[00:00:01] Luke: What's the origin of your last name, Shippy?

[00:00:07] Ann: It's my former husband's last name, and it's English.

[00:00:13] Luke: Ah, okay.

[00:00:14] Ann: My maiden name was Nacke, and that was mostly German. And my mom's last name was also-- it was Pettinger. And it turns out that Pettinger has a Luxembourg base and I might be able to get my Luxembourg citizenship next year.

[00:00:32] Luke: What? That's so cool.

[00:00:35] Ann: I'm so excited. A bunch of my cousins and I are all starting the process together and a couple have already completed it because of our great grandparents living there and coming to the United States at the right time. Supposedly we can just reclaim our citizenship.

[00:00:51] Luke: That's epic. I've always wanted an extra passport. You just never know what the new Rome is going to be. You know what I mean? Sometimes I look at the trajectory of this country and I'm just like, "Ah, I might've been here for 55 years of the decent years. But if I decide I want to be somewhere else, it would be nice."

[00:01:10] That's funny you mentioned that because my paternal grandmother, I guess she was half Swedish, so her parents were from Sweden and she was obsessed with the family lineage and traveled there and went to the old churches and researched everything. But I don't know where any of that information is at this point because everyone's dead on that side.

[00:01:30] Ann: I bet you could find it.

[00:01:32] Luke: But that's interesting. It'd be pretty sweet to get an EU passport.

[00:01:34] Ann: Yes.

[00:01:35] Luke: Cool.

[00:01:36] Ann: I highly recommend it if you can find a way in. And some of these countries are actually really interested in having you.

[00:01:45] Luke: Cool. So tell me about your own healing journey. I always find, but it's common that when a medical provider really gets into their work after going to school and building a practice and so on, the ones that continue to learn and innovate-- I know you're obsessed with new studies.

[00:02:09] We're talking about your book and you're like, "Ah, there's been new stuff that came out after I turned the book in." But I find that practitioners that I gravitate toward and like to talk to are usually ones that have overcome some challenges themselves. I think many of us get passion when we've suffered in some way or had a hard time, and we sort it out and figure it out. It's like you're compelled to share that with people. So what's your health journey been like?

[00:02:36] Ann: Yeah, in fact, I brought this up with my new patient today. I was on a totally different trajectory than medicine. I was a chemical engineer working for IBM and so I was on this fast track at IBM. I was 10 years in, reporting to the plant manager, went on vacation, and suddenly my life was very different. I really couldn't digest food and I got so depleted that people thought I had cancer. I was so sick and I went from doctor to doctor to doctor.

[00:03:29] Kept getting offered Band-Aids. Tons of like colonoscopies and EDDs and all kinds of radiology testing and what testing they could offer me. But all they could tell me was that I had an inflammation in my gut and had no real answers for me. So then that really started my journey in applying the mind, body, spirit part of me to what it was going to take to heal. And so I went and saw an acupuncturist, a nutritionist. I read some books on Ayurveda, and I saw this--

[00:04:05] Luke: If she's bothering you, you can move her.

[00:04:10] Ann: She's great. She's great. She's tuning in.

[00:04:13] Luke: For those listening, not watching, Cookie is giving her kisses on her knees, which for some reason embarrasses me and I'm not the one doing it.

[00:04:20] Ann: I'm going back to the trauma of this. Knowing my body was broken, nobody could help me, and having to figure it out myself. And so I finally pieced together what I needed to do to heal, and I just got so fascinated with how the body worked that I woke up in the middle of the night one night and decided to go to medical school so that I could do medicine differently. So it's a little bit unusual. I wanted to get this background and this thing that didn't solve my problems.

[00:04:52] Luke: At what age were you, if you don't mind me asking, when--

[00:04:54] Ann: When I started medical school, I was 32.

[00:04:56] Luke: Wow. That's exceedingly rare that anyone is motivated to go back to school. Especially that kind of schooling. It's not like, oh, liberal arts, I want to study Shakespeare because it's fun.

[00:05:09] Ann: And looking back at my 32-year-old self, I'm amazed that she had the courage to make such a drastic change. I had this career path that looked so great. And it was really going to be 10 years of my life that I'm giving up. And I had dealt with some infertility.

[00:05:31] So looking back, I'm like, "Oh my gosh, Ann. You really gambled whether you were going to get to have a family or not." Because you already had had the issues. You were 32 and you were about to go through something very stressful. And, oh, by the way, you've never had a biology class, so who knows if I'm going to be able to do this?

[00:05:52] But I was so fortunate. Within nine months I was accepted into medical school. I had gone back and read, learned into physics and the organic chemistry and chemistry, taken some biology classes so I could take the MCAT, put in my applications, and get accepted. So I feel like it was such a powerful intention, and I know you really get into the metaphysical of things.

[00:06:15] I knew that my calling wasn't engineering, even though I got to do such cool things like get the chemicals out of our manufacturing process. My calling was really to understand healing on the mind, body, spirit side of things. And to be able to give my patients hope and to solve the hard problems. They're the easy things that we can address. So straightforward in medicine. And then there are the more complicated problems that I knew I wanted to help people figure out.

[00:06:51] Luke: Wow, that's amazing. What a unique story. So fortunate that your aptitude and passion seem to have aligned that young, right?

[00:07:02] Ann: I am so lucky.

[00:07:03] Luke: I didn't go to school of any kind. It's been a long time, thankfully, but there've been so many things that I was passionate about that I really thought I wanted to do with my life, but I didn't necessarily have the skills for it. There was more passion than skill. Or the other way around.

[00:07:22] Many of us, myself included, might be really good at something, but you really don't care about it. So I think it's such a gift to, for any of us, myself included, to be able to find something that you care deeply about and you also feel that you can be successful in doing it because it fits your skillset. Which for me is just finding and talking to interesting people.

[00:07:45] Ann: And you do that so beautifully well, and I feel so lucky to be here with you.

[00:07:48] Luke: Oh, thank you. Likewise. So I was telling you before we recorded, but I'll tell the audience, you're one of those people that has been pinging around my community for so long. I only remember two people that say, oh, you guys need to go see Dr. Shippy. It's like on my list.

[00:08:05] And then I thought, oh, she's really cool, and she's based here. Probably would be a great interview too. So there's been a lot of-- they'll forever be anonymous, but thank you to all the people that recommended you. Then finally you've got your book out now, which we'll, of course, talk about. And I get just a random email and I was like, "Wait, that name sounds familiar." I was like, "Oh my God, this is the doctor everyone's been telling me I need to interview and go see. So I'm really glad that it aligned.

[00:08:30] Ann: It's perfect timing.

[00:08:32] Luke: Yeah, absolutely. And your office is very nearby. The same office as a former guest, Dr. Winters, my dentist. Thankfully I don't have to see much anymore because I don't have any real teeth left. It's one of the bonuses of going through that. I was like, "Oh, this is sick. No more cavities."

[00:08:47] Ann: Did such a beautiful job.

[00:08:50] Luke: Pretty cool. Yeah. What did you find at the root of your health challenges? What were the culprits there?

[00:08:57] Ann: Yeah. This was really one of my pet peeves about what happens in medicine. So there's a gluten issue called celiac disease where you get--

[00:09:07] Luke: Yeah, my dad had that.

[00:09:08] Ann: --an autoimmune condition in the gut and sometimes systemically from eating even various trace amounts of gluten. Well, the challenge with diagnosing it is that a lot of times the gastroenterologists don't diagnose it until the gut is totally dead.

[00:09:24] But it's a spectrum of disease. So I had a lot of inflammation. It was driving some malabsorption problems, but when I did my small bowel biopsy, I still had Celia. So they ruled it out and then the blood tests that they did at the time weren't sensitive enough to pick it up. So that was a big part of what had happened.

[00:09:45] I had picked up a parasite on vacation. It had really activated my immune system and activated the celiac disease. I had always had a little sensitive gut, but I was doing okay, until that vacation really triggering things. So part of what helped me to heal was I really changed my diet.

[00:10:06] I went on a macrobiotic diet, which just happened to be gluten free for a while, and just really got the nutrients built up and rebuilt my gut. Took a bunch of supplements that helped me to heal my gut, and really started meditating and the number of things that also helped the way that my body interpreted the environment and being less dangerous, less stressful.

[00:10:32] Luke: Yeah, the meditation part's huge. I think a lot of my physical issues over the years that have been really persistent and difficult to address on the physical level have just disappeared from doing things like meditating, taking plant medicines. Not even herbs, but psychedelic plant medicines. I was telling someone a couple days ago on the show, I was having this reoccurring issue of vertigo. I was really increasingly dizzy more often for a couple years.

[00:11:03] Went to a neurologist, went to a few people trying to figure it out and was like, "You're fine. It must be in your head." Went and had a ceremony which was a really terrible and challenging experience. And the next day I never had vertigo ever again. It's been a couple years. There was something on a non-physical-- and maybe it was physical. Maybe the intelligence of those plants also was able to get in and do God knows what.

[00:11:29] Ann: Interestingly, I think some of those plants, they're very strong antioxidants and antimicrobials, so you might have had a low grade infection or disruption in your microbiome, or just needed a heavy dose of anti-inflammatories to solve the problem.

[00:11:47] Luke: I didn't know that.

[00:11:48] Ann: This [Inaudible] many times actually where people might have an autoimmune condition or something and they feel so much better after doing plant medicine.

[00:11:55] Luke: That's really interesting. I attributed it to just, yeah, some emotional block or something that I was unaware of. And what was strange about it too is that there was nothing in the experience that I was conscious of. Oftentimes it's like, oh, remember something from childhood or whatever, someone I need to forgive, etc. There was none of that, just super sick. Felt like shit. And the next day I was like, "Wow, that's interesting. I'm not dizzy. And it just never came back, knock on wood.

[00:12:26] Ann: Yeah.

[00:12:26] Luke: But I didn't know the antioxidant and antimicrobial situation. That's interesting. Anyway, I digress. So one of your areas of expertise is fertility. And I've done a number of shows on that. It's been a while, but I started interviewing people like you with that area of expertise because Alyson and I wanted to have a baby. And I thought, wow, great, we can learn and the audience can learn at the same time. And our journey started around four years ago, and I felt like we learned everything we needed to learn and we implemented all the things that we were guided to do.

[00:13:04] And had a miscarriage, as I was telling you earlier, and were unable to conceive after that. So I think I, not selfishly, lost interest as an area of focus, but in preparation to speak to you today, I realize, oh my God, there could be tens of thousands of people that hear this conversation that we catch before they go through some of the things that we went through that were really challenging.

[00:13:32] So I'm like, it's a recon mission for me to go back and like, all right, there's still people out there that are struggling with this. So I think there's a lot of value that you have to offer. So I think we'll primarily focus on that. What' the hell is going on with fertility in the world right now? Let's just start there.

[00:13:51] Because I know men are having issues. Women are having issues. It's obvious to me we live in a world that is toxic on so many levels, from blue light to EMF, to mold, to toxins in the food, glyphosate. It's just like you could make a list of 1,000 things that are wrecking us. But what have you seen to be the most problematic issues that are preventing people from having babies?

[00:14:16] Ann: Yeah. I want to start with just acknowledging the problem. We've got this problem where it's one in five or six couples, depending on what statistics you're looking at are dealing with infertility. And often it's 50-50. It's the man or the woman, or both. Then we have the sperm counts dropping 50% in 50 years. So on average 1% a year, but it's accelerating with the last count was 2.6% decline. So year to year it's declining.

[00:14:56] And then we have this children's health crisis. So the rates of autism just accelerating. The last count was one in 31 children, one in 22 children in the state of California, and very high percentage of boys. So the number for boys is really alarming. We have increasing rates of mental health, diabetes, obesity, autoimmunity, and cancer in our children. So to see both of these things happening and at the same time, we really have to think about what the mechanisms are that tie these things together.

[00:15:41] And that's really why I wrote this book, is because we now have data that show that this preconception period before you even start trying to conceive, the 3, 6, 12, I really love it if we have 36 months, before you try to get pregnant or between pregnancies to really tune up the body. I am so sorry that your journey has been so hard with this.

[00:16:10] I hesitate to even say this, but I think sometimes it's a blessing. It's the check engine light is on. It's letting you know there's something that's not right and that things like IBS [Inaudible] are just bypassing what one or both of your bodies are saying. And unfortunately, I think there are a lot of people that can get pregnant that maybe shouldn't because of this children's health crisis.

[00:16:41] So the things that people don't know that they can be doing to help get their bodies ready. So I'd actually rather see somebody having to deal with infertility and using it as a check engine light and let's get to the root cause of what's going on here than so many people that have no idea that they're set up to have a child with autism or other health issues.

[00:17:04] Luke: Yeah. Yeah, that's huge. That makes me think too, that-- well, I've covered a lot of natural birth advocacy on the show, because again, when we were hoping to have a baby, I was just exploring, interviewing doulas from what some people consider radical, which to me is just like what humans do, wild birth, free birth into midwife and doula-assisted, every spectrum of home birth.

[00:17:34] And even some doctors that prefer to give birth in a hospital, but can do so in ways that are less invasive. So I've talked a lot about that and also just the trauma that families and the babies have in the process of hospital birth because all these interventions are necessary.

[00:17:53] So it's like, even if you're lucky enough to have a baby, what happens when that baby comes out is a crapshoot depending on circumstances and the mother's health. So to your point, I think it's a great warning signal that, hey, either parent has some underlying health issues going on.

[00:18:12] But I think it's really smart, even if you can't get pregnant, that you're totally optimized before you even start the journey of conception, because that's going to create a ripple effect through the whole birth process where, oh, now we have to do a c-section. Oh, you got to have an epidural. It's like the line items on your hospital bill are going to keep going up the more things that are missing on a foundational level.

[00:18:39] Ann: It's so challenging to deal with infertility stuff. I dealt with it, some of it myself. And it's so challenging, so challenging to have children that have health issues. I've had some of that as well. So that really inspired me to write this book because what I found is that when we either do the process in this book where we're optimizing health, we're feeding our mitochondria, we're getting our toxin levels down, we're building up the nutrient stores, we're doing the mind, body, spirit part of things, we're being intentional with our partner about how we want to parent and why we're even bringing this child in, I see miracles happen.

[00:19:27] People who have failed IVF in their 30s or 40s told it's time to move on, actually get pregnant, and have multiple healthy babies. Or families that have brought me their children that have autism or autoimmunity, and as we're getting the kids healthy again and the parents are getting healthy, then they go on to have surprise pregnancies, even though their previous children, they had had to do infertility treatment. So just spontaneous pregnancies and births and have these really robust, healthy children after having children that were struggling.

[00:20:13] Luke: Yeah. An interesting thing about wanting to conceive and living in Austin in my circles, which I think our circles overlap a lot, everyone we know has tons of kids. You know what I mean? As we've kind of worked through the grief of our situation, which is multifaceted and ongoing, we've also had to work through just, oh my God, guess what? I'm pregnant. It's just like, fuck. Another one? What is up?

[00:20:42] But I have noticed most of friends that I have, because we all take care of ourselves, they have babies with little or no medical intervention and are just so healthy. Then there's a different life force in a baby or a kid whose parents did the work beforehand and who was born under the most natural and optimal circumstances appropriate for them at that time.

[00:21:09] There's a difference. Versus your average American family that's just like, wow, we get pregnant and have a kid. What's the big deal? It's like people that aren't paying attention to this probably learn the hard way, because as I said, we're just faced with so many assaults constantly.

[00:21:24] It's just like every direction you can turn from your freaking laundry soap to-- it's just like everything is poisonous. So it's really important, I think, that people like you are out there helping.

[00:21:38] Let's talk about some of the main offenders that people might want to address in terms of toxicity and so on. I know something that you talk about quite a bit that is finally getting the recognition it deserves, and that's the issue of mold, which as you know, being a fellow Texan, is a huge issue here.

[00:22:00] And I think a lot of people think of mold as, oh, when you live in a really old, decrepit house with a leaking roof or bad plumbing and you have the little mold in the shower-- what I've learned since moving here is that it doesn't matter how new the building is, how well it was made. It could be a luxury home. Something I noticed early on here when I started learning about molding-- and we renovated this house completely when we moved in, because it had some mold in a few spots.

[00:22:28] Not systemic, thankfully. But I'd be driving around here in Austin and see a new build, apartment building home or whatever, and it would just be getting rained on. And the whole thing's exposed. It's not covered up. And then you'd see them, the rain stops, and then they just put the walls on. And I'm like, "Dude, whoever moves in there is going to have a rough time."

[00:22:50] So talk to me about what you've learned from mold from testing the impacts on fertility, mitigation, obviously. I've had shows on mitigating your living space, but less so on the detoxification and healing process. So let's dive into the whole mold issue.

[00:23:07] Ann: Yeah. And it is a nationwide problem and a global problem because our building standards have changed. Trying to build these tight buildings sets us up for having mold and the incoming materials having mold in it.

[00:23:23] Luke: We build houses out of mold food? That's one of the issues.

[00:23:27] Ann: Yeah.

[00:23:28] Luke: Drywall and so on.

[00:23:30] Ann: So yeah, the 1970s save energy plan, it really failed us. And a lot of people are still confused about the issue with mold. So a lot of people think about it as an allergen. Most doctors are trained that it causes allergies or you can get a chronic infection like in your lungs or sinuses from some of the different types of mold, like aspergillus.

[00:23:57] What we're not trained in medicine and what a lot of people don't understand is that the toxins that mold makes are actually used for things like biological warfare, and some of the byproducts are used for things like immunosuppressants. One in particular called mycophenolic acid is actually converted into a drug that people who have had a transplant take to suppress their immune systems so they don't reject their organs.

[00:24:29] So there's many, many of these mycotoxins or MVOCs that can dramatically injure the body in many different ways. So just like any other toxin, when we breathe it in or have it come through our skin or eat it, our bodies have to try to detoxify it. And often when there's a mold problem where we're breathing it in, it goes right in through the lungs and our immune systems get overloaded, our detox pathways can't keep up, and so it accumulates in the body.

[00:25:03] It causes DNA damage, suppresses the immune system, damages our mitochondria, and many, many other things. So unfortunately we have an epidemic on this. And where it fits in with, especially children's health, there's links to pretty much all the health problems that we personally don't want, like dementia, autoimmunity.

[00:25:31] And then we don't want our children to have autism and autoimmunity and digestive issues. So if I had my druthers as part of our annual checkups, we'd be checking our mycotoxin level, both in our bodies and in our health, and certainly before we try to get pregnant. It could save so much heartbreak to know that the mycotoxin levels are down because it does decrease fertility.

[00:26:01] So I've had patients have a zero sperm count basically when they were in mold. Get out of the mold, detox, sperm count comes up, have children naturally kind of thing. But it also really increases the risk for birth defects and miscarriages.

[00:26:17] Luke: Oh, interesting.

[00:26:18] Ann: Mm-hmm.

[00:26:19] Luke: I didn't know that

[00:26:20] Ann: Yeah.

[00:26:20] Luke: Is one of the challenges with mold exposure that there's such a broad spectrum of symptoms and that those symptoms can cross over into a number of other underlying issues? It seems to me that it's very ambiguous because it's not just like, it causes migraines, let's say, and we know that nothing else really causes migraines except mold. Therefore, let's look into mold. It seems to be just difficult to target because the symptoms are so random.

[00:26:50] Ann: They're so random. And even in the same family that are being exposed to the same mold in the house, one person might have the migraines, another person might have brain fog, another person might have gut issues, another person might have skin rashes. And another person might think that they're fine, but they just have a short fuse. They're just irritable.

[00:27:08] Luke: Right. Maybe that's what I have. No, I'm just kidding. I usually have a pretty long fuse. But yeah, the mold thing, it's like we've had this house tested a number of times and Alyson said the other day-- she's in the TV room, which is underneath us. She's been smelling this musty smell, and we just got a new HVAC system maybe a year ago and everything was on the up and up.

[00:27:29] But when she says that, she's like, "We need to get it tested again." I don't want to, because I'm like, oh my God, if we have mold, that means we have to throw all our shit away and move out.

[00:27:38] Ann: The thing is, the sooner you catch it, the easier it is to fix and to not have to get rid of stuff. So yeah, get on it. If she's got a clue, then yeah, definitely. And unfortunately, the new construction, sometimes it's the worst situation because it hasn't quite been stress tested yet.

[00:28:02] So if there's a problem with the shower, you can move in, think everything's fine. And then over the next few months everything starts to deteriorate gradually. Or the window flashing wasn't done quite right and there's just a little bit of water that's coming in behind the drywall, but not enough to actually show through the paint.

[00:28:23] So especially with new construction, I think you really have to do the mycotoxin testing on the dust at six months, 12 months, and really be on the lookout because there's so many little things that can go awry with a new construction. It's a zillion things.

[00:28:39] Luke: And also the new construction looks beautiful, so you don't suspect it. It is like when there's new paint, new drywall and everything sparkly and someone says, "Hey, you might have mold." It's like, why? You look around. You can't see it anywhere. I think that's the thing that's so annoying about mold, is your entire house can be infected with it and you have no clue and everyone just sick and you can't figure out why because you can't see it.

[00:29:02] Like you said, it's behind the drywall. That's always been confusing to me because I'm like, "If it's inside the wall and no one's opening up the wall, how's it getting out into the space?

[00:29:11] Ann: Yeah. It's really interesting. You have to think about it as like somebody smoking in the wall, but you can't smell it. You can imagine if there was cigarette smoke in there, it would come through the porousness of the wall. It wouldn't stay on the other side. And so yeah, the longer that smoking's been going on, the more your belongings are going to get saturated, the more that it'll come into the space. So yeah, it's--

[00:29:37] Luke: I can't wait till we're in a future timeline where all buildings are made with that and other issues that are quite common under consideration. I just had some guys on the show from a company called Geoship. They're out in Nevada City, California, and I've been obsessed with just different ways of building that aren't a square box for a long time.

[00:30:00] Even thought of ways I could customize our walls so they're not all square. It just doesn't feel natural to me. So I'm really into the domes. But a lot of these dome companies, the geodesic domes, are made with vinyl. It's like a tent cover. We went to stay in one here, in fact, and we walk in, the VOCs were off the chart, like vinyl chloride, which is like super-- it causes cancer quite readily.

[00:30:24] So I was like, "Oh, a dome would be cool." And then I found Geoship and the, I think they call it bioceramic, they use, it can't grow mold. You going to let it sit there wet, and literally there's nothing for mold to eat. They don't say it's 100% mold-proof, probably for liability or something, but basically, if you had one of those homes, you can't have mold.

[00:30:48] Ann: I heard about that company about a year ago. Are they actually up and running now?

[00:30:52] Luke: I've been stalking them for probably five years on Instagram. It's like, when can you buy these? And so I think where they are right now is they got permitted in California, so their whole building plan, schematics or whatever approved across the board in California. So their goal is to roll out those permit approvals in different states, at which point they'll be able to deliver and install the homes.

[00:31:19] Ann: I think this is going to be such a great thing for people because that really is-- it's so devastating when people are really sick and they're having to figure out how to get into a clean place, how to remediate their house. If you could set up one of these domes to live in where you know it's clean, you can get better, and then you can deal with your house and your stuff.

[00:31:38] Luke: Totally.

[00:31:38] Ann: I'm so excited for them to--

[00:31:41] Luke: I am too. I'm obsessed. I already put a deposit down. I'm like, I don't even know where I'm going to put it or when.

[00:31:46] Ann: Maybe we'll start a little community.

[00:31:48] Luke: Totally. That's what's cool about them, is they're made to be modular.

[00:31:52] Ann: They look beautiful.

[00:31:53] Luke: Yeah. It's like, you can get a big one and connect a small one to the side of it, or you can have a breezeway between multiple units. You can keep adding them together, and yeah, you can create a little neighborhood or a little community. Super cool. And also pretty cost effective. It's definitely less than building even a mid-level to luxury home. So yeah, I'm really excited about that. But I'm always just like, when is that going to be the norm? But I guess it takes time.

[00:32:22] Ann: Well, we really do need some different building science.

[00:32:24] Luke: Yeah. And also just the expense. That's the thing too. I think some of us are like, you don't want to know. It's the ostrich with the head in the sand kind of thing. Like, oh my God, if we find some mold, then we're going to have to move and remodel. And who knows what you're going to have to tear apart in your house, let alone dealing with the physical detoxification and stuff. It's very daunting to even want to find out.

[00:32:47] Ann: Yeah. But in this conversation on the preconception, it's just so important because you can really evert so many problems by knowing and getting addressed before you get pregnant.

[00:32:58] Luke: Do you have recommendations on testing, not for the body, but for your environment, for starters?

[00:33:04] Ann: So for both the body I like real time laboratory with and without glutathione. And then if you want to do a quick dust test on your own, the best tests are EnviroBiomics, which happens to be a San Antonio company and the dust test. So it uses the DNA that they pick up in the spores. And there's also a mycotoxin test. I don't trust just the mycotoxin test by itself, but sometimes it can be nice with the DNA of the dust.

[00:33:33] Luke: Cool. And those are tests that anyone can just buy online?

[00:33:36] Ann: Anybody can do. Yeah.

[00:33:37] Luke: Okay, cool. We'll put those, for those listening and watching, in the show notes at lukestorey.com/drshippy, S-H-I-P-P-Y. I love that name. That's why I asked about it. So we'll put those in there. Then what about testing your body? I remember years ago I did some old or mycotoxin testing, and I think it was a urine test or something.

[00:33:57] Ann: Yes. So there's a--

[00:33:58] Luke: I'm sure it's evolved since I did it.

[00:34:00] Ann: It's evolving and none of them are perfect. So if I have my perfect situation, I do like to do real-time laboratory just at a baseline and then also take eight teaspoons of liposomal glutathione so we can compare the results. Because sometimes the mycotoxin test can look like it's fine, but then when you actually help your detox pathways start to work, you get the toxins to start to come out.

[00:34:24] So if we can do those. And then both Vibrant Laboratory and Mosaic Laboratory, they use a little different technology that they can check a few additional mycotoxins that RealTime Laboratory can't. But RealTime at the ones that they test do the best job.

[00:34:42] Luke: Awesome. And you mentioned glutathione in between test. Is that a challenge? When you test for heavy metals, you do a pre-test and then I forget what you do in between EDTA or something like that, and then you test after. That's happened to me. And I'm like, "Oh, I'm clear." And they're like, "Hang on, we're going to do the challenge test." And then there's all these metals. Is it like that?

[00:35:04] Ann: It's exactly like that, where at the baseline is just how well is your body doing at getting rid of the toxins on its own? And then we either get the chelating agent for the heavy metals, because it goes in there and binds things up. Or the glutathione for the mold. And then we get to see, okay, once we open up that spigot, there's some coming out.

[00:35:26] Luke: Let's talk about heavy metals. How does that relate to fertility?

[00:35:30] Ann: It's a big deal. So I want people to start thinking about the sperm and the egg as being a time capsule. So when there's mold toxins or heavy metals, those genes can get dialed up or dialed down and really also create a lot of inflammation that get passed on. So to get what we want in the time capsule and not what we don't want, dealing with the heavy metals is super important.

[00:36:01] So one of the things that I see is a lot of people have been told that fish is really healthy for them to eat, and so then really prioritize that. But unfortunately, we've really polluted our waters with heavy metals. And so even the wild-caught fish can sometimes have a lot of mercury and also arsenide in it, and a lot of us don't eliminate those metals very well, and so they get built up in the body.

[00:36:29] So as part of the dietary recommendations in the book, I suggest that we need to think about fish just like we do for pregnant women. If we know, oh yeah, it's probably not a good idea, then it's probably not a great idea to be eating much fish before you are getting pregnant either.

[00:36:49] Luke: Is the accumulation of metals in fish even problematic in smaller fish like salmon and whatnot?

[00:36:55] Ann: Even in salmon.

[00:36:56] Luke: Damn.

[00:36:57] Ann: I know. I'm down to hardly ever eating any seafood based on what I've seen with my patients. And then maybe sardines, scallops, shrimp, caviar.

[00:37:08] Luke: That sucks. I'm not a huge fan of fish, but my body responds well to it. I think the DHA is a really important thing, and I've never been-- I just never resonated with fish oil. I take cod liver oil sometimes, but like fish oils to me are a little-- I've never trusted the data on fish oil. It's like, I don't know, there's something fishy going on with fish oil. Just the PUFAs and the whole thing. Yeah, it's never something I bought into.

[00:37:37] Ann: It's challenging to find a really high-quality fish oil, and you can tell-- if it's the smell or taste of it is a little off, it's not the quality that you want it.

[00:37:48] Luke: With higher, what you would consider clean or higher quality fish oils, do you see any value in them for health?

[00:37:55] Ann: Oh, absolutely. And especially preconception because you want the omega-3s to be nice and a really nice balance in the body.

[00:38:03] Luke: Interesting. Okay. Because I know years ago there was like a lot of pro fish oil people. And then for the past few years, at least in my little corner of the kookier biohackers, it's very anti-fish oil. So I've just been like, I don't know. I've just followed my intuition on it, and I do respond very well to cod liver oil, which is different than fish oil. It's not like a juiced fish. It's like a juiced fish liver at Rosita's, the brand I like. Because I don't know where else to get like that much retinol. You'd have to eat a lot of liver to really get that.

[00:38:35] Ann: It is interesting looking at the studies on what helps you to have healthy sperm, and that Vitamin A class is really helpful. And there's some really great data behind Astaxanthin, which is in that omega and vitamin A category. It's great for both men and women for fertility.

[00:38:57] Luke: That's interesting.

[00:38:57] Ann: That'd be something that you'd be comfortable with.

[00:39:00] Luke: Except the red algae oil. Yeah, I used to take a lot of that. There is a great company in Hawaii that made it, and that's been quite some time. What else is there? So we've covered mold, the heavy metal issue. Oh, let's back up to heavy metals actually.

[00:39:15] So from having these conversations, there's two predominant schools of thought I'm generalizing in grossly, but you have more the functional medicine model, which is do the testing then different kinds of binders and chelation therapy and things like that. And then you have the mineral balancing people that are into the hair metal test.

[00:39:40] And then not even trying to detox, but just restoring the detox pathways from the complimentary inputs of the antagonist minerals, basically. And I've done a bit of both, more so on the mineral balancing side, but the mineral balancing side to me is very confusing because when you get the hair test, you go, "Oh my God. I have crazy aluminum, and the calcium's too high."

[00:40:03] And they'll be like, "Yeah, take calcium. It's counterintuitive because you're trying to balance things out. What's your take on the latest and greatest in getting metals out of your body?

[00:40:15] Ann: Yeah, I find it challenging to trust anything with the hair testing because I think it's probably just a snapshot in time rather than what the total body stores are in the body, that the heavy metal challenge shows this. And we can also get a feeling on what's going on with the minerals with that test as well.

[00:40:37] So I land somewhere in between and also talk about this in the book because I know not everybody can go to a functional medicine doc and get the heavy metal challenge test. But what I find is really efficient at getting the metals out is taking a good mineral and then really supporting the detoxification pathways.

[00:40:55] I'm not a huge fan of the chelating agents and those kinds of things that seem to cause some turbulence in the body and stir things up. We just want to help the body open up the spigots to let the toxins out. So especially from a heavy metal standpoint, pretty much everybody who has heavy metals built up in their body and a lot of other toxins can use a little help methylating, which we can come back to.

[00:41:21] Usually the glutathione is either depleted because the body has a lot to detoxify or there's some genetic predispositions to not making glutathione or recycling glutathione great. And so by doing minerals, glutathione, methylation, and a little bit of a binder, you can open up these spigots and let the toxins out very gently. There shouldn't be a detox reaction.

[00:41:47] You should feel fine. This idea that detox is painful and hard, to me that's saying, "Okay, you're not doing it right. You need to step back and help your body be more gentle." And so that's really what I outlined in the book, is I think everybody needs a period of three, six, 12 months of helping the toxins get out of their body and trying to minimize the toxins coming in.

[00:42:18] And if you can test, great, but if you can't, at least you know you've done a pretty good job of lowering the toxic burden in your body, so that time capsule for the egg and the sperm is better. But this information really applies for all of us, for health and longevity. These are things that we can even be thinking about for preventing the autoimmunity, preventing the dementia and the cancers and things.

[00:42:45] Luke: As you said, that makes a lot of sense because what you said earlier about if somebody's having fertility challenges, that's the warning signal of the stuff you should probably be doing for yourself anyway. So that makes sense. That's like, yeah, we want to have a healthy pregnancy and a healthy baby. But even if you're not conceiving or you've already had a bunch of kids and you're done, it's like we're all faced with the same underlying issues, which are going to manifest for us eventually as well.

[00:43:13] Ann: Right.

[00:43:14] Luke: Yes, yes. What are the most prevalent metals that you see? I know your practice does a lot of testing and I'm assuming the newest and most effective testing. What do you see in a lot of?

[00:43:25] Ann: The mercury and aluminum, lead, arsenic. And then there's a handful of others that comes in. I just had somebody with a super high tungsten level. We're trying to figure out where that's coming from. Tin can be another issue. Probably old, from using aluminum cans that also have some tin in them.

[00:43:49] Oh my gosh, I just had a patient with a very high-- oh, the tungsten. Back to the tungsten. And then also had a high lead. We think he did a lot of fishing, fly fishing, and he put the lures in his mouth and handle them.

[00:44:08] Luke: The weights. The fishing weights are lead. The same thing happens-- you might already know this, but for those listening, people that do a lot of firearms training, military law enforcement, people for recreation-- I didn't know this and my poor dad he was big hunter or firearm guy.

[00:44:24] Every time you fire a gun, in the gun powder, you get a cloud of heavy metals. So even if you're wearing gloves and it's not going in through your skin, just being around firearms a lot seems to be very problematic in terms of metals.

[00:44:37] Ann: Very problematic. And then I see pilots and anybody that has anything to do with airplane maintenance and things being very high in lead.

[00:44:50] Luke: I wonder if all the pilots flying the chemtrail planes are high in aluminum. Some of that draft coming in the plane. Like, ah, you deserve it, you bastards. Personally, I think a lot of the-- because I ask this question to a lot of practitioners and everyone's like, "Oh, aluminum is off the charts."

[00:45:11] I'm like, dude. You can have a totally aluminum-free life, and if you just are living and breathing, you're going to have high aluminum. And that's verified now. Thankfully, information on that is becoming more, I'd say mainstream, but it's not some conspiracy theory, kooky shit. We know there's something in the air that has got a lot of metal.

[00:45:31] Ann: The cans. Drinking out of the cans, I think are something to look at too. I try to list limit to those if I'm traveling or something and I just have to grab something because I do see that the aluminum leeches into the drink and the cans.

[00:45:48] Luke: I'm so bummed. This is my favorite drink, this Update. I love this stuff so much.

[00:45:52] Ann: I haven't tried it. I probably should.

[00:45:53] Luke: No, don't do it because you'll, I won't say you get addicted, but it's-- I invested in this company because I'm so obsessed. And I've talked to them too. I'm like, what about the can lining and the BPAs and aluminum. And they just told me. They're like, we do it as good as you possibly can. No pun intended. But it just is what it is. It doesn't matter how health forward a manufacturer is if you're not doing glass, which is not practical for most companies doing beverages. It just is what it is. But I think about that sometimes.

[00:46:25] Ann: It used to be though.

[00:46:27] Luke: I know, right?

[00:46:27] Ann: It used to be always glass.

[00:46:29] Luke: Yeah.

[00:46:29] Ann: We need to get back to that.

[00:46:31] Luke: Yeah. You'd go to the soda machine and a bottle would pop out when I was really little.

[00:46:35] Ann: Exactly. We need them to-- I know, because there's some really great beverage companies coming out. But yeah, I guess we have to be also be willing to pay for it.

[00:46:46] Luke: Yeah. Yeah, that's true. Heads up to Update and anyone else making beverages. I will pay extra for glass, just on the record.

[00:46:53] Ann: Me too.

[00:46:54] Luke: In terms of detoxing heavy metals, whether for fertility or just overall health, what do you find are the most difficult to get rid of?

[00:47:04] Ann: The main thing is to not have more coming in. Really find the sources, make sure your kitchenware doesn't have lead in it. Because sometimes the coating on the plates will have lead in it or other cookware. Get rid of the aluminum deodorant. When I see the limbers not coming down, I know we've missed a source because this process of methylating using the glutathione, some binders-- I also love saunas-- it works for all of them. Yeah. So that's relieving. At least if I'm not getting them in, then I'm going to actually be able to get them down and keep them down.

[00:47:42] Luke: Do you think there's any value in taking binders before, during, or after sauna sessions?

[00:47:50] Ann: Yeah. I think for sure that-- it probably doesn't really matter which, as long as you do some in the proximity, because the sauna will stir things up a little bit. Some will come out through your skin, but you'll also have some circulating. So I do recommend finding a binder that you can tolerate. I like one that has a little bit of multiple things in it so that it's good for grabbing a lot of things. So PentaSol, a clay, charcoal, shilajit, a combination's nice.

[00:48:18] Luke: I did one of those this morning with some, I think it was the Quicksilver Scientific Ultra Binder. I opened up some of those capsules in a big jar of zeolite. I got off the zeolite for a while because it was a little sketchy out there. There's a great company called ZeoCharge. I don't know if you're familiar, but I've had him on the show and really grilled him about their whole thing.

[00:48:40] And I find the zeolite, it's much more gentle than some of the other binders. I think of it as a tonic. I take it just about every day in pretty large amounts, and it's been feeling really good. But I think recently it was like, oh, I take a lot of saunas. I should probably be taking a binder in there. It was just intuitive. I didn't know if there's sense to doing it.

[00:49:01] Ann: As long as some time in the day you're taking it, you're fine.

[00:49:05] Luke: Got it. Okay. What are some of the other big issues that we need to deal with that you address in the book around fertility?

[00:49:13] Ann: Yeah. So some of the other toxins are really getting the plastics out. The plastics go in that time capsule and they can really affect the future child's health, even their future fertility. So we really need to get rid of them.

[00:49:27] Luke: The kid's future fertility?

[00:49:29] Ann: Yes.

[00:49:29] Luke: Oh my God.

[00:49:30] Ann: Yes.

[00:49:31] Luke: It's like multi-generational toxicity.

[00:49:33] Ann: Multi-generational toxicity. I just really want people to understand that this period, it's imprinted in the sperm and in the egg. And just be really mindful of what you're putting in that time capsule or taking out of it. It really is from a mom's standpoint.

[00:49:59] My kids are 24 and 28 and starting to think about when they want to have kids. And I like, oh my gosh, I wish I had known about this before I had gotten pregnant to help my children's fertility and grandchildren's health. And that's why I called the book-- put the generational health piece in there, because the data's so clear now that we can have a positive impact on our future generation's health by focusing on this time period.

[00:50:35] So I think the other toxin in addition to really getting out the plastics would be the phthalates and the pesticides, which are getting harder and harder to avoid with all the glyphosate being so permeated into our environment, even getting into organic food, but at least less.

[00:50:55] And the PFAS, all the non-stick stuff that makes life convenient, just stop it. Just stop using all those convenience things. And takeout food is one of the biggest risks for that. That little non-stick coating that goes on a lot of those takeout containers are leaching into--

[00:51:15] Luke: Puts on the paper ones, the little brown boxes? Oh God, damn it.

[00:51:18] Ann: Depending on what it is. But a lot of them do have a coating on there that--

[00:51:22] Luke: Because they do, now that I think about it. That's what came to mind. They're slick on the inside. On the outside is more matte.

[00:51:30] Ann: Yeah. So the exciting thing is that we can measure those now. The Quest Laboratory has a PFAS test that any doctor can order if they're willing. And then there are also some specialty labs that you would get more from a functional medicine doctor. So you can actually see if you're getting those exposures. And we just don't realize that microwave popcorn has that PFAS in it or the takeout containers or the dental floss.

[00:51:58] Luke: Oh, I heard about that recently.

[00:52:00] Ann: Yeah. So anything that's nonstick, just try to get it out of your life.

[00:52:04] Luke: Oh man. The more I learn, the harder it is. Because then, I don't know what the question here, is that it's like, how do we find balance on a psychological level, balance between awareness and fear? I know it's really easy when you start learning about all of these, just constant insults from every direction. It's like you want to just go live in a bubble.

[00:52:31] Ann: You want to go live in a geodome.

[00:52:33] Luke: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. There's a psychological, I don't know, potential toward neurosis or anxiety when you start to get educated about this because it's so overwhelming because there are just so many sources of all these toxins and they're so problematic. In your own life as a practitioner that has a lot of knowledge about these things, how do you find balance? You also have to just live your life. It's like if you're just constantly concerned with all of this stuff, it's also not psychologically healthy, which is also bad for your physical health.

[00:53:09] Ann: Oh, it's so bad. And we're not looking for perfection. So the way that I personally manage it is I address the things that I can. I'm about to go get on a flight tonight. I know I'm going to be drinking out of a can or bottled water in plastic. So I just know I'm going to do some extra detox over the next few days.

[00:53:29] I'm going to take some extra glutathione and do the things. From a personal care product, I really like to color my hair, and that's pretty toxic. So I do certain things around the time that I color my hair because I'm not ready to go gray yet. Both my parents turned gray in their 30s, so I didn't have a shot at not turning gray early too.

[00:53:54] So it's a choice that I make. I have to stop painting my nails though. I don't want those toxins on. I love the way it looks on other people, but I just know that those are chemicals that I don't want to have exposure to on a day-to-day basis. So I pick and choose. There are times where I'm going to need to do takeout. But for the most part, I either go to the restaurant or I cook. And then I--

[00:54:21] Luke: It's a matter of awareness and also being as relaxed about it. I think in my journey for 30 years of being into health, I've gone through so many phases of being really constricted and borderline paranoid about things to just like, ah, screw it. It's whatever. I'm going to live my life.

[00:54:41] Then I don't feel so well, so I dial it in. It's, I think, challenging for many of us to find a balance, where we are aware of these things, but also choose your battles and know when you just got to do the best you can do. I just learned something recently that you probably already know. The black plastic takeout containers that a lot of restaurants use, they're made from recycled electronics. They're one of the worst--

[00:55:07] Ann: I didn't know that.

[00:55:08] Luke: To put hot food in. I was like, oh. So you think about the electronics that we throw away and the shit gets outdated. You're like, "That's going to become somebody's food container." That, common sense wise, doesn't sound like a great idea. So now we'll get food delivered and it's in one of those things, and I see my mind getting paranoid. I'm like, "Oh my God, that used to be like a cassette from the '80s or something, and now I'm eating off it". So it's difficult, I think, to find a middle ground there.

[00:55:36] Ann: For me, it helps to have some data to check some of the plastic levels, the PFAS levels, all of those things, and know, am I doing enough? And sometimes I am, and sometimes I've got some fine-tuning to do. But if you're getting those little hits like, oh yeah, this isn't so great, I would listen. I think it's your intuition saying, "Yeah, this isn't the best."

[00:56:02] Luke: What's the latest in testing in terms of the plastics and pesticides and things like that? I think back when I was doing a lot of testing, I don't think there were tests for that that were specific.

[00:56:15] Ann: Yeah. There's a new microplastic test that I'm testing out. It has to get sent over to Europe, so I'm not going to share that yet. But TBD. Maybe next time we talk I'll have a microplastic test. But there are really good tests for the BPA levels, the toxin, the pesticides, the mycotoxins that we talked about in the metals, and the PFAS now. So you can get a pretty good picture of what's going on in your body from all of these things.

[00:56:51] Luke: Is the pesticides test good at detecting glyphosate too? Is that included in the pesticides?

[00:56:57] Ann: Yeah.

[00:56:58] Luke: When you were talking about celiac and the gluten issue before, wanted to ask something, but I lost the train of thought, and that is, how many people do you think are actually celiac or gluten intolerant versus people who are just reacting to the glyphosate that inorganic wheat is so full of?

[00:57:20] Ann: It's one in the same, I think. There's a genetic susceptibility, so there's a test that we can do for that to see if you have celiac genes or gluten sensitivity. I got both.

[00:57:32] Luke: You do? So you're like zero gluten.

[00:57:34] Ann: I'm zero gluten because I've got the double whammy.

[00:57:37] Luke: Got it. Okay.

[00:57:40] Ann: So unfortunately, there's a lot of people who have the gluten sensitivity genes. It's almost impossible to get food that doesn't have some level of glyphosate in it. And we now know that those gluten sensitivity genes get activated by glyphosate.

[00:58:02] Luke: Oh, interesting.

[00:58:03] Ann: Mm-hmm. So I have a test that I love because I can go into the whole gluten issue in great detail now on how the bodies are reacting to many different aspects of gluten molecules. So there's 30 different molecular structures that we can assess.

[00:58:27] Luke: Are you serious?

[00:58:28] Ann: Mm-hmm.

[00:58:28] Luke: Damn, I just want a piece of toast. Does it have to be that complicated?

[00:58:32] Ann: I don't feel deprived anymore. There's really good gluten-free things.

[00:58:36] Luke: It has come a long way, to be fair. But when we were away this summer out in Nevada City, there's just tons of great organic food out there and farmers using heirloom seeds. They're very dialed into the food. I don't have celiac, but I'm pretty sensitive to gluten.

[00:58:53] And so I was like, "You know what? I want to live my life." And so I would eat pizza and stuff as long as it was organic flour, fermented bread and things like that, sourdough. I did pretty well. I didn't really have any problems. And I wondered, is this just mind over matter? My belief is so strong that it's not going to hurt me that it doesn't. There's something to be said for that.

[00:59:16] But I think there is a big difference between heirloom wheat from ancient seeds from Europe or whatever that is then fermented to make sourdough versus going to H-E-B and getting some white wonder bread full of glyphosate. There's a spectrum on the gluten journey, I think, too.

[00:59:33] Ann: And I do find that people often that are very sensitive here in the states can go to Europe and eat their food. And I think it's more than just the wheat is different there. I think the food is different there. It's, yeah, probably different strains of the vegetables and then a lot less toxicity.

[00:59:54] Luke: What can we do to get the glyphosate and pesticides out of the body? Is your protocol in your practice basically the same general testing and detox protocol for all the toxins, or do you get very specific versus metals, pesticides, plastics, mold, etc.?

[01:00:12] Ann: There are tweaks that I do depending on what I find out about the person's genetics and their immune systems and what works for them and not, but the basic principles are the same. We need to open up the spigots of how the body likes to get rid of things. Because a lot of times they've just gotten clogged a little bit or they're not optimal because of the genetics.

[01:00:33] So the better we support the body to support the liver and the kidneys and get the minerals back in and the B vitamins in so these pathways and enzymes can work well, it's amazing how everything just goes down.

[01:00:59] Luke: I think many people listening will understand the fundamental difference between functional medicine and your standard western allopathic medicine. Early on, I did quite a lot of shows about those differences, and the challenge I think for most of us is the insurance issue when it comes to testing.

[01:01:21] I hear you talk. I read your book. I'm like, "I want to go see Ann. I'm going to do all the things." And I'm like, "Oh, cool. Do you have 30 grand?" It's so cost prohibitive to so many of the people that need it the most, which are people that have lower income and are therefore living in a more toxic environment, eating worse food.

[01:01:40] It's like this double jeopardy thing. Because I think insurance is pretty worthless unless you get hit by a bus or something anyway. But early on I was like, "Oh, this is a rich person's game here if you go the route of testing." But on the other hand, if you don't and you just live the standard American lifestyle, you're going to end up probably getting sick later in life with things that cost you your ability to earn a living at all.

[01:02:06] I think it's kind of difficult either way. So what do you see-- I know your practice is more in the functional medicine side, and I'm assuming a lot of the things you do insurance probably doesn't cover. Where are we right now in that paradigm, and where do you see us going? Is this going to get any easier and better for people?

[01:02:28] Ann: It's really interesting sometimes what happens in this realm. And I do find that is the truth, that a lot of the things that I do are not covered by insurance, that I really love to help my patients. But again, that's part of why I wrote the book, is because I know a lot of people can't come to see me.

[01:02:46] They're not going to be able to run the tests. And so just here's the protocol that will really help a lot of people, the threads that I see through patients and what really help them. There's this interesting thing that's happening with Medicare, which you think is the worst insurance of all. Medicare is actually starting to cover some of the things that I really like.

[01:03:11] Luke: Really?

[01:03:12] Ann: Yes.

[01:03:12] Luke: That's cool. How old do you have to be to get Medicare?

[01:03:15] Ann: 65.

[01:03:15] Luke: All right. I got 10 years to go. I was like, "Wait, I'm getting older."

[01:03:18] Ann: I know.

[01:03:19] Luke: It’ll be a minute. Another decade to go.

[01:03:21] Ann: So I think there might be some shifting happening in this realm. So Medicare now covers a gut microbiome test that I really like.

[01:03:33] Luke: Really?

[01:03:34] Ann: Yes. And so looking at the families of good bacteria that are-- they're in the right quantities. And are there any of the pesky bacteria or actually bacterial infections, fungal parasites? How well's the gut actually working with digestion, the pancreas, and the short-chain fatty acids getting broken down by digestive enzymes?

[01:03:58] And so that's exciting. So all my Medicare patients, every year I want them to do a microbiome test because this is the center of the universe. And to be healthy, you need to do this. It also covers my favorite big nutritional analysis called an ION Profile or a NutrEval that really looks in great detail like, are all the amino acids essential fatty acids?

[01:04:21] Little look into the mitochondria. Are there signs that there might be a low-grade chronic infection somewhere in the body? What are some of the markers for inflammation, like DNA damage? And how well are the mitochondria keeping up with oxidative distress? That's covered.

[01:04:37] Luke: That's amazing. I love when there's good news.

[01:04:40] Ann: I know. It's so exciting.

[01:04:41] Luke: It's so rare and so slow-moving. I almost hesitate to ask because I'm like, "Ah, that's probably the way it's always been." You're screwed unless you have money to handle all this stuff.

[01:04:49] Ann: And then the advanced cholesterol panel. A traditional cluster panel is worthless. It means nothing. We need to know the particle sizes and markers for inflammation. And so they're covering that. So for my Medicare patients, a lot of times we can do a lot of what we want to do that's covered.

[01:05:08] I'm such a nerd, but there's this new way to check for heart disease. So we in the past have always just done a calcium score on a CT to see is this cholesterol actually starting to clog the arteries or not? And just watch that every year or so. Now we can do a CT angiogram where they actually do put a little dye and take pictures with the CT to look at the arteries. And then it runs through AI and we can see hard plaque, medium plaque, soft plaque, and it's really the soft plaque that's dangerous. And Medicare's covering that.

[01:05:55] Luke: That's amazing. I'm so happy to deliver some good news finally. Not that we're really doom and gloom over here, but I like to get to the reality of a situation on whatever the topic is, and sometimes like the reality's grim. It's like, yeah, we're not there yet.

[01:06:09] Ann: And then I think we're getting really close to some of this cancer screening that's actually good. There's some blood tests coming along where we can detect cancer super earlier rather than waiting till they are causing symptoms. So I am getting whiffs that that might actually end up getting covered. Now we just need the rest of insurance to catch up.

[01:06:37] Luke: Yeah, yeah. No doubt. Well, at least for older people, who are the people that are going to be the sickest, I'm assuming, that's positive. Going back to the fertility, I think that historically, myself included, being a male, we think-- I'm going to generalize, but I know most of my guy friends, unless they're super-duper biohacker types think, oh, I need to get my wife ready to conceive and I just keep doing what I'm doing.

[01:07:07] That wasn't really a thing for me because I'm such a health nut, that I just thought, well, whatever someone's going to tell me to do, I'm 99% sure I'm already doing it, plus more. But one thing I did discover that was quite humbling, which I never would've suspected, was when we were having trouble some months in after the miscarriage, Alyson said, "Maybe you should get your sperm tested."

[01:07:30] And I was like, "Me?" And I was like, "I'm sure I'm fine, trust me." And I was like, "Okay, if it makes her feel better." And I had it tested. My results were just in the toilet. I was like, "What?" So I started doing some research on that and found I had started taking for very brief time, a little bit of testosterone, just as an experiment.

[01:07:51] It's never something that's really called me. I was maybe two months or something, a very low dose. And then I've been doing saunas forever. And the sauna, one of the-- I love sauna so much. I have two of them. One of them is this Sauna Space that has the red light bulbs. And depending on where you situate the bulbs, they're right across from your wedding tackle.

[01:08:12] And so this hot red light is shining right where you don't want heat, which I learned. So this was very bad news for me. Once I learned that, I started using the ice pack in the sauna. I got on a bunch of spermidine and other things that could bring the levels up. And within a month I tested again. I was like an 18-year-old. So thankfully, whew.

[01:08:32] But what if we hadn't have tested? I'm sure like the men in this equation probably don't know that there's a lot they can do. And as you mentioned, the dismal sperm counts going down and down. Let's talk about what men should be aware of the testing, lifestyle changes, so that they don't waste their time trying to conceive, not knowing, or else just not have the optimal health baby because of their choices.

[01:09:00] Ann: Yeah. So there's so much research that's come out on this topic in the last 10 years about how to improve sperm health and the health of the future child. So back to my time capsule analogy, alcohol and other toxins can really affect sperm quality and health of the future child.

[01:09:25] What's going on with your weight and your blood sugar can also have a huge impact on the health of the sperm. So I'd like people to use a continuous glucose monitor and really know that they have their blood sugar good. Back to your situation, I really prefer that men wait to use testosterone until after they've completed their families because even though you can get your testosterone to bounce back, it's a little tricky.

[01:09:55] Once your body's gotten the message for a while that it doesn't need to produce as much testosterone and that there's plenty around, that reset process can be challenging for some people. What you're eating can make a huge difference.

[01:10:18] So there's a study, one of the studies that came out that I wish I had had for the book, but it's so good to talk about, is they took men and in one group they had three weeks of eating highly processed packaged foods, and the other group they had mostly whole foods.

[01:10:37] And they did a bunch of measurements, had a little washout period, and then switched them. In just three weeks of eating super clean food, not having the highly processed and probably the chemicals that come with the highly processed foods, you can dramatically improve your hormone levels and the health of the sperm. Doesn't quite make sense because it takes 74 days, really 90 to make new sperm.

[01:11:03] So it really shows you that the environment that the sperm is sitting in in the body can evolve very, very quickly. I prefer a longer time. I really like six months, 12 months or longer. But at a minimum of three months of really healthy, clean living can make a dramatic impact on the health of the sperm.

[01:11:26] And we now know that it overrides even some of the egg biology, where when the sperm isn't as healthy, it can increase the risk for miscarriage. It can increase the risk for preeclampsia, preterm labor, all the things that we don't want to have happen.

[01:11:45] So I'm really hoping that this inspires men to keep their bodies, the health that they probably already wanted to but just didn't necessarily prioritize because they're busy with their work or they're trying to have work-life balance. But prioritizing the exercise, eating healthy, doing some high-quality supplements that make sense for the fertility, taking time to meditate, all of these things that really change that environment that the sperm is being produced in can make such a huge difference very quickly.

[01:12:29] Luke: Have you found that there is an upward trend where men are becoming more aware of their role?

[01:12:39] Ann: It's so fun.

[01:12:40] Luke: Like I said, I never thought about it until I had to. But still, I'm like, "Ah, it's on her." And I was micromanaging. Oh, you need this supplement and don't do this, don't do that. Meanwhile, I'm like, oh. I didn't know that the male had so much influence, that the sperm mattered. It's like, ah, you either have it or you don't, kind of thing. Have you found that to be true, and is there a trend of improvement in terms of public awareness around this?

[01:13:07] Ann: Yeah. The more I'm talking about this, the more it's all starting to come together. And even with patients coming in, it's not always the woman bringing the husband in. It's sometimes the husband bringing the wife in so that they can do this together. It's really fun.

[01:13:31] Luke: I am glad to hear that. And I'm hoping that-- you dudes listening, listen up. I bet there's going to be a lot of women listening that are trying to conceive and they're going to play this for their man and be like, "Dude." This is a collaboration here. This is a group effort. It's not just all on me. Really, I think a lot of people don't realize that.

[01:13:52] Ann: So there's a new sperm test out in the last couple of years. It's really, really fun to do before and then after, two months, four months, six months, and seeing the changes in the epigenetics for the sperm quality. So it's not just the traditional sperm testing where we're looking at number and count and how well they swim. We can look at epigenetics of the sperm.

[01:14:17] Luke: Really?

[01:14:18] Ann: I know. It's so fun. I feel like this couple that I'm working with, she was able to really prioritize getting her part done. So she's ready to go in in January, and he has had a lot of life things happening, really, some career things. So he was thinking it was going to be fine but finally got the test done, and we just went over his sperm QT test, and there was some alarming epigenetics. So I'm like, "Wait, you need to--" They were thinking January, they were going to get the green light go. I'm like, "Wait."

[01:14:56] Luke: Pump the brakes.

[01:14:57] Ann:  Pump the brakes. Use condoms again until we get these numbers good. Because it's going to increase your risk for all the heartache that we're trying to avoid. And then we also at the same meeting, got his heavy metals back, and that was where we found the tungsten high and the mercury and lead and tin. So there's correlation with some of the things going on in his body that we need to address first because we're shooting for super healthy babies.

[01:15:28] Luke: Yeah, of course. I'm glad to hear that you're educating the male side of the equation there. That's super important.

[01:15:36] Ann: And I think men, really, you want to be engaged. You want to be a part of the process. You want to feel empowered. You want to know what you can do to make a difference and gift your future child the best health that you can. It's super inspiring to know that things that you're doing make a difference. It's so fun.

[01:15:54] Luke: It is. It's funny, when you were mentioning the alcohol, I thought, man, imagine how many babies have been conceived by drunk people and people with maybe even a drinking problem. It might explain why we have so many seemingly mentally impaired people running around in the world. Such an alcohol driven culture we have. It's part and parcel to our social cohesion. Not for me. I don't drink, but I used to drink a lot. God forbid I would've had a baby back then. Oh my God. Probably would've had three heads.

[01:16:27] Ann: Yeah. And sometimes nature's amazing, and I can bypass it all and come out with miracles, but it's back to the conversation on the things that we know that we can do. Let's do those things. Because there's probably a bunch of things like the chem trails that we can't do much about.

[01:16:48] Luke: I am careful who I mentioned that in front of, and I was like, "I think she's cool. She'll get it."

[01:16:53] Ann: Yeah, exactly.

[01:16:55] Luke: Sometimes I'll say something like that and you can see it just like [Inaudible]. Okay, never mind. Onto the next one. So I know you're a fan of supplementation, as I am. I have more supplements in our kitchen by far than any kind of food, which is probably not completely balanced, but I've just had such great results. Speaking to when I had these terrible levels of sperm, I did a little research, boom. Got on mega dosing spermidine, and I think that had a lot to do with the quick recovery there.

[01:17:29] Ann: That's amazing to recover that fast. That's awesome. Good job. Yeah. No, you did great. You are a fabulous biohacker.

[01:17:36] Luke: I was very determined. But you have a school of thought of people that are, I would say anti allopathic medicine outside of emergency medicine, but there's an emerging, I don't know, subculture, sub genre of biohacker people that are not a fan of functional medicine because they see it as the same model as let's look at symptoms, but rather than prescribing drugs or surgery, we're just going to prescribe synthetic supplements.

[01:18:04] And so you have the, you just need a healthy diet, eat ancestral, get your circadian lighting and EMF stuff together. Just for me, I think we're too far gone as a race to not take supplements. I wish I could just shop at the farmer's market and eat organic food and I'll heal everything.

[01:18:27] I haven't found that to be true. So I've found supplementation to be extremely transformative and supportive and healing in so many ways. That said, there's also a lot of really shitty supplements out there that are a waste of money and don't do anything. So I've gotten pretty good at being discerning.

[01:18:44] But in your practice, I'm sure you're able to see a lot of turnarounds from proper supplementation and high quality supplements. What are some of your favorites when it comes to the whole preconception and pregnancy and postpartum, the phases of making a baby? What are the heavy hitters in your experience?

[01:19:05] Ann: Yeah, so one of my favorite things for both men and women is phosphatidylcholine.

[01:19:10] Luke: Love it.

[01:19:10] Ann: Yeah. So having healthy cell membranes and healthy mitochondrial membranes, and especially for the woman, really good stores for phosphatidylcholine, so that baby as it's building new cells and organ systems can really pull on our stores. That's my number one thing, and it's really one of my personal number one things for just health and longevity. It keeps our brains healthy, our hearts healthy, our neurological systems.

[01:19:37] Luke: When you were writing this Bible of a book-- for those watching the video, this is a serious book. This isn't one of those, oh, a lot of doctors write books. You throw something out just to have it on your website. This is a real book. No offense to people that don't write what I would consider to be really dense books, but did you find the PC, the phosphoacetylcholine really helpful in writing?

[01:19:59] Ann: Yes.

[01:19:59] Luke: I'm megadosing that stuff. I can feel when I don't have enough of it. It's like I'm not firing on all cylinders. It's a way overlooked substance.

[01:20:07] Ann: It's one of my favorite things for patients that are having any brain fog or feeling like their memory's not working as well as they need to. Usually within a few weeks they can start to feel a difference.

[01:20:19] Luke: On that one, does it have any relationship to mold detox, or am I imagining that?

[01:20:27] Ann: Oh, absolutely.

[01:20:28] Luke: It does. How so?

[01:20:29] Ann: Mold damages cell membranes.

[01:20:31] Luke: Oh. Womp womp.

[01:20:32] Ann: So the phosphatidylcholine helps those to repair. It damages mitochondrial membranes. Helps those to repair-- so for patients that can, in addition to giving it orally, we'll do it IV. Because it's like sending them sun.

[01:20:46] Luke: I didn't know you could do that.

[01:20:48] Ann: Yes. Send it through the car wash. Mm-hmm.

[01:20:50] Luke: That's cool. I want to do that. What brands do you like of the PC?

[01:20:56] Ann: With the PC? So I have a brand that I private label Every Life Well.

[01:21:01] Luke: Oh, cool. Because you have a suite of supplements, right?

[01:21:05] Ann: Yeah. And then BodyBio. Both of those are excellent. Yeah. Those are my two favorites.

[01:21:08] Luke: I'm on the BodyBio. I like it because it's a big-ass bottle. I get the big bottle. I just chug it out of the bottle. You're not supposed to. They're like, "Use a spoon." I don't know. I'm not germ phobic.

[01:21:19] Ann: What I do is I take a pretty little bowl, I pour it in, and then I pour in some liposomal glutathione, some liposomal curcumin, some liposomal PQQ, sometimes some vitamin C alpha-lipoic acid, mix it all up, and take a shot.

[01:21:36] Luke: Damn, that's a good recipe.

[01:21:37] Ann: It's so good.

[01:21:38] Luke: That's a good idea because I take, I think just about all those on a regular basis, and it's a lot of work. Never thought of that.

[01:21:44] Ann: I don't even measure it. I just like, this feels good today.

[01:21:48] Luke: Yeah. Alyson recently read something about PC and was like, "What is this stuff?" I'm like, "I've been telling you I'm on it every day." And so I don't think she can tolerate the taste of the BodyBio one. And then I realized in the fridge we had some of the Quicksilver Scientific, and it's pretty inert. So she was able to get that down.

[01:22:07] Ann: Good job.

[01:22:07] Luke: Yeah. It's funny because if I recommend that she takes stuff, she's like, "Ah, don't tell me what to do." But then she'll see something on TikTok and be like, "I need to take this thing." I'm like, "I've been telling you for five years to take that." It's a funny inside family joke. Okay, so the PC-- now, I know you're a fan of glutathione. Talk to us about that as it pertains to healthy pregnancy.

[01:22:28] Ann: Definitely. Yeah, definitely leading up to prepare for detox and then-- you don't want to be like actively detoxing when you're trying to conceive. So it might go on the back burner for that unless you know that you tend to run low. And then you can still take a little bit, but not enough to be actively detoxing.

[01:22:49] I also don't like to do binders and that kind of thing for women in that trying to conceive place. And then I love mitochondrial support, so things that help our cells make energy. So a CoQ10, a special form of CoQ10 called MitoQ. L-carnitine in a really good form. D-Ribose, the B vitamins. [Inaudible] am I leaving out? NAD.

[01:23:19] Luke: You mentioned PQQ.

[01:23:21] Ann: PQQ, NAD. Yeah, any of those mitochondrial support. There's actually really good data for this preconception period and to help with fertility. And again, it's just so good for longevity.

[01:23:33] Luke: I know. That's the thing, I think with all of your work around fertility, as we've said a number of times. It's like, even if you're not trying to make a baby, these are all things that you need to be healthy. So if you're having fertility problems, obviously there's something off.

[01:23:49] No judgment because I've been through it, but again, it's like a neon sign your body's going-- if you're not fertile, that's such a powerful metric of your overall health. So it's almost not even about the fertility. It's like about getting healthy and then your body is like, "Cool. Let's make more of you in the world." Right?

[01:24:09] Ann: Exactly. It's [Inaudible] over and over.

[01:24:14] Luke: With the glutathione, a lot of people do IVs. There's been various oral formulations that I hear don't absorb well. So it seems like people are getting hit to the liposomal, the fat encapsulated delivery system. What's your preferred way of getting glutathione in the body?

[01:24:33] Ann: The liposomal glutathione and the liquids. They try to make them taste okay, but usually they don't taste very good. But that is actually what will raise the intracellular glutathione the best for most people. There's a topical called glutaryl that I'm seeing some pretty good results with as well.

[01:24:49] Luke: Yeah. I've used that. What's the brand called? Auro or something?

[01:24:52] Ann: Yes.

[01:24:54] Luke: It's like a spray. I think it's called Auro. Yeah, I got it. I like it. You know what's interesting about the topical one more so than any of the other ways I've taken it? It's like a nootropic. I noticed my brain seemed to be a bit more alert from that spray, and I'm like, "I got to be imagining this." And I keep testing it. I'm like, "I swear to God, I think it was good for my brain."

[01:25:14] Ann: I think so.

[01:25:15] Luke: Does that make sense at all?

[01:25:17] Ann: Yeah, absolutely. So it seems to be working pretty well for some of my patients as well.

[01:25:21] Luke: For cognitive issues?

[01:25:23] Ann: For everything.

[01:25:23] Luke: Yeah. Heads up on the spray though. It will smell like you're spraying yourself with farts. It's like those prank fart sprays, straight up. But I don't care.

[01:25:35] Ann: For about 30 seconds and then you rub it in and it goes away.

[01:25:39] Luke: It goes away.

[01:25:40] Ann: But yeah, some days I'm like, "Yeah, I don't think I want to do that."

[01:25:44] Luke: The sulfur element of it. Let's see. There's going to be things I will be pissed if I forgot to ask you. So we talked about the male fertility stuff. Tell me more about the book, because I just got the copy of it when you walked in and handed me one. But give me and the audience an overview of what they can expect in your book.

[01:26:09] Ann: Yeah. So it's really everything that I think might be helpful to everyone.

[01:26:14] Luke: So it's over 500 pages?

[01:26:16] Ann: Yeah. And then I'm such a data nerd that there's over 500 references listed in it as well. So I'm explaining all the things that I think can really help you to prepare to have a healthy baby. Yes, to overcome the fertility issues that some people are having, but for people that really want to be intentional about doing everything possible, it'll give you a really nice long list.

[01:26:43] So all these things that really make a difference with the time capsule of the sperm and the egg are starting with the alignment with ourselves. Are we really ready? What are our intentions behind starting or growing our family? And then having the conversation with our partner about our hopes and our fears and our dreams and making sure that we're aligned.

[01:27:13] I think sometimes this is the most powerful fertility agent that there is, is when both partners feel safe and that they're in this together to start or grow their family. Something happens with the nervous system. And I think also spiritually, it's a true invitation to bring this precious soul in to be super aligned.

[01:27:40] So that's really how the book starts, is to help people just even have a checklist and a thought process for going through that. And then more just on the physical body. So that's the mental, emotional, spiritual side of things. And then on the physical, there's a whole checklist to go through on thinking about your physical body, like your weight and blood sugar and your lifestyle routines that makes such a difference for fertility, your sleep and exercise, and some type of a stress optimization because we all have it.

[01:28:19] And then how do you really get the mitochondria built up, all the nutrients built up, get the toxins out. So it's a really step by step, all the different things that you might want to think about. And that even for couples that I've worked with that feel like they've done a pretty good job of tuning up their bodies, they find things that really help them to be even more prepared to bring these precious souls in.

[01:28:53] Luke: What role does emotional stress and unresolved trauma play in fertility? Do you find sometimes someone will be pretty decent on the physical level, biomarker wise, but there's some other-- if your body's just in constant fight or flight, to me, intuitively, I would say more so for the mom in the equation, it's like if there's a lot of stress, it seems like your body's not going to be like, "Hey, great time to bring more people in." It is just--

[01:29:24] Ann: It makes perfect sense. From a survival standpoint, your body's not going to be as likely to conceive when it doesn't feel safe because our bodies are so wise most of the time to not conceive if we were like moving the tribe or there's not enough food or those kinds of things.

[01:29:50] So I think there are these built-in mechanisms and sometimes it's just as simple as somebody's over exercising. They're training for marathons or doing too much exercise. That that's information for the body and can disrupt hormones that there's not going to be enough resources in this particular body.

[01:30:09] One of the things I find super, super fascinating is some of the epigenetic research on trauma in men. It's a little easier to do some of these studies on men, but I'm sure it's true for women too. It's just harder to go in there and get an egg and look at the epigenetics of the egg.

[01:30:31] With the sperm, it's so easy. So they've done studies that they can show that smells that are related to trauma can be upregulated response in children and grandchildren.

[01:30:50] Luke: Really?

[01:30:51] Ann: Yes. And there's studies that show that men who have had PTSD and other types of trauma have epigenetic markers that also show up in the sperm and the future child. So it's really a fascinating opportunity--

[01:31:10] Luke: I'm surprised by it, but then when you look at generational trauma and patterns, it's not all mental. There must be something that's going through the family line. Things like addiction and alcoholism is rampant in both sides of my family going back as far as history goes. It's like, what is that? There's something to that that's related more to the emotional body, more so than biochemistry, you know?

[01:31:37] Ann: Absolutely. So I think the exciting thing is that we can actually have conversations about this now, whereas probably even 20 years ago, you wouldn't have the conversations about how to heal from trauma and PTSD. And so I think, again, it's this opening the door for men and women to give themselves permission to really prioritize themselves.

[01:32:12] I think a lot of times we just dust our shirts off and move on and think it's all going to be okay. And to know that, oh wait, this might actually impact my future child, I get to prioritize this part of myself that is still carrying some trauma to heal and to look for some of the modalities that help people to do that, whether it's neurofeedback or vagus nerve stimulators or psychedelics or whatever really resonates with people to-- and they feel different.

[01:32:53] They can actually feel like they're not as reactive in certain situations or more peaceful or have done the forgiveness work or those kinds of things that just lead to better quality of life.

[01:33:10] Luke: Also, the net benefit of making you probably a better parent too. So the epigenetics of it, but then also just the way you behave and what you model for a kid. I know I've had to undo a lot of the modeling from my dad, comes to mind, of just being a raging maniac.

[01:33:30] It's like if I hadn't put in any effort to get rid of some of those things that I learned, I would have a much less fulfilling life and would probably be a real drag to be around. It's like if he had been mentally and emotionally healthy, not just pregnancy wise and epigenetics, but just the stuff we pick up from our parents.

[01:33:53] Ann: Your life might have been a little easier.

[01:33:55] Luke: 100%. Yeah.

[01:33:56] Ann: Yeah. So both before conception, during pregnancy, and then in the environment that you grew up in, it's all reinforcing. Yeah.

[01:34:06] Luke: One thing I wanted to talk about, and I almost forgot, was histamines. When we moved here to Texas, Alyson never had allergies her whole life. Lived in a number of different places. I've never had allergies either, thankfully, even not so much here. And so she started getting, it's almost like the flu, just really sore joints, just train wreck physically. And then eventually we heard about this thing called cedar fever. We're like, "What is that?"

[01:34:35] It's a whole thing here. So we start researching. It's multiple times per year. These damn in invasive non-native cedar trees basically spew out all of their little pollen sperms everywhere, and it just wrecks people, but it makes people really sick and inflamed. And so I'm wondering about how different histamine reactions from different allergens might impact fertility because this is while we're trying to conceive. I'm like, "Huh."

[01:35:04] Ann: You are such a good biohacker.

[01:35:05] Luke: I'm like, intuitively, if her body's inflamed and it is in that immune response, it's probably not going, "Yay. Great time to make a baby."

[01:35:13] Ann: And also, that histamine load interferes with hormones. It changes your hormone balance. Yes. So it's so interesting that you brought this up and you haven't even read the book yet because I was under a deadline. I was ready to turn the book in. It was all ready to roll, and then I decided to print it out because I just wanted to feel it.

[01:35:38] And I'm like, "Oh my gosh, there's a whole other chapter I need to write. I have to let the publisher know I'm delaying the book." And it was a chapter on inflammation, including histamines. Because I was like, oh my gosh, this is so important and I somehow forgot it.

[01:35:59] So that last chapter that got added is to explain the role that histamines have in just fertility, but also these inflammation markers that can get passed on in the time capsules. Low-grade infections that are often not bad enough to prevent pregnancy, but still again, driving the inflammation in the time capsule and a couple of other things.

[01:36:27] So you want to get to the root of what's driving the histamine. So yes, unfortunately Central Texas has a lot of cedar trees that are out this time of year and then ragweed and other seasons. But what I find is that when people's bodies are in really good balance, those external allergens aren't so severe.

[01:36:53] So usually it's a sign that there's toxic overload. There's food allergies. There's microbiome imbalances that we need to work on so that then that cedar and other external allergens aren't so bad. So I've had so many patients over the years where we get them off of all gluten and dairy, support their systems in different ways, and allergies are--

[01:37:21] Luke: Oh, interesting.

[01:37:22] Ann: And histamines are down. Now, we did get thrown a curve ball. All of humanity got thrown a curve ball with COVID. It turns out that getting spiked of spike protein throughout the entire surface of our entire bodies multiple times, almost everyone has a little bit uptick in their mast cells, which create the histamines.

[01:37:48] And so what I've been seeing in the last five years is just so much more histamine intolerance. And so whether you just fought COVID again or the flu, or-- we had just had a horrible outbreak of norovirus, the GI bug here in central Texas. A lot of people are just post infection, having a lot more symptoms of histamines and allergies, or people become more susceptible to the environmental toxins that they're being exposed to.

[01:38:19] So going and staying in a moldy hotel and at the beach might be more problematic than it used to be. Or just having a stressful event happen, people might feel an uptick of the histamine. So I'm finding we have to manage this a lot more for people. So taking things like quercetin, staying off the gluten in the dairy--

[01:38:46] Luke: Ah, damn it.

[01:38:47] Ann: --I know. Can really be super helpful.

[01:38:50] Luke: I'm like, the gluten, I could live, but cheese? Dog. How do people not eat cheese? It's the best food in the world.

[01:38:57] Ann: I know. But if it helps with fertility, if it helps with--

[01:39:00] Luke: Yeah, then you got to take one for the team if that's really--

[01:39:04] Ann: Take it for a little while.

[01:39:05] Luke: --important to you. Going back to the past five years, and you have the clinical experience and data to prove this and indicate that, but you definitely saw something, a change in the challenges people were having with histamines and stuff.

[01:39:20] Because I'm over here thinking the entire COVID thing was completely a hoax. There never was any such disease. That they just reattributed colds and flus to some fake virus so they could kill us all with a vaccine. So my views are a little radical. But I'm also not a clinician, so I don't know what I'm talking about really, other than just intuitive observations and so on.

[01:39:43] Ann: I'm partly there with you. Definitely part of the COVID story is way off, but there definitely was something that happened that's contagious that really messed up some people. And the whole long COVID thing is high histamines for most people.

[01:40:01] There may be some other things going on, but something definitely happened. And I think it was a virus with spike protein because we can look at some of the data, but yeah, so many people--

[01:40:17] Luke: If you have observations clinically that go over a period of time and you've been in practice over a period of time and you can isolate, okay, these three or four years, something changed, that's pretty compelling. Versus I'm just sitting over here watching my Telegram fee, going, "Ah, it's all a scam."

[01:40:39] Ann: But definitely there were things that didn't add up about the COVID vaccine. From my perspective, I don't think it helped and it probably hurt a lot of people.

[01:40:47] Luke: Yeah, I would agree. What I will say about COVID, which I always call Convid or the plandemic, I hardly ever say the actual word because a lot of it had to do with the PCR testing. There was a lot of fugazi testing going on. I think that was like the crux of the psyop.

[01:41:06] But I also know that people do get sick and that a lot of people seem to have been sick around that time. What do you attribute that sickness to? As we've been talking about, there's like so many compounding factors that go against us. But what I will say is in late 2020, when we were looking for a place to-- we were California refugees, just trying to go somewhere less communistic.

[01:41:35] We went to Sedona for a couple months to just try that on, and I got really, really sick when I was there. I don't think I've ever been that sick my whole life. And it went on and on and on. I don't know, a week and a half or something, which is not typical for me. So I didn't think, oh, I have COVID. But I did take note.

[01:41:54] This is like a flu on another level that I had never experienced. It was just completely non-functional, lights out, your toast. And all the things that I would normally do to get well faster, nothing helped, and I just had to ride it out. So my own experience not being a clinician is that like, yeah, during that period I got super sick. I don't know what it was, why it was, but it was a little abnormal.

[01:42:24] So as much as of a conspiracy analyst as I am, I do have that experience. I don't know if there were after effects and I became more intolerant to histamines and things like that. But I do believe people can and do get really sick, and that there are repercussions from that. Thankfully though, knock on wood, I haven't gotten sick since then.

[01:42:47] Ann: Amazing.

[01:42:48] Luke: Which I'm very grateful for all the things I do, which are extra and obsessive, but I really hate being sick. I'm such a baby. I get a little sniffles. I was like, "It's the end of the world." Which is why I work so hard to stay resilient.

[01:43:04] Ann: And it works. That's what I thought the conversation was going to be during COVID, is like, okay, we know certain things help with cold and flu and other organisms. Let's all be building up our immune systems and being healthier. And the opposite happened.

[01:43:23] Luke: Yeah, stay inside. No human connection.

[01:43:25] Ann: Yeah.

[01:43:27] Luke: The thing that was crazy to me is the physical separation. That is diabolical, the separation of families and you can't visit your dying grandma in the hospital. That part of it was very sinister to me, putting masks on kids. There were a lot of things even before they came out with the so-called vaccine. A lot of those things were so antithetical to our wellbeing, and the things that you and I and many other people know are very supportive, were never even discussed and in many cases, demonized and censored and so on.

[01:44:00] Ann: Yeah. The medications that were censored that actually worked.

[01:44:04] Luke: Yeah.

[01:44:05] Ann: And the supplements that support the immune system. I don't think anybody really needed to die that wasn't already on the paths, close to death anyway. There were answers from the very beginning.

[01:44:20] Luke: Yeah. I agree. Am I forgetting anything? Oh, with the histamine issue-- I knew there was something else. There's always this little flutter in the back of my mind, like, "No, you're not done. There's one more thing." I look at the clock. I'm like, you need to be done. With the histamines, I think some of us are aware that there's environmental allergens.

[01:44:41] You feel it. You get a runny nose, itchy eyes, that kind of thing. Tell me about the histamine issue in foods, because many of us have learned that fermented foods are really good for you. Enzymes, yada yada. Good for your gut. But I hear they're really high in histamines leftovers. Tell me like what the other sources of histamines are.

[01:45:01] Ann: And we have a whole good handout on this that we can link to if you want to.

[01:45:05] Luke: Oh, cool.

[01:45:06] Ann: This is one of the things that I think is so important for a lot of people, especially post COVID. So yeah, the high histamine foods have gotten so much press, but a lot of people like me that have certain genetic predispositions to not be able to break down the histamines very well. And to make a lot of histamine, myself, I can rarely eat them without having huge repercussions.

[01:45:31] Luke: Really?

[01:45:32] Ann: Yeah. So bone broth, sauerkraut. I love kombucha, but I rarely drink it unless I know that I'm in a pretty good histamine state. Strawberries.

[01:45:45] Luke: What?

[01:45:45] Ann: Yes, I know. But all the other berries are fine.

[01:45:48] Luke: Why? What's up with strawberries?

[01:45:49] Ann: They have high histamine.

[01:45:51] Luke: Huh. Just in the flesh of the fruit?

[01:45:53] Ann: Yes.

[01:45:53] Luke: It's not like oxalates where it's on the outside or something?

[01:45:57] Ann: Yeah. And then citrus actually releases a lot of histamine. So there are some people that for their fertility and for other things, if they follow a low histamine diet, they're so much better. And then there's actually enzymes that you can take if you do want some strawberries or some prosciutto that can sometimes mitigate it.

[01:46:20] Luke: The bone broth thing is interesting because you hear a lot in the natural birthing world, telling women just to be chugging bone broth through their entire pregnancy.

[01:46:30] Ann: No. If you start to have any reflux or runny nose after you've eaten, skin rashes, itching, probably not actually helpful for you. For people that don't have a histamine issue, it can be very, very helpful for the gut and very healing. But a lot of us, especially post COVID, it's--

[01:46:53] Luke: How would one determine their genetic disposition toward histamine as you discovered for yourself?

[01:47:00] Ann: Yeah, so you can do some of the methylation genetics because it takes a certain methylation pathways to clear histamines. And then there's DAO enzymes, and then there are a few other immune system enzymes that you can do through a lab called Intellxx, I-N-T-E-L-L-X-X. have you had Sharon on? I thought--

[01:47:23] Luke: No.

[01:47:24] Ann: Oh, she'd be great for-- you'd love her. She's a MD, PhD, all on the genetic path. Yeah, you guys would nerd out.

[01:47:37] Luke: Yeah, I've not covered much of that. I think I have a show with this guy, Cash, his last name at the moment. But he has a outfit called the DNA company. And--

[01:47:47] Ann: Oh, yeah.

[01:47:47] Luke: He does a lot of that work. But I haven't been able to comprehend it, so it's not something I've leaned into because I'm just like, "Ah, it sounds confusing."

[01:47:56] Ann: And I actually cover genetics in the book because there are certain genetics that can increase the risk for miscarriage and that kind of thing, that if you can get ahead of it and test, then there are things that you can do to help prevent the miscarriages. But the genetic testing that I like to do are when we can do little workarounds to help the body to do better.

[01:48:19] So all the methylation pathways are so fun to look at because by taking the right supplements, the right nutrients, you can bypass some of those glitches and totally methylate normally so that you can do repair, do the epigenetics, clear the histamines better, and other genes that-- even the APOE4 gene that has the increased risk for dementia.

[01:48:51] So definitely having APOE4 gene increases your risk for having dementia, but not everybody who has the APOE4 is going to get dementia, so it's environment meets genes. So to know what your genes are, you can take action and help to do prevention.

[01:49:13] And so I love doing the genetic testing to know which things to prioritize. When I did my Intellxx test, it was like having a library and to like, okay, why did you get autoimmunity? Why did you get celiac? Why did you have mold toxicity? And then know exactly what I can be doing on a day-to-day, week-to-week basis to have super health and longevity?

[01:49:39] Luke: It sounds like that little testing is like a source code for the owner's manual of your body, right?

[01:49:46] Ann: Exactly.

[01:49:47] Luke: Yeah, that's really interesting.

[01:49:47] Ann: Yeah, I think you'd really enjoy it.

[01:49:49] Luke: That's cool. Yeah, I haven't done anything in the testing realm for quite a long time. I think I just got so confused by it and I just end up with more supplements. I'm just like, "Okay, get back to basics." What about the histamines in leftovers? What do you know about that?

[01:50:07] Ann: I think for most people 24 hours is a good period of time for leftovers. For people that are really having issues with histamines, just freeze stuff in glass, and then take it out when you want to eat it. And try to avoid the leftovers if you're really going through a challenge.

[01:50:27] Luke: Got it. Yeah, that's bad news for those of us that both don't enjoy and have no skillet cooking.

[01:50:34] Ann: Yeah.

[01:50:34] Luke: So we get meals delivered and then we just heat them up. But those are leftovers. You know what I'm saying? So they sit in the fridge for a number of days. Okay, that's good to know.

[01:50:45] Ann: Yeah. Trying to eat fresh most of the time is the way to go. So if you cook dinner, try to eat it for breakfast or lunch the next day.

[01:50:57] Luke: Okay. Noted. I've gotten a lot of really great news from you today. Some news, it's inconvenient that I'm going to try to forget and just keep eating my leftovers. So I appreciate your broad spectrum of expertise and also just that you're focusing on a lot of this fertility stuff.

[01:51:17] Because as I said now, being someone that's gone through it, it is not fun at all. And I think, if I would've known some of these things earlier on, who knows what could have happened? So I think it's really, really important. And especially, I don't know, the way that our society is ordered and the way we're indoctrinated into certain value systems around success and career and education, I think I'm not alone in wanting to have kids be a later-on thought.

[01:51:53] Ann: And I think it's just getting worse. Talking with my boys, they're 24 and 28, it's just gotten so expensive to live. So even though they both have good jobs, they're both feeling like they have to wait. Because how do you get to the point where you can buy a house and feel like you can actually support children? It's not just that people want to wait later. It's feeling like they don't have a choice

[01:52:24] Luke: Yeah. I think that was the case for me in many ways. Part of it was just emotional immaturity, but when I got to the point where I wanted to, it was like, wow, we got to get the house. I don't know if it's a provider male thing where I'm just like, no, I need a certain structure and stability and security in order for me to feel like it's a good time. Right?

[01:52:43] Ann: Absolutely.

[01:52:44] Luke: And for me that wasn't until I was like in my 50s, where I go, oh, okay. I kind of have my shit together enough now where I feel like I could support a family. So it's not easy to do.

[01:52:55] Ann: Feeling aligned, mind, body, spirit, it can take some time. And then for women that want to have a career and have a baby, it's hard to do both. It really is. So I also understand that, wanting to wait. So I'm here to give hope that when we can run this process, it's very possible to have babies later in life that are super healthy and not have to struggle with the fertility.

[01:53:27] Luke: What can you say, before we close here, just about erroneous public opinion perception around fertility windows for women? I hear women freaking out when they're 35.

[01:53:43] Ann: I just had somebody told that they were past their window at 31. It's so maddening. As somebody at 38 that was told, based on my labs, that there's no way I was going to get pregnant, that I needed to do IVF, and then I got pregnant in the next cycle while I was waiting for my period to start to go on the pill. We don't know.

[01:54:09] There's so much more beyond what the basic fertility labs show as to what is actually really happening in the body. That's why I love digging deeper and preparing, because my own body taught me to not listen to those labs and to not listen to the doctor telling me I had no hope, that I better get going on IVF right away. It's not right. We should not be telling women that. And that's not what I see in my practice. You can do so much at any age when you apply these principles.

[01:54:50] Luke: If you think about Dr. Bruce Lipton's work, The Biology of Belief, if you go to someone in their little white smock and they're educated, they're smarter than me. That's my doctor. And they're like, "How old are you? 40? Oh yeah, just give it up." It's like that belief can be so powerful. That could shut things down in and of itself, right? It's like when someone gets a cancer diagnosis. Oh, you have six months to live. Boom, they die six months to the day because they believe it.

[01:55:17] Ann: That's actually exactly what happened to my stepfather. He told him he was going to die and a few weeks later he died, after years of dealing with this chronic health issue. When he was told there was no hope, there was no hope.

[01:55:34] Luke: Yeah. I'm glad that you're a beacon of reality for that. To me, just intuitively, if a woman's still menstruating, you still got a shot.

[01:55:44] Ann: Absolutely.

[01:55:44] Luke: You know what I'm saying? It's like that's nature saying, yeah, the body's still getting prepared. Right?

[01:55:50] Ann: Yes.

[01:55:50] Luke: Am I tripping?

[01:55:51] Ann: There might not be. No, there's definitely less than when you were 20, but you just need one good egg and preparing that environment that the ovaries are in to be highly nourished and low inflammation, even though histamine.

[01:56:08] Luke: Yeah, yeah.

[01:56:09] Ann: The body knows what to do.

[01:56:12] Luke: Beautiful. All right, last question for you. Who have been three teachers or teachings in general that have impacted you, influenced your life, who you are as a person, how you practice medicine, etc.?

[01:56:25] Ann: It's so interesting that you just brought up Bruce Lipton because he actually early, early on in my search for how to do integrative medicine, the way that I wanted to do it, I went to a workshop that he gave.

[01:56:38] Luke: Oh, cool.

[01:56:39] Ann: Yes. So it was probably around 20 years ago, out at the crossings outside of Austin. And that understanding of how our mind bodies are connected, it really planted an important seed both in my own health journey and with my patients. And I would say Jeffrey Bland. Have you interviewed Jeff?

[01:57:506] Luke: No, don't know of him.

[01:57:07] Ann: I consider him the father of functional medicine. He's a PhD biologist, and he's the one that really had this vision that we can do medicine differently and started the Institute for Functional Medicine with a couple of the other people.

[01:57:20] He's just such a joy and delight and continues to move this field forward more than anybody I know. And then I guess I would say my parents, both of them. They were both teachers. My dad taught at the University of Kentucky, and my mom taught both over the years at the reading program and the gifted and talented, and they really prioritize learning over everything. So that's why I have so many--

[01:57:56] Luke: That's why you went to college twice?

[01:57:58] Ann: Really three times because I got a--

[01:57:59] Luke: I thought you were just a masochist.

[01:58:01] Ann: I got a master’s degree in engineering too. But I remember being so mad at my dad at times where I'd go to him for help, and it'd be so frustrating because I just wanted him to tell me the answer. Just tell me the answer. And he wouldn't. He would help me to think through how to get to the answer myself.

[01:58:21] And I feel so lucky that I get to use that process of really thinking about things and integrating ideas and testing out hypotheses and running little mini experiments to understand humanity better. Not just health, but what is consciousness, and what are these souls that are wanting to come in to help humanity move forward?

[01:58:46] And so I really feel grateful to them that they were so encouraging. Although my mom, she had two brothers who had gone to medical school. So when I was like, "Hey, I think I'm going to go to medical school and I'm 32 and I haven't had kids yet," she was like, "Oh, I don't think this is a good idea."

[01:59:09] But other than that, they've been so incredibly supportive about pursuing my dreams of really making a difference. When I gave my mom a copy of the book-- my dad's passed away-- I could just feel the joy that she had and a sense of how many people this is going to help. And it has been such a passion for me to get this information out there.

[01:59:39] So we can start to see a change in this fertility rate and the children's health crisis. I really think that these principles will really help people to have healthier babies so that we can not be so afraid of what's going to happen to future generations.

[01:59:58] Luke: Yeah. Amen. God bless your parents and you for putting you in the world, doing good things. We're going to put your book, and we've talked about a lot of different labs and supplements. So for those listening and watching, again, lukestorey.com/drshippy is where you'll find all the goods there clickable.

[02:00:16] Jarrod's always over here, hard at work, taking notes as we go, making sure we don't miss anything. So we put a lot of time and effort into making sure people are left with some resources. Lastly, I know your practice is based here in Austin. If someone was interested in working with you, what does that look like? Is it only in-person? Do you do anything remotely? How's your practice going to run?

[02:00:39] Ann: Yeah, so I have people fly in for the first visit, and then we can do remote after that.

[02:00:44] Luke: Oh, cool.

[02:00:45] Ann: Then I have a program that I'm going to be launching in January.

[02:00:48] Luke: You don't say.

[02:00:49] Ann: Yeah, so the low-cost option is the book. So I'm hoping people share this with everybody that they know wants to start or grow their family. But then we'll do a group program where we can have Q&As and do more training and have access to labs. And then I'll do group explanations of what the labs mean and how you can adjust that. So that'll be launching in January.

[02:01:13] Luke: I'll try to get it out soon. I'd love for people to be able to not miss that program. But if they do, hopefully it goes well and you'll do it again.

[02:01:27] Ann: Yes, absolutely.

[02:01:28] Luke: Sometimes we do these and they come out three months later. Sometimes it's out next week, and I'm like, "What? We just did that." So I never know. But I like to try to time things so that if somebody has a further level of engagement with the audience that it's available. So we'll do the best we can there. Well, it sounds amazing.

[02:01:46] Ann: Thank you.

[02:01:47] Luke: I'm so glad that we finally got to meet after people trying to connect me with you for quite a while now. It's been really fun.

[02:01:52] Ann: Amazing. I know the timing is a little bittersweet.

[02:01:56] Luke: I know. I'm like, "Duh, three years too late." You never know. You never know.

[02:02:00] Ann: I see things happening. If there's anything in the book that-- I think you've got my cell phone now. If there's anything in the book you've got questions about or any way I can help you guys-- I feel like you're part of my soul family. And I do see a couple of souls around you. I have this gift that's come through on the metaphysical as I've been working on this project.

[02:02:31] Luke: Yeah.

[02:02:32] Ann: And sometimes I have an awareness of souls. So they may just stay with you in this form. Can you feel them?

[02:02:40] Luke: I've had different experiences over the course of this journey where I've felt, seen, heard presence. And it's, I think, something that's come to me later, is realizing that there was a grief element to the experience that I wasn't really aware of because in terms of miscarriage, we moved through that with a lot of grace together, and it was very-- we're already quite unified, but it was really an incredibly bonding experience for us to share and just support each other and hold each other through that.

[02:03:20] So it was disappointing, but it wasn't something, I think, because we got pregnant so fast the first time we tried. I think it was like, oh cool, that was easy. Boom, keep it moving. And then it didn't happen. So I think when that loss took place, I don't think I realized that we couldn't just do it again. I was like, "Oh yeah, okay. Let's give Alyson some time to integrate and regroup and then boom, we just do it again.

[02:03:47] And then doing all the things and it's not happening. So it's a multifaceted acknowledgement and facing the-- shadow work's a little heavy, but just facing some uncomfortable feelings about the whole experience overall. But I also feel I'm surrendered to whatever God's will is too.

[02:04:13] So it's like I'm open to miracles, but also just going, "Hey. Listen, I'm putting my hands up on this one." I feel like we did everything we possibly could on every level from the spiritual to the biology and everything in between. And it's just like, wow, I don't know what the thing that created me has in store for my life, and I'm left with no other option, but to just trust that, whatever that looks like, and not close my mind or my heart to the possibilities.

[02:04:40] And also just being a daily acceptance of what is and what my life and our life together will look like if that's not in the cards for us. But I think the grief part for those listening or watching still at this point, two hours in for anyone that's had that experience and you really wanted to have kids and you haven't, I think what I'm learning about it is that it doesn't serve me to bypass the disappointment and the sadness around it.

[02:05:08] It's like, oh, whatever. God's will. And it's pretty meaningful disappointment. It's not as easy of a pivot as I thought it would be. So it's been a beautiful invitation to go deeper into acknowledging the meaning and the impact of it.

[02:05:34] It's quite a heavy practice to reconcile. It's just like you think life's going one way, and it's like, well, of course. We've both done so much work on ourselves. We're so healthy. We have such a beautiful life. We have some stability. It's just like the table is set.

[02:05:50] It's like everything is seemingly in the perfect place for this to happen. And when it doesn't, yeah, it's an invitation to-- also, if it doesn't, where can our love and service go if it's not going into that? And I think that's a really interesting inquiry to me--

[02:06:08] Ann: That's beautiful.

[02:06:09] Luke: Is just like, hmm, okay. The purpose for me of having a kid is just to have a deeper experience of love. To be able to love like I've never loved, to be able to receive a kind of love that you can probably only get in that way, being a parent. So it's like, okay, it's not like the love in the field went anywhere. I still have the capacity for it. It still exists in this realm.

[02:06:32] So where is it going to be channeled to and from if it's not through that. And maybe it still could be through that, who knows? So it's a beautiful learning experience, but only because I'm continuing to face how heartbreaking it is at the same time. It's a lot. It's just a big experience to have in so many ways.

[02:06:56] Ann: Hmm.

[02:06:57] Luke: So I'm hoping that the people that have heard this and have had those challenges, and are maybe past the point of no return, can reconcile that. But more than anything, of course, is people that want more kids or they want to have their first kids, it's like, man, do everything you can to get it right. Because as you say in your book, and we've talked about today, the multi-generational thing is something I've not really thought about.

[02:07:20] Ann: It's huge.

[02:07:21] Luke: Yeah. So if you want like healthy, great grandkids--

[02:07:24] Ann: Start now.

[02:07:25] Luke: This year, or however long you can devote to really optimizing yourself is going to travel on through time after you're long gone.

[02:07:33] Ann: And such a gift to give in advance. Yeah.

[02:07:37] Luke: Yeah. Well, hot damn. I didn't know we were going to end on such a deep level.

[02:07:40] Ann: Oh my gosh, you articulated that so beautifully. That's such a gift to me. Thank you.

[02:07:47] Luke: Yeah, thank you. And thank you for your commitment to helping people make beautiful, healthy babies. The world needs more of them. Think about it like, if people were just having healthier babies, the level of psychospiritual emotional health on the planet could be improved so dramatically.

[02:08:05] As we were talking about earlier, just the cascade downstream of birth trauma and like, ah, you're stuck in the medical system now, there's so many repercussions when it doesn't go well that I think we would live in a different world if people were really paying attention to their conception protocols and making healthier babies. Man, we just have a different world. So I'm so supportive of your mission.

[02:08:27] Ann: Thanks for seeing the vision.

[02:08:29] Luke: Oh, totally, man.

[02:08:30] Ann: This means so much.

[02:08:31] Luke: Yeah. I think sometimes as humans, we're very shortsighted also. And we just think, oh, what I do doesn't really matter. Just me and my little family and friends. But I do see the interconnectedness of all things in all people and how things that are seemingly unrelated are very much related and interdependent.

[02:08:55] And one of the things I get fed on Twitter, because I probably watch too many of them, is road rage videos, of just people like pulling out guns, hitting each other with bats and stuff. I'm just like--

[02:09:04] Ann: I never get any of those.

[02:09:05] Luke: Yeah. It says something about my mental health and what I'm attracted to. But I look at those and I'm just like, "Oh man. This is someone who hasn't healed their childhood trauma. This is someone who's probably inflamed with histamines or whatever."

[02:09:17] Ann: They might be in mold.

[02:09:18] Luke: Yeah. It's like dude's probably driving a moldy car, the air freshener or whatever. It's just like, I see the breakdown of society, and I know there are so many solutions and people like you that devote your life to helping people find those solutions. So it's depressing and super inspiring at the same time.

[02:09:40] Ann: I hope that the message is of hope.

[02:09:43] Luke: I think it is.

[02:09:44] Ann: We are in dire circumstances as a population globally, and the planet's in trouble. But I think we're going to rally. I think we're going to get this together.

[02:09:58] Luke: I think so too. I would say for someone that has as much knowledge as you in terms of like what we're up against, you're pretty optimistic. So just to give you a reflection on that. I don't find you to be a doom and gloom type person. It's just like, yeah, there's some things we need to address, but we're also going to be okay. We'll figure it out. That's what humans do.