and, you know, barely severe, verbal, but, you know, lots of issues. And then another one who was a year and a half and had developed a pretty severe autoimmune cephaletic in cephaletic, just so pants pantas. We found that they were in toxic mold and had, you

know, methylation. So, you know, symptomatic, predispositions to not clearing toxins very well. It's a good thing. We found a lot of things with them and we got them out of that. To lem it right, so now this little girl is she's leading her class kind of thing and a little boy doesn't have any signs of autoimmunity, but in the meantime, then I got to help the parents. And they had had to go through some IVF to get these kids, but we got the parents turned up and so then it

42, they ended up with the surprise number three. That would, that they weren't expecting because

they had gone through infertility with the first two and then also, you know, it was a little

alarming like we're going to get a healthy baby at 42. What this little girl, she's two-spive now, and she, uh, she's so unbelievably healthy. Like, every, because you kind of got them healthy. Because they got healthy. So they were some of my teachers and, like, what's

infertility issues that children get their bodies turned up and they accidentally get pregnant.

Yeah, I see a lot, I see a lot. People don't think about how they had to get themselves healthy

“first, but it, it's a great story because I think it sort of speaks to the versatility of a lot”

of these problems. Well, and I think so many couples that are going into this seeing, you know, they're either their siblings having children with health issues or their family, or their friends having infertility or our problems. So they go in already thinking, oh, we might fail, and so that's why I love sharing these stories because just having that hope that if you put this effort in it and actually press the pause button and take the time, don't rush into

getting pregnant. Take the three, six, twelve 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, to have a child with the neurodevelopmental delays or the autoimmunity. It's, it's a little disturbing. I mean, one in six kids now has some type of neurodevelopmental problem, whether it's learning disabilities or asperger or ADD or autism or anywhere in that whole spectrum.

“Just 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 not 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. If you've seen the studies on 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 it's the one of most consequential books because of that because nobody's really talking about this. We're talking about the rising autism, most to cause, and what's going on. We know, like, it's not like I'm brick and 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, like a conjugal 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, you just like, I 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 changed the”

trajectory for your own longevity, right? I think you're, that's likely to get cancer to get auto immune diseases to have all these things that are also looming for people. Yeah, right. It's not like you're doing this to tell her, maybe you're actually getting your health healthier. And there is benefits to that. You're going to feel better. You're going to have less product disease, right? The other thing that I've seen is that when 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 after the first month or two, we're

placing nutritional deficiencies and double-ticking 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 family's more and be present to have, you know, delight in growing their family. Yeah, I mean, if you're going to help me, it's hard to shut for your kids, right? Exactly. And just kind of leave me 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 couldn't affect your brain children. I think that the PFAS testing is one of the biggest things. I think you offer it through- Yes, it should help. We do it. 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 PFAS can dramatically, like just of exposure to the sperm in the egg, can dramatically affect the possibility

that the child's going to have to deal with obesity. Yeah, those are, those are forever chemicals, right? And they, there are obesity sygins. 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, the best analogy that I can think of are the DES, children, right? The, the children that were exposed to the DES chemical in utero. It's a similar

thing where, you know, I just had a, a new patient the other day where her, her grandmother had had the exposure and now we're like, oh, well, it'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

it's hard to poison a human, unpurpose, but we're all poisoned anyway, but unpurpose. And they do

“these animals, like the mice. And they see that there's transgenerational effects. If the”

grandmother mouse had glyphosator to the weak killer, round up their, ran a little baby mice are affected their risk of hormone dysfunction, cancers, kidney issues, it's kind of disturbing. And, and we're, we're not really addressing this as a medical profession, as a society, and we have to because if we don't, we're going to, 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

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, the, our sofas are, um, carpeting all those kinds of, uh, like just nonstick surfaces. I'm not sure that any nonstick pan is off the, don't feel safe with them. I think we need to be using the cast iron. Yes. Our stainless steel, um, so eliminating the exposures that we

can figure out, and then helping our bodies to detoxify that three, six, 12 months before and between pregnancies, I think it's going to give people a much lower likelihood of patting on those epigenetic changes. And there are ways of people, like, the thing about a, okay, what are the tests that we need to do? What are the biomarkers we need to do? Because, you know, a functional health, we create a panel of biomarkers and 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, immune factors, checking for inflammation, and also, we can look at PFAS, you can look at BPA, you can look at 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 functions, 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? Discs, yeah. So I really like people

to do a detailed autoimmune panel. It's incredible. I don't know if I told you this ambient

function, be back, you know, at 4,000,000 members, go through it and a good third of people, have some degree of autoimmune disease or pre-autoimmune disease. It takes years. It's a positive DNA. It's kind of a lot of tissue damage to happen. I pretty much screen every patient, because it's usually that dysfunction. It's that immune system just being confused and, and as it's working on something, a low-grade infection or these in paramel toxins that are building up, um, and then

it gets confused and attacks itself like the thyroid or the DNA hurt, you know, I had a run in macho grins after, um, I had my second baby, um, totally gone now, along with, um, basically anti-phospholipid syndrome, uh, also completely gone now. This is important, but everybody should pay attention to was when innocent, she had a whole bunch of auto antibodies. And by the way, so did I, and

we were trained in medicine that once we have them, they never go away. But I mean, that ain't true.

Well, so what we're trained in medicine to do, so I, you know, two years into my internal medicine practice, I can't have a conversation without having some piece of gum or mint in my mouth, and my eyes were so dry, couldn't wear contacts anymore. And I, so I did an autoimmune work up on myself, and I found I had those antibodies along with the antipospholipid antibodies, which means I was at increased risk for having a heart attack stroke kind of thing, right?

And so I, you know, I had my training, and I know I still go see the, um, the specialist,

“the rheumatologist, and get the answer I expected, like the only thing to do is to put you”

on immunosuppressants and then go away, right? Um, so that was actually perfect because I had had a baby in med school, a baby in residency in my thirties, and I was kind of, had a one-year-old in a five-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 a saw of this. So that was right around the time that I have them started

being a little bit more visible. Found them when did my first course, it was all they offered

at the time, it's just the one week. Then 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 how she modes thyroiditis,

immunosuppressants. We need to figure out why your immune system is 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... It's true, it's important like the diagnostic work-up to make sure you're

“okay before you have a kid as important. And that's why, with function health, we do include”

autoimmune biomarkers, which are not typically part of your check-up, because I think they should be screened because there is a phenomenon of pre-autoimmune. It's like pre-diabetes or pre-hypertension, and it's not that they're really pre-anything, they're just... They're just... Don't have full-bone disease, yeah. Something's going on, it doesn't mean it's normal, and the most dodge that will dismiss and say, "Well, you know, the other symptoms is nothing, it doesn't mean anything."

It's not true, it means 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 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'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 worked her up, she had an undiagnosed autoimmune thyroid situation, along with some shifts in her microbiome, some toxins, you know, worked up the whole thing. She ended up getting pregnant, naturally, and then she was nursing that baby. And ended up getting pregnant with twins, didn't learn the lesson,

coming pregnant with number four, so she ended up with four children, under they defore, after failing IVF, like, no, she talked about breaking her up, that her husband finally

“decided for it was good. I don't just aspire to live a long life, I actively build it. The secret”

lies in consistent, high-quality inputs that target immune resilience and longevity. I've trusted peaks quality for years, and their Nandaka Adaptogenic Coffee Alternative Blend is the ultimate standard for establishing your strongest internal foundation. Nandaka is a paradigm of sophisticated wellness. It combines ceremonial cacao, wild-mimicking functional mushrooms, fermented poo-RT from 250-year-old trees, and Ayurvedic spices. This formulation is a daily

essential, rich in phytocompounds that directly support immune function. The engineering is crucial.

The cacao powder retains an unprecedented 30% cacao butter. This naturally occurring fat serves as an optimal lipid-based delivery system, dramatically maximizing the bioavailability of the Adapogenic Compounds. The mushroom blend notably over indexes on the critical compound, Reishi Sport Powder. This system delivers smooth, perfect energy via cold-extracted poo-RT, ensuring you get calm, focus, not jitters. Redefine your standard of health and secure 20%

off your order to begin your intentional wellness journey today at peaklife.com/hiamen. That's PIQUE-life.com/hiamen. You know, a lot of people don't realize how important magnesium is, especially in the winter. It's involved in over 300 processes in your body from turning food into energy to keeping your muscles relaxed, your nerves calm, your mood stable,

“and even supporting your immune system. But here's the thing. In the winter, when days are”

shorter, sunlight is limited, and stress tends to go up. Many of us don't get enough magnesium, and that can leave you feeling tired, tense, or just off. That's why I take magnesium

breakthrough. It's a full spectrum magnesium supplement that helps your cells produce energy,

supports healthy sleep, keeps your muscles and nerves working properly, and gives you that deep steady energy that actually lasts without the jitters. So this winter, don't just push through, give your body the magnesium it needs, and you'll feel clearer, stronger, and more resilient every day. You can try it for yourself at bioptomizers.com/hiamen. Use promo code high-minute check out to say 15%.

That really taught me about how important autoimmune piece was in the infertility, and then how readily fertile, because you're not supposed to be that fertile way, you're still nursing. But yeah, I have several other, I have actually had two of those patients right now that are we did a little tune up postpartum, you know, looking at your nutrients status, and got them really dialed in with their nutrients, and then they were quite ready for the next one.

It happens, right? The health of your get, the more further you're going to have, that's all a message here. If you want to be firm, it'd be healthy. Infertilities, not a disease, it's a sign that something else is going

on your body that you can address, and it's not directly treating your hormones, which is basically

system. They cause all kinds of havoc. Off a movement, have long-lasting consequences from that. I'm not saying IVF is bad, because, you know, if people really want to have a baby and they

can otherwise, okay, but like, they're so nice. I do this first, because if you do end up needing

IVF, you'll have the healthier baby, and you'll have better chances at the IVF working. So it should be like prep for IVF, because a lot of times, then you don't even need it. I just a new patient last week. They had failed IVF. I've just seen her for the first time, and that her has been came, and they had been reading the book and learning about him. So he had done a traditional sperm test, or then when they were doing the IVF piece, and it looked okay. So they

were just pointing the finger at her. Well, then they did this every turn. I heard about the sperm QT test yet. Yeah, so he did sperm QT. It's terrible. And so they're both patients, and we're gonna get both tuned up, because the sperm QT looks at the epigenetics of the sperm and can detect deeper problems than what a tradition is. What is it measuring? It's measuring epigenetic markers, so methylation and histone markers at the sperm. And I, this is another thing that I hope just

becomes really common as part of this, probably the longevity conversation. Is your, can we use sperm as a biomarker? A biomarker for men? Okay, all right. I actually have a true confession here. I wanted to figure that out, and I did that as 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 next 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. When you say in some ways, your healthier now than ever? Yeah, for sure. And so that's some great, but you can see that. Yeah, I understand that it's a biomarker. Even if you're not wanting to have a kid or not planning to have children, it's like checking your blood pressure. Checking your sperm health

is a way to see if your otherwise health you're not, and actually Michael Eisenberg from Stanford on the podcast, you talked about exactly this issue. You said, it's a biomarker of your health, not it's like a vital sign. 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, a disruption in your microbiome?

“Do you have a low-grade infection someplace? Do you have some autoimmunity brewing? I think it's”

an easy way to see what's going on. Yeah, I mean, I'd encourage you 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 guys have the problem, and often the woman gets all the hassle and the blame. And it's-- And have the opportunity for this prescription supplement period, right? It's like art of how we have a healthy pregnancy, how we have a healthy baby. It's like such an

intact potential for couples to help them actually have a healthy family. Yeah, it's so true. That's so great work on this. I love hanging out with you. I love that you into that. Yeah, whatever. I'll try to show everything. I want to know everything. I want to test everything because I just curious, and it's one of my job is anyway, so I want to learn about tests. I want

to do 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 early. I want to kind of come back to and see if you can dive in a little bit on the research on this. And we've heard a lot about

“Anna Man and R and AD as this longevity supplement. Mike, David, I think Claire has done a lot of research”

on this. And I heard her once talking about this. And I read about it in this book, Life span, where he basically talked about these female mice who he gave an event to, which is a precursor of any AD, which is some helps mitochondrial function and DNA repair and inflammation and blood sugary relation, a whole bunch of stuff. And he said these mice reversed menopause, or he called it mouse-opause. 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 were so many different things. I use 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 for that that I get just such great results. And then I combine it with phosphatital colonel, orally and IV if we can, really good forms of cocaine, 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 always show I'm doing an online course, you know, kind of the people

and yet they can't come see me as a patient. So I've just started this and, you know, showing

them the picture of the sperm, but have all the little mitochondria lined up after the head. So they could, you know, be inspired to support their mitochondria. And then, um, and then the ovaries, like the ovaries just needs so such good mitochondrial support. And then I just see this. Like, I had a football patient at today who's 55, and she's doing all the mitochondria support, you know, she's taking the mitochondria, the cocaine, 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, you know, she had some family”

history for things that we wanted to really get ahead of with some dementia and heart disease and those kinds of things. So I'm like, okay, let's really have your mitochondria abuse on the

focus. So I think the NAD is really, really a powerful piece of this. And then they are some,

there's a study that came out where they did the NAD IVs, you know, like a 10 pack 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 that NADs, but if you're in a situation, you know, you're 40 and you want to have a baby next year, or then pick up out doing the NAD IVs. Yeah, all such important information, you know, there's some nutrition, the relative toxins, your microbiome, mitochondria, but, you know,

there's another piece of this, which is this stress, I've tried to have a baby when you can't have a baby. And 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, because it's such a stressful problem. Personally, and one of those babies, my mom had 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 the early 90s,”

I took a course at Harvard that was mindfulness one. Yeah, with her Benson. Yeah, and there's had a woman come and speak who is a Harvard professor. He was Ali Domear 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 and stress reduction. And there results, in terms of pregnancy, where the same as IVF, like, are better than

I, so basically, I thought that was fascinating. And I'd love you to sort of speak a little bit

about that piece of it. And I think families, couples, maybe especially get very, very burdened by this feeling with 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 an important for everybody, the same, not just for people that want to start to go with their family, like it's such an

“important driver for health. So in it, it's something that I really do address in the book,”

but, you know, we have something called a cortisol steel, where when we're stressed, we make more cortisol, and it basically slurps up the estrogen 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. It's so funny because I was just having a conversation with one of my office staff today. When we're both grabbing a cup of tea, about the importance of meditation,

it's like, but I can't do it. I'm not good at 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 her biology. It's just letting your body know that it can be for a moment without doing, will start to change the brainwaves that you make. We even think that you could do meditation, not meditating, or actually meditating. Actually meditating. 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, to a dispenser. Any kind of meditation has really good research behind it. It's a matter of just finding a type of meditation that you

like and actually doing it. It doesn't even have to be long. Even five minutes will start to change your biology. Ideally, it's 20 minutes once or twice a day, and then for people that really want to get more nerdy about it, you can do neurofeedback. I personally find neurofeedback

weeklong neurofeedback for 40 years and I've done four or five times, and I have the

use a sense of hey which is one of the newer neurofeedback devices. I have the equipment that

“you spend 20 grand on because I find it so impactful. I think sometimes when we go through these”

health crises are almost dying, or like both the best have done multiple times that our brains can really get stuck in something called limbic state or we can't like we're just stuck in hybeta and can't get into the alpha data brain states very easily. One of the best things that we can do is go and do some neurofeedback to help our bodies know that we're not running from the tiger anymore. We're needing to be hyper vigilant and we can actually start relaxing and enjoying our

lives again. So important for fertility, healthy pregnancies to find something that you really enjoy. It can just be a guided meditation, it can be a prayer, a mantra, to something that gives your body a few minutes every day to relax. Well there's just such a hopeful conversation, you know, from just a simple idea that there's actually something you can do rather just going to fertility doctor, crossing your fingers and going through tens of thousands of other treatment

with all kinds of folks and projects and injections and it's like, wait, stop. Like let's try

something else first, not that we can't use IVF as the last resort, but it shouldn't be the first step.

“And I think in the yearbook really lays out very carefully how to think about all the different”

things that you can address from fundamental lifestyle factors to detoxification, to dressing about a conjugal function, to identifying all those pieces in a very simple way that people can use. So, and I thank you for wearing this book. Where can people find out more about you, about your work, about the online course? Like tell us, tell us more. So my website is anchipymd.com. The book is available any place that books are sold. It's easiest probably to get on Amazon,

and we're just constantly putting information on Instagram and any place that I'm found. Thanks so much for having me. What about this course? People listening like, "I can't see you," and what do I...

“Oh, the courses we've started as a separate website called "Every Baby Well" because that's my dream.”

Is it all the views are born healthy? I was pregnant with my first son.

Oh gosh, this makes me feel really emotional. This is what I wish I had known before I got pregnant. It's 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 when I want every parent to know before they get pregnant

on what to do. Every Baby Well. Every Baby Well. You can find information about the course, and so I'm loving it so much. I love seeing patients individually, but what's really interesting is how the people in the course are wanting to help each other already and be encouraging each other. So I really feel like we're going to build this community of parents to be, or people that are growing their family that all want to really be implementing this healthy

lifestyle, have these tools on their toolbox so they can have healthy families. Well, thank you, Anne. 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. What if the greatest threat your health wasn't bad choices, but bad design. In America, chronic disease isn't accidental. It's the predictable outcome

of a food system built for profit, not people. A web of corporations, lobbyists, and policymakers, all feeding off your plate. They call it choice, but your options were engineered. From the grocery aisle to the school cafeteria, big food, big ag, and big pharma, wrote for the rules. Take together. The food pyramid distorted. The science bought. The front of packaged health labels designed to deceive. This is an abroke in system. It's a perfectly functioning machine,

producing disease, dependency, and distraction, exactly as intended. Food Fix Uncensored pulls back the curtain on the collusion shaping your health, your choices, and your future.

they never meant for you to read.

“If you love this podcast, please share it with someone else you think would also enjoy it.”

You can find me on all social media channels at Dr. Marquayman. Please reach out. I'd love to hear

your comments and questions. Don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe to the Dr.

Hymn Show wherever you get your podcasts. And don't forget to check out my YouTube channel

“at Dr. Marquayman for video versions of this podcast and more. Thank you so much again for tuning in.”

We'll see you next time on the Dr. Hymn Show. This podcast is separate from my clinical practice

at the Ultra Wellness Center. My work at Cleveland Clinic and function health where I am chief medical officer. This podcast represents my opinions and my guest opinions. Neither myself nor the podcast endorses the views or statements of my guests. This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional care by a doctor or other qualified medical professional. This podcast is provided with the understanding that it does not constitute medical or other

professional advice or services. If you're looking for help in your journey, please seek out a qualified medical practitioner. And if you're looking for a functional medicine practitioner, visit my clinic, the Ultra Wellness Center at ultra wellnesscenter.com, and request

“to become a patient. It's important to have someone in your corner who is a trained licensed”

healthcare practitioner and can help you make changes, especially when it comes to your health. This podcast is free as part of my mission to bring practical ways of improving health to the public. So I'd like to express gratitude to sponsors that made today's podcast possible. Thanks so much again for listening.