← The Human Upgrade: Biohacking for Longevity & Performance
The Human Upgrade: Biohacking for Longevity & Performance
Biohacking Fertility for Men and Women at Any Age : 1381
01:03:37
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- [00:00]
Dr. Ann Shippy
I just had some patients where they came in. They're both 35. They looked at everything that I asked them to except for the. They're like that was in another house. They ended up getting pregnant right away, but then they had a miscarriage a few weeks in. I want people to think about infertility as the body turning the engine light on. Do not proceed. Really do the work to figure out why Mother Nature is wisely saying don't proceed. Think about the egg and the sperm as a time capsule. Everything that you've been doing the years leading up are going in this time capsule to the baby.
- [00:34]
Dave Asprey
I want you to list the things that are causing infertility, from most important to least important.
- [00:39]
Dr. Ann Shippy
The most important thing is the environmental toxins. The one that comes to mind is toxic. That's the gist of all of this. Like set the red light. Don't get pregnant yet. Put a pause on it. Do this work for at least three.
- [00:51]
Dave Asprey
Months that you could reduce the chances of having a seriously unhealthy baby by 50 to 75%. You're listening to the Human Upgrade with Dave Asprey.
- [01:07]
Dave Asprey (Advertisement Voice)
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- [03:16]
Dave Asprey
This is a special episode of the Human Upgrade because it is about a topic that's critically important. In fact, it's so important that the first book I ever wrote was about it. And no, it's not the Bulletproof Diet, if you're a longtime fan. My first book was called the Better Baby Book, and it was about what can you do before you get pregnant and during pregnancy to have healthier, stronger babies? And you might say, I don't want kids. I don't need to listen to this episode. But you do need to listen to this episode, because it turns out that fertility is a marker for longevity. And if you have strong biology, you will live longer and you'll be able to have healthy kids. And it's not just for women, because I know this may be a surprise. Men and women are responsible for making healthy kids, so the quality of the swimmers is as important as the quality of the egg. Now, I wrote that book 15 years ago, and there are very, very few resources for you about what do you do if you want to really make yourself work well. And I am so excited because our guest today is a former IBM chemical engineer turned medical doctor and a top expert in the world on this. And one of my closest friends, Dr. Ann Chippy. She's incredibly brilliant and has just a mission about how do we make healthy parents so our next generation as stronger than we are instead of weaker, which is the direction we're going. So tune in. You're going to learn something whether or not you want kids. And welcome to the show.
- [04:59]
Dr. Ann Shippy
Thanks for having me, Dave. I've been so looking forward to having this official conversation with you because we've had such great conversations on this over the years.
- [05:07]
Dave Asprey
Well, let's get into it. Childhood illnesses are rising rapidly, and so is infertility. Is there a connection?
- [05:17]
Dr. Ann Shippy
Absolutely. And, you know, I'm really glad I've had my kids But I'm starting to think about, okay, when I have my grandkids, like, we really need to be preparing because we're seeing this drop in infertility. It's one in five or six couples, depending on where you look at the data, are actually dealing with infertility.
- [05:35]
Dave Asprey
One in how many?
- [05:36]
Dr. Ann Shippy
One in five or six.
- [05:37]
Dave Asprey
It used to be one in eight when I wrote my book. One in five or six. Did you remember when we were at the. In our 20s, like, I hope that she doesn't get pregnant, and now I hope she can get pregnant. It's changed.
- [05:50]
Dr. Ann Shippy
It's so changed. Right. We used to have to worry more about the opposite being too fertile. And then we're seeing 1 in 31 children being diagnosed with autism. And that data is delayed. Right, because those are kids a year or two old, data that are 8, because we can't make that final diagnosis. So when you look at the trajectory of how autism is increasing, yeah, it's very alarming. And then the childhood obesity, diabetes, mental health, autoimmunity, cancer. Like, our children are getting so sick. And I see this in my practice, like, what I'm seeing Now compared to 20 years ago, it's definitely progressing.
- [06:29]
Dave Asprey
Is it possible that our kids just aren't getting enough vaccines all at the same time?
- [06:36]
Dr. Ann Shippy
I'm sure that that's part of.
- [06:39]
Dave Asprey
Did you see the news today about hpv?
- [06:43]
Dr. Ann Shippy
Hpv, No. I saw the hepatitis vaccine getting taken off for newborns. Sorry, what's the definition of insanity to vaccinate a newborn for hepatitis B? Because it's so unlikely that they're going to be exposed as a newborn? Because the parents are checked.
- [07:00]
Dave Asprey
The risk. The risk of hepatitis is 0.1 out of a thousand. And the risk of lightning strike is 0.3 out of a thousand. And so it's crazy.
- [07:15]
Dr. Ann Shippy
The risk. And then the immune system of a newborn is not even developed enough to really even become immune to it.
- [07:26]
Dave Asprey
This is why they shouldn't let epidemiologists set health policy. They should let doctors do it.
- [07:32]
Dr. Ann Shippy
That's such a good idea, guys.
- [07:35]
Dave Asprey
You can study it, you can look for patterns, but don't you make laws and regulations on your patterns? Because I will know where you live. All right? And I love epidemiology because it helps us see things. It's just not. Everyone's the same. How do you know if a parent is likely to have fertility problems if they haven't even tried to get pregnant yet? Can you tell just by looking at them?
- [07:56]
Dr. Ann Shippy
Well, they. I'm actually, I think that infertility is a blessing. And as someone who actually dealt with infertility, I don't even know if I told you this part of my story.
- [08:07]
Dave Asprey
I knew you really well. I did not know you were infertile.
- [08:09]
Dr. Ann Shippy
No, I. Yeah, I kind of waited because I was a chemical engineer, and I was on the fast track at IBM, and I love my job, so I'm, like, putting kids off. And then right around 30, 31, decided I wanted to start my family, and I couldn't get pregnant. And so I started the fertility treatments. At the time, it was doing clomid and trying IUIs, and I still didn't get pregnant. And then I had a big health crisis where the people that I was working with actually thought I had cancer or something because I got so thin, so ill, picked up a parasite on a vacation. It triggered my celiac disease, but nobody could figure it out for me. I had to figure it out myself. And by the time I'd figured out, I'd really decided I wanted to stop engineering and go to medical school so that I could practice medicine differently the way that I wish that I had been cared for. So here I'd had my fertility run in, then I got super sick, and I had this impulse. It really was a compulsion, not a. Like, looking back, I kind of think I was. I wasn't really factoring in that I might not be able to have my kids because it was such a strong drive to go to medical school. And I really rolled the dice. So I somehow had made the changes that I needed to for my fertility to come online. Maybe it made a difference that I wasn't reporting to work in a manufacturing facility anymore and having less exposure to chemicals. Maybe it was because I was actually a little more relaxed. And the first few years of medical school, it's mostly classroom and learning and so much fun. I got pregnant spontaneously.
- [09:55]
Dave Asprey
Wow. So you made some changes, and then it worked, but all the medical treatments didn't work. How much of fertility is the woman's fault versus the man's fault?
- [10:04]
Dr. Ann Shippy
Well, it turns out that it's about 50. 50.
- [10:06]
Dave Asprey
Shocking.
- [10:09]
Dr. Ann Shippy
But what I really wanted to come across in this discussion today is how much hope there is. Like, you laid such great groundwork by. You were so far ahead of the game with your book.
- [10:21]
Dave Asprey
I didn't know we had this in common. And I couldn't have babies either. I mean, I could, but my wife at the time was infertile. Her medical school colleagues said that, like, we have to do something. So I did the normal Dave. Crazy biohacking thing. And I wrote that book, but it was five years of research. And the deal there was infertility wasn't as big of an issue 15 years ago, but it was, how do you not have a kid with autism? How do you have a kid with a bigger, smarter brain? And I've reviewed and actually wrote an endorsement for the Preconception Revolution, which is your new book that's just coming out. And I'm just grateful that you've updated and taken it way beyond. And you have amazing knowledge and amazing credentials, and you're just eminently believable about this. That are baby book. It's like some guy with no license. Yeah, I know my shit. But still, I think you're going to reach a ton of people. And if you're thinking about having kids, even at some point in the future, you should read the book. Because if you're saying, well, I'm 25 now and I at some point in the future, maybe I'll store my eggs or something, read the book if you're going to store your eggs. Get healthy before you store your eggs. It's just. It's so obvious. And this is a lot of new info. We didn't understand genetics 15 years ago the way we do now.
- [11:42]
Dr. Ann Shippy
It was so fun to research this book. I actually started writing it in 2016 and hired a PhD biologist.
- [11:49]
Dave Asprey
I remember when you did that. Yeah.
- [11:51]
Dr. Ann Shippy
And I was like, hey, Friday morning, we're going to talk. Go research this. Write it up for me so that I have the research at my fingertips. And then I ended up putting it to the side for a few years to do a couple other projects and to get through Covid and help all my patients for a few years. So two years ago, when I started it up again, and it was incredible the amount of research that's gotten done in the last 10 years, really understanding some of these links that we do for health and longevity as they apply to preparing for pregnancy. It's just so much fun that people actually love to be in the lab and do this research so that we can understand it and bring these pieces of data together so that people can implement and actually see on the other side that even if they've had infertility, if they've had children with autism or autoimmunity, all these things can go on to have their healthiest babies yet in their 40s.
- [12:49]
Dave Asprey
Okay, let's just get right to it. You're a top expert in the field. I want you to list the things that are causing Infertility. From most important to least important.
- [13:00]
Dr. Ann Shippy
Oh, God.
- [13:02]
Dave Asprey
It's okay. You have to have a reference for everything. I just want you because you, you have a. A list of importance in your mind. Share it.
- [13:10]
Dr. Ann Shippy
The most important thing is the environmental toxins that we're being exposed to.
- [13:14]
Dave Asprey
Which ones?
- [13:16]
Dr. Ann Shippy
You know, the one that comes to mind that we both have had our run ins with is toxic mold.
- [13:22]
Dave Asprey
It's a huge problem for fertility.
- [13:24]
Dr. Ann Shippy
Huge problem for fertility. And I've just had. I had just had some patients where they came in, they're both 35. They got married late, and they knew to come in and do the work to prepare their bodies. They looked at everything that I asked them to except for the mold. They had a mold test, but they're like, that was in another house. We don't think it's in this house. So we're just gonna move forward with everything else. When I gave them the. I had to go along with it. They just refused to look at it. When I gave them the green light to go, they ended up getting pregnant right away. But then they had a miscarriage a few weeks in. And I'm like, we have to look at the mold now.
- [14:07]
Dave Asprey
People don't understand. I got clued in on mold with fertility from ranching because they know with pigs especially, have the closest biology to humans, that if they have moldy food, that they have a huge amount of miscarriage. And in cows, same thing, moldy hay. They lose the babies and then they lose money. So they track this. They have global maps of what toxins from mold are in food for animals. But then they don't talk about that for humans. And that's just food based, which is minor compared to breathing it or getting on your skin. Okay, so mold's a big one.
- [14:40]
Dr. Ann Shippy
Mold's a big one.
- [14:41]
Dave Asprey
Okay. It seems like circadian disruption. Bright lights, though, are a major inhibitor.
- [14:46]
Dr. Ann Shippy
Yeah.
- [14:47]
Dave Asprey
Do you tell your patients that they need to dim the lights at night?
- [14:50]
Dr. Ann Shippy
I'm not even good about doing that myself.
- [14:54]
Dave Asprey
This is true. Your place has bright lights at night, but you're not trying to get pregnant.
- [14:58]
Dr. Ann Shippy
Well, but I think, you know, I think we all have our blind spots, and that's probably one of the things that I could do better with.
- [15:06]
Dave Asprey
I'm going to get you some red light bulbs for Christmas.
- [15:08]
Dr. Ann Shippy
Okay, let's do it. One of the biggest thing on the circadian rhythms that I find is having total blackout at night.
- [15:20]
Dave Asprey
Oh, it's.
- [15:20]
Dr. Ann Shippy
So that's.
- [15:22]
Dave Asprey
Darkness is a nutrient. Right.
- [15:23]
Dr. Ann Shippy
And it really is one of the Things that people are very resistant to implementing. I can't tell you the number of eye rolls that I've had when I tell people they need to darken, like get complete blackouted.
- [15:36]
Dave Asprey
Why is complete blackout so important for circadian rhythms?
- [15:40]
Dr. Ann Shippy
Right.
- [15:41]
Dave Asprey
I mean, I could have a couple little LEDs on in the corner, blinking or something.
- [15:45]
Dr. Ann Shippy
Okay. So that light hits your skin, it's not just the eyes seeing it. So people think that if they're wearing a mask, that's enough. Any bit of exposed skin, the light will hit your red blood cells. It changes the confirmat, changes how your body makes melatonin.
- [16:01]
Dave Asprey
It does change melatonin. And people don't understand. Many cells in the body have chromophores. These are color sensing, light sensing, little solar panels that are looking at the world. And they talk to each other with light. So it's like having that little blue LED in your bedroom and putting an eye mask on. It's like having someone yelling when the mitochondria are trying to talk to each other. And it absolutely changed my life to sleep in a pitch black room.
- [16:30]
Dr. Ann Shippy
Here's one of the other things that I'm really experimenting with myself. I really like to have my phone by my bed to be able to check on things if I wake up in the night or in the morning. But I'm really noticing that if my phone is away, like not even close to my room, I sleep so much deeper. Explain that to me, Dave.
- [16:50]
Dave Asprey
Do you have it on airplane mode?
- [16:52]
Dr. Ann Shippy
Yeah.
- [16:53]
Dave Asprey
So Arianna Huffington came on the show and talked about that as well, that there's some subconscious things that are going on. And there's even studies that if there's a phone on the table, even if it's face down, that people's stress response is higher and their distractibility is higher. So it could just be that we're so addicted to our phones. I use mine as my alarm clock.
- [17:10]
Dr. Ann Shippy
So I also wonder if there's a bit of an EMF field setting up as we're charging it.
- [17:15]
Dave Asprey
It shouldn't be that close to your bed, though. The other thing that could be happening, and this is fascinating, when you are looking at your phone and the screen, even when it's off, there's an infrared camera that's watching all the time and it's blinking infrared light. Infrared light is one of the wavelengths that affects ourselves. So the fact that you can't see it doesn't mean it's not happening. So it should be face down next to your bed, and that may be different.
- [17:40]
Dr. Ann Shippy
Another thing I'm wondering, you know how the like you get ads for things you just talked talked about, if there's like a subconscious vigilance about being monitored, also keeps us a little bit on the more limbic survival part of the brain.
- [18:00]
Dave Asprey
So you're like a conspiracy theorist. I don't know. I, I didn't believe that because I'm a computer science guy, but there's abundant evidence, even in the patents and in the license agreements. Now I kind of wonder, but the fact that there's any wondering at all. We need more open source phone stuff. You know, Android used to be open source and technically it still is, but there's all sorts of crap in there that shouldn't be so who knows? So what I like to do is I like to tell ChatGPT to make up a bunch of crap to talk about so that that'll tell whoever's listening the wrong thing.
- [18:36]
Dr. Ann Shippy
Oh, that's so brilliant.
- [18:37]
Dave Asprey
Dirty data. That's the solution.
- [18:39]
Dr. Ann Shippy
Confusing.
- [18:40]
Dave Asprey
All right, we're both going to get ads for IVF clinics forever after this interview, right?
- [18:46]
Dr. Ann Shippy
We are.
- [18:50]
Dave Asprey
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- [20:55]
Dr. Ann Shippy
So in the book I talk about some of the risks that are evident from the data on ivf. That mother's health is impacted and that babies are not as healthy. It's really challenging to find good studies on this, prospective studies where they're really looking at controlled data. I think we're missing a lot of the data. There's so much anecdotal evidence on how hard the egg harvesting is on the mom. Pretty easy on the guy, but we like that. It doesn't make sense to give women such super physiological levels of hormones and pushing the ovaries that hard. So in my practice, what I see is that by really getting your body super healthy, you can be very, very fertile well into your mid-40s. I've got a patient right now who came to see me at 47. She'd had a couple kids years ago and met the love of her life and they really wanted to have a child together. So she's feeling this sense of urgency, like I need to get going. But I know what you do, Dr. Shippy, and I really want to check in and just see is it even safe for me to get pregnant. So we ran a bunch of tests on her. We found that she did have some toxin levels we needed to get down, mold and other things. We found her microbiome was out of balance that was creating some inflammation. So she worked on it for about three months, four months, and, and then she was supposed to come back and check and see if we had everything squared away. But they had one night where they were having fun and weren't protected and got pregnant right away at 47. And she's about six months in and and feeling great during this pregnancy. We don't have a healthy baby yet, but it's really looking good. So I really admire that. Right. Rather than feeling like, oh, my gosh, I need to go do something like IVF or something that's going to really give an insurance policy, I'm going to take care of my body, I'm going to collect data and then do things naturally. So it's really inspiring when I see These couples, late 30s, 40s, having their healthiest babies yet.
- [23:08]
Dave Asprey
That is why you wrote your book. It's funny, when I came out with the bulletproof diet, which is. I think it's sold about a million copies now, I had this couple walk up and this guy says, dave, you got my wife pregnant. And I'm like, oh, man, sorry about that. I said, what do you mean? They said, well, we were in fertile, and we started eating this way, and all of a sudden we didn't know we were fertile because they were taking glutathione, which helps toxins get out. And they were getting adequate fat and protein and the right kinds of fat. So the hormones were corrected, and suddenly fertility comes back and people, their cycle starts happening again. So doing IVF first is expensive, and it comes at a cost to the woman's health and almost certainly to the baby's health, too. And if you can't have a baby any other way, it's a blessing. It's a new technology. But I think there might be some kind of mitochondrial and spiritual things about IVF as well. You want to talk about those?
- [24:04]
Dr. Ann Shippy
So I want people to think about infertility as the body turning the engine light on. Yeah, it's like, check, engine. Do not proceed. Like, really do the work to figure out why Mother Nature's wisely saying, don't proceed. So the spiritual part could be. It could be physical, it could be spiritual, it could be emotional. So are you ready to take on the care of this new soul with your partner? Are you emotionally geared up for this? Because our children are definitely, often our greatest teachers ready for the lessons that.
- [24:46]
Dave Asprey
Our children are reading, whether you like it or not.
- [24:48]
Dr. Ann Shippy
And then are you physically ready to create a healthy baby? And if we start to think about the egg and the sperm as a time capsule, everything that you've been doing the years leading up and especially the six months before are going in this time capsule to the baby. So by thinking about it that way, the fertility issues can be a blessing. But what I'm most concerned about are the people that can get pregnant. But really shouldn't be because they got the heavy metals or the high toxicity burden. Their mitochondria aren't working quite well to pass on the energy structure for the baby. The microbiome imbalances that we're seeing, like, oh, my gosh, the bacterial imbalances, the fungal overgrowth, the parasites that people are often carrying unwittingly that are also driving inflammation. So these.
- [25:41]
Dave Asprey
Wow.
- [25:41]
Dr. Ann Shippy
These epigenetic markers are getting passed on through the sperm and the egg. And I think that's really part of what's predisposing children to having these health issues. The infertility a blessing because it's saying, hey, wait. But I really want everyone that's thinking about getting pregnant anytime to really start future proofing their fertility and not going along with this narrative of doing IVF as their backup plan.
- [26:08]
Dave Asprey
Yeah, ivf. The way you're describing it, it's like, oh, there's a check engine light. Let me drive faster instead of fixing it and then driving faster. There's also some really amazing biology that happens with pregnancy. So how many eggs does a woman have in ovaries? They're there at birth. Right?
- [26:29]
Dr. Ann Shippy
Right. So it's a set number of eggs.
- [26:33]
Dave Asprey
And this, it's like a million or something. Or 600,000. I forget. It's a large number. Right.
- [26:38]
Dr. Ann Shippy
I want to change this conversation about ovarian aging. There's some new research that just came out that showed that the mitochondria in the ovaries don't really age much. But then there's this whole group of data that's showing that the eggs themselves are aging. I don't think it's because they're aging that there's the genetic changes that are starting to happen. I think it's the environment that the ovaries are sitting in. Because what I see is that when we get the environment in the body healthier, the eggs do great regardless of how many you have.
- [27:15]
Dave Asprey
Well, there's the number of eggs, but if you have, let's say, a million eggs, I'm forgetting the exact number. It's been a while since I wrote that book. And you're going to have a few hundred eggs that get released over the course of your life. And you get one or two a month. Right. During your fertile years, you know, there.
- [27:34]
Dr. Ann Shippy
Can be four to six follicles that start to develop each month, but they may not all get released into, you know, the fallopian tubes and to. Yeah, so. So there's usually several each month that are starting to develop those Eggs are.
- [27:51]
Dave Asprey
Completely identical in all ways. They're not.
- [27:53]
Dr. Ann Shippy
Absolutely not.
- [27:54]
Dave Asprey
Exactly. So there's wisdom in Mother Nature where the mother's body says, given the toxin environment, given the sunshine, given the food, given the stress, given the safety, let me pick an egg that's the perfect egg for the world I live in. And if you're doing ivf, you're short circuiting that. So some eggs are going to come out, but the body doesn't get to pick which eggs. And I don't think that's ideal. But then how does the sperm get into the egg?
- [28:22]
Dr. Ann Shippy
With ivf, it's all in a test tube.
- [28:25]
Dave Asprey
It's in a test tube, but, I mean, they inject the sperm, right?
- [28:28]
Dr. Ann Shippy
Well, that's. That would be icsi. So I think they just put sperm.
- [28:32]
Dave Asprey
In, just let them swim around and.
- [28:33]
Dr. Ann Shippy
Let him swim around. And so there is still a little bit of selection, unless you're trying to avoid a particular genetic issue. So that. There are a couple of times where I think that IVF is appropriate. So one is in autosomal recessive genetic disorders. So, like, cystic fibrosis is such a great example of that. So if both parents are carriers for cystic fibrosis, they have a 25% chance of having a child with cystic fibrosis, which still does not have very good treatment. Yeah, most people die pretty early if they have cystic fibrosis.
- [29:08]
Dave Asprey
So you want to pick the right egg and the right sperm.
- [29:10]
Dr. Ann Shippy
So at that point where you want to do the genetic analysis and pick one of the eggs that doesn't have cystic fibrosis, you know, a care for both of them.
- [29:19]
Dave Asprey
Totally agree.
- [29:20]
Dr. Ann Shippy
Totally makes sense. The other situation is if the woman's tubes are blocked and can't be open, there is advancing technology to try to help open the tubes. If. If you have blocked tubes. Those are the two things that I can think of. I did just have a patient this week who had breast cancer at 27, and. And then they found that she had. That there was a genetic link to the breast cancer. And so when she saw the fertility specialist, they recommended she do the selection of the ovaries. She went through the IVF process and didn't get any eggs. And so she came to me and we're just getting started, but, you know, her body's been through cancer. There's something going on with her. We need to figure out what is driving these things and get her body healthy and then. And then let her conceive naturally. Somebody who's had breast cancer to go through the. The IVF treatment. This doesn't make sense.
- [30:23]
Dave Asprey
Got it. And to be really clear, if you need IVF and you want to have babies, that's a blessing. It's just we're saying doing it first without making yourself abundantly healthy is just a bad idea. Because if you're abundantly healthy and then you do ivf, you'll have better results. There's no downside to doing what's in your book, and everyone should do this. And your book isn't about just women, because guys also have to do something.
- [30:52]
Dr. Ann Shippy
It's so exciting for men to know that they can actually have a role in this and gift their future child with better health just by building that time capsule ahead. So avoiding the toxins, like not drinking alcohol, not smoking, not doing pot, all these things, and actually exercising can give you healthier sperm. Watching your blood sugar, eating a very low inflammation, high protein, good fat diet makes a tremendous difference in the health of the sperm. Meditating, sleeping well, all of these things can help make those epigenetics so much better.
- [31:31]
Dave Asprey
When you're working with women, you like to have three to six months before pregnancy, right?
- [31:37]
Dr. Ann Shippy
Or longer or longer.
- [31:38]
Dave Asprey
Yeah.
- [31:39]
Dr. Ann Shippy
I mean, ideally, it'd be like three years.
- [31:41]
Dave Asprey
Yeah. I actually agree. The longer you have, the more Runway you get. Most people, in my experience, are like, six months is a long time.
- [31:50]
Dr. Ann Shippy
And I love it when I get to work with couples where both the men and the women are prioritizing their health, because that's when I really see the magic happen.
- [32:00]
Dave Asprey
And what you probably can't say because you have a license that they can take away, but what that I can say because I'm an unlicensed biohacker here. Being healthier before you conceive will increase the IQ of your child.
- [32:15]
Dr. Ann Shippy
Absolutely. And I see that in practicality. And then there's strategic supplements to be taking.
- [32:23]
Dave Asprey
Ooh, okay, tell me about those.
- [32:25]
Dr. Ann Shippy
Phosphatidylcholine. Amazing. For brain development and gene expression. Astaxanthin actually has some great data for both men and women and fertility and future health of the baby.
- [32:39]
Dave Asprey
These are both classical longevity supplements, too. I'm on 12 milligrams of astaxanthin every day. Yeah.
- [32:45]
Dr. Ann Shippy
Coq 10 Mitoq. Great for sperm production. Great for ovarian health.
- [32:51]
Dave Asprey
Is this a longevity podcast or a fertility podcast? And these are, like, all the supplement companies I've had on. Because they work for mitochondria, Right?
- [32:58]
Dr. Ann Shippy
For mitochondria.
- [32:59]
Dave Asprey
Wow.
- [33:00]
Dr. Ann Shippy
L. Carnitine is classical. Like, we can see the changes happening. Spermidine. Absolutely.
- [33:07]
Dave Asprey
It's named Spermidine. It has to be good, right?
- [33:09]
Dr. Ann Shippy
Has to be good, right?
- [33:12]
Dave Asprey
My gosh. So we get both partners on it. So if a woman. You like to have that three, six months or even a year, how much time does a guy need to do it?
- [33:21]
Dr. Ann Shippy
So this is fascinating. It's a conversation on what you're. It's almost like risk tolerance. Like how much risk do you want to take in whether your baby's healthy or not? So at a minimum, three months, because it's 74 days to develop a sperm, but really 90 when you look at the whole milieu.
- [33:39]
Dave Asprey
So still like three months for guys.
- [33:40]
Dr. Ann Shippy
Yeah, three months for guys. But the exciting thing for men because it's so much easier to measure in women. There's a study that they did recently, it came out after the book, where they took men and they put them on a highly processed diet for three weeks. And then the other group on a healthy food diet. Right. Very unprocessed diet. Then they gave a little crossover period and then they switched groups in just three weeks. I thought this experiment would fail. If I had read the details of the experiment, how they were going to do it, I would be like, no, you got to do it longer. In three weeks, they could start to see changes in the sperm health and hormone levels.
- [34:20]
Dave Asprey
Wow. So we call it the impossible sperm diet, like impossible meat. So don't eat ultra processed foods because they're just bad. If they're bad for your swimmers, they're bad for your mitochondria. That's just how it works.
- [34:35]
Dr. Ann Shippy
And so looking at that, I'm starting to think we should use the epigenetic sperm tests as a marker for longevity and health.
- [34:43]
Dave Asprey
100%.
- [34:44]
Dr. Ann Shippy
Instead of like a cholesterol, let's actually have an annual physical exam that it truly shows function, not just a biological marker.
- [34:55]
Dave Asprey
I think you might be able to sell that one, Ann, because it would involve collecting sperm and guys are generally not opposed to that.
- [35:00]
Dr. Ann Shippy
Okay, good. But then. Yeah, so there's a sperm test that they can look at some of the epigenetics. And so we can implement a plan for a month or three months and then check and see what's changed. And in very interesting detail compared to some of the other biological markers.
- [35:19]
Dave Asprey
Wow. Do you ever do epigenetic DNA methylation tests, the same ones we use for longevity?
- [35:26]
Dr. Ann Shippy
Yes.
- [35:27]
Dave Asprey
And how does your measured age is in like a true age or similar? How does that affect fertility?
- [35:33]
Dr. Ann Shippy
I think there's a pretty good Correlation that, and it's harder to put together the health of the child data. But it also looks like it's probably a pretty good marker for whether you're going to have a healthy child or not.
- [35:46]
Dave Asprey
I believe it. If your biology says you're 30 and you're 50, you probably have healthier babies than if your biology says you're 70 when you're 50.
- [35:54]
Dr. Ann Shippy
Yeah. And I really think that these things should become more standard of care so that we can get ahead of this children's health epidemic. I mean, if we have markers for inflammation, if we have epigenetic markers, if we have toxin loads that are high, then we really do need to be pressing the pause button until we've addressed those things. I mean, there's nothing more devastating than having a healthy, unhealthy child. I think it's hard to deal with infertility, having dealt with it myself, but having a unhealthy child is really.
- [36:28]
Dave Asprey
It's heartbreaking.
- [36:29]
Dr. Ann Shippy
It's heartbreaking.
- [36:31]
Dave Asprey
So a lot of people sort of believe aging is inevitable and you're just going to be in the hospital in, you know, a diaper and tubes and a wheelchair. That doesn't happen to everyone. It's not inevitable, and it's not random. And having an unhealthy child, there's a lot of things you can do to radically lower the risk. Right. So it's not something that just happens. It's something you can influence heavily. And just knowing that. Okay, well, then of course you want to do that, because everyone who decides to have children, we want the healthiest children we could ever have. And, I mean, I know the people who come to you are really serious about it. And I talk with people all the time who really. They do research and they're planning and saying, if we're going to do this, we're going to do it like biohackers. We're going to measure what we can. We don't have to be excessive, but let's get the plastic out of the house. Let's stop having air fresheners and weird candles and fabric softener and just clean things up a bit. And that actually means you can have a smarter child and a stronger child and a healthier child, but your risk of having a really unhealthy child, which is economically devastating, it goes way down. So in my mind, it's an obvious thing to do if you know it's possible.
- [37:46]
Dr. Ann Shippy
Well said. Thank you. That's the gist of all of this. Like, set the red light. Don't get pregnant yet? Like, I'd like, I just like everybody to put a pause on it, do this work for at least three months and then get to the best place possible and then start.
- [38:03]
Dave Asprey
Now, I know that this is going to be a hypothetical, but how much do you think you could reduce the risk of having an unhealthy child if you took three months and cleaned up your environment and did the stuff we just talked about? Like, what percentage of decrease in risk?
- [38:18]
Dr. Ann Shippy
I would say 50 to 75%. Like, if you really do this well, like, you follow. Like I've got a checklist in the book.
- [38:26]
Dave Asprey
So, so, okay. And you're saying, again, this is not the we, we can't have a study of this. But your estimation as an expert in the field is that if people do what it says in your book, that they could reduce the risk of having a seriously unhealthy child by 50 to 75%. Okay, that matches my estimation as well. I'm not a chemical engineer from IBM and a medical doctor, but I know a thing or two. And yeah, it's that big of a risk. And the risk of having unhealthy children is higher than it's ever been.
- [38:53]
Dr. Ann Shippy
It's alarming.
- [38:55]
Dave Asprey
Yeah.
- [38:55]
Dr. Ann Shippy
I feel so much relief that I have two young men. I have a 24 and 28 year old. And because we've been having these conversations, they both want children at some point. They're not anywhere near close, but they're actually planting more seeds with me on who needs this book. Like, they are both starting to think, okay, this is going to be matter to me and my future wife and my family and I. And they're starting now like they are already starting on not just on their own longevity, but on how to have a healthy baby.
- [39:28]
Dave Asprey
Wow, that's, that's intense. And if you are young, listening to the show and there's a lot of people in their 20s who listen because it's so cool. The things that make old people young make young people powerful. That's why biohacking, you come to the conference, there's 18 year olds and there's 88 year olds and they're all hanging out, going, same tool, set different goals. And so if you're there and saying, I know I want to do this someday, how do you line up your biology and what's the side effect? Your testosterone's higher, your body works better, you look better, you're smarter, you're faster, you're less anxious, less depressed. Oh, and you're more affordable. It all goes Together and you get.
- [40:03]
Dr. Ann Shippy
A healthier baby when you decide to have one without the stress of worrying, like so many people in this 20 something, 30 something, they're so stressed about whether they're going to be able to have kids and whether they're going to be healthy. So you can relax a little bit.
- [40:20]
Dave Asprey
Yep. It is something you have great control over and sometimes you don't. But the vast majority of the time you're way more in charge than you think. Okay, can we talk about thyroid? When people run their Axo Health labs. This is part of Upgrade labs, guys. You can order the important biohacking lab tests from Axo Health. And so I've got a good amount of data now. Everyone has a thyroid problem. It's worse now than it was 10 years ago. I've been saying if you're over about 35, get a thyroid test because it's becoming a problem and it makes you old. But what does low thyroid do for fertility?
- [40:58]
Dr. Ann Shippy
Let me back up a little bit. So I do detailed thyroid screening on pretty much every patient.
- [41:06]
Dave Asprey
Good.
- [41:06]
Dr. Ann Shippy
Every year.
- [41:07]
Dave Asprey
Good.
- [41:07]
Dr. Ann Shippy
Because you can start to detect when it's going to go off before people have big symptoms. And screening for the thyroid antibodies often.
- [41:16]
Dave Asprey
Which is Hashimoto's.
- [41:18]
Dr. Ann Shippy
Yes. So because our world is getting more and more toxic, we are seeing more thyroid problems. Because our food is getting less nutrient dense, we are seeing more thyroid. I think about the thyroid as being the canary for a lot of people's bodies. So it's just saying, hey, we're, we've got an issue here. And if we detect it early, then we can actually get it healthy again without having to take thyroid hormone.
- [41:45]
Dave Asprey
Yeah.
- [41:47]
Dr. Ann Shippy
You just made me think about one of my. Of course, my patients are my biggest teachers on what works and what doesn't work. And I had this patient years ago that was. She'd gone through IVF a couple of times. No fertility doctor would touch her. She went to New York, she went to la and they were like, you're done. You just need to adopt. And so she came to see me, she heard about me. And we found that her thyroid was off.
- [42:17]
Dave Asprey
Oh my gosh. They never caught that.
- [42:18]
Dr. Ann Shippy
They didn't catch that.
- [42:19]
Dave Asprey
That's like low hanging fruit.
- [42:21]
Dr. Ann Shippy
And she had some autoimmunity brewing. It was borderline. But she also had some undiagnosed gluten issues. She had some toxic overload and some microbiome imbalance balance. So we worked about six months. We got her tuned up, she got healthy and she got pregnant. So then what was so interesting is while she was still nursing that child, she was so used to not being fertile, she got pregnant again while she was nursing with twins.
- [42:51]
Dave Asprey
Oh, my gosh. Her body was ready.
- [42:53]
Dr. Ann Shippy
Her body was ready. And she did tune up. She came to see me after pregnancy and got tuned up as well, like figuring out what the body got depleted in and built things back. So then she didn't learn her lesson. She got pregnant again.
- [43:08]
Dave Asprey
Oh, my gosh.
- [43:09]
Dr. Ann Shippy
She was nursing twins. So she ended up with four. Under four after being.
- [43:13]
Dave Asprey
And how old was she?
- [43:15]
Dr. Ann Shippy
She was late 30s when she started.
- [43:16]
Dave Asprey
Late 30s and infertile and had four kids.
- [43:20]
Dr. Ann Shippy
Four kids.
- [43:20]
Dave Asprey
And having a kid when you're nursing is hard because the body's not quite right.
- [43:23]
Dr. Ann Shippy
I have another one who's actually pregnant. She's eight months pregnant right now. Got pregnant nursing her second one. So. Yeah. So one of the things that I start out in the book is to ask people to pick some kind of contraception. Basically use condoms during this period because you're going to get more fertile. I've had so many, even people coming to me to prepare for pregnancy where their normal methods of birth control don't work. So the pull up method and the rhythm method do not work when you get super fertile, even when you're supposed to be the advanced maternal age in your 30s.
- [43:59]
Dave Asprey
I am a single man. I do not want to hear this. No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
- [44:04]
Dave Asprey (Podcast Outro Voice)
Yeah.
- [44:04]
Dr. Ann Shippy
If you're, if you're dating somebody, that's.
- [44:07]
Dave Asprey
Who'S a biohacker or super healthy.
- [44:09]
Dr. Ann Shippy
Yep.
- [44:10]
Dave Asprey
Yeah. Fertility is. It does go way up. Those methods are still like 80% effective at least, right? I mean, there's great research on the rhythm method because you know when you're going to be ovulating.
- [44:21]
Dr. Ann Shippy
No, I've seen it fail multiple times.
- [44:23]
Dave Asprey
Yeah. Just as a percentage. It fails. It's not as reliable as a condom, but it's better than not pulling out. I've heard that right before perimenopause kicks in or maybe during perimenopause, that in kind of a last gasp to get pregnant, that women will release an extra egg off cycle and there aren't necessarily ovulation signs for that.
- [44:43]
Dr. Ann Shippy
And I think that can happen anytime, honestly.
- [44:45]
Dave Asprey
Oh, that's scary.
- [44:46]
Dr. Ann Shippy
I know. Especially when the body's like, yeah, yeah.
- [44:50]
Dave Asprey
But I was like, it's time. Okay.
- [44:54]
Dr. Ann Shippy
What do you think makes the perfect snack?
- [44:56]
Dave Asprey (Podcast Outro Voice)
Hmm.
- [44:57]
Dave Asprey
It's gotta be when I'm really craving it and it's convenient.
- [44:59]
Dr. Ann Shippy
Could you be more specific?
- [45:00]
Dave Asprey
When it's cravinient okay.
- [45:02]
Dave Asprey (Podcast Outro Voice)
Like a freshly baked cookie made with.
- [45:04]
Dave Asprey
Real butter, available right down the street at am, pm Or a savory breakfast.
- [45:08]
Dr. Ann Shippy
Sandwich I can grab in just a second at am, pm. I'm seeing a pattern here.
- [45:11]
Dave Asprey
Well, yeah, we're talking about what I.
- [45:13]
Dr. Ann Shippy
Crave, which is anything from am, pm. What more could you want?
- [45:16]
Dave Asprey
Stop by AM pm where the snacks and drinks are perfectly crisp, craveable and convenient. That's cravenience ampm. Too much good stuff. Now, when I was 26, I was fat. I had all kinds of problems going on, and I went to the doctor and my thyroid was almost undetectable. And when I went on thyroid, it was like, oh, somebody turned the lights back on. It was such a big deal. But as you were saying, I've been on thyroid now that's like 25 years. But about two years ago, I was just feeling a little bit less energy than normal, and I did my annual exo, and lo and behold, my thyroid. I need a little bit more thyroid for whatever reason. And when I went back on, I was like, boom, the energy comes back. So I love the annual checkup idea because this controls energy metabolism, and fertility is dependent on energy metabolism. But there's another thing that I think is worth talking about. You have some kind of fearful guys like Peter Attia, who's out there saying once you go on testosterone, you can. You can never turn your natural production back on. It's going to ruin your fertility. Now, I also went on testosterone at 26, and I've been taking testosterone for all but a couple years of testing out the bulletproof diet. I went off to see what would happen. Number one, with 100% certainty, you can tell the body to restart testosterone production if you stop taking testosterone. So when people say it's impossible, it's because they don't know how to do it. It's not impossible, and it's been done over and over. So I did have two kids in my mid-30s when my partner was 39 and 42, while taking testosterone, because you take other things with it. What is the effect of low testosterone on fertility?
- [46:59]
Dr. Ann Shippy
Yeah, low testosterone definitely impacts sperm count. Okay, so you've got to get to the root cause of why the testosterone is low. And usually there's some kind of toxic exposure.
- [47:10]
Dave Asprey
For me, it was mold.
- [47:11]
Dr. Ann Shippy
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So what do you add with it?
- [47:15]
Dave Asprey
You can do either HCG or Clomid and Arimidex, but Clomid's the most important. And what I do these days is I use Crizan, which is an herb. And there's another one called Fadogia. That would probably be enough. But you might need a little bit of Clomid, because for guys, we need our FSH and LH hormones to be high enough. And it's true taking testosterone can reduce those. But the new types of testosterone. Guys. Daveasprey.com testosterone has the whole podcast on it. The oral testosterone doesn't aromatize, so that doesn't have the same risks. And that's what I'm using now.
- [47:52]
Dr. Ann Shippy
So the conservative medical doctor side of me prefers that men wait until after they've had their children to go on testosterone.
- [48:01]
Dave Asprey
Unless they're super low. Right.
- [48:03]
Dr. Ann Shippy
But then I want to try to get them to make the testosterone on their own.
- [48:07]
Dave Asprey
You should fix it naturally anyway. But if it doesn't work, then I think going on it because you don't want to be a dad who's low T when you're conceiving. And if the natural ways of raising T don't work, what's the right choice?
- [48:20]
Dr. Ann Shippy
I don't know that I've had anybody that. We couldn't get it up naturally.
- [48:23]
Dave Asprey
So you fixed Ed as well.
- [48:25]
Dr. Ann Shippy
Yeah.
- [48:28]
Dave Asprey
You just skewed that one up.
- [48:32]
Dr. Ann Shippy
I'm trying to think. I want to be accurate here, but. But, you know, usually there's something that's going on in the body that we can. It's. You know, to me, the body is shutting down hormones for a reason, not just randomly aging. You know, sometimes there's sleep apnea or.
- [48:53]
Dave Asprey
Or sleep issues will do.
- [48:55]
Dr. Ann Shippy
Yeah, sleep issues will really do it.
- [48:58]
Dave Asprey
Can I just say that you are so smart, like, you're one of my favorite doctors because you were a chemical engineer, you understand systems in a way that most schools just can't teach. So, like, well, there's a reason. We'll just, like, go through all the processes and find this one and find this one and find this one. Like, that is so rare. I think that's why you have such success with your. With your patients.
- [49:16]
Dr. Ann Shippy
And it's been part of my own journey. Like, my body has been my greatest teacher. I've been through hard things, like what happened to me where I felt like I was dying before I went to med school. I developed a couple of autoimmune disorders after I got out of medical school. Then I got into toxic mold and had ALS like, symptoms. And then I had adult onset asthma.
- [49:38]
Dave Asprey
Wow. She went through it.
- [49:40]
Dr. Ann Shippy
I've been through. But what my body has taught me is if I just keep digging for the clues and Running the little mini experiments that it can heal from really hard things. And so I hold that space for my patients too. That even if you're starting to lose hope that you can heal from something and you've been the same way like you.
- [50:02]
Dave Asprey
I've had everything wrong with me. That's why I'm such an expert. Because I was going to die or be disabled without it. It's. It's kind of a good teacher.
- [50:08]
Dr. Ann Shippy
Right. And then we're just, we love. I think that's part of why we're such good friends too is like I continuously learn, love learning and I get to learn from you and have these.
- [50:19]
Dave Asprey
Amazing conversations about and guys, Anna and I have dinner at least once a month. We both live in Austin and we usually go to the well and sometimes True Foods kitchen and we just talk about the nerdiest doctor like biochemical pathways and toxins. And I always look forward to that because it's not. A lot of people can think of it that way. So I appreciate that.
- [50:41]
Dr. Ann Shippy
I feel like we're building this five dimensional puzzle of model of what humans are and how we work like mind, body, spirit, so that we can really bring the best to the people that we care about and help humanity in this. In a really tough place with human health. Like I got to go to Tanzania a year ago and even the tribal people are starting to deal with some of these western illnesses where they're seeing, the mothers are dying with preeclampsia and they're starting to see autism. And you know, things are changing globally. The, the birth rate in Korea and China, they're dry, it's dropping.
- [51:28]
Dave Asprey
So the whole world is way below replacement. Right. Like we have a population crash coming that may be the biggest threat to the future.
- [51:37]
Dr. Ann Shippy
And, and then we can't afford our healthcare anymore. Like it's so expensive to have insurance and to. And to even try to get help. Right.
- [51:46]
Dave Asprey
Do you even take insurance in your practice?
- [51:48]
Dr. Ann Shippy
No, I can't.
- [51:49]
Dave Asprey
No. No good doctor can afford to take insurance because insurance companies are assholes. So as far as I'm concerned, we have to just get rid of insurance companies and we need to certainly make it so you're not required to have it. And so if you're listening to this going, but they're going to protect me. You can get catastrophic coverage if you're in a car accident. But to call your insurance company and ask if they're going to cover a portion of an overpriced drug and then take a massive cut of it without telling You. It's dumb. So Mark Cuban is doing some things to get rid of these PBMs that are driving up costs. So the US is terrible costs, but in the rest of the world, like, I was in Dubai and you can buy any drug that's not addictive. You go to the pharmacy and like, yeah, this is what you use it for. And you can just buy it.
- [52:36]
Dr. Ann Shippy
And it's pennies on a dollar that we spend here.
- [52:38]
Dave Asprey
Yeah. And Dubai is not a cheap city. Yeah, Right. But if you go to the uk, like, you can't buy Neosporin prescription. That's. That's become a very restrictive country. But I just, I think we've got to fix that model because it's. That's driving costs of pregnancy, too. I know that your book the Preconception Revolution is like, what do you do before you get pregnant so that you're really healthy? Mine covered the preconception and what do you do while pregnant? And up to. And including birth. And the cost of birth in a hospital is ridiculous because being pregnant is not a medical emergency. If you have a normal pregnancy, we didn't need hospitals for that. So I caught both my kids at home in warm water and we had an emergency room doctor on call because their mom was one, and we had a doula and a midwife and a plan to go to the hospital if we needed it. And the cost of that was 20% of what the hospital is going to charge. But insurance didn't want to pay for it. So we yelled at the insurance company and said, do you want, Fine, we'll go to Stanford. We're going to insist on everything that's going to cost you $75,000 or you can give us 10 grand. And it was about 10 grand to do it, including renting a birthing tub. So it's actually something that I think reduces risk. In a healthy pregnancy, you reduce a lot of risks about stress to the baby. So I know that's out of the topic of your book, but it's just worth noting.
- [54:05]
Dr. Ann Shippy
Well, but I love this because part of what I want couples to do is really to have these conversations before they even conceive. Like, what. What are we? What's important to us? How do we want to do things? How do we want to parent? What's. What's the path forward? So it's great to even bring these things up and have the conversations. I. I ended up with hospital births for both of mine and in teaching, teaching a teaching hospital for the first one. And I was so intent on having natural childbirth. But the anesthesiologist didn't believe me, and he just kept coming in and pugging me.
- [54:39]
Dave Asprey
They really harassed they women. You have to have a birthing plan and like a policeman there to be like, you're not allowed. Yeah. And I do see that. That shifting in some of the more natural birthing centers, where there's a little.
- [54:50]
Dr. Ann Shippy
Bit less pressure, there's so much better options.
- [54:52]
Dave Asprey
Now let's talk a little bit about the spiritual side of things. And I love it that you cover this. And we'll start with maybe more psychological, emotional, but bordering on spiritual. If you're afraid of pregnancy and the thought of having a baby not in a hospital terrifies you, you have trauma, and maybe you should do something about that to improve your fertility. So if someone's afraid of getting pregnant, will that affect their ability to get pregnant?
- [55:20]
Dr. Ann Shippy
Absolutely. And it can affect the health of the future child. There's information now that shows for men who've had PTSD or trauma, there's epigenetic changes. So how the genes are being dialed up or dialed down, they get passed onto the baby.
- [55:37]
Dave Asprey
Yes.
- [55:38]
Dr. Ann Shippy
So that's why I love the 40 years of Zen and doing the trauma work and really getting your brain state into a alpha theta kind of brain state. Instead of being in the high beta run from the tiger limbic state, stressed.
- [55:55]
Dave Asprey
Parents are less fertile. Because if mother nature thinks there's a famine or something's chasing you because you're over training, then it's gonna say it's a bad time to have a baby because something will eat it.
- [56:07]
Dr. Ann Shippy
So I really ask people to at least do some type of meditation practice so that they can and to make some life choices. Right. Like, I look back at my situation, probably wasn't great for my second child and the epigenetic changes that I passed on to him by being pregnant during residency. And then for my older one, I did my first rotations in medical school when I was eight and nine months pregn. Um, those are not the best choices for them epigenetically from a stress standpoint. And I. You know what? I don't know. I can definitely see the impacts of stress on them.
- [56:47]
Dave Asprey
And this is a call that if you have someone in your family who's pregnant or a friend or you just see a pregnant person at the store, just be a little kind. Right. Women actually need to be cared for when they're pregnant and not running everywhere and doing everything, even if you're capable of it and even if you want to do it. That's not what's best for the baby. So this is a time to kind of go inward. And this is why hormones change during pregnancy. They make you want to nest and make you want to do things, and suddenly you want to do things that would have been inane for you before. But this is Mother Nature preparing you to just be like, it's time to grow a baby. Not time to run a marathon and do a startup up. You can. It's just there's a cost. And acknowledging that and making pregnancy a sacred experience instead of a medical emergency would go a long way. 18 months or so before I had my kids, their mother had a dream. And it was such a vivid dream that she actually opened the door to see, like, why there were kids standing outside the door in a rainstorm. And of course, there were no kids there. But the dream was so vivid. And it was an older girl and a younger boy holding hands saying, hurry up, Mommy, we're waiting.
- [58:12]
Dr. Ann Shippy
I've never heard this story.
- [58:14]
Dave Asprey
Yeah. And so many women have these intuitive knowings. In fact, it's normal. And it's in ancient literature, it's in stories. And women who dream the gender of their baby are right the vast majority of the time. Right. So there's some kind of thing going on here. What do you think it is?
- [58:36]
Dr. Ann Shippy
Well, I think humans are metaphysical, not just physical. And are you allowed to say that.
- [58:42]
Dave Asprey
With a chemical engineering and medical degree?
- [58:44]
Dr. Ann Shippy
Yes, because I'm also.
- [58:48]
Dave Asprey
You're also metaphysical. Exactly.
- [58:52]
Dr. Ann Shippy
I hear this story often that men and women feel the souls, feel the spirits of the baby before they're even conceived. And that's part of. Actually, my mission with this book is that I have an awareness around souls that are trying to come into physical form, that are very bright lights and need very strong bodies to be able to. To function in the human form.
- [59:27]
Dave Asprey
So I know you're making superhumans is what you're doing.
- [59:30]
Dr. Ann Shippy
Well, it feels like there are these. What I see in my practice and what I feel is happening is that there are couples that are really wanting to have children that are just ready to change how humans are doing things. Be kinder, gentler, more collaborative.
- [59:55]
Dave Asprey
Time for an upgrade.
- [59:56]
Dr. Ann Shippy
Time for a human upgrade. Where. I mean, I've pretty much stopped watching the news or reading the news. Yeah. And I'll get my news from my kids or somebody else, because what's going on on the planet is very. It's just so disturbing, you know, year to year, month to month, doesn't seem like it's getting Any easier to be on the planet. But it feels like there's this shift that's happening, and I think these parents that are open to doing the work to prepare for their babies are going to receive some of these children that are their operating systems, how they do things, how they see things are going.
- [60:42]
Dave Asprey
To be different and different in a good way and maybe not in an autistic way.
- [60:48]
Dr. Ann Shippy
Right.
- [60:49]
Dave Asprey
And some people probably just got triggered by that. Number one, if you can be triggered, it means you're carrying a loaded gun and my finger's on the trigger. So. No, no, no. Go get a therapist. Autism isn't something that you want. And having had it and reversed it, even an autistic brain sees the world very, very differently and sometimes in a beneficial way. But it comes with a bunch of health problems that you don't want. So let's have the babies with special brains that can see things and sense things and have a better ability to connect. And that don't come with all the health problems that come with being on the spectrum.
- [61:20]
Dr. Ann Shippy
Exactly.
- [61:21]
Dave Asprey
In tantra and in a lot of esoteric work, I think that we've probably both studied, and I just say that because we're good friends, there's such a thing as a conscious conception where both parents have done the work. And I did experience one of those where, like, everything was perfect and you just knew. How common is that? Do people talk about that? Is that part of your worldview where, like, tonight's the night and you just, you. You feel a presence coming in. In the room and things like that?
- [61:51]
Dr. Ann Shippy
You know, I'm hearing it more and more.
- [61:53]
Dave Asprey
Yeah.
- [61:53]
Dr. Ann Shippy
Like, especially when people have really prepared.
- [61:56]
Dave Asprey
Yeah.
- [61:56]
Dr. Ann Shippy
Their bodies, they. They have this sense, okay, we're really ready to welcome this baby, and we're ready to welcome the soul into our family. There is this knowing and this, I think, this kind of spark of light. If you actually watch the video on it, a sperm and an egg, there.
- [62:13]
Dave Asprey
Really is a spark of life.
- [62:15]
Dr. Ann Shippy
Spark of life.
- [62:15]
Dave Asprey
Yeah.
- [62:16]
Dr. Ann Shippy
I think when you're really tuned in and your body's in good balance and you're in balance with. And partnership, there's this knowing.
- [62:26]
Dave Asprey
There is an inner knowing. And my experience has been that even guru level people with mystical powers, when they start doing the longevity and the biohacking techniques. In fact, one guy in his 80s, author of Big books many people have read, recalled me once with tears in his eyes, and he said, dave, thank you for those supplements, because I got my powers back. Like, I was fading. And having worked with a lot of shamans and energy workers turn up the mitochondria, and their ability to do their magic goes through the roof. And so it would make sense that if both parents take care of their health, they do what's in their preconception revolution. They do these things, they will become a. We'll call it a better antenna for reality. And they can have a healthier, stronger baby, and they can maybe have more awareness along the way.
- [63:17]
Dr. Ann Shippy
And I think the better you feel, the stronger that your biology is, and the more resilient, the more you trust yourself and you trust your intuition, and then the more you trust yourself and your intuition and your partner's doing the same work, the more you can trust and know them. And then that's when the magic happens.
- [63:41]
Dave Asprey
And that brings us to the kind of final part of what I want to talk about. If a couple is having problems in their relationship and decides that they want to have babies, how frugal will they be?
- [63:54]
Dr. Ann Shippy
Well, that's a loaded question. There's. If you're lucky, the end check engine light will be on. Because if there's a rocky, sticky part of the relationship and you add a baby, it's not going to get better, it's going to get worse. So doing. Making the effort to really figure out the relationship part. And that's why I start with that with the book. So you might be fertile, but it's not a good idea. I have both to partners individually kind of look at, like, how's. How are things really going individually and then together and. And some. I actually just had somebody come and tell me, hey, I. I decided, no, like, I'm not gonna have kids because this is not the environment that I want to bring a child into.
- [64:47]
Dave Asprey
Yeah, you want to feel connected, and then you want to feel powerful because your health works. But the other ingredient is you want to feel safe. Life. And maybe safety is more for women, and for men, it's more peace. But regardless, you need all of that. And when those happen, that's when you have these incredibly healthy babies. So sometimes you might want to go to a relationship coach or therapist, and sometimes you might want to go see Dr. Shippy and get your mitochondria working your hormones working your toxic toxins out. Right? And it's that combination where you line those things up. They have to be perfect. They just want to be mostly lined up. That's where magic happens.
- [65:31]
Dr. Ann Shippy
Like, there's so much conversation about running out of time. You're getting old, you're losing your eggs, you're all the things. But I want to dismantle that. You have time. It's so important to lay this really solid groundwork so that you can really show up as the parent that you want to be and really nourish and nurture your partner and your child the way that you dream of.
- [65:57]
Dave Asprey
Yeah. If your relationship or your environment are dysregulating, you, fertility will be tough and parenting will be tough. So you probably should address those sooner rather than later. Right?
- [66:06]
Dr. Ann Shippy
Yeah. And you can do things in parallel. You know, you can do the relationship coaching or the. Or the inner work that you need to do and. And be working on your physical part at the same time. Time.
- [66:17]
Dave Asprey
100%. Dr. Ann Shippy, you are brilliant. Thank you for your friendship and thank you for writing the preconception revolution. I thought I was going to have to write another version of the better baby book until you told me that you were working on this and allowed me to help you out with some conversations and all because this is a meaningful book and the world needs it a hundred times more than when I did the better baby book. So, guys, this is not marketed as a longevity book, but it is a longevity book, and it is something that is just critically important. And if you think we're full of crap on almost everything, if what we said that you could reduce the chances of having a seriously unhealthy baby by 50 to 75% by taking a bunch of these steps. Even if there's a 50% chance we're wrong, you still got 25%. There's no losing from doing these practices because it changes the quality of your life. Even if you change your mind about having kids, like, this is part of the plan for being just a better human being because you can show it better in your life and in the world and probably for parenting, which is a whole lot of work. Talk about that some other time. The next book. Yeah, exactly. And I just appreciate you so much, appreciate your work in the world and the way you handle patients and your.
- [67:39]
Dr. Ann Shippy
You're.
- [67:40]
Dave Asprey
You're brilliant. So thank you.
- [67:41]
Dr. Ann Shippy
Oh, thank you, Dave. Thanks so much for your friendship and thanks for helping to get this out into the world so that we can see a healthier next generation.
- [67:49]
Dave Asprey
And did you do a water birth for the preconception revolution?
- [67:54]
Dr. Ann Shippy
I did. I did. It feels like it's been birthed. It has its own energy. It has its own life. I feel like I have a newborn and it's so exciting. I can't wait to see what it develops into.
- [68:06]
Dave Asprey
What a great way to end it. That's really funny. See you next time on the Human Upgrade Podcast.
- [68:18]
Dave Asprey (Podcast Outro Voice)
A Human Upgrade, formerly Bulletproof Radio, was created and is hosted by Dave Asprey. The information contained in this podcast is provided for informational purposes only and is not intended for the purposes of diagnosing, treating, curing, or preventing any disease. Before using any products referenced on the podcast, consult with your healthcare provider carefully read all labels and heed all directions and cautions that accompany the products. Information found or received through the podcast should not be used in place of a consultation or advice from a healthcare provider. If you suspect you have a medical problem or should you have any healthcare questions, please promptly call or see your healthcare provider. This podcast, including Dave Asprey and the producers, disclaim responsibility for any possible adverse effects from the use of information contained herein. Opinions of guests are the right own and this podcast does not endorse or accept responsibility for statements made by guests. This podcast does not make any representations or warranties about guest qualifications or credibility. This podcast may contain paid endorsements and advertisements for products or services. Individuals on this podcast may have a direct or indirect financial interest in products or services referred to herein. This podcast is owned by Bulletproof Media.