Optimizing your Preconception Health & Fertility with Dr Ann Shippy [Ep. #1022]

 

This Week’s Episode Special Guest: Dr. Ann Shippy

Summary: 

In this conversation, Dr. Ann Shippy discusses the significance of infertility as a health indicator, likening it to a check engine light that signals underlying health issues. She emphasizes the importance of both partners’ health in enhancing fertility and ensuring the birth of healthier babies.

About Dr. Ann Shippy

Dr. Ann Shippy is a Board-Certified Internal Medicine physician and certified Functional Medicine practitioner based in Austin, Texas. With a background in chemical engineering and a successful career at IBM, she transitioned to medicine after facing her own complex health challenges—an experience that fuels her passion for uncovering and addressing the root causes of illness.

Her work centers around four key areas of expertise: longevity, health span (increasing the number of years lived in vibrant, disease-free health), unlocking better outcomes through personalized, data-driven care, and preconception—supporting couples as they prepare to conceive the healthiest baby possible. Using advanced testing and epigenetic insights, Dr. Shippy empowers patients to activate the body’s innate ability to heal, thrive, and even reverse chronic conditions.

Motivated by the alarming rise in childhood illness, Dr. Shippy felt a deep urgency to provide answers. That urgency led her to write The Preconception Revolution: A Science-Backed Path to Your Fertility and Generational Health—a hope-filled guide that empowers couples to take control of their fertility and future family health. The book offers a clear, actionable blueprint for reversing the childhood health crisis—one healthy baby at a time.

With degrees from Washington University in St. Louis, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and the University of Texas, Dr. Shippy brings a unique blend of engineering precision and medical insight to her work. Her practice—Ann Shippy, MD— is dedicated to helping individuals live better—and get better—with age.

Guest Resources:

Book: THE PRECONCEPTION REVOLUTION: A Science-Backed Path to Fertility and Generational Health

Website:  annshippymd.com

Social: @annshippymd

 

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Episode Chapters

 

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Transcript: 

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (00:01.446)
Dr. Anne, thank you so much for joining us here today.

Ann Shippy MD (00:05.646)
excited for this conversation.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (00:08.049)
I’m excited too, as I mentioned to you right before we got on the show, I actually did read your full book, which is very comprehensive, The Preconception Revolution, Science-Backed Path to Your Fertility and Generational Health. Can you tell us a little bit, just as we start, Dr. Anne, how you decided to focus on this specific subject in your career, in your work, helping women or helping families have…

healthy children, how did that become the focus?

Ann Shippy MD (00:39.51)
It was kind of this accidental confluence of information. I feel so lucky that I was able to pull this all together for people. I had gone through my own infertility journey before medical school and then during residency. And then I started seeing these amazing things happen with my patients.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (01:03.271)
Bye!

Ann Shippy MD (01:05.23)
around this topic. Like what does it actually take to have good fertility and healthy babies both, right? We don’t want to just get pregnant. We want to have our, you know, give our children the best shot at having a good healthy life, right? So one of my early patients, I had only been in practice a couple of years and she was 41 and she’d finally gotten married and had the love of her life. And she just had the intuition. She’d heard about me and she was like, Dr. Shippey, I know I really need to prepare my body more to be pregnant.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (01:16.059)
Yes.

Ann Shippy MD (01:34.91)
And so we worked her up. We looked at her microbiome. We looked at her toxin levels. And she actually had really high mercury. Yeah. And so I loved that. That was a really early story of like, really need to listen to my patient’s intuitions. And so we worked together for six to nine months and finally gave her the green light go. And she had a healthy baby right away at 41, 42.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (01:42.727)
BWOY!

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (02:00.967)
Wow.

Ann Shippy MD (02:03.05)
So that taught me, okay, we can really help people to have healthy babies even into their 40s. And then a couple years later, I had a patient come in who also just found me by word of mouth and she had done IVF a couple times. was in her mid 30s and she failed IVF a couple of times. And so then nobody else wanted to give her another shot at it.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (02:28.264)
Mmm.

Ann Shippy MD (02:28.556)
So we did the same kind of thing. We worked her up, found out what was out of balance in her body, how we could really build the resources in her body. And long behold, less than a year later, she was pregnant and had a healthy baby. And then she actually got pregnant with twins while she was still nursing the first one. She got so pregnant. Yes. And then had a birth. So she had, she ended up with four children, under four, after being told that she couldn’t, you know.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (02:53.512)
Wow.

Ann Shippy MD (02:58.446)
into her 30s. So my patients taught me that when we’re really healthy, can get past the fertility issues and have healthy babies.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (03:09.352)
Yeah.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (03:14.482)
You know, it’s really interesting, Dr. Rans reading your book and just thinking about friends that I know that, you know, and there’s we’re in a time and you mentioned this in the book where some companies are, you know, giving a stipend for freezing your eggs and sort of going down that pathway. But it just seems like so many people are going right to IVF and they’re even late, like 20s. And I just say for me, it didn’t even it wasn’t in my consciousness, you know, and I don’t know, like

I don’t know, it just seems like a time when IVF is becoming more and more popular at younger ages. And do you think that’s connected to the toxin level and people are struggling? Or do you think it’s just because women are wanting to delay having babies because of their careers? Combination.

Ann Shippy MD (04:03.822)
Yes, I think it’s all the confluence of things, right? The sperm counts are going down. They’ve gone down 50 % in 50 years and it’s accelerating. It was 1 % a year. Now it’s almost 2.5 % decline in sperm counts per year. So we’ve got that along with people waiting a little longer. And then…

the drop in fertility. The latest number that I saw was one in six couples deal with infertility, which is not getting pregnant in a year. There is another number circulating, I haven’t found the source yet, of one in five, so this fertility issue’s accelerating. And then I think it’s the narrative of what the conversation is that we’re normalizing IVF, we’re normalizing IVOI, and using the clomid and other things.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (04:40.157)
Mm.

Ann Shippy MD (04:55.532)
rather than being weight, infertility is actually a sign, it’s like a check engine light. It’s like the body saying, wait, we’re not, like something’s off because we’re born to like procreate the species. That’s been the amazing thing of how, you know, like it’s just part of our makeup to have children. And so I think…

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (05:01.607)
Mm-hmm.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (05:11.098)
Yeah.

Ann Shippy MD (05:24.32)
If you’ve got that check engine light on, especially you want to pause and figure out what needs to happen in both partners to really enhance their health so that then they can not just have better fertility, but healthier babies.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (05:39.356)
Right. Yes, and it’s like you said, it’s a natural biological function. We’re seeing that across the board where people are having trouble, know, digesting, they’re having trouble sleeping, they’re having trouble, you know, having energy, they’re pumped up with caffeine. So it seems like there’s many aspects of our lifestyle as a collective that need to be re-examined, this being one of them.

Ann Shippy MD (06:02.766)
So in addition to having all these patient experiences where I can see that people are often very fertile well into their 40s. My oldest patient is 47 right now. And after doing a few months of work, we’ve worked on her health for a little over three months. She gave me a little bit of time. She didn’t want to wait too long at 47. But she got pregnant on her first try, and she’s five months in now. So we don’t have a healthy baby yet, but it’s teaching me.

what it takes to be fertile. So when we look at root causes of these things, you mentioned the environmental toxicity, I think that’s a really important piece for us to look at, not just for fertility, but the health of the future child, and then how important it is to eat the nutrient-dense foods. It’s really hard to…

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (06:46.968)
Yes.

Ann Shippy MD (06:55.822)
have a healthy sperm and healthy egg and then a healthy body to grow the baby in if you’re not just full of nutrients because all of these reproductive mechanisms run on nutrients.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (07:06.96)
Right. Well, it’s funny, Dr. Anne, how, you know, I’m sure you see all types of people and different parts of their journey. I could say for myself, I wasn’t focused on pregnancy, but I was sort of turning my body around. had a lot of, you know, constipation and acne and bloating. And so I was eating so many greens and so much fiber. And so when I went to have

Kids I did I was lucky enough to have them on the pretty much the first try each and then my grandmother from the Philippines Like your client she had babies to 48. So there’s these incredible possibilities we have but so much of the you conversation today is quite Negative and like again rushing to do IVF and everybody’s struggling and it’s so hard. So it’s nice to feel and to hear a bit of

Ann Shippy MD (07:41.954)
Yes.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (07:59.548)
hopefulness and also that that doesn’t have to be the way. there’s a, you know, there’s this whole other healthy way we can make choices, we can re nourish the body and you know, so many of the different things that you talk about in the book, which we’ll get into in just a moment.

Ann Shippy MD (08:16.086)
It really is exciting. It’s, you know, IVF is so expensive. It’s so hard on women’s bodies. It’s stressful for the partner too, because they’re, you know, they’re feeling out of control. so when we can find a way to really restore the body and to help people to be fertile, that’s amazing. And then what I really see the big opportunity is to based on this is that.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (08:26.182)
Yeah.

Ann Shippy MD (08:45.58)
when people give themselves the three, six, 12 months before they get pregnant to really optimize their body. It’s like creating time capsules that the egg and the sperm are so that the baby has healthier epigenetics, how the genes are being dialed up and dialed down. really, for me, this is not just an infertility opportunity. This is helping to solve the children’s health crisis that we have with one in 31 children being diagnosed with.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (08:55.3)
Yes.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (09:12.465)
Yes.

Ann Shippy MD (09:15.52)
autism and the mental health and the diabetes and the autoimmunity, the cancer, all these things that we’re seeing happen in children. The research backs this up now how important the epigenetics are to really address before you get pregnant to help have a healthier baby.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (09:35.11)
And one of the things that you talk about in the book is the correlation between boosting our mitochondrial health, specifically, independent of how old, maternal age. Can you talk a little bit about that and how we could do that specifically?

Ann Shippy MD (09:49.996)
That is one of my favorite topics because it applies to everybody. So even if people are listening and they’re like, yeah, I’ve already had my kids or I’m not going to have them for a while, this is something we all need to be focusing on. So mitochondria are the little organelles inside the cell that make energy. So they’re little powerhouses that really run everything. They help us to detoxify, to rebuild things. They do everything. And unfortunately, a lot of people’s mitochondria are getting

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (09:52.456)
Yeah.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (10:01.042)
Yeah.

Ann Shippy MD (10:20.288)
injured or aren’t working optimally because of the environmental toxins that are building up in people’s bodies are not having all the right nutrients or having inflammation in the body. The mitochondria are responsible for keeping up with, you know, not having the fire go to get out of balance and basically be burning down LA. So

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (10:23.4)
Okay.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (10:40.838)
But what an analogy Dr. Edward, always so sensitive to fire that that really sinks in, you know.

Ann Shippy MD (10:49.784)
So we all need to be tending to our mitochondria. And there’s some amazing research around what we can do to help them. And it’s one of the things that I really see the impact with my patients, whether they have a chronic illness like Parkinson’s, or they’re just wanting to really work on their longevity, or we’re preparing for healthy babies. So there are things that help those mitochondria to

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (11:04.793)
Ugh.

Ann Shippy MD (11:18.904)
work better. So things like CoQ10 and a special form of CoQ10 that I love called MitoQ, alpha lipoic acid, carnitine, B vitamins, D ribose. So there are so many things that you can put into your concoction of mitochondrial support and you can do some trial and error and see what you like the best. Astaxymetham’s another one, but you can’t go wrong with any of those things. They are all going to help your mitochondria be better.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (11:30.632)
Hmm.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (11:39.388)
Yes.

Ann Shippy MD (11:47.008)
And then our cell membranes and our mitochondrial membranes all really benefit from something called phosphatidylcholine, or I call it PC for short. And it also is just one of the really good things, especially for women, great for men too, but to be taking to build healthy babies because a lot of what we’re doing as we’re growing a baby is making new mitochondria and new cells in their bodies. And so having plenty of phosphatidylcholine.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (11:53.981)
Mm.

Ann Shippy MD (12:13.656)
can help in it, especially for people that are doing a plant-based diet. They may not be getting enough choline and phosphatidylcholine. So that would be my number one thing. If you’re just going to pick one thing to take in this preconception period, take the phosphatidylcholine because it’s going to help that baby to grow as well as help your agate sperm be healthier.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (12:17.735)
Yes.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (12:36.924)
I read then the book, Doctor, and we see a lot of prenatals that contain choline, but you say there’s, should also be taking the phosphatocolline. That’s a word. You should take both. You should specifically seek that out, or are there prenatals that contain both?

Ann Shippy MD (12:48.43)
Take them.

Ann Shippy MD (12:53.652)
I don’t know of any prenatals that have it yet. It has to be separate from what I’ve seen. That’s actually not a bad business idea.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (12:56.164)
Got it.

Because I hear a lot about colon, we hear that a lot, your literature, your book was the first I had heard about taking that as well. Also, we hear about taking DHA to make sure we’re early pregnancy or all of pregnancy. That’s also an important supplement for babies’ health.

Ann Shippy MD (13:19.966)
Yeah, you know, I tend to stay away from anything that’s hormonal, preconception and during pregnancy. Okay, perfect. Because yeah, DEA is something we make in our body and there are people that take it to support their bodies, but yeah, the DHA, I like really hesitant. But yes, the omega-3s are super important again for building those cell membranes and you know, brain heart, all the things. Yeah.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (13:26.408)
I’m sorry, EEPA, D-A-S-E-P-A-E-P-A-E-P-A-E-P-A-E-P-A-E-P-A-E-P-A-E-P-A-E-P-A-E-P-A-E-P-A-E-P-A-E-P-A-E-P-A-E-P-A-E-P-A-E-P-A-E-P-A-E-P-A-E-P-A-E-P-A-E-P-A-E-P-A-E-P-A-E-P-A-E-P-A-E-P-A-E-P-A-E-P-A-E-P-A-E-P-A-E-P-A-E-P-A-E-P-A-E-P-A-

Yes.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (13:36.226)
make a fact. Yes, yes.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (13:49.576)
So another thing that was really interesting in your book, Doctor, that I’ve been hearing more research around is NAD. And I remember I had an NAD infusion to help me get over COVID, which was amazing. I felt so clear. I felt so good. But I’m also hearing people talk about doing it for mitochondrial health as well. Can you share with us a little bit about that? And if people are interested, should they be doing NAD?

while they’re pregnant, both the micro daily injections or oral NAD.

Ann Shippy MD (14:24.268)
Yeah, so just to give you a context, really think about if pregnancy is different than preconception versus like when you’re trying to conceive. there’s kind of preconception, trying to conceive and pregnancy. So NAD, I love preconception. Like some of my patients will actually come, they’ll do it orally to help with mitochondrial function, because it is a good booster for mitochondria. And then they’ll do…

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (14:37.895)
Right.

Ann Shippy MD (14:53.196)
do it IV because it’s kind of like a little bit of a car wash. You don’t have to do that, but if you have access to it and have the resources to do it, it is great. It’s a tool that I use if I’ve been traveling, if I’ve known I’ve gotten a toxic exposure, it’s my best reset. During COVID, it was amazing. Even now, I some patients that come in after the flu, COVID, anything to

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (14:57.477)
Yeah, mega jokes.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (15:14.472)
Yes.

Ann Shippy MD (15:22.626)
just get a little reset. When we get into the trying to conceive period, I’m a little bit more conservative. Like I want men to be careful about what, know, anything that might push the body to detox a little bit too much or women to detox a little bit too much. So that is kind of an individual decision based on, you know, a patient for me, because I don’t want to do anything that’s kind of want to do it.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (15:37.755)
Okay.

Ann Shippy MD (15:50.766)
too big of a detox right around the time that we’re actually conceiving. And then during pregnancy, I’m very conservative. Like I really believe in a lot of the building block kinds of things, but we don’t want to push the body to be detoxifying too much. We really want to be, so anything that might help the body to detox too much. So I wouldn’t do like a glutathione IV, I wouldn’t do any significant IVs during.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (15:53.572)
Okay.

Ann Shippy MD (16:17.336)
during pregnancy because I just don’t want to take, like I’m risk averse in that situation. If I don’t have data to know that the baby’s going to be okay, I’m going to look for other alternatives.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (16:21.178)
Yeah.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (16:28.786)
So even the oral NAD you wouldn’t recommend during pregnancy. Okay.

Ann Shippy MD (16:31.47)
Actually the oral is fine. The IV just pushes the body a little bit more that you might do a little bit more detox.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (16:38.824)
got it. Because I hear people doing, and I know you talk about in the book avoiding peptides and hormone replacement, but I know there’s brands that are doing like 30 micrograms a day, like tiny amounts of NAD. Do you think that would help with embryonic health potentially?

Ann Shippy MD (16:58.338)
before pregnancy and then after pregnancy, just would need some to feel and to see some data to feel comfortable with it. Yeah. So what I’d love to do is prime the body as much as possible in this preconception period and have it like everything supercharged. It’s like, you know, when I travel, I have my phone charged, my computer charged, and I have a backup battery that’s all charged. So we want to get all the charges in place and then say, go and then maintain.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (16:59.794)
Don’t. Yeah, no, that’s clear. That’s good information.

Yes.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (17:17.809)
Yes.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (17:25.286)
Yeah, I got it.

Ann Shippy MD (17:27.884)
the charging, we don’t want to do too much supercharging. That could be a risk.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (17:34.534)
What do you say to patients, Dr. Anne, they’ve done the program, they’ve cleansed, they’ve done a lot of your protocols. And I want to get into stress and autoimmune in just a moment, but they’re doing it and the program’s successful and they get pregnant. But then how do you counsel your clients about avoiding miscarriage or if some people have repeated miscarriage? I know you mentioned progesterone in the book.

Ann Shippy MD (18:01.216)
Yeah. So I do track progesterone really carefully right after conception. Because sometimes people need that. It’s interesting because I feel like there’s before the last couple of years, I thought that you were more likely to need the progesterone, you know, with the older age, right? Like maybe later thirties and early forties. But what I’ve seen happen now is like the more

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (18:21.959)
Yeah.

Ann Shippy MD (18:28.846)
crime the body is, the better the, especially when we have partners that will also prep that a lot of times you don’t need the progesterone, but it is a really, I do like to monitor it in that first trimester and make sure that the body is making a good amount of progesterone. And then if somebody is having recurrent miscarriages, we got to dig deeper as to why.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (18:36.072)
you

Ann Shippy MD (18:58.326)
So one of the more common things that can happen is the toxic exposure you don’t realize. toxic mold, the black mold, isn’t just an allergen, but it’s actually making chemicals that are very strong and very dangerous have been one of the root causes when we’ve dug into things to find out what’s going on with miscarriage. There can also be a genetic predisposition to clotting.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (19:03.88)
Mmm.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (19:24.988)
Mm-hmm.

Ann Shippy MD (19:26.7)
So then we wanna do some gene testing and see, do you have a predisposition where your body starts clotting really easily? And if that’s the case, it’s so treatable. just take, depending on what the gene is, you might take some aspirin or you might take an injection with lovinox. Then the other thing we wanna do is look for, is there a situation where there’s some autoimmunity? So antiphospholipid antibodies. Looking back at my story,

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (19:51.836)
Okay.

Ann Shippy MD (19:54.988)
that probably was one of the reasons that I wasn’t getting pregnant. was having super probably having super early miscarriages because I would feel like, okay, my body feels different. But then I would have ended up starting bleeding and then have a heavy period. So and then later on found that nobody was looking for looked at it for me. It was before I went to medical school and and then during residency before I had all this information.

So then we wanna do those blood tests to look for autoimmune, it’s called anti-cardiolipin or anti-phospholipid. And again, it’s good news if you find it because then you know, okay, well, that’s at the root of it. And a lot of times what the traditional medical model will do is just band-aid that with a medication to thin the blood a little bit. But in…

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (20:36.775)
Yeah.

Ann Shippy MD (20:48.834)
my world with the functional medicine where we’re looking at the root causes of, wait, why did the body get confused and start attacking itself? So we find out why and we get those things healed. So a lot of times there’s a gluten sensitivity or celiac, or there’s a shift in the microbiome. There’s a low grade infection like Candida in the gut that the body’s trying to fight off and in that exuberance of trying to keep.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (21:07.9)
Thank you.

Ann Shippy MD (21:17.026)
from being taken over, it’s gotten a little confused or there’s an environmental exposure like heavy metals, pesticides, toxic mold that the body’s like, wait, this is too much to deal with. I up regulate the immune system and then again get confused and attack itself with the thyroid or ANA or antiposyloquid are the most common ones.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (21:18.664)
Yeah.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (21:29.384)
I

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (21:38.374)
Hmm.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (21:43.45)
It’s amazing. The first thing you said was the mold, which means you must see it quite a bit in your work. Is there any product or any way you recommend for us to detox the black mold as well as

Ann Shippy MD (21:54.464)
Yes, I do. so this, so my friends are like, you know, my other doctor friends are like, wait, you write a book on preconception because they all know me as who the person to send their toxic mold patients to. So I definitely have become an expert on that. And I’ve had my own run ins with toxic mold and we are in an epidemic of it. So on my website, it’s anshipemd forward slash mold.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (22:10.394)
you

Ann Shippy MD (22:22.84)
There is so much information on what to do, how to do it, because anybody listening, like, did you have a roof leak? Did you have a bathtub overflow? Did you have some wrinkling on around the window paint? Or do you have a musty smell in your house? Like, I’m sure that there are people listening that are like, wait, is that what’s causing my health issues?

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (22:33.051)
I’m

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (22:39.975)
Hmm.

Ann Shippy MD (22:48.878)
We have a lot of resources on the website to send people to, but the most important thing is to find the mold and get rid of it. And then to take the supplements that help your body to detoxify. So things like liposomal glutathione. I also love phosphatidylcholine that I mentioned for pregnancy because it helps the cell membranes and mitochondrial membranes to start healing, to take the mitochondrial support because unfortunately these microtoxins that the mold makes attack the mitochondria.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (23:04.551)
Mm.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (23:19.386)
Okay. And not all mold is toxic, but we need to figure out if it is or not.

Ann Shippy MD (23:20.759)
So.

Ann Shippy MD (23:25.998)
If it’s growing in a house, often it is toxic. Yeah. And lot of times, unfortunately, we don’t have good prevention for this setup. We probably should be doing house inspections, car inspections, places where the mold, school inspections regularly so that we don’t become the frog in the pot and the waters.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (23:31.408)
Yeah, not a great thing to have growing in your house.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (23:48.017)
Yeah.

Ann Shippy MD (23:53.55)
spoiling us. Like a lot of times people don’t figure out the mold issue until they’re somebody in the family is really sick. So and we’re not like when we when we move into a place we should have like an owner’s manual on how to keep it healthy too. But they don’t we don’t know how to do that.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (24:10.44)
Yeah. No, it’s good to be aware. And then the other note I had going into this, here again, so many people have all these different iterations of autoimmune doctor.

friends that have, I mean, I can’t even tell you how many, you know, just so many different names and versions. And that also seems like a huge epidemic. And you touched on this a little bit, how it can severely impact our fertility, unfortunately. And even if we do get pregnant, I had a friend at 14 weeks and, you know, she lost the baby. They thought it was a little bit of an otter. Yeah.

Ann Shippy MD (24:47.918)
God, it’s so hard. So as part of this preconception, I really think that it’s important to know before you even start trying. So checking for auto and new markers is in my list in the book of things that we should be screening in advance. Unfortunately, a lot of times those things are never checked, even when people have had a miscarriage. And so if we can know upfront and empower people to figure out how to

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (24:58.216)
Yeah.

Ann Shippy MD (25:15.982)
you know, do the things that help their body to reverse it so they don’t end up getting an autoimmune disorder in the first place or that they have it under control before trying to conceive.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (25:26.17)
Right. Right. Because then you can manage that before trying to conceive.

Ann Shippy MD (25:33.986)
Right. And so it gives you better shot at being super fertile when your body is not confused and attacking itself and the baby’s going to be healthier.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (25:45.766)
It’s the intelligence of the body because you can work on that part and it’s the womb can be this protective area whilst you’re dealing and taking medications for those other things, doctor.

Ann Shippy MD (26:02.177)
Um, I’m not sure.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (26:02.312)
Because you have autoimmune and you have to take medications and then you’re also pregnant and you’re trying to protect the baby.

Ann Shippy MD (26:08.81)
Yeah, no, it’s better to see what you can do before you get pregnant. to find a functional medicine doctor to help your body. So what I do when I have patients come in with like Hashimoto’s or lupus or rheumatoid arthritis, you know, we take six months to 18 months and really delve into what it is that set off the autoimmune and then help to reverse it.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (26:13.02)
Right.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (26:21.746)
you

Ann Shippy MD (26:35.918)
So for me, I used to have the antiphospholipid antibody and then I had something called Sjogrens where it was the autoimmunity was attacking the eyes. So my eyes were dry and my mouth was dry. I couldn’t wear my contacts and I could only have a conversation if I had like a gum or a mint or something like that. And so I was able to totally reverse that. So I have contacts and today and you know.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (26:35.933)
Got it.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (26:50.536)
Huh.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (26:57.824)
my god.

Wow.

Ann Shippy MD (27:04.972)
making saliva just fine. especially if we find these autoimmune things before they become super symptomatic or early on, we can definitely reverse them.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (27:16.008)
Another big issue we hear about is PCOS. Can you talk a little bit about what we can do if anyone’s listening to this?

Ann Shippy MD (27:26.838)
Yeah, no, we definitely have so many health epidemics, but the PCOS, it’s really become so common compared to what I saw 25 years ago, and now it’s even 10 years ago, like it’s dramatically different. So then you have to ask why, and I think a lot of it has to do with the environmental exposures.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (27:42.248)
10 years ago, right?

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (27:48.679)
Yeah

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (27:52.264)
Mm.

Ann Shippy MD (27:52.278)
I think it’s how the body is responding, the hormone disruption that’s happening from the plastics, phthalates, the microtoxins from the mold. It’s all these heavy metals. I’m seeing these young people also have such high heavy metals. So it’s the body doing the best that it can to try to balance the hormones, but there’s so many things that are basically throwing it off. And so a lot of times by

either just going ahead and doing a period of very safe detox. Like there’s so many things out there that I don’t believe in as far as detox, but you know, the supplements that support the normal processes for getting the toxins out, like liposomal glutathione, binders that help to pull it out, things that support the liver like, milk, Thalso, alpha lipoic acid.

and then eating super healthy foods like the cruciferous vegetables, the broccoli, cabbage, kale, all the phytonutrients can really help a difference in then what the body’s doing with the hormones.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (28:50.086)
Yeah.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (29:01.882)
Yeah. And I’ve heard research around spirulina as well. I know they’ve used it a lot in Japan to help chelate and bind. I’ve been a huge spirulina consumer for a while. Yes. gosh. Third party. yeah. You’re having something that has heavy metals. Yeah. Our glowing powder is third party tested because thank you for bringing that up, doctor. There’s so many products out there that are.

Ann Shippy MD (29:13.046)
And the key is to get it clean because it, yes, it can be so contaminated.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (29:29.234)
questionable and taking in toxins. Yeah.

Ann Shippy MD (29:32.706)
So yeah, so I think this conversation around endometriosis and PCOS, all these things are so reversible, right? So I think people get scared, especially if they’re wanting to start or grow their family, like, am I gonna be able to get pregnant? And then they get trapped into this, you know, harvesting their eggs and going down the IVF pathway. And I just want people to pause and…

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (29:43.089)
Yeah

Ann Shippy MD (30:02.08)
you know, work with their bodies to get them back into balance. Like these things can heal and you’re going to have healthier babies. the healthier you get your body, the healthier your partner gets their bodies. Putting that together, it really makes a difference for the health of the child.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (30:21.22)
You know, I’m going to get a goosebumps a little bit doctor, because I love your authenticity and your heart. And you’re really speaking about what you feel and saying things that some people may not say. So for example, you say, listen, if you want optimal health, you should take out your breast implants. And I’ve heard a lot of doctors be like, no, it’s fine. Like maybe you can breastfeed, maybe you can’t, but you know, there’s a material that’s foreign in the body.

that may be potentially leaking or you talk about there’s, which my friend Danica Patrick, who’s been on here also talked about publicly, she had all this illness and she took out her breast implant, she started to feel better.

Ann Shippy MD (31:05.238)
I’ve had so many patients over the years where we check their toxin levels, take out the implants, they feel better and the toxin levels are down. To me, it’s, you know, it’s just, I get scared for people thinking that that’s going to be okay to have the, you know, the foreign body leaching into their body. I just don’t see any way that it’s not, you know, what we put on our skin, hair, nails.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (31:09.596)
Yeah.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (31:31.175)
Right.

Yeah.

Ann Shippy MD (31:35.732)
everything, our bodies, what we breathe in, our bodies are so absorptive. There’s just no way that having the breast implants aren’t increasing the toxin levels that the babies are getting exposed to. And it’s already, you know, when you look at the environmental working group, core blood data study from 20 years ago,

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (31:53.648)
Yes, and Cook has been on here many times as well. I love him.

Ann Shippy MD (31:58.082)
Yeah, and that was like, I’ve tried to find more recent ones, but even 20 and like the toxicity levels that I see in my patients over the last 20 years are just escalating. Like we need every, we need to take every measure that we can to help our bodies detox and not put more in the breast implants just can’t be a good idea for you or for future children.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (32:02.948)
Yes.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (32:13.138)
Yeah.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (32:22.184)
How long before trying to conceive would you recommend to your patients stopping, you you talked about these other cosmetic toxin sources like toxic hair dyes or botulism, botox. People say it’s localized, but perhaps that might leak as well. I don’t know.

Ann Shippy MD (32:39.788)
I know that feeling a little bit.

Ann Shippy MD (32:45.364)
it links as well. I would say the longer you can deal with it. So at a minimum three months, like I really think everybody should not be doing any nicotine products, any alcohol or other substances the best that they can and definitely at least three months, I would prefer a year. Like if I was going to really like, okay, how do we get on top of this children’s health crisis fastest? We have parents between pregnancies.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (32:51.848)
Cleanse.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (32:57.925)
All right.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (33:11.047)
Yeah.

Ann Shippy MD (33:14.402)
before pregnancy is really getting the toxin levels down, getting the nutrient levels up, and then doing all the other lifestyle changes to change the stress response and all of these things. I don’t want it to be over, I don’t want people to not do it because they’re like, I can’t do that for 12 months. Start with three months and then see how long you can go.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (33:37.074)
So this is sort of a random but related question, doctors. I keep hearing more and more about mold and coffee. What do you think about drinking coffee in the preconception period? And of course, in some cases, you can get mold-free organic coffee. I was actually at a breakfast lunch that had that advertised. But for most people, they’re on the go, they’re going to Starbucks, or they’re going to normal places. Is that something to be careful of when you’re trying to conceive?

Ann Shippy MD (34:06.76)
You know, it’s been really interesting seeing the microtoxin level data with coffee drinkers and non-coffee drinkers. I’ve seen some things where like, people’s coffee machines have gotten really moldy, like really fancy coffee machines causing huge issues. So now I’m like, okay, if you’re going to drink coffee, get the cleanest coffee that you can. There’s danger coffee, purity coffee, and a few others that are

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (34:11.548)
Yeah.

Ann Shippy MD (34:35.934)
They’re very conscientious about the quality and the content of the coffee. then do it like those little pods where you’re running hot fluid through a plastic. Like that can’t be good because it’s got to be into the coffee. So if you’re going to do coffee, get the best coffee and then find the cleanest way to make it like a French press that just has glass and stainless steel. Stainless steel does not leach out much.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (34:45.672)
Yeah.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (34:51.95)
yeah.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (35:02.673)
Yeah.

Ann Shippy MD (35:05.87)
if that all into the heat. So, and then you just have to think about how stressed is your body, right? So if you’re already under a of stress, if you’re doing fair amount of exercise, you’re

Ann Shippy MD (35:23.95)
have stressful things going on. The coffee might make you feel good in the moment, but it could also be elevating cortisol so that can impact fertility. again, in this like right up to the trying, starting green light, starting to try to conceive, the less coffee the better.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (35:30.77)
Thanks.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (35:41.082)
Yeah, that’s a very sound way to put it. And you mentioned stress and you talk about a section in the book about how that can affect our epigenetic aging and how it’s important to have stress modalities. Now you don’t get too deep into it in the book, but you do mention if people feel good doing acupuncture, that could be a good thing because I know some people say, especially if you’re doing IVF, so many people talk about doing a lot of acupuncture, which may be challenging for some people.

out of the budget or some people can do it. How do you see it in other stress tools as well?

Ann Shippy MD (36:19.534)
definitely a fan of acupuncture. It’s been at different times in my life when I had health things I was exploring, it was a piece of the puzzle on how to somehow down my nervous system. So I think for each individual person, think give it a try, see how you feel. I am a little bit careful about the Chinese herbs that a lot of times the acupuncturists will recommend because they can be heavily contaminated.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (36:41.35)
Yes.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (36:45.336)
Yeah.

Ann Shippy MD (36:47.99)
I haven’t dialed down how to get really high quality supplements that are non-toxic that I recommend, but I don’t have the Chinese herbs figured out. There may be, there probably are some really great ones, but I can’t say that I would recommend doing that, but definitely the acupuncture. But then, you know, there’s also just traditional meditation that’s so, so helpful. There’s

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (37:13.809)
Yes.

Ann Shippy MD (37:14.902)
technology now that’s incredible. The vagus nerve stimulators, you can get that done in three minutes a day where it helps to balance that parasympathetic nervous system. I love neurofeedback. So actually retraining your brain waves to instead of being in that high beta run from the tiger to be in that theta state, which is so good for fertility and for helping the body to restore the alpha and theta states are much more calming, relaxing and

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (37:22.269)
Yeah.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (37:26.748)
No, it’s not.

Ann Shippy MD (37:43.306)
and also telling the body that it might be safe to actually have a healthy baby.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (37:48.622)
Yes. And those, the breath work techniques, the meditation are things that you can do ongoing. In my last book, Dr. Anne was about heart coherence as well, and how we can line up the heart, brain and nervous system. And there was an amazing study, you might be interested in that show doing those coherence techniques in 30 days had a huge increase in DHEA, and just had great hormonal balance. It just shows how, and you do have these

big sections in the book, which I really loved about emotional well-being and intentions and spiritual introspection and connection. So it really has a well-rounded approach, I think, versus just a clinical, yeah, numbers. Because we’re talking about babies, we’re talking about life, and I love that you include that.

Ann Shippy MD (38:33.294)
Thank you.

Well, it’s really where I, it’s what I wish I had known before I had my babies. I would have made some different decisions. They turned out amazing. They’re grown now. They’re 24 and 28.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (38:47.984)
Yeah, we’ll do the best we can when we are there that moment.

Ann Shippy MD (38:52.302)
But I wish I had known, you know, I probably had a, well, I definitely had a bunch of heavy metals and I was so stressed. I was, you know, in med school and residency. Happy I got to do both, become a doctor and to have the babies. But I do feel like there are times where I’m like, oh gosh, I wish I had, you know, taken a little time off and, you know, let them percolate in.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (39:07.29)
No.

Ann Shippy MD (39:21.152)
in an environment that wasn’t so high beta run from the tiger.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (39:25.756)
What’s like, you know, the long-term, right? And you’re so loving now just to have that love for the whole life. It’s not just those early years as formative they are, the children will have the love forever.

Ann Shippy MD (39:38.318)
Yeah. Well, and I do feel like they have to do a little bit more to overcome, like work on their health than maybe what they could have. Like they, they both have to meditate. like to feel good and they eat super clean. They’re 24 and 28. And, so, you know, there, I think some of what I didn’t know, gave them some tighter guard rails on what, you know, little less flexibility on.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (39:48.253)
Mm.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (39:52.828)
How old are they now?

Okay.

Ann Shippy MD (40:08.224)
on how they need to live their lives.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (40:10.93)
When you talk about that as well, sometimes we hear the message, do it, know, eat whatever you want, eating for two. And then as you speak about, especially in early pregnancy, how the mother eats can really set the child up for preventing even allergies, cancers, many health. I mean, this is, we’re talking early, early pregnancy, which is tough because I remember feeling like I didn’t want to eat that much.

Ann Shippy MD (40:33.41)
Yes.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (40:37.97)
but also like this is important to eat really well during those nauseous months.

Ann Shippy MD (40:43.64)
Well, and to avoid the toxins because, you know, eating, especially right before pregnancy and pregnancy to eat organic, to drink filtered water, to do what you can to have clean air, at least at night with, you know, extra filtration because those toxins we now know they really do cross over into the cord blood and into the baby. And those exposures can have dramatic impacts on the health there on their health.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (40:46.056)
Yeah.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (41:12.2)
So would you say, doctor, for anyone listening or is about to get pregnant or is in early pregnancy and just really struggling to eat a lot, would you say at least be sure to avoid the toxins and make your environment as clean as possible?

Ann Shippy MD (41:25.654)
Right. it’s been so interesting over the last few years being able to look at the environmental toxins that are circulating in people and definitely avoiding the packaged foods. So the highly processed, highly packaged. So in that early part of pregnancy, if you feel like eating a cupcake, go get some blueberries or an organic apple instead, right? Listen to it. You probably need

real something that’s in the real food like you probably need some phytonutrients and your body just interprets it as sweet. You know those food aversions where you the certain things that you don’t feel like eating tune into what you do and then get the you know just the simplest version of what sounds good rather than the you know snow cone.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (42:14.6)
you

The only thing saved me, doctor, was coconut yogurt. Because it was soft and simple and I could just spoon it up and it was, you know, easy. Easy, simple foods really helped me.

Ann Shippy MD (42:21.208)
Yes!

Ann Shippy MD (42:33.198)
That’s beautiful how you listen to that intuition and just found the healthiest thing available.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (42:40.296)
Yeah, and lots of mangoes. It’s so funny, I joke with my younger son loves mangoes because I ate so many and my older son loves, I had a lot of green smoothies and he loves green. I mean, it’s funny. I don’t know if there’s actual published research if your child likes the foods that you ate when you’re pregnant, but I noticed it a bit in my own children.

Ann Shippy MD (43:02.078)
that’s interesting. Maybe it might be there, like what their body needs are and what they crave, especially when it’s something that’s healthy.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (43:10.15)
Yeah. So I also love in the book, Dr. How you talk about avoiding dairy, which is something I have cut out of my diet quite a while ago and just noticed a huge uptake in my energy, my acne cleared. Can you talk a little bit about why you recommend that from a fertility perspective?

Ann Shippy MD (43:28.59)
Yeah, so the animal dairy is full of the hormones for that particular animal, like a cow, it’s got the things that help the baby cow grow to be a big cow. So I think that from a hormone disruption standpoint, it makes sense to avoid the dairy. But then also we know that the dairy concentrates the toxins that the animal’s being exposed to. So even if you’re getting organic milk, it’s still like whatever was in that, whatever the animal was eating.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (43:40.081)
Yeah.

Ann Shippy MD (43:58.034)
so a lot of times there’s high micro toxins and other pesticides and things that they’ve been just inadvertently exposed to. And then what I find is just where most people are today, we’re on the edge of high inflammation. So dairy tends to be inflammatory for a lot of people. Just, you know, and sometimes you get symptoms, right? You might, if you haven’t eaten dairy in a little bit and you have some dairy, you might get, a little bit stuffy or.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (44:27.666)
Yeah.

Ann Shippy MD (44:27.798)
a little gassy, you know, so your body might give you a clue. But a lot of times it’s just quietly turning up the dial on inflammation and you don’t even realize it. And there are some blood tests, my favorite blood tests for the dairy is by Vibrant Laboratory. And it’s got a very extensive dairy test to look for a lot of the different molecular compounds of dairy. Because if you don’t do it at that,

level of discernment. If you do just a regular dairy allergy test, can miss it.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (45:03.368)
That’s great to know. I had heard that two doctor for certain environmental toxins like dioxin can bioaccumulate even in cows, like not just the dairy, they’re like the actual beef because it bio up the food chain. And as you and I chatted about, you know, I’m plant-based, started being plant-based after, you know, started for spiritual reasons and going to India and yoga, but getting into yoga. But then I read some of that, you know,

Ann Shippy MD (45:16.302)
You know the fact.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (45:32.882)
I know everybody’s body is different and there’s so many different diets out there, but I do know there can be certain toxins that come into the animal’s bodies and come into our body.

Ann Shippy MD (45:40.94)
Yeah, that’s definitely a challenge. yeah, so the thing about the… So I actually with my first baby got pregnant after doing three years of a very strict macrobiotic diet. So, and then what was interesting is when I got pregnant, then I started just craving eggs. I think I needed the choline and the eggs. And I probably needed…

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (45:57.298)
Yeah.

Ann Shippy MD (46:10.03)
probably at that point wasn’t doing quite as much protein as I needed to, but I wasn’t cooking quite as regularly as I had been before. And so just around the conception time, just pay attention to what it is that your body is craving. And if you don’t wanna add in the eggs or the animal proteins, then you can use amino acids and like a pea protein or rice protein that’s really

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (46:21.682)
Thank you.

Ann Shippy MD (46:40.334)
high quality.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (46:42.448)
Yes, and I was having so many nuts, I still eat lot of nuts and seeds are like a big part as well.

Ann Shippy MD (46:49.37)
which is again so important. We talked about the DHA, but also having the omega-6s and nines is also really important to grow a healthy baby. So the nuts and seeds are a really important component of the preconception and prenatal diet.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (46:54.587)
Yes.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (47:06.728)
Well, Dr. Anne, I could talk to you forever. I mean, as I mentioned, I read your entire book. I found it fascinating and comprehensive and obviously so packed with information. Can you share a little bit about where we can get your new book and also where we can learn more about you and your work?

Ann Shippy MD (47:27.79)
Thank you so much for reading it because I don’t think you’re planning on more babies. I know you. I really, it means so much to have this conversation with you and your questions are so thoughtful and I can see why your audience loves you. So the website is the preconceptionrevolution.com. You can also find, so that’ll have like the

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (47:45.608)
thank you.

Ann Shippy MD (47:56.93)
bonuses and all the kinds of things. If you buy the book, then we’re going to do a webinar and things like that, that you can ask questions and there’s other bonuses with it. Or you can go to my website, anshipemd.com. There’s all kinds of information on autoimmunity and mitochondria and all the things we’ve really been building up quite a library. And then our main places on social would be Instagram. There’s anshipemd.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (48:13.883)
music.

Ann Shippy MD (48:24.684)
just starting one around the babies called Every Baby Well. It’s still pretty small, but we’ll be more focused on the preconception there. The ANT-Ship-AMD has the full spectrum of everything from longevity to autoimmunity to babies. And I just really look forward to people helping me get this information out there because I really think it’s so important.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (48:27.911)
Ann Shippy MD (48:54.358)
for this fear that’s being instigated into the conversation around having healthy families. And I just want there to be hope because what I see in my practice is so hopeful.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (49:08.72)
That’s so beautiful and your heart and your authenticity definitely comes through. Thank you so much, Dr. Anne for sharing all of this. And we will link in our show notes at mysaloon.com directly to Dr. Anne’s website, her books, her book, her social media, everything. So if you didn’t catch all that, go to that page once again at mysaloon.com, get all the information. I also encourage you to share.

this episode with anyone that you think would benefit. There’s lots of people that we probably all know that are trying or thinking about having a baby or are struggling. And so this information can really help so many families out there. So thank you for sharing. Thank you for tuning in. I will see you on social as well at underscore Kimberly Snyder. And we’ll be back here in a few days for our next interview. Till then, take great care and sending you all so much love.