Alexandria DeVito – Enhancing Fertility Through Health

Alexandria DeVito, MS, CNS is the author of 9 Months Is Not Enough and founder & CEO of Poplin, the first pre-pregnancy wellness company.

After years as a functional nutritionist, Alexandria founded Poplin to help couples prepare for conception. Previously, Alexandria spent a decade in healthcare consulting at McKinsey and tech investment banking at Merrill (now BoA). She holds dual Master's degrees and certifications in wellness, nutrition, and personal development.

The discussion covers the limitations of traditional fertility treatments like IVF, the importance of whole-body health for successful conception, and how lifestyle factors play a critical role in fertility. Alexandria introduces her comprehensive approach to fertility that extends beyond reproductive organs to encompass overall health. She discusses the innovative work of her company, Poplin, and her book "9 Months Is Not Enough," which offers actionable steps for pre-pregnancy wellness.

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Takeaways
1. Preconception health isn’t just about you—it's about future generations.
2. Fertility is a shared journey.
3. Stress management and reducing reproductive anxiety are crucial

Connect with Alexandria DeVito:
Website | Instagram | Facebook | Tiktok |
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexandria-devito-3381553/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/getpoplin/

Transcript

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Welcome to Your Infinite Health. Are you getting older? Are you feeling it? How would you like to do that in reverse? We're your host Doctor Tripp. And Lanae. We've run an integrated medicine practice for 13 years. Together, we have 60 years of combined experience helping clients. We've helped tens of thousands achieve success in health and live longer, happier lives. In this show, we'll cover peer reviewed and evidence based integrative approaches to creating the health you've always wanted. We also share professional experience we see in the field every day. So if you're ready to feel, look, and live your best life, you're in the right place. Welcome to Eurofina Health podcast. Hey, guys. Lanae here. Tripp will be joining me shortly, but I wanted to go ahead and jump in to this great episode we've got. And I wanted to ask you, did you know that there is a fertility gap that is plaguing American couples? And did you know there is something that can be done about it? Getting pregnant and having healthy children is more difficult now than it ever was for our parents' generation and probably more difficult, than it was for me. It's pretty easy. But moreover, today's solutions for infertility are woefully inadequate. They're expensive, invasive, and can be exhausting. But there is another way. The steps you take to prepare your body and mind before you conceive can optimize your health and inspire a lifetime of health for your child. In the book 9 Months Is Not Enough, pre pregnancy expert and our guest today, Alexandria DeVito, shares a scientifically based roadmap for complete pre pregnancy wellness for you and generational health for your family. You'll learn how to run comprehensive diagnostic testing to identify underlying health issues that can impair fertility. Prepare for a preconception visit with your doctor and adopt a fertile friendly diet, supplementation, and lifestyle plan. No matter where you are in your journey, 9 Months is Not Enough is today's must read handbook for tomorrow's parents. Alexandria DeVito is a functional nutritionist who specializes in fertility and preconception health, the author of 9 Months is Not Enough, and also the founder and CEO of Poplin, the first pre pregnancy wellness company. Prior to founding Poplin, Alexandria worked in management consulting at McKinsey and Company. She holds an MBA from Harvard Business School, has a master degree in nutrition, extensive training as a doula, yoga teacher, and personal trainer, and is an Institute For Functional Medicine certified practitioner, all of which informed her approach to pre pregnancy wellness. Alright. Alexandria, thank you so much for taking some time out of your Friday to chat with, Tripp and I. I'm excited to be here. Thank you so much for having me. So really excited to delve into your book and your work. But before we go there, can you tell the listener a little bit about your backstory and how you came to be passionate about preconception. Mhmm. Yes. Absolutely. So so I actually started on the corporate side. I was a healthcare consultant for many years and kind of worked with pharmaceutical companies, medical device companies through that work and became incredibly passionate about health care. And at some point, I decided that I wanted to switch from what I felt was a more reactive model of health care to a more proactive one, which, you know, may not come as a surprise to either of you or your audience. And so that was the impetus for me. I went back to school and I did both my MBA and then I also did a master's in nutrition at the same time. And, yep, not the most traditional path. That's cool. And that was me adding more tools into my toolkit and really wanting to have the clinical lens as well as the business lens. And so then after finishing both of those degrees is when I left the corporate world, moved into the clinical world, did training in functional medicine, and my eyes were opened to kind of a just a very different way of approaching care. And, really, what ended up happening was I ended up seeing a lot of clients as a nutritionist who were struggling to conceive. And at the time, it was mostly in the context of infertility. Right? So people had been struggling to conceive for several years and were coming to me essentially as a last resort. Do you have any ideas for me? Do you have any other suggestions? I've tried everything else. I've twirled around. I've spun on my head. I've done all the things that everyone's telling me. I'm willing to do anything. I'm willing to pay anything. What do you got? Right? And aside from it being just gut wrenching to watch, it was also striking to me. And so I started running really broad set of tests inspired by what I was learning in functional medicine and the clinical studies that I was able to find on the factors that can affect fertility, all of a sudden I was able to flag things that my clients' providers had never even looked at. And once we were able to resolve them, they were able to get pregnant either naturally or on the next round of assisted reproductive cycle. And it occurred to me, why are we waiting? Why are we waiting until someone is a year or 2 years or 3 years emotionally exhausted, physically exhausted, financially exhausted in many cases to screen or flag these things that we could have flagged on day 0. And so that was really what got me passionate. And then I realized that there actually have been preconception guidelines for 40 years, but nobody knows about them. Nobody's doing anything with them. And so I I got really passionate about rewriting the narrative about how we prepare to get pregnant, when you know, rewriting the narrative such that we can prepare to get pregnant just like we prepare for a wedding. Right? A year in advance with guidance, tools, and support. So that felt like it was worthy of a a conversation, and and so I built a business around it. I wrote a book around it. And now I'm just passionate about getting the word out let people know that they have so much more agency over the reproductive health than they may have been led to believe. That's really cool. And so the book is 9 months is not enough. I like the analogy of thinking about planning for it like you would your wedding. But I'm curious. Do you find that is there, like, an age is age a factor in somebody's ability or inability to conceive? I'm so glad you asked this question. And, again, right, I I'm guessing it's not gonna come as a surprise to to anyone listening to this show, but yes and. Right? So I I think the biggest myth in fertility today is that age is the only or even the primary factor when it comes to conceiving. But the reality is that fertility is an extension of your overall health. And for most people, there is a difference between their chronological age, meaning their age and years, like what's listed on their birth certificate, and their biological age, which is essentially, right, the vitality of their cells. And in current medical models, we treat all 30 year olds as equal, all 40 year olds as equal, but cellularly, that's just not true. And so at best, it is inefficient. At worst, it is completely ineffective. And so I think there's just a much better way to go about this conversation when we actually start looking at what's going on cellularly for people. And by the way, if you happen to be getting pregnant older in years, then it's a much more efficient way to go Because instead of following some random data table about some random 35 year old, you can actually look at what's going on for you specifically and intervene for you and your reproductive partner specifically. Very cool. Music to my So do you test for biological cellular age when you're starting with somebody? So the idea is it was when I started this work, I was inspired by a lot of the work that was being done on biological age markers, and we've, you know, learned a lot even in the last 5 or 10 years on the different types of clocks. And there's a variety of different ones. I I'm sure you guys are are familiar with them, and we're learning every day. Some of them, you know, tend to correlate better, and some of them we thought correlated and maybe not so much. So I think there's still a lot of evolving science. The way that I thought about it when I was designing our panels was how do we get an aggregate of markers? Because we can't directly measure, for example, egg quality. And so how do we get a proxy? Right? Egg cells are cells just like any other, and they're impacted by many of the same factors that other cells are in fact impacted by. So that's, like, things like inflammation, things like blood sugar dysregulation, things like nutrient deficiencies. So if we can look at a constellation of factors, then we can get some sort of proxy for your overall health and there for, you know, your cellular health and then therefore a proxy for kind of what is egg health likely to be and sperm health likely to be. So that's kind of how I think about it, and I think that correlates with some of the models that we see around biological age as well. Cool. Yeah. Well, I love the concept. I think that's reflected also in my practice where I started a number of years ago using the biological age markers that have been genetic age and the glycan age, those things that, actually help us determine that biology that that defines health. That's so good. And it's so helpful because I think it's an empowering thing. And, you know, I've heard you talk about this before where people are getting results, and in some cases, they're much older, quote, unquote, than their age in years. Right? And then you can work with them through a series of intervention and then they find out, woah, shocker. I can actually reverse my biological age. Right? We don't yet know how to reverse our chronological age, but we can reverse our biological age. And that's a a really brilliant and and encouraging thing to see. And so it's data can be a really helpful feedback mechanism so people can understand what's going on for them cellularly, and then they can take some actions and see, oh, actually, what I'm doing really does make a difference. Yeah. And it's really it's been really useful in the clinic for us that people will come in. I'll have them do a, you know, an epigenetic or a glycan age, and I'll have them and then I'll follow that up within 6 or months or a year or so after putting them all optimization and doing a number of the peer reviewed, informatics out there. And they'll see sometimes, we'll see up to 20 years age reversal, biologically, and it's phenomenal. And our overall average is about 11 years. So Oh my gosh. Our process. And I think I have I'm wait. I'm gonna let you go, but I think the the go ahead. But I think I have a number of corollaries that I've had and similar experiences to what you're describing here, and it's really exciting that somebody has really taken the fore on. Well, I hope everyone listening heard that. 11 years reversal in biological age is no joke. I mean, think about taking think about rewinding a decade to you know, it's phenomenal. And I imagine this is just the beginning as we learn even more our precision and our methods get even better. So, you know, just with baseline blocking and tackling and really understanding what's going on at a cellular level, that's incredible work that you're doing. And fun. I could imagine. Well okay. So getting back to I wanna delve into, like, your protocol and what what somebody could expect if they were working with you. Do they get on a diet? Are there specific supplements? You know, what are there weird things they have to do? Like, what does that look like when somebody has to somebody comes for you to you for help? Mhmm. Well, so through Poplin, we do pre pregnancy wellness testing, and it's the first of its kind anywhere in in the nation. And the idea is to do a screening test. So because preconception visits aren't really standard, technically, everyone can and I I really encourage people to ask their doctors for it, but many doctors don't know about it, don't have the time to do it. Right? And so less than 20% of individuals are even getting a preconception visit from their doctor. And so I found even if I was working with people and telling them to go and get these visits and get this testing, they couldn't get it done. And to me, a lot of this journey starts with testing because the majority of people who have abnormal preconception labs have no symptoms or they think their symptoms are normal. I think that's an important caveat. Right? They're not even aware. And symptoms come late into the disease process anyway. So you can be walking around with physiological dysfunctions that can interfere with your ability to get pregnant, but you may not even know that they are present unless you are doing some sort of testing. And so that's why I think testing is the bedrock of this preparation phase, again, especially if you happen to be getting pregnant later in years because then you can be more thoughtful about your interventions. So what we do is a screening test that flags red or yellow, you know, flags that could potentially interfere with your ability to get pregnant or have a healthy pregnancy and baby. And these are the most common factors that we know that can interfere with fertility. And these we do it across 5 different categories of health. So we look at your blood status, your hormone status, your metabolic status, your nutrient status, and your immune status. And the idea is just to give you a starting point. Again, with this idea that fertility is an extension of your overall health. Most other fertility companies are looking at hormones. Right? And they're looking at 5 of them or 7 of them, which is a helpful starting point. But fertility is not just a below the waist conversation. It's not just about your reproductive organs. It is about your whole body. And so if we just myopically look at hormones and reproductive organs, we miss huge swaths of information. And by the way, your sex hormones are downstream to your thyroid function and downstream to your adrenal function. So if your sex hormones are off and we only know that, we have no idea why, and therefore, we don't know how to help you. So the idea is how do we take a much bigger lens and actually look at what's going on as a screening test? So you would have the screening test, you would have your blood drawn, and then you would get the results through our app that basically says here's what's flagged and here's what it means and here's the implication for fertility. And then you can have a call with one of our pre pregnancy educators to review those results and start to talk about kind of what the next steps are on you for for you on your preconception journey. Cool. And then what would a next step look like? So it depends on what's flagged. Largely so everything that is on our test panel is modifiable. Well, actually, except blood type. We can't change that. But everything else is the idea is that I don't wanna give people information that they can't do anything with. Right? It's not helpful to start flagging things left and right and then people don't have agency over it. So things can be modified through diet, lifestyle, supplementation, sometimes medications and procedures in collaboration with your doctor. And, you know, the earlier that we identify these things, the smaller the perturbation, which also means the smaller the intervention, the less invasive the intervention. And so oftentimes what we see is a lot of times things can be addressed through dietary changes. I mean, that's a very big one. Blood sugar dysregulation can be addressed through diet. Inflammation can be addressed through diet. Stress management is a big one that, you know, we're seeing elevated cortisol a lot of the time. Supplementation, we see I mean, over 80% of people are micronutrient deficient, and this is consistent with the studies that say the majority of reproductive age women are micronutrient deficient. We're seeing deficiencies in vitamin d, in iron stores, in omega threes. Right? These are very common, and we're seeing them all the time. So, you know, there again, those can be dietary interventions, veterans. It can also be supplementation. To answer your question about, like, are there weird wonky things? Generally, no. And I know that sounds maybe anticlimactic because we want, like, the one thing that's gonna be amazing, but, right, the foundation tends to be our diet and our lifestyle and our community. Right? All of these baseline things can modulate our health and our fertility. And I would add there that sometimes the and and many of the fertility phase I I gotta tell you, I've had a a little I've had some success with fertility very much in line with what I think you're talking about. And I 10 for 10, actually, at this juncture. Yeah. That's right. 10 for 10. And and I think the the mind body connection and the stress that you're talking about there, I've helped a couple of my patients, nurses, physical therapists, that reverse that thought process and be mindful about about how they're making decisions in child related to challenges they're receiving. And it's amazing what happens. So the even in the absence of physiologic and metabolic abnormalities that we find, I think we see that the mind body and the relaxation and the getting away from that focus of, I gotta get pregnant. I gotta get pregnant. I gotta get pregnant. Women are are so sensitive to that, and they they and particularly professional women, they tend to go in deep into their profession, their competitive nature, and, boom, they're they're impairing their ability to get to get pregnant, so to speak. And I had, I think, just one observation I've seen. I'm seeing I I think that's relating to what you're saying here. Well, in your book, you talk about reproductive anxiety. And can you go a little bit more into that? Yeah. I think it's it's very much related to what what you were just talking about, Tripp. Reproductive anxiety is, as I look at it, is essentially the feelings of worry and concern that we have when we when thinking about our ability to get pregnant, have a healthy and have a healthy baby. And reproductive anxiety is real, and it's on the rise. And I've surveyed thousands of individuals at this point, and the average answer that I get is about a 7 regardless of personal health history or family health history. It is a staggering number. And, you know, I think that's because we're talking about infertility more. People are seeing friends, family, colleagues struggle to conceive. People are having children later in life, or all of these things I think are contributing to a milieu where people are concerned. But here's the rub and here's why I think it's so profound, is anxiety often results when there's a gap between the importance of something and the control we have over that thing. And so with fertility, it's a high importance, but we've been told low control situation. Meaning, there's nothing you could have done about it except got pregnant earlier, which is helpful to no one. Right? So what's happening is people are getting stuck because they're like, I'm really wanting to build a family. I wanna do everything that I can to make that happen, but I've been told not really anything I can do just cross my fingers and hope it will happen until they get stuck. And my message to people is there is absolutely a lot that you can do to optimize your chances of getting pregnant when you want to on your times, on on your terms, on your timeline, and we can rewrite this narrative. And so just giving people options for start starting to take action against this oftentimes can address a lot of the anxiety people are feeling because it gives them something to focus on, and to really start to move towards their goals. Well, just curious. It seems like so many people are on some sort of antidepressant and medications of that nature, Adderall and all those things. Are you seeing that can play a part in making it difficult for someone to conceive? So I would say medications of any sort have side effects, and a lot of medications have side effects with regards to fertility, whether that is through direct pathways or indirect pathways like reducing libido, which means you don't want to have a sexual relationship with your partner, which is a prerequisite for building a family. Right? And sometimes we think about these basic things that we just dismiss, and a lot of medications dampen libido. And so that's a big one. And then there's others where they have other effects where their hormones are exist in a very intimate cascade with one another. And so if you affect one hormone, often that has a domino effect on other hormones. And so I I think there is there's a lot to be said for mental health and fertility. And it's a very delicate balance because, right, there there may be implications of the medications, but there is also implications of stress on getting pregnant as well. And so it's an individual decision for everyone to figure out, okay, well, is you know, being on the medication a net positive for me versus coming off of it, and everyone has a different calculus for that. But for sure, I think mental health is a really big issue, and it's, you know, related to sleep, I think, and stress levels and so many other factors. And these are very compounding factors for fertility, especially. And from the physician perspective, I think I mean, I hate to say conventional reactive medicine, unfortunately, you you and and the paradigm that exists of health care delivery facilitates the utilization of those medications without a proper diagnosis for a a a reactive melancholy that that occurs. Oh, here. Take this take this pill, and it's unfortunate that I think we have so many people, young people also, young women, young men that that that get on to these medications that that don't need them. Mhmm. That they need mechanisms and strategic mindfulness practices that that can help them deal with the the challenges that they feel melancholy or or depressed about. Mhmm. That's such a great point. I I think that's true. And I think especially what I observe in women's health is that both birth control and antidepressants or antianxiety are used in a very similar way, which is people are coming in complaining of things. And rather than trying to figure out what is causing dysregulation of your cycles or what is causing dysregulation of your moods as you're saying, it's here is a a pill for it. And, right, conventional medicine is great at pills and procedures. Right? That is the those are the tools in the toolkit of the traditional medical model. And so if you have a problem that can be solved with either a pill or a procedure, then it's a great place to go. But if you have a problem that's not well addressed by pills or procedures, then it's really important to seek out adjunctive care. And, you know, this is where I think we miss the mark is we are only functioning in the conventional lanes, and we're missing all of these other practitioners that are doing incredible work. And that oftentimes can be utilized before we even get to the pill and procedure stage and it may may not make that make those stages not even necessary in in the first place. So I I think it's a phenomenal point that you're making and an unfortunate reality that, you know, people have to advocate for themselves because of this infrastructure that's in place. Well, I'm going from that to this idea of, okay, I've been trying to get pregnant when I thought I could get pregnant. I'm not getting pregnant. My next step is IVF. I've seen I know a lot of women that are just like, I have to go do IVF and, stressing out about that. What are your thoughts on that? Okay. There's a lot here, and I get a little I get a little fiery about this one, so you may have to I'm kinda fired up. It's like it started, So I'm bring it on. So I think yes. The the challenge that I see is it's the options given to people today are do nothing, spend $0, do IVF spend $60,000. And there is nothing in between those two options. Mhmm. And if you are someone who is trying to build your family, the options tend to be very clear. Right? Which is, of course, I if the only real option being presented to me to pursue my family building goals, I'm going to go down the route of IVF, whatever that takes. Number of shots and the, you know, the emotional distress, I will do it if that's what it takes to build my family. And what I would say to people is there are so many things between nothing, $0, and IVF, $60,000. Right? And the reason I say $60,000 is because it's about $20,000 per cycle, and it's a 70% failure rate. So you usually need at least 3 rounds to get to a live birth. Right? So these are staggering numbers. Yeah. That's 70% failure rate. Like, why that's just a bad investment. Well and and it would behoove the physicians administrating those that technique to to to to have at least some kind of component clinical component to to help those people that that can't afford that. And I I can tell you quite frankly, the women that that, just by chance, ended up in my practice and been successful with, you know, going the other route. It's been it's because of financial difficulty with being able to do that. Yeah. It's really unfortunate, and what this creates is that it means that fertility is a luxury product. And I personally do not believe that fertility should be a luxury product. And so that's the systems that we have in place, and so I think it's really important to start to offer new alternatives for people. And, look, IVF is a marvel of modern medicine. I think it is incredible for its ability to offer conception opportunities to individuals and couples who may not ever have had that option. Right? People who are in same sex relationships, people who have undergone chemotherapy. Right? There's a whole host of categories for whom this is an incredible intervention. That being said, it is usually being used way too early and way too often. It has become the first line of defense rather than a last resort, and that's where I think it becomes problematic. And, you know, this gets into the other thing, which is, right, a lot of times if I ask people who are going to IVF why they struggle to conceive or what's going wrong, they have no idea. Majority of the time, it's unexplained infertility. And I would argue most of the time, it just means not yet explained infertility. We haven't gone wide enough or we haven't gone deep enough to figure out what is going on. And to what you are saying, Tripp, right, even if you're gonna go through IVF, your health is still a marker that matters. Right? Whether you try naturally or you try through IVF, your health dictates the probability of success on both of those fronts. So investing time and energy and figuring out how to optimize your health may actually mean that you have to undergo fewer rounds of IVF because they're more successful. So I think we can't really circumvent our health, although sometimes we try to. Right? And fertility is also a measure of future health. There's tons of data that is suggesting that fertility is correlated with longevity. Right? And so we if we miss the canary in the coal mine, that is fertility, because fertility is a symptom. It is not really infertility. It's a symptom. It's not really a diagnosis. So if we miss that symptom, then we end up dealing with these problems years later, and they're festering and often more profound then. So I think it's a really important reframe when we start to think about using these procedures. They can be incredibly powerful. And, ideally, we are also looking into what is causing the challenge in the first place and trying to start to address that. Absolutely. I I think it brings up the concept of the environment oxygen environment that we always develop and the degree of that and then the impact on our cellular health. Again, you've mentioned that already, and the development of the zombie cells or welfare cells as I call them. And that reserve, the reduction of that reserve that that that takes place so that just getting some getting that that general health back and decreasing the inflammation and that environment brings us back brings back the reserve, brings back, enlivens, so to speak, the welfare cells to participate in organ function again. So I I'm sorry. I diverge. You're both quite passionate about the subject here. Yeah. That's true. So you talk about generational health. I thought that was so clever. Generational because, you know, people say generational wealth, but you've taken it to health, and I think that's awesome. Can you talk a little bit about what you mean by that? Yes. I so appreciate you asking about this because it's so incredibly important of of a concept, and I think we're just now starting to understand, and I think we'll uncover even more in the next couple of decades, right, through the science of epigenetics, how what we are doing is being passed on to our next generation and next generation. Right? And it's setting the stage. And so generational health essentially is saying that what you were doing in the roughly 1 year, right, could be a little bit longer, prior to conception is actually what sets the stage for the epigenetic material in egg and sperm to be passed on to your future children. And that those epigenetic markers set the lifelong trajectory of health for your children and potentially even we're seeing children's children and beyond. And so when I think about legacy, we think about all these different forms of legacy that we can leave our children. And what about health as one of the most foundational legacies that you could leave your children? And we thought for many years when we looked at the developmental origins of disease and so forth that, oh, okay. It's actually the first 100 years of a 100 days of life. Excuse me. And then we're like, okay. Actually, it's the prenatal period. And so what we're doing in pregnancy is now we're realizing it starts even earlier in the preconception period with the health of both reproductive parents. So it's what people are doing in that preconception period that has such knock on effects. It's such a profoundly powerful time period because it affects not only your health, but your future family's health. And so I think it's just so important for people to understand that what they're doing in that window affects not only them, but their future children. And so if you wanna optimize the bang for your buck, it's a great time period to to really zone in on your lifestyle behaviors because it will have such profound effects. And this isn't just something for women. This is men are included in this as well. Right? Absolutely. And it's both. Like that fill up and do the do also. Yes. Actually no. I think that's and found out. Right? It's such an important point. So for for the male reproductive partners out there, it literally is biologically your one shot contribute epigenetic material to that child. Right? So if we think about it, it really is right? Because the female reproductive partner is going to be carrying the baby and is going to be supporting the baby through pregnancy, you know, potentially even in the postpartum period maybe with breast feeding. But the male reproductive partner's highest biological contribution is at the point of conception. So what he is doing in that prior 3, 6, 12 months is incredibly important through, you know, several sperm development cycles. And I really encourage people if you're gonna be parenting together to prepare together, and it's so much easier when you do it together. And biology does not care about our cultural construct that fertility is a female problem. Right? It's literally a 50 50 biological equation. And so if we only optimize 50% of the equation, we are significantly less likely to get the outcome that we want. So if we just simplify it into those terms, absolutely. It's why we do testing for both males and females. And I think it's really important to invite our male reproductive partners into the conversation regardless of what the relationship construct looks like. Yeah. I'm glad you touched on that. Okay. Blockers. Did we already talk about blockers? Reproductive blockers? What does that mean? Uh-huh. We've we've alluded to them, but, no, we haven't talked about them for a second. Other children. Right? Yeah. The other children as being blockers. I hadn't thought about that one. That's a good one. Oh, yeah. Okay. I have to expand my view now. Oh, no. Wait. Those firstborns, man, they can make sure no thing's coming after them. The real can be a buzzkill. I see where you're going with this one. So when I think about fertility blockers, right, the the I the general idea is that our bodies were designed to conceive, but our modern environment was not. Right? So if you think about it that way, just like our environment is obesogenic, it is also infertilgenic. So if we take no compensatory action to offset the effects of our modern environment, we are likely to struggle with obesity and infertility. Right? So that's the general idea. So then we say, okay. What are the things in our environment that are causing infertility or increasing the probability of infertility? And by the way, I just have to say this because I think it's really important. Infertility is a misnomer. So infertility just means that you have tried concertedly to conceive for a year and you are unsuccessful if you are under the age of 35 and 6 months if you're over the age of 35. It has nothing to do with your capacity to conceive. It's an arbitrary cutoff. Right? So what's actually happening is subfertility. Right? Which just means there are things in and around your environment that are blocking your natural fertility, and we have to figure out what those are and remove them to restore their natural fertility. And it's only about 1% of the female population. I have yet to find great stats for males, but 1% of women that are sterile, meaning cannot conceive themselves. Right? So even though infertility statistics are about 15 to 20%, so we're really confusing these data points. That's all to say that the blockers in our environment that I generally see are nutrition, certainly. We're eating less food and more food like substances, and we're eating very calorie dense foods but not very nutrient dense foods. So our bodies think we are in a famine and they down regulate reproductive function. If we just think from a adaptation standpoint. Right? We're more stressed and stretched than ever before, and our sex hormones are in the same biochemical pathway as our stress hormones, and our body will always prioritize survival over procreation. And, again, it down regulates reproductive function if it thinks you're in a war, which it does if you're constantly stressed out. Right? Environmental toxins, which we were talking about earlier, are doing there there's a whole class of endocrine disrupting chemicals, which do exactly what they sound like. They disrupt our endocrine system and confuse our own hormones and cause our hormones to increase or decrease and just get all out of whack. And when we're trying to conceive, we certainly don't want external sources of hormone mimicking things. And then another big one is just movement. And I don't necessarily mean exercise, although that is great. We're not moving more than 10 feet usually without planes, trains, and automobiles to take us places. And what that means is when we're sitting for long periods of time, it means oxygen and nutrients can't get to where they need to go. So even if you're eating a miraculous diet, you may not be digesting and assimilating and then having it go through to your body. And particularly for males when we're sitting for long periods of time, that increases testicular temperature. And so that's not great for sperm count and sperm quality. So, again, you know, kind of movement is another really big thing that that can be a factor here. Cool. I saw. What else? What else do the people need to know? Oh goodness. We have covered so much in such a short period of time. Great stuff. Let's see what else. What else do I think is important? What like, the one thing that you want the listener to know? That they have a ton more agency over their reproductive health than they have been led to believe, and I really, really encourage people if you are not getting the care that you desire from your providers. I just learned this from one of our clients, which is you can fire your doctor. You can. Which I thought was brilliant. Yeah. And so now I wanna pass that along. Right? You know, if you're not getting the care that feels aligned to you, you can keep searching, keep looking. Right? We're oftentimes I don't know if the right word is picky, but we're so particular when we're we're, you know, looking between certain products and so forth. You can be that same level of picky and, you know, do all this research with providers as well. And, look, it may increase the amount of time that you have to spend and the amount of money that you need to spend to test out different providers. But there are wonderful providers out there, the team that that you all have that will listen to you and will dig deeper and will be collaborative care providers. And oftentimes it's also not just about one provider. It's about collaborative care between a variety of different providers. So I would just really encourage peep if what we're saying resonates, great. Then there's so many other options out there. And if it doesn't resonate, also put it in a box. And I think health advice is also really important that you filter it through your own mechanisms. If, you know, what we're saying resonates, great. Then use that as fuel to to get the care that you desire. And if it doesn't, then also let your own instincts strive as well. Yeah. I think that's very important. I wish I hadn't known that when I was younger. Yeah. I think because I've tolerated some really bad health care providers because I felt like I had to. So thank you for saying that, and I hope everybody, does that. I think it it brings up a concept that in our book that I'd advise over a decade ago now, thinking about the what we call the medical mastermind. And the medical mastermind is just a mastermind, which is a concept that came from Napoleon Hill in the business domain, which was Andrew Carnegie. And and, basically, it's having a group of trusted mentors, advisors that you bring together to create the outcome that you desire. And everybody in that mastermind is working for the head of the table to get them where they want to go. And it's and it's the responsibility, obviously, of the individual, but that concept had been wiped away by the current medical paradigm and going in and seeing for 5 minutes and leaving. And that's why many people end up with those providers that they that have no no desire to help them get where they wanna go. They want to give them the next bill and push the bill out the next day, whatever. That's so it's really incumbent upon the individual to see, is this provider, like you said, are they are they am I resonating here? Am I is this the person that's gonna help me create my desired outcome? So yeah. Got it. I love this concept of a medical mastermind. I think it's brilliant. And we're working on some stuff in preconception too because I think we've lost a lot of that collaborative model where it's both collaborative on the medical side, but then also on the peer side. Right? And it's so powerful what you can learn from folks who are kind of going through a similar journey to you. And the other thing that I would just mention on what you were sharing is I think I have a lot of compassion for our medical providers today. And a lot of times, it's not their fault that they can't offer the care that they would like to. Even if they wanted to, oftentimes their hands are tied. They don't have the time. And in many cases, insurance is driving care. Care is not driving insurance reimbursement. Right. And, right, we just have to understand the incentive systems. So it is, again, oftentimes not their fault finding providers who have different models where they can spend more time and can offer you do have more tools in their toolkit is, you know, better for them and better for you because they can operate in in in broader swats and really serve you in the way that works well for them and for you. I would also add to that. In in a lot of those situations, those the providers have chosen not to be dictated by insurance companies. So patients need to understand that those that access, that cost is going to be out of pocket because insurance was never designed to keep you healthy. So FYI. It's a really important distinction. And, you know, we're not so used to and I think it's changing now paying out of pocket for health care costs, but I would say there is a vast difference between health care costs and wellness costs. Right? I was just talking to our friend. I'll just share this with you because I thought it was so poignant. He was sharing about going to the doctor and, you know, the doctor had run some blood tests and he, like, wanted to he's, like, run all the tests you can and he he comes back and it's, I don't know, CBC, a CMP, and, like, maybe a TSH, which, you know, like, triple like, it's very basic information. And so the doctor says he's, like, comes back and he's like, okay. How are things? And my friends were counting the story to me, and he's like, the doctor basically said to me, you're not dying. Come back next year. Ouch. That's the sub and substance. That is the bar. It's Exactly. It is. You know, you're not dying. Come back. Next like, I just I I couldn't. I just didn't even know how to respond to that. But that is the barometer. Right? There's nothing imminent here. Right? We I can't, you know, do anything for you because everything's fine in air quotes. Right? Never mind optimal. Yep. And so, you know, again, this is the barometer. So, you know, if you want something different if you're comfortable with that, then that's fine. But if you want something different, if you want something that's not average, if you want something that's optimal, and if you want different outcomes than the vast majority of, you know, people are having from a health perspective, then unfortunately or fortunately, you need to make different decisions. And it's up to you where to prioritize your time and your energy and your capital, to figure out where that balance is. Awesome. Well said. Very cool. Okay. Well, where can the listener learn more about you and get a copy of your book? So if they're interested in getting the book, it's called 9 Months is Not Enough, and it's sold wherever books are sold. So wherever your favorite bookstore is, please please feel free to to go and and grab it there and it can but it'll tell you all about how to prepare to to get pregnant. And if anyone's interested in the testing side or has more questions about what I shared with testing, that's at poplin. So get poplin, g e t p o p l I n, and would love to support folks on their preconception journeys. Awesome. Well, thank you so much. Listen, I'll have the links in the show notes. So if you're driving, don't wreck. They'll be there later. Well, Cole, thank you. It was so nice to meet you. I learned a lot. Love the mindset. Love the perspective. Yeah. It's just it's incredible. It's what's needed in this moment. Thank you so much. It was such a pleasure to connect with both of you. Likewise. Well, listener, I hope you found this informational, educational, somewhat entertaining, and until next time. Thanks for subscribing to your Infinite Health. I'm doctor Tripp. And I'm Lanae. Until next time. Feel it, look it, and live it.