Dhru Purohit Show - An Urgent Warning On Population Collapse, The Fertility Crisis, Erectile Dysfunction & Our Toxic Environment with Ronit Menashe & Vida Delrahim

Episode Date: February 5, 2024

This episode is brought to you by LMNT, Momentous, and Pique Life.  Infertility rates and population decline are skyrocketing, and it's not just about couples choosing not to have kids. The real story is that our current lifestyles are wielding a mighty influence in this alarming decline, and the same factors that influence overall health impact fertility.  Today on The Dhru Purohit Podcast, Dhru sits down with Ronit Menashe and Vida Delrahim, co-founders of WeNatal, to unveil the staggering crisis of plummeting populations and fertility rates. Ronit and Vida share the critical role of environmental toxins and metabolic dysfunction in causing low fertility. They also break down the research on infertility and population decline and dish out the keys to unlocking fertility including quality sleep, diet, movement, and stress reduction.  Ronit Menashe and Vida Delrahim are the co-founders of WeNatal, a prenatal supplement company intentionally designed for women and men. Ronit and Vida are also advocates for couples and individuals who aren’t aware of how the modern world and the toxic environment that we all live in could be impacting our fertility journeys. In this episode, Dhru, Ronit, and Vida dive into (audio version / Apple Subscriber version): The shocking rates of population decline and low fertility rates (2:56 / 2:56) Lower sperm levels in men (12:51 / 8:54) The role of environmental toxins on fertility (17:30 / 13:48) Infertility in women and increased rates of miscarriages (19:08 / 15:30) The one percent effect (24:50 / 21:13)  Reproductive health as a sign of overall health (29:07 / 25:48) Ronit and Vida’s personal story (37:47 / 32:44) The role of IVF (42:42 / 37:14) The three main root causes of infertility (56:12 / 51:12)  Concluding thoughts on fertility and why WeNatal (1:13:47 / 1:08:41) Ronit and Vida’s mission (1:20:21 / 1:15:27) Also mentioned in this episode: WeNatal.com/Dhru to get a FREE 30-day supply of fish oil ($34.95 value) with a subscription WeNatal Slides The 17-year time lag in research Of Boys and Men book Right now, LMNT is offering my listeners a free sample pack with any purchase. Head over to DrinkLMNT.com/dhru today. Optimize your Omega-3 levels by choosing a quality fish oil made by and used by the best. Go to livemomentous.com and enter promo code DHRU to get 20% off any order.  For a limited time, Pique is offering my community up to 20% off of their Fasting Bundles PLUS an exclusive gift. Go to Piquelife.com/Dhru to redeem this exclusive offer today!  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today, we're talking about a big subject, and that subject is the future existence of us as a species. Yes, I'm talking about the human race, pervasive and permanently low fertility rates, and population decline that may eventually lead to a depopulation here on Earth are big, big problems. And yet we don't hear enough about them. High one, Drew Perode here. And on today's podcast, we have my two friends, Ronit Manasha, and VIII, Vita Dilrahim talking about this big topic and to sound the alarm on a scary future that we want to avoid, but that could take place if we don't get our act together as a society.

Now, a little bit more about Ronit and Vita. Together, they are co-founders in Weenatal, a prenatal supplement company, intentionally designed for women and men. You'll learn a little bit more, but men are a big part of the equation, as everybody would understand. But they also play a role in this permanent. low and pervasive fertility crisis that we're in. I'm a huge fan of their work.

I'm an advisor to their company, and I'm also a consumer of their product. My wife and I take it regularly as we start our adventure to hopefully starting a family one day, knock on wood. Ronita and Vita are also huge advocates for couples and individuals who aren't aware of how the modern world and our toxic environment that we're in, including the chemicals, the diets, our obesity crisis are all impacting our fertility journeys. And we're going to be talking about that on today's podcast. That's why they're here to

sound this alarm on this important topic. Stay tuned for a fantastic episode with my friends Ronit and Vita, co-founders of Wienable. Ronit, Vita, welcome to the podcast. Something shocking that I want to share with our listeners that I've learned from you guys that the two of you are here to talk about is that we're literally witnessing the unfolding of the most fundamental shift that's ever taken place in human history. And I don't mean that lightly at all whatsoever. And that shift encompasses two big themes that I'll share. Number one, there is a massive trend of population decline that's leading to a future of

depopulation. Yes, here on earth. And number two, a pervasive and permanently low fertility rate. People aren't having babies. And the ones who are are finding it harder and hard. and harder to conceive. Literally the future of our human species is at risk, and the thing is, no one's really talking about this,

but the two of you are, and that's what we're going to be chatting about today. So welcome. Thanks for having us. Absolutely. Let's jump into the first one, which I mentioned, which is this idea of population decline. Vita, do you want to jump in? Yeah, I'd love to.

I think it was astounding to us to realize how shocking the numbers are and the fact that no one is talking about this, Drew. So there are huge implications with population decline, economically, socially, politically. And when we dug into the research, we realized by the end of this century, we could be experiencing a population shrink smaller than the black death. So we could have less people on this planet than the black death. And if that wasn't alarming enough, we realized that over the past 60 years, our birth rates have gone from 5.06 to 2.3. And half of the world's countries are now below 2.1, which is our replacement rate.

If you think about a normal couple replacing themselves at two people, half of our countries are now below that. So when we dug into the research, we're like, okay, this could be scary. There's researchers saying this could be human extinction, the end of humankind. What does that mean? is that if you look at country by country, global fertility is not distinguishing between economic status, between social status. It is literally affecting the globe. We dug into country by country and uncovered research, starting with China, where this past year, they went from 11 million deaths and only 9 million births. Do the math. If that trend continues, they're losing two million a year of their population. And so much so, the government actually wanted to get involved.

I think a lot of us remember their one child policy that existed back in the day. They uplifted that. In 2014, they went to a two-child policy. And most recently, in 21, they actually uplifted to three children per family. And so you could see that governments are starting to realize that, like, this could be a big problem for our nation if we don't incentivize people to have more children. Then you look at France. They have the lowest birth rates since the 1940s. We looked at Japan. Japan's giving cash incentives to women to start having and have more children. And then I think the most alarming research we saw was in South Korea. Their global fertility rate dropped to 0.8. And there's

like New York Times articles literally citing, could South Korea be disappearing? And so when we looked at all this research, we're like, how could nobody be discussing the fact that, that humankind could slowly be coming to an end if these rates continue. It's incredibly shocking. And I don't know about you guys, you know, we're all around the same age. But when I was growing up and in high school, so much of the conversation was about, oh, the planet is overpopulated. There's not enough resources for everybody.

And even still today, especially when you talk about sometimes the environment, everybody's telling you, oh, we're so worried about the future population. There's not enough space on Earth. but actually if you actually dig into the research and look at the stats, it's the other way around. We are actually running out of people and population is on the decline. You know, you mentioned about China and you said the end of the century, just so that people understand, you know, this stat that you shared. By 2,100 end of the century, you are expecting that China's population would be half, if

fertility rates continue to where they are. That's a loss of almost 800 million people. Yes. And just to piggyback on that conversation regarding China, in the last year, they lost the amount of people that's equivalent to the state of Mississippi. So that's happening already on such a large scale. And like Vita mentioned, it creates a huge impact on society, economic, societal. And we can get into the reasons why this is happening, right? There are so many reasons. that are positive, women got access to birth control. They're entering the worst workforce. People are having kids later in life. People are choosing not to have kids. It's expensive to have kids.

There are many reasons where people have a choice. But there are also reasons that we're going to dive into and speak about today that are not people's choice. We are seeing that a huge component of this is a reduction in male and female fertility. This episode is sponsored by Element. Our bodies are constantly using and losing water and minerals like sodium and magnesium throughout the day, even when we sleep. Basically, most of us are dehydrating ourselves 24 hours a day, so we have to constantly be focused on putting back in the good stuff into our bodies that we're losing. Thankfully, Element takes hydration seriously with their tasty electrolyte drink mix. It's got a scientifically supported ratio of sodium, potassium, and magnesium to ensure that you get everything you need to stay. stay hydrated and nothing you don't.

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off today. It's a huge point. And that really goes to, you know, you guys have prepared a fantastic series of slides. We showed the first one that's on here. Would you mind just describing a little bit of what was on this slide? And for those that are listening on audio, you could watch this on YouTube and you can have access to these slides. And we're going to walk through a few of these slides as we go through over here. But this was the fertility rate by Total Burts, kind of talking about some of the key countries that you had mentioned on here. Anything else you want to say about this slide? Yeah, you could just see the graph of the last six years. And you could see that we had around 5.06, which Vita mentioned.

And in 2021, the births per women, which is what defines fertility rate, was 20, was 2.3, which is slightly above that 2.1 replacement level that Vita mentioned. But if you look at the right side of the presentation, you could see these are ranked from low to high. And there definitely wasn't room in the space to show all of them. But you could see that there's a huge span that are way below that 2.1 replacement rate. And it's not just happening in Asia. It's happening in Italy, in Spain. And in the U.S., the number is 1.8.

So that means that people are having less children than their replacement rate. So it's happening here as well. Well, you mentioned that there's a whole series of things that play into this. And then there are unintended consequences that a lot of people are not aware of that also play into this. There's good things and there's quote unquote bad things. One of the bad things that's out there, this isn't just a conversation about women. This is a conversation about men too. talk about your second point here, Roanee, one of the bad things that's happening to men,

and we should all be caring about this. Yeah, so men today have 50% less sperm compared to their grandfathers. And when you look at the decline, you could see that in the last 60 years, there's been about a 1% decline per year, which equates to 60% decline. and then since the year 2000, there's been an acceleration in that 1% and there's a 2.6%. Some researchers like Dr. Shauna Swan, Aaron Brockowitz, are saying that by the year 2045, there could be zero sperm. When we heard that, we were shocked. and which is why we've become advocates.

I never in my life thought I would be talking about sperm so much. And the interesting thing is that this decline that we're seeing in men's sperm is not just sperm. It's testosterone. There's an Israeli study that looked at the decline in testosterone in the span of 10 years. And you could see that there's a 10% decline across all age groups. So this is something systematic is happening. We see a decline in libido. We see an increase in erectile dysfunction, an increase in testicular cancer.

And these are all affecting reproductive health. And when we look at animals, this is also happening in animals. And so research done by veterinarians have shown. that in dogs we're seeing very similar trends, and they mimic the trends that we're seeing in humans. It's super scary. And a big part of why you guys have become advocates in this is you have your own personal story about both of you, about getting pregnant and going through that process and what it

looked like and how that led to you too founding your company, Weenadle, which we'll talk all about. But this is something that a lot of people are experiencing. yet I'm still so surprised how many people are not aware of not just the role that, you know, not just how much men's sperm is on the decline. Obviously, that's why we're talking about on today's podcast, but just how much sperm quality is related to the process of a couple getting pregnant. Obviously, when I say it, it's a no-brainer.

But people don't realize, I think I heard the stat originally from you guys, that in many cases were in a couple, and there could be a lot of different reasons why a couple could have a hard time conceiving, but in most cases, it's going to be a 50-50 situation. It could be that the male doesn't either have enough sperm or doesn't have quality sperm and motility. In fact, I'm at the age group where all my Facebook ads and Instagram ads that I get targeted with, I feel like every other day somebody's trying to pitch me, you know, a sperm quality test. And I was asking some of my friends in my men's group and they're like, yeah, we see these ads all the time too. It's a a big issue. A lot of people don't know about it and a lot of people aren't talking about it.

It's huge. And I'm actually happier getting targeted with these ads because a couple of years ago when we incepted we natal, no one was talking about men's health or the fertility crisis. And that was the aha we had that out of hundreds of people we surveyed before starting the company, 99.9% of people, the men didn't change their diet, their lifestyle or think they had to do anything to prepare for conception. And the burden of the fertility was on the women. And so With this rise in male infertility, I think we're seeing so many other brands pop up to address this. So I'm actually happy there's more brands talking about it because when we started, there was none. Yeah, that's an important point.

I think the other thing that's important on that side is just to touch on, you know, we're going to be talking about what are some of the key root factors that are there. And a lot of people say, well, we've seen some of the science that's out there. It's obviously clear, like American particular, but this is happening around the world increasingly as we export our lifestyle. You know, it's all obesity, right? People are getting fatter. And so when you get fat, your testosterone drops and we're not working out as much. But that's part of the story. And that's probably a big part of story. But there's a lot of other things that are there. You know, toxins is one of them that we are super, super scared about. Give us a little bit of a preview of what are the reasons why so many researchers are worried about the massive level environmental toxins that we're all surrounded with. Yeah, that's very important. And Dr. Shana Swan is a really great research on resource on the topic of environmental toxins and this toxic soup that we're living in. And specifically, she talks a lot about endocrine disrupting chemicals that are in our food supply,

in our homes, in all around us, really. And specifically she talks about phallates and bisphenols, BPA, and these mimic our hormones. And as a result, they throw them out of whack. And really, she goes deep into what happens in utero to specifically boys. But this impacts girls, too. and the impact on these chemicals on even genital size. And there's actually research in mice that shows, and she did some human research actually looking at pregnant women

and the levels of these endocrine disruptors in mothers and then looked at the children and was able to show that there is a massive connection. Yeah, it's super scary. Let's go to the third slide that we have here in the third talking point. I'll pass it over to you, Vita. Talk to us about women and what we know about women today compared to their grandmothers, you know, decades ago. Yeah, alarming also. Women today in their 20s are less fertile than their grandmothers were at 35. So they're 15 years younger, but less fertile. And so it's a result of kind of everything Rone mentioned, right? Our world being more talk. toxic, the foods we eat not being as nutritious. And a big part of when we dove into Nalde in the male side, we realized that miscarriages are also affecting 25% of pregnancies. And that Rone and I having miscarriages a week apart is what woke us up to go deeper in the research in a culture that was very dismissive to our miscarriages, very much just, there's nothing you can do,

move on, try again, you're old, whatever the reasons we were given, there wasn't a desire to go deeper on what is the root cause. What can I do to improve my odds? There's a lot of myths in the fertility space that there's nothing you can do. And we just weren't willing to accept that. And so looking at the miscarriages, which is also at an all-time high and growing, we kind of dove into the research to understand what can women do, want to not only feel alone and the burden on their own, but also to improve their chances of a healthy pregnancy. And the other thing no one's talk about is the lifelong health of their child. It's not just about not miscarrying and trying to get to having a baby. It's about what are you doing to set up the foundation for your future children

for their lifelong health. It's such an important point. And this is why this topic is an important topic for whoever's listening. You know, if you're 60 plus and you're thinking about longevity, well, of course, you care about the longevity of you. But if you care about your own health, you also care about the health of your daughter, your son, your niece, your nephew, whoever it might be, your grandkids that are there. And if you want to leave the world off and make it at least a better place than when you entered into it, we are in a situation where we may not be able to do that right now. So regardless of what age you are, even if you're not trying to conceive at the moment,

even if you're young and you're thinking, oh, this is decades away. Technology will solve, you know, the problem and everybody will be having babies in some sort of, you know, matrix-like, you know, technological or utero, which is kind of a scary vision. Yes. You know, this is an important conversation for everybody to be paying attention to. You know, the other thing that I think that's super important about this topic is that, you know, miscarriages can happen for a lot of different reasons, right?

And it's also a really beautiful thing that it's being talked about now in a way in the world that our mothers grew up in, it was not really allowed to be talked about. And then especially in a lot of cultures that might come from a religious background, there's a lot of superstitions about miscarriage, right? I come from like an Indian background. And I know this is culturally around the world in different communities. People believe that if you had a miscarriage as a woman, you did something wrong, something bad happened, your family isn't blessed, you have to go pray more, you have to do this. So, you know, there could be a lot of reasons and history. And historically, even when our health was better, women would go through miscarriages. But what you're saying

and what I feel like I'm hearing is that there seems to be an increasing rate of miscarriages that are happening. And there are some things that can be done for the miscarriages that would be the reason that the body wouldn't want to terminate a pregnancy because it didn't feel, you know, that it was the right fertilization of the egg, right? Or there could be a chromosome defect or something else, there could be other things that are at play that could be accelerating miscarriages to happen. Is that accurate? Correct. Yeah.

100%. And I just want to add on that that just because miscarriages are common doesn't mean that it's normal. That's what we were told. It's common. Just keep trying. And it didn't make sense to me when the doctor said, you know, common equals normal. And so I think in the topic of miscarriage, what we uncovered, is that 50% of miscarriages happen because of sperm quality.

So this is going back to the sperm. And that makes sense, right? When you intuitively think about sperm meets egg, makes sense that it's 50% on the sperm. But as a society, we're not used to it. And as a society, the burden of fertility and carrying a pregnancy has always been on women, which is why we're so passionate about the men's health piece,

about talking about improving sperm because it is so, I don't want to say it's so easy, but it's possible to improve sperm, and it's also possible to improve egg quality. And so the miscarriage, our miscarriage was our aha moment. And we're here to say that there's so much that people could do to optimize their health and their partner's health to reduce the risk of having miscarriages. Yeah, you both are here on your hero's journey. In a way, you've gone through the trials, the tribulations. You've slayed the demons that are out there, so to speak. And, you know, fast forwarding a little bit, you both have children, right? Multiple children, beautiful families. And you're really here to be advocates for women in a way that nobody was there to sort of share with you the truth about these very layered and nuanced subjects. And you guys, you guys, you guys. are here to sound the alarm because we all need to be talking about this more as a society. Let's go to the next topic that we want to get a chance into. It's something that you guys

call the 1% effect. Can you talk about that, Roen? Yeah. So the 1% effect is actually the annual decline in overall reproductive health and the various elements of reproductive health. So since the 60s, we've seen a 1% annual decline in sperm counts. We talked about that. A 1% decline in testosterone, a 1% decline in increase in erectile's dysfunction, a 1% increase in miscarriage, and a 1% reduction in total fertility rate. Now, a lot of listeners might be thinking, 1% is no big deal. Why are you even talking about this? Well, 1% over. the span of 50, 60 years is a cumulative effect of 50, 60%. So this is a huge problem. And when we look at what's happening in reproductive health, we're actually seeing a faster trend compared to global

warming. Everyone's talking about global warming and they should be. Of course, that's a huge issue for us. But what's happening to reproductive health is happening on a faster level. So we're here to shine light on this topic and share more and bring it to people's awareness because this is crucial to our survival. You have a slide here. Can you describe what's on the slide? Yeah. So you could see the sharp decline in sperm.

That starts at 1970. On the left graph since the 70s. And as we mentioned earlier, the decline in sperm actually accelerates after 20s. 2020. And then you see the overall decline in fertility, which we also spoke about and the uptick in miscarriage rate. And so there is something that's impacting men, women on a deeper level than just kind of these societal reasons to not have kids. Oh, my gosh. It's like a scary sci-fi movie. In fact, there is one, a scary sci-fi movie like this. I don't know if you guys have ever seen it. It's one of the breakout films by Clive Owen.

It's called Children of Men. If anybody wants to be scared about what our potential future looks like, it's a world in the future here on Earth where essentially there are no more babies being born. And the youngest person on Earth, somebody kind of comes after to like, you know, kind of get them. And this guy who's just like a random accountant, Clive Owen, is thrown in the midst of finding out that there's been this vast conspiracy that has been going on where in that case against this is a movie and we're not implying this the government and the global sort of government almost big brother type is trying to create a world where they unintentionally put out a medicine that ended up making the population infertile again it's a movie we're not saying that

that's what's going on over here but it's a scary portrait of the future where we're what happens when there are less and less kids that are here on this planet? You know, the other thing that you mentioned, Rooney, you mentioned that erectile dysfunction is on the rise as well, too, in men. And my cardiologist has been on this podcast multiple times. Michael Twyman, shout out to him. And one of the things that he reminds us, again, just showing how important this topic is to our overall health, he said, Drew, what's important for your male listeners,

especially to understand, and the women who love them, is that you know, you know, ED, erectile dysfunction, is equalling ED, which is endothelial dysfunction. If you can't get your penis up, that is bad for your heart. The same things that make it hard to have an erection or make it soft to have an erection, so to speak, are actually things that are damaging your endothelial system, which damages your heart, which makes it more likely that you would develop cardiovascular disease, which is the number one killer in both men and, of course, women as well, too. The other thing that you said, Rone, is that, you know, with reproductive health, reproductive health, which of course includes sexual health, libido, everything, and eventually, if a family chooses

to create a child, your reproductive health is a sign of your overall health. Exactly. The same things that we're talking about here that are important for couples and individuals, who might want to conceive and have a baby, these are the canaries in the coal mine that show how healthy are you. If you have a massive drop in testosterone as a guy and it's harder for you to have quality sperm, which is quantity and motility,

then that means that there's other aspects of your health that are also poor as well too. If your testosterone is low, you don't sleep as well. If your testosterone is low, it's harder for you to put on muscle mass for both men and women. So all these aspects of fertility, population class collapse, challenges in conceiving, these all relate to everybody's overall health, including us and including the audience that's listening as well. Yeah. It's all connected. And I think so many people try to compartmentalize like mind, body, fertility versus overall, but all these things are connected. Your

overall health is a hundred percent linked to your fertility and mental does affect your body and all that aspect. So there's a lot to understand and be your own advocate. That's another thing I want to tell all your listeners. I think throughout your medical journey, it's so important to know your own body and advocate for what you need because there's so much misinformation. There's so many well-intentioned doctors who are very busy and might not know your body as well as you do. And so it is important and it is all connected. And then going back to the sperm health and overall men's health. Dr. Paul Torek is a famous Los Angeles reproductive urologist and he says that IVF is the worst thing that happened to men's health. So IVF was

invented in 1978 and because you only need that one sperm in order to go through an IVF cycle, you're you're kind of bypassing this very important time and this operation. that men get to explore. Why do I have erectile dysfunction? Why do I have low testosterone? Why do I have low sperm count? And truly, sperm is a barometer of health. And we see this all the time in our we natal community that when men improve their sperm quality, they also feel better. They have better mental health, focus, clarity, energy, sexual desire, libido, all of these things. things are interrelated. So this reproductive time frame is actually like an amazing time frame for people to focus

on themselves, improve their overall health, and in turn, they'll be improving their fertility. This episode is brought to you by Peak. One of my favorite ways to jumpstart my health in the new year is a short fast. I typically do some sort of intermittent fasting or time restricted eating, especially after the holidays. Fasting can have so many incredible benefits for our health, including improving. our body composition, and it's even been shown to support the process of atophagy, which is related to longevity. Paired with special teas to support digestion and cut cravings, fasting can be a

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Yeah, so as we know, when we actually went through our miscarriages, the World Health Organization at that time, a couple years ago, was saying one in eight couples are dealing with infertility. Fast forward to today, just in a short few years, we're already at one in six. Everyone you know basically around you, everyone has one degree of separation from someone dealing with infertility. These rates are alarming and it's getting worse and worse. It's super scary. Sorry, Rooney, were you going to add something to that? It's just the only other thing I was going to add is that it's 18% of the population and it doesn't

discriminate. It's happening in across the world globally, different economic statuses. It's happening to everybody. Yeah. In fact, the only areas that I've seen that there's some question if it's happening are largely areas that are, have not advanced with our sort of all the exporting of our Western lifestyle food, chemicals, toxins. There are some places in Africa that I believe, I don't know, maybe you guys know more about this than I do, Congo in particular and a couple of other countries in Africa, whose rates of infertility and their population is not on the decline as much as it is here, but then when you start to look at class and you look at individuals who are now exported the Western lifestyle, which includes the foods, the toxins, the plastics,

the stressors, the everything else, you see that it's in a way the poor population, not the extreme, but the individuals that don't have as many resources are generally in a good situation because they're living not a sedentary lifestyle. They're not obese. They're not having all these other problems that people do. But then as you get wealthier and wealthier, the problem continues to persist. You know, there was the editor-in-chief of Wired Magazine. I think it was the founding editor-in-chief.

He's no longer involved now. He always had this great point. He said, you know, one day if something bad happens to the planet, God forbid it, it ever happens, knock on wood, you know, the Amish are going to inherit the earth, right? The Amish are going to inherit the earth. Why? He said the Amish are going to be the ones that survive because they've built this lifestyle where they are self-sufficient, right? Yep. They've built this lifestyle where they, you know, farm, you know, raise animals themselves.

They don't shop at grocery stores. In fact, they have so much food that they sell at grocery stores. I grew up in Delaware right nearby Lancaster where there's a huge Amish population. You know, they have tight-knit societies. You know, their religious framework and their view of the world is baked into and they almost like in a way their own little blue zone, right? They value community. They value children. They value elders. They have generally shunned a lot of the trappings of modern society, including a lot of the chemicals. Now, listen, I don't want to live that life. You know, it's not for me. But it's an interesting point that the people that seem to be thriving are the individuals that haven't fully

baked into this modern world. Now, again, we're not here to go back in time. We don't all want to live as our paleo ancestors did because back then there was a lot of problems. You know, so many women died in childbirth. That was a major issue, right? When people talk about, oh, the life expectancy back in Benjamin Franklin's day and age was like 40, people only lived to 40. No, plenty of people live to 70, 80, 90, it's just that so many children died in, there was so much infant mortality that you just didn't have a lot of people getting to old age. But generally, if you made it to 30, you made it to 50, 60, 70, on and further. But it's an interesting idea that there might be some lessons that we can all learn from the Amish that are there. So let's talk about solutions here

in a second. But before we do, you know, we talked a little and hinted at your stories individually. I think this is a good opportunity to just share a little bit. You know, Rooney, you mentioned that both of you having miscarriages about a week apart set the start of your journey into space. Tell us, what do you mean by that? So in early 2020, Vita and I had a miscarriage a week apart. And when I was working in the functional medicine space at the time, I'm a huge advocate of functional medicine, which is root cause medicine.

And when I looked and tried to figure out what's the root cause of miscarriage, I learned about the importance of sperm quality when it comes to healthy pregnancies. And that just took us down a whole spiral of starting our company. Initially, our idea was creating a men's prenatal because research shows that men who take antioxidants, high-dose antioxidants like vitamin C, CO-U-10, NAC, have four times of a higher chance of their partner getting pregnant and five times of a higher chance of a live birth. And we thought, like, why isn't anybody talking about this? Why aren't any men taking prenatals? This is an easy, no-brainer, so much better to just have your man take a prenatal, know that you're covered.

And, you know, before you get into any issues. And then we also saw a huge gap in the women's prenatal space, which is why we got into the women's prenatal market. We saw prenatals were over-promising and under-delivering, and we can get into, you know, why we decided to develop a women's prenatal. But that's our story in a nutshell, but truly what made us launch we natal and made this our lives mission is the stats. that we talked about today.

Being able to conceive, if you want to, being able to have children as a couple or by yourself, if you want to, is our birthright. And we're here to help people in that process. Yeah, it's important. And Vita, you know, a big part of what you want to also share in context of that and feel free to add anything to the story. Well, actually, I'll let you jump in. Perfect.

I think the other thing that I've had two mess carriage is, I actually had one before, the one Roanit and I mentioned. And I think there was such a lack of one optimism in my journey. I felt so much guilt, shame, and blame, really, to myself. Never did it dawn on me that it could be my husband. And we're also here to like make that journey better for not only the women behind us, anyone trying to start a family to do it together with community. There's also no supplements on the market talking about mental health. And that was a chapter of the book that we know there's so much research coming out about the mind-body connection, that gratitude can shift your physiological state that it's becoming so stressful, so much more stressful to have kids in this

day and age that if you can get back to some of the fundamentals of gratitude and being in a loving relationship and think about really why you want to have a kid, it can really help your body not be what I was exhibiting, which was fight or flight mode. every day, right? Adrenal fatigue. I was literally going through such stress that my body wasn't going to prioritize conception. And it was important through the we natal journey that we want to be optimism to people that there is so many myths to dispel and there's so much optimism we can bring of what you actually can do to put your best foot forward. It's such an important point. And I think that you mentioned something important. You know, you're not here to blame anybody.

you're more here to highlight, you know, whether it's men, women, anybody that's out there, you're here to highlight that we are living in an environment that has created this situation. And there's nobody to blame about it. Sure, there might be responsible parties, et cetera, especially on like a big picture level about how society is the way that it is. But largely, we are in an environment. And that environment has created this situation. And there's people that are saying that they have the solution to that.

to our problems that we're in, some of those things can be important, but they may not be getting to the root cause. And that's one of the areas that you are also getting a chance to talk about. So, Vita, do you want to share a little bit more about, you know, IVF and your thoughts on that as a group and individually and an organization? Because IVF is an important tool that's allowed many people to allow to start a family. And a lot of people, and I'm generally a techno-optimist, you know, I do feel that technology is important and is going to be a big part of allowing our society to be able to thrive and continue to move forward as a species. But what is it that you want to get a chance to share about IVF? We're so grateful, right? Just like you were optimists and the technology

has allowed countless number of families to have children. And for that, we're ever grateful. But we also want to know, our listeners to know, that it's not the only game in town, right? There is a lot that can go into improving your health. And like Rone mentioned about, IVF and there's a reproductive endocrinologist in New York, Dr. Sammy David, who basically says 50% of IVF is actually a lot of times unnecessary. And so when we started to really dig into and having friends and family who are like basically taught to go to IVF first, we're like, wait a minute, there's so much you can do to actually improve your health if you would like to have a child through natural conception. And that's how we kind of started to evolve about,

could this actually be a Band-Aid solution for some when really if we can educate people on the steps they can take and do a little bit more leg work to improve both partners help before, it can go a long way. Yeah, because it goes back to this larger idea, which is that the same things that you both have outlined here, some that we've given a preview to, some we're going to drill down into further, focusing on those things are going to improve your overall health. And they're also the things that the latest research has shown. that are going to support a couple's ability to actually conceive in a healthy weight.

So we're appreciative of things like IVF. And it's okay to recognize that it's also part of sort of, you know, big fertility, right? It's an industrial sort of accomplice. There's IVF mills that are out there. And largely, a lot of doctors, this goes, you know, a lot of well-intentioned people who just the system has not been designed to keep you on the up and up of the latest science and research. There's a paper that we've referenced a few times. I'll put it inside of the show notes that the latest research in the medical, you know, literature, many physicians have come on this

podcast. Researchers have cited this paper. It can take 12 to 17 years before that material ends up in the clinic of your doctor's office. So there's plenty of well-intentioned, big-hearted individuals who are so proud that they can help families who are struggling, you know, get pregnant through things like IVF, but they just may not be aware of the other side of the coin. And many of them themselves, I've talked to some of them, they're also very concerned about these stats that have been mentioned. They're just not sure what the solution is, which is why we all have to have this conversation. Yeah, I want to share on that topic.

I got pregnant with my first at the age of 38, and then I had Emma my second when I was 42. And a very close fertility doctor friend just looked at. at me and said, well, you're lucky. This is the, this is, this doesn't happen. You're just lucky. And I had these kids not, got pregnant naturally. And for me, I don't think it's luck. I think I just did all the things that I needed to do to improve my overall health, to improve my egg quality at a later age. There's a myth that after the age of 35, your eggs are old and there's nothing you could do about it. There is so much that you could do to improve your egg quality in the window before ovulation. There's a 100-day window where the egg is maturing, where you have a huge

opportunity to improve the mitochondrial health and the integrity of this egg cell. And the same thing with improving sperm quality. When we were developing we natal, I gave my husband like, I don't know, 12 pills a day, which ended up being three in we natal. But, you know, he did all the things. I did all the things. And we got pregnant on our first try. The other thing to add on IVF is it's a huge industry. It's a $20 billion industry and growing. And the success rate of an IVF cycle is 30%. And when you think about that, people are spending over $20,000 on average out of poverty. And, you're pocket with a 30% success rate, which means a 70% failure rate. So an IVF patient is equal to a profitable patient. And we're here to say that that's not the only way. And there's so much that you

could do before going to that step. And if that is your route and that's where you need to be, that's fine too, but all of the things that we're talking about today to optimize your egg and sperm quality also impact IVF success rates. It's an important conversation because as people know right now, one of the key topics of discussion in the zeitgeist in society is the a Zempe and the GLP1 antagonist. And somebody well-meaning could look at the population and say, look, it's just inevitable people are going to get obese. And yeah, if you look at a population level without trying to incentivize health, it's true. The vast majority of people in the United States either are or will become obese.

But if our only solution is a medication intervention that may potentially have side effects, we don't know for the lifelong. It's short term it's been studied, but not long term. Then what? we are going to be in a place in a situation where every day people are injecting themselves and potential lifelong side effects that are there and at what cost to the health care system and at what cost to us as a country. So in a way, the people that are solely focused on IVF and that industry, they're not lying when they say that, hey, egg quality after 35 is so bad because when you look at the population, it's true, but that's because the population is unhealthy.

It's just that nobody's having the other side of the conversation, which is it doesn't have to be this way. Exactly. Such an important point. You know, there's a lot of fear that's also in this space. And I think that what I've seen, the antidote to fear is always education. And a big part of what you guys have been doing at Wienatal is trying to make fear disappear by empowering individuals. You know, anything that you want to say about that before we jump into some of the solutions that we're going to talk about in a second?

Yeah, I think fear is part of this journey because it's so stressful. You're having it later in life. If you have trouble, you immediately are targeted with all these things to buy and do, right? There isn't like this inward. Maybe I should look and do my own research and back to being your own advocate. There is a lot of very profitable industries who are trying to kind of capitalize on your fear. And I'm not saying they're all bad or not well intention, but it's important to know what's best for you and not let the fear drive your decisions for you and your growing family. And do your own research,

do your own, get your own advocates, kind of start creating your village of people you trust because it's so important in the long run of you kind of managing your own health. And with that, we at We natal want to be that trusted village because there is so much fear and missing. information out there when it comes to fertility. And we are so passionate about creating resources, sharing them workshops on a regular basis. We're talking about doing a fertility master class this year. Just last week, we had 700 people attend a workshop where we talked about the impact of blood sugar on fertility as well as other things. And so for us, Education is empowering and giving people the tools that they need to go through this journey

with confidence, knowing that they did everything they could before going down, you know, other routes. So we're going to get into the solutions and the root cause part of the conversation here. Now, before we go into these three key areas that you guys have lined up that we're going to be talking about today, which are sort of unintended consequences of the environment. that we live in, that are contributing to the reason that we are, going back to the top of the episode, a massive trend of population decline that's leading to the future of depopulation here on Earth and a pervasive and permanently low fertility rate leading to people not having

babies and the ones who are, are finding it harder and harder to conceive. So we're going to be going into three of these areas with some points. We kind of hinted at some of them in the conversation earlier. But let's talk about some of the positive reasons or the societal reasons that are also contributing to some of these instances, which I think are important to acknowledge, right? So what are some of the maybe positive, quote unquote, or neutral reasons or things and life decisions that are also contributing to this, that we don't want to immediately, like, demonize and throw the baby out with the bathwater? Who wants to start with one of those? Yeah, I'd love it. I think one that I'm really proud of is birth control and the woman's right to birth control. The other that I love

is that women have joined the workforce. And back probably in our grandparents' generation, that wasn't the case. Women were typically the homemakers. And so us being able to have careers naturally for most prolongs the age that we're going to start thinking about or having children. And to your point where it's not detrimental always having it later does have an impact on our fertility, especially in this toxic world. So there's a couple that I think are really great. Rone, anything you want to add to that? Yeah, I agree with Vita.

And also, like, just by choosing to have kids later in life and focusing on your career as a woman, you are often meeting your partner later in life. And just that time span just gives you less time to have more kids. Yeah. Here's kind of a controversial take of something that I feel. is both good but also challenging in it. And we're kind of seeing this really explode in today's day and age. It's the college industrial complex.

And here's what I mean by this, right? You know, college was really the ticket into the middle class for so many people throughout sort of the history of America since, you know, universities have been around. But then we got into this place where because the government sort of backs and will, you know, guarantee, you know, college. And universities got bigger and bigger with so many things that are not core and essential to education. And the expense of university in America is like astronomical compared to like, let's say Canada, Europe, the rest of the world that's there. So you have all these people that are in debt, but colleges are making money hand over fist, huge endowments that are

there. And we all know like the social aspect of college is amazing. But like what the did we all learn in the first like three years. Maybe it could be like condensed into like two years. And I think that it's prolonged a situation where a lot of people, not everybody needs to go to college, but a lot of people who might want to develop a trade or do something or, you know, step into the workforce so that they can start earning so that they can start paying to actually support a family. They were delayed in that process. And now those individuals also have a massive level of debt. And we know if people don't feel secure economically, they're not going to feel comfortable to start a family. Obviously, it's multifaceted and it's a little bit of a controversial

take, but it's something increasingly I've been having more conversations. This especially shows up for people who grow up, you know, in a lower middle class or poverty where you don't have the resources or the network where immediately you're going to get a job that's there, or you don't of the support system where you're going to finish school. So it's a controversial take, but I think it's one of the things that's a part of it. I mentioned the other one, which is that there are economic conversations that are there. And we have to figure out as a society, and we're going through this transition of how in this massive age of inflation that we live in that young people actually feel that they can support

and start a family. Going to, you know, some of the beautiful trends, women are now graduating in many degrees at twice the rate that men are, the unfortunate side of that means that a lot of men are falling out of the workforce, not graduating college, and often in traditional heterosexual relationships, you know, a woman is still going to need a man to be excited about wanting to start a family, right? That's the time that we live in. So the men are falling behind. There's a really incredible book about this called The Crisis of Men. Richard, I'm forgetting his last name, but I'll put in the show notes. You know, these are other societal things that are also

contributing into this, right? So those are big topics for us to dig into, but there are actually another topic that we can actually do something about, and we can do something about it today. And these are the three main root causes that you guys have identified that play a role, especially when it comes to a health level. Who wants to start off with the first one, which is the toxic world that we live in? Yeah, we live in a toxic world. Endocrine disruptors are everywhere, as we mentioned. So when we look at things like phallates, fallates make plastic soft.

So if you think about all the plastics, water bottles, they are also in our cosmetics. They are in our creams. They are in our kitchen. And we look at BPA, which is another common one. in our, there's plastics all around us, and these chemicals are disrupting our endocrine system, which is our hormonal system. So that's number one. When we think about the toxins that are in our environment, we look at the air that we're breathing, we look at the water that we're drinking.

And on the flip side, we can look at this toxic soup that we're living in, and a lot of it is outside of our control. But if you have the awareness around these toxins, you also can know and learn strategies on how to limit them in your everyday life. It's important. You know, the industry will often say that, and plastics are necessary, right? They're an important part. Pretty much everything that we use on a daily basis has had plastics as a part of either the production or the shipment or other stuff. So it's an important thing. And it's not like we're going to move away from plastics overnight. right, our computers, pretty much every medical device that's out there.

On the side of the concern when people like yourself advocates or experts like Shauna Swan would talk about the dangers of these plastics, the industry would often say, well, these plastics have been studied. And we know that they're safe. But, you know, something came out just even last week. And it was all over the news. And it was about bottled water and the amount of microplastics that were exposed to. And what the researchers who were behind that study talked about was that they were surprised to see over 250,000 particulates of microplastics in one bottled water.

And part of what they were hinting to is that we actually don't even know how much exposure we're getting. And that's just one bottle. And if somebody's drinking plastic water bottles and in America here, we are dealing with a lot of people, you know, addicted to hyper-palatable. ultra-processed foods and a high percentage of the population, unfortunately, the most economically disenfranchised who consume sugar-sweetened beverages on a daily basis. Largely those are in plastic bottles, right? Many of them that have been out in the sun, have exposed to heat, been in hot trucks, UPS, whatever. And we have no idea the amount of toxins that we're being exposed to. So how could we understand and fathom what this would do to somebody over the exposure of a lifetime?

So when people tell you, oh, these things have been studied and they're safe, I don't know if we need to be buying that story because the experts themselves are saying we actually don't even know how many plastics and microplastics people are being exposed to. We have another one that you guys outlined, which is probably one of the biggest ones here, which is diet and lack of movement. Who wants to talk about that? I can start. I think, you know, I come from a mom who's like a chemist and she was very into like, you don't need to supplement. eat a clean diet. And for the most part, the way they were raised in our grandparents' generation was eating the rainbow, eating very clean, not processed foods. And that was, that did suffice for them. But what people aren't talking about is the fact that, Drew, I know you know this, our soils are

depleted. Eating an orange in my grandfather's generation, I have to eat eight oranges to have the equivalent nutrients. And so even if I am eating all organic, a Mediterranean diet, clean foods, you cannot get all the nutrients you need from a clean diet, unfortunately because of the soil situation and the depletion of vitamins and minerals in our food. And that's when we realize supplementation is one of the easiest things to do to enhance the way you eat and give yourself a little bit of an insurance policy that you're meeting all those nutritional deficiency gaps in our everyday food. It's not a clean pass to eat fast food every day, and people think they can supplement their way out of healthy diet. We're not suggesting that. We're literally saying it's going to help with in addition to

a healthy diet. And then I just want to add that metabolic dysfunction is a huge root cause of chronic disease, including depression, anxiety, infertility. And in women, when we look at the number one cause of infertility, it's PCOS, polycystic ovarian syndrome. And that is often, that's one in 10 women have this. And that's often reversed with a diet with diet. And the root of PCOS has to do with metabolic dysfunction, insulin resistance. I'm not going to get into the science of all of that. But we know this is actually so encouraging. that the root of the number one reason why women are infertile is related to how they're eating because now we can think about how do we reverse that. And the diet that's been studied the

most on fertility is the Mediterranean diet, both for men and women, when they eat focusing on lean protein, eating the rainbow, veggies, fruits, nuts, seeds, legumes, they have better fertility outcomes. And also this diet has been studied on IVF patients too. So improving your metabolic function, walking away from processed food, walking away from sugary drinks. Yeah, I mean, we see that just drinking sugary sugar-sweetened beverage reduces fertility in men and women. And so diet is a big one. Diet is a big one and going back to what Vita said, bridging that nutritional gap with a supplement is key because you can't, even if your full-time job is eating for your fertility, it's really hard in today's life to actually get all the nutrients that you need for fertility. Yeah, well said. And on the diet side, it's interesting, you know, the same things that drive PCOS and women are the same things that drive primarily insulin, that drive. that drive erectile dysfunction in men.

It comes back to largely insulin resistance, sedentary lifestyle, ultra-processed calories that lead to excess calories in the diet that are also leading to some level of obesity that's there. So when you add all those things together, they play a role. Taking this a little step further, we had one of the world's top autism experts on the podcast this past week. She's based in San Diego. Her name is Dr. Suzanne Go, a Harvard-trained medical doctor who's so passionate about this space. And she ran and did one of the pivotal studies on autism showing that. She had a theory that many kids diagnosed on the autism spectrum

were dealing with some sort of mitochondrial dysfunction. And at the time, it was a little bit controversial because when they looked at straight mitochondrial disease, they saw, no, these kids on the autism spectrum, they don't have this kind of classic diagnosis. But it's almost like saying, you know, does somebody have diabetes or do they have pre-diabetes? And what she found through her research is that 80% of these kids have some sort of mitochondrial dysfunction that is there. Now, that's a correlation that's there, but taking it a step further when I asked her, based on the latest autism science that we know, what percentage of autism is related to increased diagnosis, which everybody talks about, and what percentage of it is lifestyle, you know, meaning our

environment, not to say that, you know, something that somebody's doing is causing that situation, but the environment that a baby, a developing mind and a mother that would be having the baby would be leading to. And she said, the conservative estimates show, only 50% is based on increased awareness. So 50% is based on the environment that the baby is growing up in, including even in uteral and touching it back to your point, if you have PCOS, you're more likely to have gestational diabetes, right? And a lot of women, even if they don't have PCOS, deal with gestational diabetes. And then the worst expression being, or the toughest expression would be preclampsia, which a lot of women go through.

If you have preclampsia and you have a baby, there's an increased risk of having a baby that ultimately is diagnosed with autism. So these things all get connected. And we're learning more and by no means are we saying that this is all connected to choices. There's so much research that's needed that we don't know that are out there. But to say there's no connection or lease association is definitely missing the bigger piece of the story. And that's why Drewie became so passionate about being advocates for the preconception time frame, this trimester zero that we learned from Dr. Demery, a good friend of ours,

there is so much and probably one of the best gifts you can give your children and your future children is investing in those three or six months before having kids. And like you said, it's a lifelong health that you're granting them. a lot of modern-day society and we're guilty of it too. We're preparing our nurseries for months, our baby registries, but really like both partners putting their best foot forward and investing in the food, the nutrition, the movement, not too much, not too little. We can get into exercise in a minute. But that three to six months before trying to have a kid can drastically improve the outcomes. And oh, by the way, 50% of pregnancies are unplanned. So if you're in that

committed relationship. If you think maybe one day, it's so important to try to adopt some of these healthy habits in your relationship because ultimately, you want to set up that foundation for bringing a baby into your home. And it could be overwhelming to try to feel like I have to literally rip the rug out from under me and do them all at once. So some of the recommendations we got was like one at a time. When you run out of a product in your home, think of a better, cleaner option, a beauty product, a pan that you're cooking with. Like, you have a choice with your dollar. and with every fork you pick up to put in your mouth, and it's slowly making better decisions for you and your growing family.

And no one's perfect. We're definitely not. We have our cheat days. We enjoy life. But one of the nutritionists on our board said, if you can try to do an 80-20, if 80% of time you could try to be really mindful and allowing yourself to be human. I wish that was some of the advice I got throughout my postpartum depression of thinking

it was all mean. It was all my fault. Yeah, important. Ronnie, did you want to add anything to that? Yeah, I just want to add that on this topic of trimester zero, sperm has an amazing window of regeneration. So the sperm today in your man or in you was actually generated 71 days ago. This is called spermogenesis. So your sperm is always regenerating.

And men have an amazing opportunity to take two to three months to improve their sperm. using, you know, some tips that we're going to talk about and create completely new batch of sperm. And so this is a huge window of opportunity, which is why we're so passionate talking about preconception. And the other thing, just relating back to your comment on mitochondrial health and autistic kids, we always say that for older women who can have lower quality eggs, the number one thing they should focus on is their mitochondria. because your egg cells have, has the most amount of mitochondria that you have in your body. And so improving your mitochondrial function will improve your egg quality in the three months leading to conception.

Yeah, important topic. You know, we mentioned toxic world, diet and lack of movement, and you also have your sleep and stress. Who wants to start off about that? I'm definitely the most stressed out person you'll meet them. I can start. but I think stress is like we're not going to go away from it, right? Like I said, we're all working more. We're ambitious.

Women are entering the workforce and have been. And so I think to eliminate it would be like a joke. It's more about how you be friends stress, if you will. But really, like, it's part of our life. And there's things that you can do to combat it. Movement is one of them. The community is the other. But also I found one of the most underrated topic is actually sleep.

I struggled with sleep problems myself and realized that so much of my immunity, my body's able to repair and restore itself was based on that sleep. And the brain fog, all that getting sick, all that thing comes from it. And again, back to like healthy body, more fertile, all the things. Sleep is such an area of opportunity. And now we have such amazing technology like horror rings and bit bits that track our sleep that tell us our optimal zones that tell us how much deep sleep we're getting. And all of that is so restorative.

So if you can find what works for you, I ended up going into many sleep mouth. master classes and buying weighted eye pillows and weighted blankets. But like you have to find what works for you. But sleep is a magical tool. And I think being more stress, like you said, it's connected. We're sleeping less. We're on phones later at night. The blue lights affecting us. There's so many things that are affecting our sleep in this modern day age. So finding what works for you is very important for your overall health. And just to bring sleep back to fertility, our one of our advisors, Bridget, this week. We had a workshop and she talked about her preconception tips and she kept repeating sleep over exercise, sleep over exercise. I think so many people think like they have to do it all.

But really when it comes to fertility, it's better to invest in that restorative sleep than to wake up at five in the morning so you can squeeze in a workout, which oftentimes your workouts can be depleting if you're not getting enough sleep. So I think sleep is a huge one. Oh, that's great. Yeah, Bridget, she's a former nutritionist. She's a nutritionist now. She was at the Cleveland Clinic previously. Now she has her own practice as well, big fan of hers. And I think that on the topic of sleep, like even our world is so, is set up in such a way that there is a lot of dysregulation on sleep. Like we don't have sleep regularity. Like we don't generally go to sleep. at the same time. We don't wake up at the same time. And Sachin Panda, who's been a guest

on this podcast before, researcher down in San Diego, one of the top people in the space of circadian rhythms, done some pivotal research inside of there about how our different organ systems have their own rhythm that's there in addition to our sort of 24 hour clock. One of the studies that he turned me on to is that there was a recent paper that was published in the UK. And it looked at a group of 64,000 individuals who a subset of them were given basically like a sleep tracking device. And one of the things that they found, this is correlation, not causation, but it's still important because it was pretty large paper. One of the things that they found is that people who had consistent sleep regularity, they went to sleep generally

within about 30 minutes to an hour the same time each night and woke up each morning around the same time period that was there, had had a lower rate of all-cause mortality from pretty much every single major disease that's out there. So just the idea, which obviously when you have young kids and that's in the mix and you're waking up at night, that's a different situation. But we're just talking about in general, especially when you're younger and you want to have a family in the future. And sure, there might be some parting. We've all done it before. You're going to be going out. You're going to go out to dinner, other stuff. But on the days that

you're at home and on the days that you're in your routine, that 80-20, the importance of sort of having that routine that's there. Having that routine, having that thing that grounds you and helps you restore back from a little bit of the crazy world that we all live in right now. Let's go into concluding thoughts and ideas that are over here. How do we sort of put this all together, what are some important other things that people should be thinking about? And also, too, however you want to slice this in, just a little bit of a description of we natal, what is it, right? And what are people actually taking? And, you know, does the man take something? Is it the same as the woman? So if you can get a chance to break that down. Yeah, for sure. So from a high

level, just concluding thoughts, when you think about improving your fertility, there's a lot that you could do. But really, if you think about it in two ways, adopting fertility boosters and removing those fertility blockers. So what are those blockers? It's the toxins in our environment, toxins that we're ingesting, whether it's cigarettes, marijuana, alcohol. Ultra processed foods. Ultra processed foods. Removing, you know, trying to manage the stress. Again, we talked about that as a fertility blocker. Then the fertility boosters is the diet, the lifestyle. The diet, the lifestyle. The lifestyle, the movement, and then tying it back to we natal, bridging that gap of diet and lifestyle with a supplement. So we have a supplement for her and we have a supplement for him. And our women's

supplement helps support every phase of fertility from preconception, pregnancy, and postpartum. And really we're super passionate about every stage. And in fact, postpartum depletion is also a common topic because so many women go into pregnancy depleted and then they end up being depleted postpartum. And it takes about seven years to replete those nutrients. So weenatal is unique in the sense that it has bioavailable ingredients, which means anybody can absorb these nutrients, no matter what your genetics look like. So we use a methyl version of B vitamins, for instance. So if have MTHFR, you can absorb it. We have dosages because that make a difference. We have some competition out there that have maybe like a great list of ingredients, but the dosages are too low to

make a difference. One ingredient that we talk about a lot is coline, which is super important for baby brain development. We have 400 milligrams of chlorine. And I don't think there are any prenatals on the market that have that amount. And then it's making sure that your supplement is third-party tested and regulated. That's a big one for us. There's so much junk that could be in your prenatals or in your supplements or in your greens because they're not regulated by the FDA. So making sure that you're buying a good quality product. And then on the men's side, it's mostly a antioxidant, as I mentioned. It includes. It's CO-U-10, NAC.

And then we also made it a full-spectrum multivitamin so men can keep taking it after their partner conceives because they feel so good on it. Yeah, that's awesome. So when do people start? Right. I'm sure you get this question all the time, right? When should people start taking or a couple? When should they start thinking about taking prenatal? Today.

I'm just joking. I think honestly. You are joking, but you're not joking. I'm not joking. So I think a lot of our medical board would say if you're in a committed relationship, if you're thinking about it, building those nutrient reserves years in advance can only help you. A lot of the baby's genetics are determined on conception. And a lot of our friends, we realize in surveying them only started taking a prenatal

once they found out they were pregnant, which is what, sometimes eight weeks in? And there's a lot you can do beforehand. So ideally three to six months, but if you're in a community relationship, if you think sometimes back to that 50% of pregnancies are unplanned, why not start building? those nutrient reserves and kind of putting your best foot forward. I also think that with women, a lot of times in their first trimester, they have a really hard time taking down vitamins. They have a hard time with their diet, just nausea in general. So if you build those reserves in advance, you don't have to worry in your first trimester. If you skip a few days of taking your supplement,

you're good. Yeah, super important. Well, my wife and I are on it. We're on the We-Natal, him and hers, So we've been taking it. So I'm excited for us to one day, you know, start our own family here. And then we'll be one of your, you know, success stories. But I want to take it back to the beginning part of this conversation and talk a little bit about the why, you know, that drives you both and coming back to your story. You know, when you were mentioning about some of these countries that are out there and the projected population declines, you know, we shared, you know, by 2,100, right, which is just around the corner. It's not that far away when you talk about human history.

I already mentioned the China stat, that China's population is going to be halved if we don't, if we continue at the fertility rates that are there. You mentioned about South Korea Vita. And one of the things about South Korea that's been really interesting is that this has to be a multifaceted conversation. I believe the stat that I looked at was that South Korean government, you know, they've thrown more than $200 billion of this problem. They realized that their fertility rate was super low and one of the low.

lowest in the world, they needed to do something. So they have done a lot that's out there. And yet still, they're in a situation where the fertility rates continue to decline because they're multifaceted. And people are just not having babies. And the ones who want to have babies are still having a lot of these challenges. Because again, even though Japan and South Korea are largely healthier because they don't have the extremes that the United States has, they still are suffering with a lot of the over exposure to toxins, the sedentary lifestyle, the other things that are also plaguing us here in the West. You know, Eastern Europe, a decline by 43% that's projected by 2100, you know, this is going

to be continuing. It's a multifaceted conversation. But if we don't at least start this conversation and if we don't get everybody to start caring about this conversation more. I mean, what is more important? You know, we're really focused on AI, you know, which is an important conversation. We're talking about having colonies on Mars, which I do believe is an important conversation as well.

But I think another conversation that's also pretty important is like, what the hell is our species going to be doing in the future and are we going to be around? So talk to us a little bit more as we conclude here about just some of the why of what's driving you to really spearhead this mission? Who wants to jump in first? I will. I think so much of the why, I think Roeat mentioned never in a million years did we envision ourselves kind of in the supplement game. I think when we had our miscarriage story and pregnancy loss and uncover this research, we realize there's a huge gap in opportunity to educate. The whole point of we natal's existence is to make the past better for those behind us. And the why is really like human

extinction. We are an endangered species. No one is talking about this. And yet we all want to make this world a better place and have a world where our children and grandchildren can grow and succeed. And so without this conversation, the trends could continue. And spermageddon could happen in 2045, which is even closer. Spirmageddon. Spirmageddon could happen by 2045, which is even closer than end of this century. So the opportunity is real. It's now without education, we go about this modern lifestyle and kind of forget all the things we can do. And so our mission is really like how we make this better, how we literally change people's lives. And I will tell you, so far the best part of wenatal has been the testimonials, has been the people who have 14 rounds of IVF who told us

they found we natal and functional medicine and had a baby naturally. I mean, there's people's lives, we're actually changing with this product. And that's for me, like, more rewarding than anything we can do. Yeah. And I think the point that you mentioned earlier is that even if a couple does choose to go down the IVF path, all these things are going to make, you know, you, your partner, and eventually the baby healthier too, which is going to mean that you're more likely to be successful in your IVF journey.

That's what you so choose. Exactly. Roney, do you want to add any concluding thoughts on that? Yeah. I think echoing what Vita said, we're obsessed about the topic of preconception and trimester Zero, which is a lot of people come to us and say, like, I'm pregnant now. Can I still take your prenatal? Because we talk about preconception so much. We educate so much about the topic because it's the biggest gift you can give your child. Taking the time to invest in your health

before conception gives them lifelong health to your child and to your grandchildren too. So that is what makes us tick every day and why we shifted gears in our career towards launching we natal. I'm still very passionate to talk about the fact that fertility is not a women's health issue. It is both partners stepping up their game. There's so much you can do. And we're about to move the conversation and shift the gender paradigms from me to we. Amazing. Super hopeful message. Well, you guys have set up a code.

You know, I love supporting friends, businesses. Ronnie, we've been friends for a long time. Vita, we've been friends. I love to help people who are doing the right thing. You guys are definitely doing the right thing. If our audience is interested and they want to join us on the wenatal journey, you can sign up for any subscription at we natal.com slash Drew, D-H-R-U, for those that are listening, And if you sign up for any subscription, you get a free fish oil, which is super important.

You know, we've done a bunch of episodes on this. We did a big episode on this recently. So our audience knows how important this one is. And where can people go to keep in touch and, you know, follow Weenatal on the journey? Yeah. So our website is we natal.com on social. We're at We underscore Natal. And then we have a free guide that we created for our community.

If you go to weanatal.com slash guide and sign up, you get our nine preconception tips. And anybody who's, you know, we answer every single DM. We answer every email, care at we natal.com. We love helping supporting people. If anybody needs anything, we're here for you. Amazing. Roni, Vita, thank you both for being on the podcast and sounding the alarm on this super important subject. Thanks for having me.

Thank you. Hi everyone, Drew here. Two quick things. Number one, thank you so much for listening to this podcast. If you haven't already, subscribe, just hit the subscribe button on your favorite podcast app. And by the way, if you love this episode, it would mean the world to me. And it's the number one thing that you can do to support this podcast is share it with a friend. Share with a friend who would benefit from listening.

Number two, before I go, I just had to tell you about something that I've been working on that I'm super excited about. It's my weekly newsletter. And it's called Try This. Every Friday, yes, every Friday, 52 weeks a year, I send out an easy-to-digest protocol of simple steps that you or anyone you love can follow to optimize your own health. We cover everything from nutrition to mindset to metabolic health, sleep, community, longevity, and so much more. If you want to get on this email list, which is, by the way, free and get my weekly

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