Realfoodology - Why Fertility Is Declining: Environmental Toxins, Lifestyle & What to Do | Dr. Ann Shippy

Episode Date: March 24, 2026

293: I’m joined by Dr. Ann Shippy to explore a topic that’s often overlooked when it comes to fertility: the role of environmental toxins and how they impact our bodies long before pregnancy. We talk about preconception health, lowering your toxic load, and simple ways to support your hormones and overall well-being. If you’re thinking about having kids—or just want to better understand your body—this episode offers a more holistic approach to fertility and long-term health. Topics Discussed: → Preconception health and how to prepare your body for pregnancy → Environmental toxins and their impact on fertility → Hormone balance and reproductive health → Detoxification and lowering your toxic load → Lifestyle habits that support fertility and long-term health Sponsored By: → Manukora | Head to https://manukora.com/REALFOODOLOGY to save up to 31% plus $25 worth of free gifts with the Starter Kit, which comes with an MGO 850+ Manuka Honey jar, 5 honey travel sticks, a wooden spoon, and a guidebook! → Timeline | Support your cells and how you age with Mitopure® Gummies from Timeline. Visit https://timeline.com/Realfoodology and save up to 39% off your Mitopure® Gummies.. → Cowboy Colostrum | Get 25% Off Cowboy Colostrum with code REALFOODOLOGY at https://cowboycolostrum.com/realfoodology → Get 25% Off Cowboy Colostrum with code REALFOODOLOGY at https://cowboycolostrum.com/realfoodology → Our Place is having their biggest sale of the season right now! Save up to 40% on your sitewide now through April 12th. Head to https://fromourplace.com/REALFOODOLOGY to see why more than a million people have made the switch to Our Place kitchenware. And with their 100-day risk-free trial and free returns, you can shop with total confidence. Shop Our Place’s best sale of the season right now. → Save at 15% at paleovalley.com/realfoodology and use code REALFOODOLOGY Timestamps:  → 00:00 - Introduction  → 06:39 - The role of environmental toxins in modern health → 11:11 - How toxins impact fertility and hormone balance → 17:58 - Understanding your body’s toxic load → 19:02 - Preconception health: what to do before pregnancy → 23:19 - Detoxification and supporting your body naturally → 36:20 - Lifestyle habits that support fertility and long-term health → 51:10 - The bigger picture: fertility, longevity, and overall wellness Show Links: → realfoodology.com Check Out: → Instagram Check Out Courtney:  →  LEAVE US A VOICE MESSAGE →  Check Out My new FREE Grocery Guide! →  @realfoodology →  www.realfoodology.com →  My Immune Supplement by 2x4 →  Air Dr Air Purifier →  AquaTru Water Filter →  EWG Tap Water Database Produced By: Drake Peterson

Everybody in Austin calls you the baby whisperer. Oh, I didn't know that. If you were having any sort of issue with getting pregnant, everybody says, oh my gosh, Ann Shippey is the woman to go to. I am a conventional doctor. I am an MD. I'm an internist. But because of my own health problems, I had to search outside the box and figure out what's going on.

What is the biggest mistake people make when they're trying to detox from mold? So I think about detoxing as a series of dams. And if you open the upstream dam too fast, you're going to flood. And so instead of actually helping the toxins to leave your body, they might just be recirculating. Anne, thank you so much for coming on. I'm so excited to have this conversation with you. I know, me too. I've been looking forward to this so much.

So I'd actually been hearing your name for a long time. And then our mutual friend, Jason Karp, invited me to your book party for your book launch. And I was like, oh my gosh, everybody's been telling me about Anne Shippie that I need to get her on the podcast and to check out her book. because everybody in Austin calls you the baby whisperer. Oh, I didn't know that. That's so good to hear. Really? Oh, yeah. Everybody talks about you as the baby whisperer

where if you were having any sort of issue with getting pregnant, everybody says, oh, my gosh, Ann Shippey is the woman to go to. So I actually had you on the back burner because when my husband and I moved to Austin, I'm 41. We didn't know how I was going to go, obviously. And we took about six months before, and we can talk about this too, but my husband and I took about six months before we tried just to really, really clean ourselves up. Like we were doing sauna every day. We did protocols based on our blood

work because we were working with a doctor and we were living in Denver. And we did a whole detox protocol and really just got ourselves healthy and ready before we tried to conceive. But, you know, in the back of my mind. I love it that you knew to do that because that's what the book is all about. Like how to get ready for pregnancy at any age. Yes, which is why I want to get. Yay. So it works, right? Yes. I mean, it really does. Well, I'm living proof of that. And actually, this was when we first met, this is the first thing I said to you and I came up to you is like, I am dying to talk to you because I did a whole protocol. I'm 41 and we got pregnant literally on the first try, which is wild because all the

statistics were working against me. And I love it that you're living proof to what I'm teaching about because I really so want to give people hope that they don't need to rush into IVF and other alternative message options just because they're aging, you know, over 40 or in their 30s. I have so many people that are saying that they're getting pushed into putting their eggs on ice at even like 28 and 31. Yeah, which makes me sad. What are your thoughts about that actually?

Because that really, so I actually ended up doing that. I found my partner much later, which is why I didn't mean to wait until I was 41, but it just took me a long time to find my person. And when I was 35, I started looking into doing IV or so I'm not IVF freezing my eggs because I started getting really nervous. What are your thoughts about freezing your eggs and going that route? Yeah, I think we don't really talk about the implications of the process that you go through to be able to harvest eggs. And unfortunately, I think a lot of the clinics that are doing the egg harvesting and IVF, don't really prepare women or really help them to understand what the risks are.

Yeah. So, and there aren't really good studies to map it out for women, unfortunately. So it's really a tradeoff that every woman has to make, but I would encourage doing this work to keep your body super healthy and go on that road a little bit slower. I have a patient right now who has. gone through a similar situation. She wasn't quite ready to have children yet, hadn't met her partner and was in her mid-30s. And she came to sue me about an hour or about a year

after doing the egg harvesting and she just hadn't felt quite right. The whole process of pushing the body so hard left her with irregular cycles and not feeling like herself. So it had really disrupted her whole HPA access. And I'm optimistic that we're going to get her back on track. It helped other people, but it just, you know, front and center is showing me what can happen. And then I also have a patient who she came to see me after she had done IVF, and she did end up with a little girl who's three, but it really caused her endometriosis to get very severe. going through that process. And the endometriosis got so bad,

it infiltrated into her urid or in her kidney, and she had to have her kidney removed. Oh, wow. So these things aren't. They don't come without risks. They don't come without risks. Losing a kidney is not a common thing, but I do, you know,

she and I are both suspicious that that is a big part of what caused things to get so severe because of the timing of things. Yeah, and this is why I love so much the work that you do, because, you know, if you think about it, if you zoom out from the conventional medical perspective, they tell you that we don't have any other options.

You know, they just say, oh, well, you know, if you're struggling to get pregnant, we're just going to pump you full of hormones and immediately direct you to IVF. And actually, I have a close girlfriend who's actually going through this right now where she was dealing with two years of infertility has done every single test under the sun. Has, you know, her and her partner of detox. They've done sperm tests. They did all this stuff. everything, literally everything that it says in your book, turns out she just had endometriosis

and literally had a blocked flopian tube. And when she found that out, and by the way, her conventional doctors were pushing her to go to IVF. And when she found that out, this doctor said, even if you had done IVF, it probably most likely definitely would have failed. And so it's so sad to me that women are automatically just pushed into IVF. And this is why I love the work that you're doing because you're having conversations and you're sitting down with couples and going, okay, well, let's eliminate every other possible scenario first. Let's make sure that your sperm is healthy. Let's make sure that your hormones are on track.

What are some of the things that you're seeing with couples that are coming in that are dealing with infertility that you're able to turn around? Yeah, there's usually some source of inflammation and toxicity. So with patients in the clinic, I like to do a lot of testing. So we look for environmental toxins, including toxic. toxic mold, which I know that you're familiar with. Unfortunately, yes. Unfortunately, we look for nutritional deficiencies. We look for mitochondrial dysfunction.

We look for whether there's some genetic predisposition going on. What's going on with autoimmunity? Is your thyroid balance? There's so many things that we can look for. And usually we can find some combination of things. It's not usually just one thing that's going on. It's kind of the bodies hit the perfect storm. But what's so exciting is even if somebody, like this applies for men as well, like if they have a very low testosterone or the sperm counts are super low, we can help the body to get back into balance.

And then when our bodies are in balance, we get super fertile. Like we're really built to create life. And so there is, I think that's one of the exciting things about this idea. about the mixing the geriatric pregnancy because that you're like if you just think about things in the scheme of things in your 40s you're in every other way you're still in like in the prime of your life yes why wouldn't we even attach the word geriatric or make women feel any less than this vibrant creator of life that they are this time of year it feels like everyone is trying to stay healthy through the winter months and I'm always looking for simple,

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just calls pregnancy after 35 geriatric instead of actually looking to get to the root cause. I mean, I guess I kind of know the answer because they don't look for the root cause. But why are we not treating this as bio-individual care? Exactly. No, super well said. And I think that's really, you know, that's for me, I am a conventional doctor. I am an MD. I am an internist.

But because of my own health problems, I had to search outside the box because traditional allopathic medicine let me down. And so I had to use my chemical engineering brain to start looking at systems and how we can run our little many experiments and and figure out what's going on. Whereas most physicians kind of have the box that they have, the tools that they have in their toolbox are limited. So I do think these conversations are somewhat threatening for most reproductive endocrinologists or fertility doctors because they don't have these tools in the toolbox. They don't know how to look at the toxin levels and help somebody to detoxify safely. They don't know how to rebuild the mitochondria.

They don't know how to heal the microbiome. They're not the tools that they have in the toolbox. So we have to really bring the best to both worlds. Like sometimes IVF is necessary. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. Thank God it exists, right? Right.

Yeah. But even if you do need IVF doing this work, the 36, 12, 36 months before you go through that process, you will have a higher likelihood of having success and then having a healthier baby. This whole field of epigenetics, how the egg and the sperm, how those genes are being influenced up and down, is like this whole exploding field of discovery that we can dramatically change the health of the future. your baby. And that's why what you've done is so exciting. Like you've put in the work to really help give your child the best chance of not having these things that we're seeing be part of this children's health crisis that we have. By having done the detox, built your mitochondria, have a healthy microbiome, all of these things, and building up the nutrient stores in your body so that you can be a good baby factory.

Your baby's less likely to have all the things that we're seeing with these children today, the increase in the autism, the mental health, the autoimmunity, the cancer. By having the egg and the sperm be super healthy, those epigenetic markers that dial the genes up and down can have a traumatic impact. So good job. Thank you. Well, I'm very, I'm very grateful to my mom because my mom is the one that put me on this track. She's the one that really, she was making everything from scratch when I was a kid, you know, living at home and started learning about, I mean, I joke about this. I just think it's so funny. She came to visit me one time when I was in college and this had to have been, let's see, it would have been like 2004, 2004. This is how early

my mom was to all of this. She made me throw away all my teflon nonstick pants. Yay! Right? Go mom. I'm like a 17 year old unaware. And she comes in and she's like, oh, like literally that day, like took me to Target and bought me stainless steel pans and was like, do not use those nonstick teflon pans. I love that your mom did that. I know. So amazing. And I'm so grateful because everything that we're learning now. And I want to dive a little bit more into this notion of geriatric pregnancy because in my mind as a woman, this gives me a lot of hope, actually, this whole conversation that we're having because, you know, a lot of women are waiting to have kids or they're taking longer. A lot of my girlfriends are, they just haven't been able to find

their partner yet and they're deferring, you know, having children a lot later. And then everybody's feeling like they have to freeze their eggs and they're pushed into this corner or they're hearing really scary statistics as I was too that, you know, the older you get, the harder it is to get pregnant. And I just kept holding in my mind, okay, I'm just going to stay and be as healthy as I can. So until I find my partner, hopefully it will preserve and keep my fertility intact. And it did. And I think we need to be telling women more about this. So tell us a little bit about what you wrote in the book and what you're actually seeing in your practice, how this is true. What my patience have taught me. I've learned so much by what my patients, what their experiences are.

So, you know, having had patients who had even failed IVF, right, they did not, multiple rounds of IVF, one patient in particular could not get another IVF doctor to do another round because they were like, well, you know, the results have been so terrible. She was mid-30s. And so she came to see me and we found a bunch of things. we found that she had some hidden autoimmune thyroid and she had some microbiome issues and some nutrient deficiencies. We did some work for about six months and then she got pregnant naturally. Amazing. And they were still kind of in that mode of thinking that they weren't going to get pregnant easily. And so she got pregnant again while she was still nursing.

Oops. And that was with twins. Oh, wow. And then after the twins, they still had kind of been in that mode of not being that careful because they had. So anyway, they ended up with four very close together after being told to adopt. So situations like that where mid-30s, even mid-40s, having had problems before, a lot of times, you know, people will come to see me because they have autoimmune issues or other things. things going on. And then after we've done the work to help reverse the autoimmune diseases or other things, oops, they don't believe me that they need to be more careful about getting

pregnant and they end up with more children than they were expected. So even in with people that have had issues with infertility, we can, and have had autoimmunity and have had issues. When the body gets into balance, it really wants to create life. Yeah. Well, the healthier you are, the better your fertility is just because that's our natural state. The body wants to be healthy. And when the body is healthy and everything is functioning correctly, fertility is going to function as it's supposed to.

So I like to think about infertility as it's just letting you know, the check engine line is on. Like it doesn't mean that you don't have a good car and that it can't be repaired. It's just saying, hey, look underneath the hood and see what's going on and let's get things rolling again before you get pregnant. So I feel like a lot of times what IVF is doing is just pushing the body when it's already saying, hey, wait, there's something going on that we need to address. So what are some of the biggest things that you find that are really helping couples?

So let's say, you know, for me, for example, let's say, you know, this was a year ago, and I'm knowing that I'm going to want to start trying within the next, you know, year, maybe six months, what would be your advice to somebody before they've even tried and know if they have any sort of problem? What are things they could prep their body? They're in their partners. Yeah. I think one of the biggest things that we're facing today is our unintended exposure to environmental toxins. Yeah.

Like it's even being fairly careful with what we're eating and our air quality. water quality, all of these things, most of us can't quite keep up with that. So those toxins build up in our body a little bit. So I really like for both men and women, this is so important for men to do a period of very gentle, safe detox. So there are certain supplements like liposomal glutathione and some binders, helping with methylation, just can really help to get that load down in the body and then to do some rebuilding with things like phosphatidylcholine, which are great for both men and women for

fertility, brain health, all kinds of things, and then feed our mitochondria. So the supplements that can help our mitochondria, the little organelles inside the cells that work so hard to give us energy. So special forms of co-Q10, like mitochondria, co-Q10, carnitine, there's a whole list of things. And then to clean up the environment, you know, to get the healthy. cleanest food that we can to drink the cleanest water that we can to run things like air filters at least at night when we're sleeping so that we can lessen the load. And this is important for babies, for children anyway, because when they come into the world,

their detox pathways aren't fully developed and they need a clean environment to thrive. I think that it's their early exposures to things, what they're already born with, can set them up for issues with autism and other health issues so the cleaner we can have things for them, the better. Yeah, I love this. And would you recommend everybody gets tested for MTHFR? Absolutely. Because I was, yeah, I've been diving more into that and I just feel like everybody, I feel like this should just be a test that everybody tests their baby for when they're born. So I really like to do a test, and it's all covered in the book too, on the, um, There are multiple methylation genes.

So MTHR is one. And there's several others, MTRR, CVS. So what's really so fun to do, my chemical engineering brain loves looking at these multiple steps in the methylation pathway. So homocysteine and several others that ultimately help us to make glutathione, which is one of the main things that we make in our body to help us to be able to detoxify that often gets depleted. So looking at that whole pathway along with the genetics. we can see what things we can be doing to optimize our methylation. And that's so important for fertility. If you're finally ready to fix your gut, make your hair healthier and stronger and add a little

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what you're cooking it in. This is something that my mom, a gift that my mom gave me, probably about 20, 25 years ago was she got me to get rid of all of my traditional nonstick cookware because a lot of it still contains forever chemicals like Phaas, the same chemicals that are linked to environmental and health concerns. In fact, Studies have found that the majority of nonstick pans still contain these coatings, and even a small scratch can release thousands of plastic particles into your food. That's why I've been loving our place. They make beautiful, high-performance kitchenware that's completely toxin-free, so you can cook without worrying about what might be leaching into your food. One of my favorites is their four-piece cookware set, which basically upgrades your entire kitchen and one-to-move.

It includes their iconic always-pan and perfect pot, which I use almost nightly. in both many and full sizes and together they replace a whole stack of bulky cookware you can saute sear steam boil fry bake basically everything and the non-stick performance is incredible but without the toxic coatings and if you love air fryers their wonder oven is amazing it's a stainless steel and glass air fryer and oven all in one and it makes cooking at home so easy and it's gorgeous on your countertop our place is actually having their biggest sale of the season right now Save up to 40% sitewide through April 12th. Head to from our place.com slash real foodology to see why more than a million people have made the switch to R Place Kitchenware.

And with a 100 day risk-free trial and free returns, you can shop with total confidence, shop Our Place's best sale of the season right now. I agree. Well, the more I dive into MTHFR, the more I just understand how I wish I'd known when I was younger that I had MTHFR SNIP, because I had, have it. And the way that it affects our detoxication pathways, I just, I can imagine that it, I know that it has an effect on fertility and our overall health. And by, I think at some point, we will test babies as they, maybe even before they're born or as they're coming in with a whole bunch of different genes, like looking at the methylation genes and then other detox genes. So we know, you know, how much support their body's going to need from a detox standpoint and what things could be

safe for them even medication-wise in the future, as well as inflammation genes and coagulation genes. There's all kinds of things that just knowing in advance can help us to make better decisions as parents. Yeah, absolutely. So you brought up epigenetics, which is one of my favorite topics to talk about. I love it so much. And I'm curious to know, what does epigenetics say about how are babies?

these genes affected by the health of mom and dad? And how can that also affect their fertility for the future? This is such an exciting evolving field. And this is really why I wrote the book, because those three to 36 months before and between pregnancies can have such an important impact to the health of the baby. So it's easier to study in sperm than it is to study in eggs. So some of the men's studies are even more. Why is that? Well, just because it's easier to collect sperm than it is to collect an egg.

That's fair. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, it's kind of invasive to get an egg. Yeah, that's fair. Sperm's pretty easy. So epigenetics for men, I think, is so empowering for them to know that they can actually have more of a role than what they're being told that they have,

just deliver some sperm here, please. But for them to know, hey, by making an effort for at least three months before trying to conceive can dramatically affect the health of the baby is so exciting. So it turns out that even whether they're exercising, building muscle dials certain genes up and down that can reduce the risk of the child to have obesity. Oh, it's fascinating. I know. Wow. I'm so glad that my husband looks weights. I'm like, go, dad, go. And then, A whole lot of these environmental toxins, like the PFS, the PPAs, the pesticides, the glyphosate, the glyphosate, they also can influence the gene expression and then affect not only your baby, but then future generations as to their fertility, their chance of getting obesity. Like their risk for all kinds of things can be impacted by basically the environment that the sperm is being produced.

And we know that some of these toxins even get passed on with the ejaculate. So it's not that these toxins are just going through. They're also building up in the body and they're getting into the different fluids in the body. So again, it's kind of exciting. It's a little overwhelming when you're first getting started. We also know that alcohol and other substances can impact the health of the baby. So it's really great if the dad's willing to not. drink or do other substances in that preconception period.

And then blood sugar control. So I love for people to use the continuous glucose monitors in this preconception time, both the men and the women, to get that blood sugar as dialed in and as stable as possible because that can help the baby to have less risk for diabetes and obesity and other metabolic syndrome issues. It makes sense. It makes sense. and it's so exciting. There's even some data that shows it's good to deal with trauma so that

that stress response in the body can also affect some of the epigenetics. So if you've had a big trauma, it's a good idea to find some kind of modality that you feel good about with clearing that and EMDR or neurofeedback, meditation, those kinds of things can make a huge difference. Wow. It's so interesting. Everything that we're learning about just how much just how much our health and yeah overall yeah or overall health can affect our babies i mean and i just epigenetics when i first discovered it it like many things in health um i feel like you can use it to either scare you or like you can choose to either let it empower you or let it scare you and i've always everything i've learned about health is just like i just keep getting more

and more empowered because the more we learn the more i realize that yes there will always be things in life that you can't control. But it's what I love so much about ebigenetics is that we learn that we actually really have so much control over the health of our bodies. Yeah. So, you know, I know that there are people listening to your podcasts that have had to go through IVF or, you know, they've dealt with infertility. And a lot of times they feel really, they feel a lot of shame or blame around it. And I definitely, like, I want to be really careful about the conversation and how people feel about it. Because a lot, this information isn't even available to most doctors. Like, even in the medical field, I think a very small percentage of doctors have actually read the research on epigenetics and definitely not the IVF docs.

Like, if they did, they would be saying, wait, go go do this. work beforehand to better your chances and really to help your future child be healthier. So I don't like this is new emerging data and we're needing to put it together before there's time to do a 10 year study on it. Right. Like we there's enough evidence that we can really take action and start to improve this children's health crisis. Like if I was having my kids Right now, I'd be very alarmed and very afraid with the autism rate being one in 31 children, nationwide, one in 22 in California, and 75% of them boys. Like, I have two boys.

Yeah. Like, it would be, it'd be scary to think about the, you know, rolling the dice, especially, you know, having, I've got the detox gene issues. I've got methylation issues. I've got all the things. So I want it to be hopeful. Like I see people with all of these issues. You know, we see the high environmental toxin low.

We see the microbiome balance that mitochondria not working well. And we can reverse it. Yes. Yeah. I mean, I know not in all cases, but I know with autism, I have seen some cases in which they were able to do really deep detox, get the heavy metals out, clean up their microbiome where they were able to reverse at least some of their symptoms and make their life easier.

For some of them, yes, absolutely. And some of them fully. Yeah. Well, I've seen a lot of cool cases of that. What do you think is contributing to the high rates of autism? I have my thoughts, but I want to know what your thoughts are because from my understanding, it seems to be multifaceted. It seems more like it's an assault on our bodies, not necessarily just one particular thing.

that's exactly i mean we have clues yeah on associations um and we have to put that together right if we keep this escalating rate like it's going to be too late for for humanity right yeah well it's really going to be really concerning yeah and just to be really clear um what i'm more specifically talking about i'm not talking about somebody that's just you know a little bit on the spectrum and they're really smart the the autistic cases that i'm I'm particularly concerned about are the ones where they're nonverbal. The parents are really struggling because the babies are scratching them. They can't talk.

They're having to wear diapers into their 20s. Like, you know, they're hitting their heads on the wall. Like it's very hard on not only the child but the parents as well. And it's something that we owe to these families to figure out. I agree. Yeah. Yeah. toxins. And I, you know, that's just with what I've seen with the patients that I've worked with,

it's a small part of my practice. I don't have a huge amount, but with the kids that I've worked with, there's usually been an accumulation of toxins, probably some epigenetic factors from parents, methylation issues, detox issues, and increased inflammation genes. So, part of Part of it seems to be the body's response to having these toxins built up in their bodies and then creating a lot of inflammation that then, and especially the gut-brain connection and disruptions in the microbiome. So pretty much all of these kids have some combination of those things, which, and then sometimes some autoimmunity part of it.

there's also some data around folate receptor antibodies which has been an interesting yeah I got a little little four-year-old nonverbal patient that oh gosh she's so precious that we were starting to see some improvement with addressing all of these things so it's we're very dental with her and and making little incremental steps but I gone from where she wasn't potty trained to now being, she can go grab somebody's hands. She's starting to interact with her siblings. And yeah, so it's still kind of early in the process, but it's so exciting to see this resilience that exists in humans and especially in children that when their bodies are really being

given what they need and not being overwhelmed by the things in the environment, like their bodies respond so beautifully. That's really cool. What a gift that you get to work with clients like that. And you can see real results that are really genuinely helping people. Yeah. I'm so lucky. I know.

I get to do what I do. Very cool. And I mean, it's so much, it's so much work to be my patient. There's testing involved. There's changing your diet. There's changing your lifestyle. There's taking supplements, sometimes doing IVs, sometimes doing things like hyperbaric, sometimes stem cells. It's a lot of work.

But I'm so lucky to get to do this beautiful collaboration with my patients and get to see what resonates with them and help them put the puzzle pieces together to really trust their bodies again. And I'm so lucky that I've had these health renins with my own body so that you know what to do. And so that I can hold that faith. Oh, yeah, too, yeah. And hope that when we put enough at the puzzle pieces together, their bodies will respond accordingly.

I just had a follow up with the, I call him a young man. He's 35 and this afternoon actually before the, and he, you know, I think he was kind of starting to lose faith in his body. He'd gone through a lot in the last. 15 years and I had to depend on some medications just to get him through. And we found some things that really have helped him to start to trust his body again. And they're just starting to try to conceive. So I'm really excited for him. You know, his testosterone had been nothing, you know, in his 20s. And so he had gone on testosterone. But now his own productions coming up and he's being able to

get off of the antidepressants and what a gift to get to come in to be a dad when you're actually feeling good in your body rather than kind of dragging through life and feeling like you don't have the tools that you need to feel good. If you're looking for a delicious drink that will improve energy, focus, and support healthy inflammation levels, you need to try Paleo Valley's superfood golden milk. It combines the profound, well-demonstrated health benefits of turmeric with other nourishing certified organic superfoods such as Lions Main, Rishi, Cordyceps, Chitaki, Salon, cinnamon, ginger, and more.

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by the body, which is why they created a blend of slightly spicy and sweet ingredients that your body can recognize and use efficiently to support healthy levels of inflammation, brain and immune health, and overall wellness, all in one deliciously creamy drink. To try the superfood golden milk today, go to paleovali.com slash real foodology, and you will save 15% off when you use code real foodology. Again, that's paleovalley.com slash real foodology. Well, that's a big, that's a big piece to it. I think so many of us, and I know exactly what it feels like because I was like this in my 20s when I went to college, I think so many of us don't know that feeling sick, sluggish, depressed, you know, name it, you name it, whatever it is that somebody's going through is not actually normal and that you can feel better if you give your body the right resources and tools that it actually needs in order to function correctly. Even in your 80s.

Exactly, exactly. Like you should still feel pretty good. Yes. Even in your 80s. And you shouldn't be on 10 plus medications in your 80s. Yeah. Our bodies were not meant to function that way. Yeah.

You just have to give your body the right resources. So I want to talk a little bit about mold because I know this is something that you're very passionate about. And I wouldn't say necessarily I'm passionate about it, but I'm currently, it's resonating with me a lot. Well, I'm passionate about it in the way that I want to spread awareness now that I've gone through this whole situation. It is. Wow. How common is mold illness and why is it still dismissed in conventional medicine? So we have a problem with how we're building buildings now. We're basically taking mold food and we're building tight containers to save energy. And then we've lost the art of building, like buildings used to breathe and dehumidify just the way that they were being built. But in the 70s, they started building things tight to conserve energy.

And then so many things just aren't done well now with buildings. The flashings are not like you need a lot of detail to waterproof a shower to make sure that a chimney doesn't leak, like all these things. And that attention to detail is just not even happening. I just had a patient today with the $5 million home that multiple things weren't done. properly. Like, it turns out that 90% of the windows weren't flashed properly. The, um, the showers weren't sealed.

And then there had been a leak during construction that never would, like they should have pulled up the, um, the wood on the second story when something leaked and they just covered it up. So a lot of times it's that, um, just the building materials and the attention to detail, even in like homes that people are paying a lot of money for. And then the humidity issues that are having were having with the AC systems being oversized or not being designed properly. One of my kids had an issue with that during college.

They had put an air conditioning system into a duplex that was like twice the size of what it needed to be. So the humidity was just constantly running high because the air, AC was hardly running. So there's so many things with building science that need to be reworked and probably look at some different materials too because a lot of times there's mold spores already present in the drywall. And then we're not taught about mold in medical school other than it can cause infections in immunocompromised people. We're not taught that it's one of the most toxic producing substances on the planet. So some of those most most most most most most toxic,

molds make the materials that they make in their metabolism are used for biological warfare. Wow. Or immunosuppressants for people that have had transplants, there's something called mycophenolic acid that will basically suppress the immune system. So we're just not taught it. So the only way that doctors actually learn about the toxic effects of mold is if they go and decide to learn about it on their own, or they're like me. I mean, I had to start learning about it because I had ALS-like symptoms.

About 16 years ago, it was just as mold was just kind of even coming onto the landscape in functional medicine. And now we know that it can be one of the triggers for autism. It can be a trigger for infertility. It can be a trigger for cognitive, early cognitive decline. So it's one of the causes of Alzheimer's. It can even be a trigger for autoimmunity, inflammatory bowel disease, so many things. And there's so many different chemicals that mold makes that it can be that you're in one place and you have a mold situation and you have new symptoms or when, you know, a collection of symptoms, you move to someplace else.

And you have a different set of symptoms like I can attest to as well. Oh, my gosh. Yeah, I mean, I'm not going to get into my whole story because I actually can't talk about a lot of it right now because we're probably going to end up in a lawsuit with our landlords. But I just, we found toxic black mold in our place in January. And actually, this is something you and I were talking about right before we started recording. How amazing, looking back, I'm like, oh, my gosh, I cannot even believe that we were able to get pregnant because we've got pregnant. Actually, you know what it's interesting? we think we got pregnant right, like literally the week before we move to Austin into that place.

So we weren't actually living in it then, but it is pretty wild that I was able to actually keep this pregnancy knowing that we were being exposed to this toxic black mold. But we probably just got exposed. It was probably just early on enough that I was able to get through it. And then I started having symptoms. Well, and it's probably because you do so many things to help your body detoxify and help your immune system that you don't even realize. So you're super clean diet, you're minimizing the other toxins that you're getting exposed to. I don't know what your supplement stack is, but there are probably lots of things that really support your mitochondria and support your body to work well.

And that kind of gets back to none of us do things perfectly. Like I know I'm exposing myself to color my hair, right? So there are things where we can't control, but we need to control the things that we can. so great that you've moved and gotten out of the situation and that supported your body so beautifully. But if you like I think that's the message to your yeah to the people listening is if you've had any leaks, if you have had high, you know, running over 50% humidity in your environment and you have anything health going on, it's good to check and see if there's mold. and often it's hidden.

Like you don't even know that the flashings on the window aren't working or there's a little leak behind the dishwasher or things like that. And then just it's probably a good idea to test when you can. Yeah, yeah, I agree. What are there, what are some of the common, well, maybe not even common symptoms. What are some of the symptoms that you have seen that were connected to mold that people may not actually be making the connection in their head to it being mold? Yeah, it can just be an upregulated immune system. So when I started learning about histamine intolerance and mass cell activation,

so that's having headaches and running a little red and feeling a little brain fog, maybe a little bit of abdominal bloat or the most common things with the histamine issues, they're so nonspecific, right? You just, like, there's nothing specific to point to. that always, when I hear that combination of things, I always want to do the the micro-toxin test to see what the level of toxin exposure is. I feel like at this point, I've heard so many wild stories of wild symptoms that I feel like at this point, if you're having any sort of symptom that has gone longer than maybe a

month and that you can't pinpoint to, I would just test for mycotoxins because, I mean, I heard one about a little baby's hair was falling out. like she had alopecia, and turns out she was just sleeping in a moldy room. I've heard literal, like, going crazy. Like somebody I know said that they were living in a moldy home, and all of her children were acting like they were going crazy, like actually going crazy. And having neurological symptoms, which we also know is a symptom of being exposed to mold.

So that's probably Pans, Pandas kind of symptoms. So the neuropsychiatric encephalopathy, and that, yes, if your child is having any of those kinds of symptoms, you have to check for mold. Yeah. Oh man, I just hate how common it is now. Yeah, part of my warning sign when I first had my run in with mold as I had was just, my hair was just falling out in clumps. I had so much pain in my body that I did, my kids were little at the time.

I didn't like just even getting a hug from them was painful. So couldn't wear heels. I had to, like my feet were so painful. So it can really show up differently for different people. But it is such a common problem these days that my preference is that everybody checks at least once a year so that they're not surprised and have to actually get super sick that they can be proactive and preventive. Yeah. Wow.

What is the biggest mistake people make when they're trying to detox from mold? Oh, that's such a good question. So I don't like to focus on the mistake. I like to focus on the positive. Well, that makes sense. Or you can also say what is the best way to, but I just was thinking what can we do to avoid? Because I heard it's hard to detox from it. I really think that most people do great with supporting their own detox pathways better.

So things like liposomal clutothion, doing some good binders. I guess the biggest mistake was maybe to push it too fast. So I think about detoxing as a series of dams. And if you open the upstream dam too fast, you're going to flood. And so instead of actually helping the toxins to leave your body, they might just be recirculating. And so just doing it gently, I think more isn't necessarily better on the detox. So taking the supplements that support each part of the dam, including taking a look at methylation pathways, is super helpful. And then I love things like we have a clay and detox pat that we carry in the office.

Medi detox. I love infrared sonnas. Hyperbarics can be awesome. And then we do some IVs, phosphatidylcholine and in AD that just are like sending the cells through a car wash. So if some of these having, you know, pretty significant symptoms, it can help them get their head above water and open those pickets more gently to get the toxins out. Oh, wow. What is, if you're allowed to tell any of these stories, what is maybe one of your, one or two of your favorite stories that you had of people coming in and really struggling with their health, whether it's infertility or maybe mold toxin or something that was unexplained that you were able to help them with? One of my older patients is popping to mine. I love that. Probably the audience is probably meant to hear it then. I mentioned, well, we have this fear around aging, right? And there's this.

especially for women, I think, a lot of times the message that they get from their physician is, oh, that's probably just because you're getting older. I hate when doctors say that. It makes me so much unacceptable. Yes. So one of my patients is in her mid-80s, and it was actually her grandson who came to see me first, and he actually had these crazy parasites that we figured out. He ate a lot of sushi.

and had done a lot of traveling. He was right around 30, and, you know, he was, he really thought he was dying. So we got him tuned up, and then his mom came, and, you know, she was just really feeling she was in her mid-50s and just feeling like she was just hitting a wall with the whole aging thing, just brain fog. not having much energy.

And they actually did have some mold in their house, got her on track. And then the grandson was like, I want my grandmother to come. So that was like, oh, my gosh. And so she really, she was feeling like she had some pretty significant cognitive decline, like wasn't winning at Brinch anymore.

She had a lot of pain in her body, wasn't able to get down on the floor and pick things up and just really down. And we found that she had an undiagnosed gluten sensitivity even at 85, right? And some things with her microbiome, some nutrient deficiencies. And the last time that she was in, I guess it's been about nine months ago now, so there's something in there. she's winning at bridge again, she's got her brain back. It was so fun, doing everything independently, not driving, but everything else.

And good energy, she's cooking and doing all these things. And I happened to drop something on the way out. And she picked it up before I could. Wow. So that so inspired me that even in your mid-80s, it's possible to heal from these things that aren't supposed to have good answers. So we definitely, like, it makes sense to take a look at what's out of balance in the body and then address the things that we can find and then see how the body can come along

even when, I mean, that would be called advanced. That is. Advanced age, right? So even at advanced ages, your body has some tremendous capacity to heal. I love hearing that story so much because a lot of what, I talk about on this podcast is, you know, it's because, you know, I get questions all the time for people say, well, you're going to die anyways. Like, why go through the effort?

And I always tell people is that because I don't believe that we're inherently meant to just break down, be sick, be fatigued, and then just be all this medication when we're in our 80s or 90s. I'm looking to the future going, I want to have energy for my kids, my grandkids. I want to feel good for as long as I can on this planet. And I don't believe that it's inherently just a part of our aging process to feel bad. And I think prevention is really hard to measure. Yes.

It's very hard to measure. We can kind of measure it in populations, but even then we're not very good at it. Yeah. And so we have to just really check in with our own individual bodies and check in with it. Like, okay, what do you need? What do I really need to have for prevention? I love doing the genetic testing, like really advanced genetic testing, to help to guide us, to know what some of the work around things are.

But I think a lot of times intuitively, and I so love that you're talking about this and giving people hope and inspiration, that it doesn't have to be just a decline. Yeah, I don't think it has to be doom and gloom and decline. And I don't think you need to go into your doctor and have them to say, oh, that's just what happens, you know, with aging. Yeah, I just, I don't think it has to be our story. Okay, here's another story. Okay. So a patient had come to see me postpartum with postpartum depression.

And we found a whole lot of nutrient deficiencies, some shifts in her microbiome, her mitochondria were struggling, and we got her back on track. She quickly gets pregnant with number two. Wow. Oh. Oh, a little sooner than we were. It's a little sooner than we'd hope. But her whole pregnancy was so much better when we had done that work to tune her up. And then she didn't have postpartum with the second one.

Wow. No postpartum depression. She felt good. So I think a lot of times these symptoms that we have are just letting us know that something's out of balance. And, you know, I think the usual story would be once you've had postpartum depression once, probably going to have it again. So to know that I think also part of this tune-up to before-pregnancy can help you to have not just more fertility, but healthier pregnancy and then better postpartum.

But I still love it when I get to tune people up after the pregnancy. Like I really encourage people to get back in within six to eight weeks, and this will be for you postpartum. Yeah, I know. I was literally just thinking about it. I'm like, oh, mental note. Yeah, double-check your microbiome because definitely pregnancy can kind of shift things.

And then make sure that this, I mean, what's so amazing, I think, about humanity is that the babies really can take the nutrients that they need for mom so that they can have the best chance of thriving. And then if we can do the really detailed nutritional testing, looking at amino acids, essential fatty acids, your trace mineral roles, your mitochondrial function, all these things, and then tune you up from there. It just makes that whole postpartum period a lot easier and more enjoyable.

Love that. And I hope this gives women hope, because I think that's a fear amongst many of us, at least it is for me, because we always think, you know, what if I get postpartum depression after? And that gives me hope to know that, you know, it could just be a nutritional deficient. Absolutely. And this is not at all to minimize anyone's experience. Everyone has different. No, post-partum depression is, oh my gosh, it is so scary for women and for their spouses.

Yeah. Like that it's, it really is one of the things I think it's so important to try to prevent. Yeah, absolutely. So if there's things that we can do, is there, so let's just, actually, let's dive a little bit and get more specific. So if a woman is dealing with it or if she wants to try to minimize, postpartum depression, what would you say would be maybe your top tips in order to hopefully avoid it? Yeah, I think it's really good to, I mean, if we can test to do something like

a neutral bowel or ion profile, look at the microbiome, it's best, but you can't go wrong with taking a nice dose of some B vitamins, really making sure that you're getting good protein, There are some supplements that help with nitric oxide repletion because that can be super important postpartum because your body's just pulled a lot of those things out. So things like Neo40 can be great. Then nice antioxidants like curcumin, CO210, phosphatidylcholine, I think is something that everybody needs to be on because that PC is amazing for just helping everything. work better. It helps with cell membranes, mitochondrial membranes. I sound so nerdy. No, I mean, this is every, I love it. I'm eating it up because I'm the same way.

Okay. No, I love it. I love it. And that, like, if I was just going to pick one thing for women to be on during pregnancy and postpartum, it would be phosphatidylcholine. Okay, good. My favorite ones are on our website, but yeah, it's like, it helps make healthier baby brains. It helped baby cells. Okay, good. Yeah. So, yes. I was very happy to learn because I was taking it for the last year or so up until we got

pregnant and I was very happy to learn that I could take you during pregnancy. So good. So, okay, good. So I'm on the right track. Why do you think that so many people feel better when they travel to Europe and eat the same foods? That's not the case as much as it used to be. Like 10 years ago, it was pretty much fairly dependable. That is true.

I can confirm. And I think it's because. They have different requirements for everything, everything from the mycotoxin levels in coffee. They have different standards. The way that pesticides are used is different. A lot of times the grains that they grow are different. So it really just is a better environment that most people feel better there. They also have, like, I'm just thinking about some of my patients that have spent some time in London, though,

That's definitely been an exception where they deal with so much mold there. Interesting. Because of their weather, I would assume, right? Yeah. And some of the building issues, yeah. Yeah. Okay. That's fascinating.

Yeah. You know, you make a really good point. So I used to travel with a pop star as her nutritionist, and we spent a lot of our time in Europe. Yeah. And this was about, wow, I can't believe this has been almost 10 years ago now, was almost about 10 years ago now. And back then, I was making posts about this back then and saying, wow, I feel so much better when I go to Europe. And more recently, when I've traveled there, it just hasn't been the same as it was back then.

I mean, back then I could fully just eat pizza and I'm gluten-free, which now, like, yeah, it just is different now. It's a global contamination issue. This fertility crisis that we're seeing is global. Drop in sperm pound by 50% in 50 years is global. The one in six couples is global. So you look around at what's going on in the world, and it's this buildup of environmental toxins, both the plastics and the use of glyphosate and other pesticides. When I was in Tanzania, was it two years ago, we were driving between the Hedzebe tribe

and the Maasai tribe, about a three-hour drive, and there was field after field after field of Monsanto corn. And like so many plastics around the roadways, because they don't have a, you know, a garbage collection system there that's efficient, effective. And so meeting with one of the Maasai tribe doctors, over the last 10 years, they've really seen an increase in their health issues with some of the maternal health,

the central issues and children with autism and children with autism and so many things, so many health issues that we're seeing here are also happening there and the only correlation that I could make was what I could see. So it kind of makes sense with what we're seeing with some of the epigenetic data around the glyphosate and the plastics. Wow, that's so sad. I think they're starting to use more glyphosate in other countries and hours before they weren't using it as much as they are now. Oh, man. Is it fair to call every pregnancy starting at 35 geriatric or do you think that it's a cop out for not addressing root causes?

It's very upsetting that any woman is called a geriatric pregnancy. And we just have to stop this. Like, I think we need to refuse that label, that diagnosis, because women in their 30s and 40s can be very fertile, have very healthy babies, and by preparing for pregnancy, can totally avoid that label. This is something that I've been getting on my soapbox about so much recently, and we talked a lot about it in the beginning of the episode. But I really believe that we need to be practicing bio-individualized care and treating each individual case as an individual instead of putting a blanket statement on every single woman, just calling them geriatric after 35.

It's insane. It really undermines their sense of well-being and their confidence in their body. so we should be doing just the opposite. We should be helping them to be confident in their bodies and to know that they're going to be very healthy and be able to have a healthy baby. And to let them know that they're not broken. No.

Yeah. I had my kids at 34 and 38. I love that. And I had gone through infertility prior to getting pregnant with both of them. And right before the second one, I had done a bunch of labs and took them to an IVF, you know, an infertility doctor, and they looked at them and they were like, oh, you just better go, you're 37, almost 38, you better just do IVF.

And in the time that I was waiting for my period to start, got pregnant, even in residency where I was like, it was not the ideal time to get pregnant because I'm, you know, every 3rd or 4th night, all night. But it just showed me how inaccurate those labs can be as to, you know, it's not. to how healthy your eggs can be. So I just really, it's alarming how many women are being encouraged to just bypass their bodies. I completely agree. And I think that's a great place to end.

I have so many other questions I want to ask you, so I feel like I'm going to have to bring you back. Oh, good. I'll hang out with you anytime. I know because I loved this. And I just think the work that you're doing is so amazing and you're helping so many people. And I think you're giving women so much hope or couples in general so much hope. So I just want to honor you and say thank you so much for all the work that you're doing.

And for writing your book, please let everybody know about your book so that they can check it out. Yes, the book is called The Preconception Revolution. And it's really everything I wish I had known before I got pregnant with my children. and that I really see makes a huge difference with fertility and creating an environment to have healthy babies. So I really hope that people will pass it along to help them preserve their fertility and have healthy families. And then we also have an online program that we're starting to do because not everybody can come see me.

So we're trying to help people have access to the labs and know the right supplements to take and help along with the journey. So that is on my website and CHIP EMD and every baby well, because that really is my desire that we start to turn this children's health crisis around by starting to have these conversations so that men and women know what to do before they're trying to conceive and to get the green light to conceive. Yes. I love it. Well, I love the work that you're doing so much. I think it's so important. So, yeah, thank you so much for coming on.

This was such a great conversation. Thanks for having me. Yes. It's so fun to be with you. I know you too. Thank you. Thank you so much for listening to the Real Foodology podcast. This is a Wellness Loud production produced by Drake Peterson and mixed by Mike Fry.

The theme song is by Georgie. You can watch the full video version of this podcast inside the Spotify app or on YouTube. As always, you can leave us a voicemail by clicking the link in our bio. And if you like this episode, please rate and review on your podcast app. For more shows by my team, go to WellnessLoud.com. See you next time. The content of this show is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not a substitute for individual, medical, and mental health advice and doesn't constitute

a provider-patient relationship. I am a nutritionist, but I am not your nutritionist. As always, talk to your doctor or your health team first. If you struggle with bloating gas, constipation, digestive issues, yeast overgrowth, well, you may already know about digest this. It's the podcast hosted by me, Bethany Cameron, also known as Little Sipper on Instagram. I dive into gut health, nutrition, the food industry. and drawing from my own experience. I break down what's good, what's bad, and what's the best

for your gut, your skin, and so much more. I even offer gut-friendly recipes. New episodes every Monday and Wednesday produced by Wellness Loud.