1KHO 864: The Fertility Crisis | Dr. Ann Shippy, The Preconception Revolution

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Welcome to The 1000 Hours Outside Podcast. My name is Ginny Yurich, I'm the founder of 1000 Hours Outside. And I'm beyond delighted and honored to have Dr. Ann Shippy here. Welcome Dr. Ann. You have written this incredible book, incredibly timely book about a topic I know that can be really difficult to talk about, The Preconception Revolution, A Science Back Path to Your Fertility and Generational Health. And that's the hope there, right? It's like when you start to change some of the things, you can have this generational impact. So welcome to you and huge congrats on your book.

**Ann Shippy** (1:35)
Oh, thank you so much. And thank you so much for being so interested. I can tell you're really dedicated to getting great information out.

**Ginny Yurich** (1:43)
I read this book a while ago called The 100 Year Lie. I got it from my midwife. She had a little shop for a while, and she had always had great books there. And this book parallels the rise in chemicals, different toxins in the environment. Maybe it went from like 1900 to 2000 I don't remember the exact details. But one of the things I really noticed was, was fertility and how it was like as these things. And so I don't think it was like a direct correlation, but it was just showing, you know, as these things have risen in the environment, we've started to have these different health problems. And it made me consider about my own kids.
These are the things you don't really expect to be a problem. And then when it becomes a situation that's hard, you don't really know what's going on, it can be really difficult to deal with. And so the book is phenomenal, very comprehensive. We're going to talk about a lot of the topics in here, people can pick up their own copy. But before we get to some of the specific topics about fertility, can you just tell us the fact that you used to be a chemical engineer?

**Ann Shippy** (2:43)
I was a chemical engineer for IBM for almost 10 years. And I got to do really amazing lead teams to do incredible things ahead of the time with actually reducing the environmental load from our manufacturing process. So, chlorofluorocarbons were what we were using for cleaning our PC boards at the time. And it was going to be mandated to get rid of them. But I got to lead a team to develop new materials and get it implemented into our manufacturing processes. So we didn't have to use it well ahead of when it was mandated, because at the time IBM was like, okay, this is not good for the environment, we need to get on it and we need to get this done, but still produce the same quality of machine, of computer. So, unfortunately, though, I think all my time in manufacturing was part of why I got sick.
So I had the, I probably had, I mean, still had a mouthful of amalgam filling, so the high mercury, and then just didn't know what I didn't know about my, the exposures and that I don't detoxify very well. So in the process of figuring out how to heal myself, I got so fascinated with how the human body works. And I woke up one morning and decided I was going to go to medical school to do things differently because most of the doctors that I went to couldn't, weren't helping me solve the problem. So I knew we needed to change medicine.