Latest / Everyday Ancestral with James Barry / Sperm Counts Headed to Zero by 2045? Fertility Crisis Explained | Dr. Nashat Latib

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Sperm Counts Headed to Zero by 2045? Fertility Crisis Explained | Dr. Nashat Latib · Everyday Ancestral with James Barry

• 0:00
  Welcome back to Everyday Ancestral. Fertility isn't something we should have to fight for.
• 0:05
  It's something that returns when we reconnect with how the body was designed to function.
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  In this episode, I'm joined by Dr. Nishatlati, a functional medicine trailblazer who's
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  redefining what's possible for natural fertility. She's helping women and couples overcome complex
• 0:22
  reproductive challenges without invasive interventions using science-backed holistic strategies that
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  restore the body's innate ability to create life. We uncover what modern medicine has missed,
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  how stress and disconnection disrupt fertility, and what it truly means to return to the body's
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  natural intelligence, the same intelligence that allows life to flourish. Dr. Nishat, thank you
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  for joining me. Fertility is something that I know we really do associate a lot with women, but
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  I think we got to start looking towards the men as well, would you agree?
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  A hundred percent, and I don't know if you know this, James, but sperm counts are actually headed
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  to zero by 2045. Shocking. Wow. Well, why is that? What is causing this? Is it environment? Is
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  it lifestyle? What are they blaming or putting the focus on around that? Yeah, so that's kind of
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  a loaded question, but essentially, if you look at the data and the science, our average sperm counts
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  have dropped 50 percent in the last 46 years. And so if you actually put this on a graph,
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  that's how we're coming up with this projected possibility of sperm counts headed to zero by 2045,
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  which gosh, what does that mean for our kids and future generations, right? And as far as like the
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  reason that this is happening, it really comes down to root cause, right? We live in a toxic world.
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  We are exposed to toxins on a daily basis, and there's a massive amount of what I call
• 1:56
  oxidative stress and toxic burdens on our bodies, let alone the quality of our food, you know,
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  has just plummeted over the past number of decades. And I mean, it's really hard to get high
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  quality food that is packed with nutrients and minerals and so forth. And unfortunately,
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  the traditional paradigm will just overlooks male factor fertility, which unfortunately is accountable
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  for 50 percent, believe it or not, of the responsibility when it comes to couples struggling
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  with infertility. So really one plus one is two. Wow. I feel like though, you know, as we started
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  like the woman gets so much energy and really blame around this, do you find that
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  part of your practice of supporting natural fertility is also kind of like supporting the emotions
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  that come with it, like just, you know, maybe people not shaming themselves for it, like what
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  comes up when when you first start working with people? That's a great question and a really
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  loaded question. Quite honestly, I feel like most couples and really women, right, because women
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  are really on the hunt for a solution most of the time. And the guy is just kind of, he's supportive
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  and he's alongside her, but the focus is not on him, right? So when couples come into that
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  into my world, mostly women, they're often felt unheard, you know, they're often felt
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  feeling like just a number. And the reality is that in modern day and age, women are definitely
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  reproducing later on in life. And, you know, and a lot of these women have gone through a lot of
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  losses, whether it's miscarriages or chemical pregnancies or, you know, you name it procedures
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  endometriosis, PCOS and number of conditions. But the reality is that nobody's really addressing
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  the root cause. It's really, the traditional system is more of like a band-aid approach where we're
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  trying to essentially, you know, push the body to do what we want it to do by giving it pharmaceuticals
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  or undergoing IU-Y or IVF or writing a prescription. And in my approach, we're really just about
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  addressing the root cause. But, but in answers to your question, the mind-body connection cannot
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  be overlooked. And the reality is that one of the first things that I do when I work with couples
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  is we have to step into a place of belief. You know, I always say that babies are not going to be
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  born in a place where there isn't love. And so a lot of times when I'm talking to my couples and
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  like you're more likely to get pregnant if you're focused on lovemaking and not babymaking.
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  Obviously, that's not a full picture. But, you know, we have to move away from babymaking to
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  lovemaking. And before we do that, we have to heal the body first. One of the other things I say
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  when I work with couples is, you know, your body is smart, right? So the reason you're not
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  reproducing may not be because there's a broken. It's not because you're broken and it's not
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  because there's something wrong with you. It's just because your body has not been set out for
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  success. Does that make sense? Oh, yeah. No, I like, I like what you're, how you're talking about
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  this because I feel like you're not just bringing up the biological piece, which is what I think a
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  lot of people focus on. But you're almost talking about a cultural kind of disconnect that we have
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  around. It's almost like the reproductive issues are coming up, which is kind of a new phenomena,
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  right? Two degree. And then from there, though, we still keep focusing on the biological
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  two degree and trying to overcome nature's course and trying to bring in the kind of like
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  scientific lab kind of stuff, right? But there's also a cultural kind of like, I think the fact
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  that we have so many women in men's roles, traditional men's roles, you know what I'm saying?
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  Where they're now in very high stress environments that they may not have been in yesterday year.
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  You know, they're in roles that are pushing them to be potentially out of sync with their own
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  rhythms, their own innate feminine rhythms, you know, two degree, let alone
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  the shame as we mentioned, the shame and the pressures that we put on ourselves in these circumstances
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  of like, I need to have a baby. I, you know, whether it's the age thing or expectations of this is
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  what it means when you're in a relationship, you have to have a kid, whatever, whatever may come,
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  but I feel like it's a cultural thing or at least that's the piece that you're bringing to the
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  table here. What do you think though has led to this disconnection from our reproductive health?
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  Is it just food or what do you think it is? Oh my gosh, it's so many things. So gut health
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  is a big part of it, right? Because that's a driver of inflammation and of course, yeah,
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  food is a huge part of it too. Food leads to poor gut health, dysbiosis, lehika, which drives
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  inflammation and food sensitivities, you know, drive things like Hashimoto's and thyroid issues
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  and so on and so forth. You know, our overburdened systems with toxins and endocrine disruptors are
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  everywhere that are, you know, causing wreaking havoc in our hormonal communication systems.
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  All of this is driving infertility together, you know, and I think that's one of my biggest
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  frustrations with the traditional models and traditional approaches is we are so focused on
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  trying to fix, you know, what's going on rather than just hitting a step back and appreciating
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  that our bodies are protecting us. One of the things also is, and this speaks to what you're
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  talking about, most of the couples that come to me are very high-achieving couples and I feel like
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  a lot of these women are spending sleepless nights, you know, googling for the answers and
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  searching, they're all type A and they want to get it right, you know, but the reality is that in
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  order to get from where we are now to our optimal fertile state, it requires a 360 degree approach
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  to the body and it's about doing the right things in the right order, in the right intensity for your
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  personal biochemistry. So I also don't believe that there's a one-size-fits-all solution to get from
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  our toxic leaky gut, dysbiotic inflammatory states to optimal fertile. I feel like a very highly
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  personalized approach is critical. The other thing is, you know, I encourage my couples to
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  appreciate that you may not be getting pregnant, not because something's wrong with you and again,
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  not because your body is broken, but because your body is protecting you, right? Your body's smart,
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  your body only wants to create life when it believes it's safe and when it believes it will create
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  a healthy, beautiful, vibrant life. And until it feels safe, it is not going to reproduce. So I'm
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  helping couples understand and reframe their infertility is actually a form of protection
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  and to lean into the messages that our bodies are giving us because symptoms and things that you
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  may be experiencing on a daily basis are really just messages, you know, for us to pay attention to
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  rather than to try to like, you know, fix or disregard, you know, there's also a mindset shift,
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  right? When they're working with me, I say it takes about 90 days from a time our egg and sperm
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  start to develop until they are ovulated or ejaculated. And so I'm like, until we get you to the
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  point where we have a super egg and a super sperm, let's focus on love making that baby making,
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  right? Let's celebrate our period every month because it means that you are fertile, right?
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  If you're getting a period and you're having a cycle, you're fertile, right? Don't let's,
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  let's get out of this infertile mindset because you're not infertile. Your body's just protecting you
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  and we're trying to take the time to set it up for success. I love that. Let's get out of this infertile
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  mindset. I love this because you know, a lot of times we are, we're focusing so much on the
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  biology of it, but we're not really talking about the mindset. And so I love that we're going
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  into this place with this topic. Is there, I mean, you're already sharing some mindset stuff,
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  but is there something like that you find the couple themselves can do independent of, let's say,
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  you energetically or mindset wise because you mentioned the celebrating of the period,
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  the safety within. I feel like two degree, those are almost individual things, but what is there
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  something that the couple together like practices that couple together can incorporate into their
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  lives that will help to support this internal and external environment for fertility?
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  Yeah, so it's funny that you say that. So my preference is to work with couples and not
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  individuals. And that's one of the reasons that I do that is I have a lot of women that come to me
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  and they're really interested in, in addressing their fertility issues and healing their bodies
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  and addressing root causes. And I'm like, okay, great, we can do that.
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  But I ask them to bring their partner to our initial call together because I want their
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  partners buy in because guess what? I do find that couples have the most success when they're on
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  this journey together. Why is that? Because you're getting into rituals together, right? You're getting
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  into meal change and behavioral shifts and biochemical shifts together as a couple.
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  And that speaks to what we've already talked about, which is creating a safe space for procreation.
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  We were all put on this world to procreate. We're biologically designed to create life.
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  And so all we need to do is foster human connection. And I feel like human connection and a couple,
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  you know, we're always go, go, go, running, running, running. Life is really fast. These high achieving
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  career driven type A couples often forget that connection and love is the epicenter of fertility
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  and procreation. And while we do need to shift by chemistry, right? We do need to upregulate
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  detoxification. We do need to heal the gut. We do need to decrease inflammation. We have to balance
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  hormones. We have to do all of those things, but we can't do them in a silo. We have to do
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  together with everything else. I love it. You know, it makes me think of when someone's in the
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  process of getting married. I always tell them, I'm like, you know, it's this process you're in
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  right now, the planning of the wedding, the actual journey to the day. That's the that's the
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  marriage. How you treat each other, how you interact, how you communicate, how you, how you work
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  together. That's going to really mold your marriage. The day of the wedding is icing. It's just,
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  it's just a party. But a lot of people disregard the journey. They're just focusing on I just want
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  a baby. You know, I don't know. I don't care how I get it. I just want the baby. And I,
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  I think it's really fascinating because your approach is it's rooted in data, right? Your hormones
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  and health and toxins, but it's it's also deeply holistic. So how do you combine science with intuition
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  in your practice? Well, that's a great question. I think it's really just about holding
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  space for these women and these couples. Every single call that I do with my group starts with
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  mindset work, right? Starts from a place of belief starts from a place of positivity. Everyone
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  is required to put a win in the chat because it puts us in a positive mindset for the rest of the
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  call. And a lot of times, you know, people get caught up in the details, you know, why didn't I
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  ovulate last month? I just had a call at one of my clients asked me that this week, like I'm so
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  upset. My charts look great. And then this one, it looks like I didn't ovulate. I was like, well,
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  what was going on? She was like, oh, I was really stressed out at work. And I had this work trip
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  and I was traveling. I was like, do you think your body wants to make a baby? When you're traveling,
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  getting irradiated and an airplane and really stressed out. And she just kind of looked at me in
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  a jaw dropped. I was like, yeah, your body is smart. It didn't drop an egg because it didn't
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  want to make a baby. So we don't have to, you know, be brought down when we're not ovulating. We
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  have to create this shift and realize that we're not ovulating because our body is smart. Like, let's
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  give, let's give credit to our bodies for protecting us. And let's lean in with curiosity. And so a
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  lot of times when I'm working with couples, I'm really holding a space. We're doing all the biochemical
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  stuff, right? I'm giving them personalized protocols. We're optimizing health. But guess what?
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  The other thing I always say is that optimal fertility, obviously, requires optimal health. So
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  what else is happening when I'm working with couples? We are reversing diabetes, we're reversing
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  blood pressure, we're reversing hyperepidemia, we're healing the gut and getting people off of
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  anxiety and depression medications all while optimizing egg health, optimizing sperm health,
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  and fostering connection and love within the couple. I do actually have a mind body coach that
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  works with my couples regularly. And her calls are, you know, focused on, you know, there are
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  a place for couples just to lean in if they're having a struggle. You know, a lot of times if I have a
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  woman who's gone through recurrent pregnancy loss, it's really hard for her to get into a place
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  of positivity, especially when she gets pregnant with me. She goes into a place of fear,
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  and I'm like, no, bodies don't like fear. So you've got to get on the call with my mind body coach
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  and let's work through those fears. Let's do some inner work to get you into a place of belief
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  and possibility because that is when that baby is going to stick. You know, of course, in the context
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  of all the other work that we've done. Oh, that's really powerful. I mean, it is such a
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  different paradigm or even just a different way of looking at it than, you know, conventional medicine
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  does. Are there other things that you find that conventional medicine is overlooking that you
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  have found to be really effective in your practice? Oh my gosh. I mean,
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  there's a lot. You named a few right there. I named a few. I mean, I feel like the male
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  factor is a big one because I feel like they're addressing the woman first and the male is not
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  addressed until much later. One of the things I also talk about a lot are, you know, lab values,
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  and probably a lot of people don't realize this, but on like a lab core or a quest, you know,
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  form, there's a lab range and that lab data is based on research on middle-aged white males,
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  which those people were working with me don't fit that category. So, you know, so my goal is to
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  get them into a much more narrow lab range that is, you know, it's optimal for fertility
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  and men and women in a reproductive age range. So, that I feel like it's often overlooked,
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  you know, and then, you know, the other thing is even on a semen analysis when I get those numbers
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  back. Those oftentimes when you get a semen analysis done, you go to a fertility clank, right?
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  And the fertility clinic just wants to make sure that a male has some quality good enough
• 18:46
  for IUI-IVF. But the reality is that the sperm quality needed for natural conception just given
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  the physiology of the distance that a sperm needs to travel to find his mate, you know, you need much
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  higher sperm quality for natural conception versus IUI-IVF. And so, that is another thing that is
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  really critical in the way that I work with couples is I'm like, our goals are not the top of the
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  normal range and the lab range. Our goals are much higher than that. And that is the reason that my
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  protocols have an 80% success rate with couples that I work with. Obviously, I'm also doing, you
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  know, screening couples before I work with them because I only invite couples to work with me if
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  I'm confident that I can help. So, that's the reason my success rates are so high. But I mean,
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  if you look at IUI-IVF success rates, I think it's hovering around 40% under the age of 35. And
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  once they get above, I want to say the age of 38, it drops down to 20%. And that may not be per
• 19:46
  cycle. That may be over a series of cycles, you know, oftentimes it's quoted on them six cycles.
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  What now you said IVR, is that what you said? IVF.
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  Oh, no, IVF, and what was the other one you said? IUI. Oh, IUI. Yeah, IUI is intrauterine insemination.
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  So, turkey baster into the uterus, get the sperm in there. IVF is taking the egg out of the woman,
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  taking the man's sperm, putting it in a petri dish, creating an embryo, and then putting that back
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  into the uterus at a later time. And a lot of my couples will come to me after failed rounds of IUI
• 20:22
  and IVF and so forth. And they'll get pregnant naturally with me because we're dressing the root
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  cause, right? Yeah. And we're getting them into an optimally fertile state. I'll tell you a story
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  about a couple real quick, which I think will probably be really inspirational for a lot of our
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  viewers. They were a double doctor couple. She's actually a board-certified endocrinologist,
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  believe it or not. So she is a hormone doctor, and her husband was an interventional cardiologist.
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  So obviously, high accolades, very academic couple, both board-certified physicians. I mean,
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  talk about knowing science. You know, they both knew science inside and out. And they struggled
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  with infertility for many years. Finally, did IUI. They did seven failed rounds of IUI. And then
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  they went on, which again, IUI's intrauterine insemination rights are turkey baster in the uterus.
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  Did that seven times? It didn't work. And then they moved on to IVF, which of course is very
• 21:23
  expensive, very invasive. And they did three rounds of IVF, all of which failed. And she was actually
• 21:32
  hospitalized twice because of oberin and hyperstimulation syndrome, which happens when, you know,
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  sometimes the body is overstimulated with the exogenous hormones and drugs that are required
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  to stimulate egg production for retrieval. And so when she came to me, she was spent,
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  and she, they had been on this journey for about six years, and she's a board-certified
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  endocrinologist. She realized, okay, I can't go back and go on any hormones or anything. I can't
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  do another round of IVF. You're kind of my last resort. Otherwise, we're going to go adopt.
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  And they came and they worked with me, James, and they got pregnant naturally in eight weeks.
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  And had a beautiful, healthy baby girl. So my message, you know, to go out there is that again,
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  you're not broken. And I'm not, and I do believe in traditional medicine, right? I'm in ER
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  doc by trade. I believe in the infraditional medicine and acute cure setting. However, you know,
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  we weren't trained in traditional medical school to address root causes. You know, I was personally
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  taught that fertility plummets at the age of 35, and you go and you do IUI and IVF. And I myself,
• 22:43
  in a fertility warrior, I had my first child with IUI and I had my twins with IVF. So I know the
• 22:48
  journey well and is a large part of the reason that I am so passionate about this work is because
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  when I went back and looked at my labs and my, you know, data, I realized I didn't eat any of those
• 22:59
  treatments. I just didn't have the proper guide or somebody who could help me unpack this and heal.
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  From the inside out. And so I think the main thing that the traditional paradigm misses is,
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  again, that this phenomenon, that of, of not giving enough credit to our biology and enough
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  credit to the body's innate ability to heal and reproduce. That's probably the biggest thing that
• 23:30
  I feel is missing from the traditional approaches. And I feel like it's picking up a little bit,
• 23:36
  but, you know, we're not 100% there yet. Yeah, the human body is miraculous. It really is.
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  Do you, so was it your own births? Like, what changed for you? Here you were in, you know,
• 23:52
  the system as a ER doctor, but clearly you got curious about root cause. What made you curious
• 23:59
  about it? Yeah, that's a great question. So in the ER, right, save lives, right? I trained in a
• 24:07
  level one trauma center in the Bronx and kind of saw it all. But what I realized was, you know,
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  when I first in medical school was going into the emergency room, I thought, okay, I'm going to
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  have a life threatening emergency. I'm going to save lives. And, you know, it's going to be a one in
• 24:24
  done. And I'm never going to see these people again. But what I realized over the course of my
• 24:28
  many years working in the ER over 20 years is that the ER was like a revolving door. So people were
• 24:35
  coming in having an acute emergency, you know, and then we're helping them and they're leaving.
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  And then a week or two later, they come back with the same thing because we're not, we're not
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  reprogramming what's happening at the base of the pyramid, at the root cause level.
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  And so we're basically throwing pharmaceuticals and band-aids at it. And then to, you know,
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  obviously my own journey with infertility was part of this dynamic that was also kind of playing
• 25:07
  into my questioning the traditional systems and the things that I was learning and I started
• 25:12
  diving into the data. But I'll tell you the moment that everything changed for me, James, is when
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  my mom, who was healthy as a horse and an amazing woman, went from not being able to being,
• 25:29
  spending with me five days a week to not being able to sign her name to dead seven months later.
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  And like I saved lives for a living. And here I am trying to figure out what I needed to do
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  to save my mom and the traditional system just really failed me. So I think the combination of
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  what I saw in the ER and my journey with infertility and when I was going through infertility
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  and I UI or IVF, I was at a healthy way, I was exercising, you know, I ate healthy,
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  um, I did all the things and my body was not getting pregnant and I had a regular cycle. I mean,
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  there was really no rhyme or reason as to why I was not able to have a baby naturally. So I think
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  the combination of all those things just made me take a step back and say, what are we missing?
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  Like, what is the future of medicine? You know, where are we now? Where do we need to be?
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  And why does the system feel so broken to me? And when I started diving into the literature,
• 26:31
  right, I'm traditionally trained in very scientific, I'm very database and evidence-driven. And when
• 26:36
  I started looking at all the scientific data, the waypops started going off. And that's when I started
• 26:41
  diving into, you know, functional medicine, regenerative medicine, anti-aging, um, peptides,
• 26:49
  you know, you name it and started connecting the dots and realizing that we're actually very far
• 26:56
  behind. Um, I don't know if you're aware of this, but it takes about 50 to 100 years for, for
• 27:02
  something to become the standard of care. So what I learned in medical school is based on,
• 27:08
  you know, scientific data, literature and studies that were done 50 plus years ago,
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  whereas what I do with couples and what we do in functional medicine is based on literature and
• 27:17
  data that is, you know, one or two decades old. So we're not doing things that are new or just
• 27:23
  came out. We don't have a lot of information about, we're just a lot more current. So yeah, that's
• 27:30
  amazing. I'm curious though, now that you have that functional medicine, you know, knowledge,
• 27:39
  were you able to look back at your own situation and see new things that you didn't know before?
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  And if so, what were they? Because you were sharing how you did everything. You were doing
• 27:51
  everything you thought was right, but now looking back with this new lens, what was missing,
• 27:56
  you think? 100%. So there were a lot of things missing. First of all, I was an ER doctor. I was
• 28:03
  doing all sorts of crazy shifts nights, weekends, holidays. You know, my body was not on a regular
• 28:10
  schedule at all. And I don't think that I work with a lot of couples that do shift work,
• 28:16
  and you know, a lot of actually a lot of physicians come to me for support with respect to fertility
• 28:23
  given my journey. But for me personally, there were multiple factors. I think I had a very high
• 28:30
  toxic burden. I didn't understand, you know, I always say the liver is a laundromat. I didn't
• 28:35
  understand the importance of detoxification, right? And I didn't understand how many toxins
• 28:43
  I was being exposed to on a daily basis and how that was impacting my body. I didn't understand
• 28:49
  the critical nature of gut health. I definitely had gut health issues. The other really important
• 28:54
  thing which I talk about a lot is stress. And stress, I always say there's three forms of stress.
• 29:01
  There is the stress that we all know and recognize as like a stressful day or
• 29:07
  argument with your family or a marital stress or whatever it is teenagers, you know, making life
• 29:13
  challenging. But the other forms of stress are dietary, right? You can probably speak to this,
• 29:20
  right? So things like yo-yo dieting or, you know, super high carb diets or, you know,
• 29:27
  inflammatory foods, you know, nutrient poor diets or, you know, you name it. There's dietary
• 29:35
  stress. And then there is stress that we don't even see or know is there. So for instance,
• 29:42
  chronic back pain can be a form of stress on the body. A hidden parasite in the gut can be a
• 29:48
  form of stress on the body. A mold infection that you may not realize you have can be a form of
• 29:54
  stress on the body. And I always talk about this because what happens with stress? How does
• 30:00
  our body react to stress? Our body doesn't know the difference between emotional stress or
• 30:04
  stress from a parasite. Either way, it's going to cause some adrenal dysfunction, meaning it's
• 30:09
  going to cause a shift in our cortisol rhythm. And the reality is that when our body is producing
• 30:14
  cortisol, you know, and we're in cortisol overload, what happens? And this is a little like
• 30:22
  getting a little biochemical, but, you know, our bodies take progesterone and turn it into cortisol,
• 30:29
  instead of it going down the other hormone pathway, which makes all our sex hormones. So I teach
• 30:35
  this a lot in my classes where I'm like, when your body is in cortisol overload, the things that
• 30:39
  aren't being made are testosterone, estradiol, DHA, you know, which are critical hormones for
• 30:46
  reproduction. So a lot of times, hormone balances are driven by stress. And it's not just emotional
• 30:52
  stress. So the other thing I promised my couples is I'm not just going to tell you to relax and let
• 30:56
  it happen because like couples are sick of hearing that. I was sick of hearing that. I was like,
• 31:01
  I'm not stressed out, you know, and telling somebody to relax doesn't really help them relax. It
• 31:06
  makes them more stressed out. It makes that cortisol go up even more, you know, so I always tell my
• 31:13
  couples, I don't think that you're going to come here and I'm just going to tell you to relax,
• 31:16
  don't think you're going to come here and I'm going to tell you to meditate because we have to
• 31:20
  figure out the root cause of the stress, you know, and again, because stress is not just emotional,
• 31:25
  it's multi-layered, you know, it's critical to get to the root cause. And one more thing on that
• 31:32
  is that a lot of people don't realize that 90% of our serotonin is produced in our gut, right,
• 31:38
  by our microbiome. And so if we don't heal the gut, it's very hard to achieve emotional homeostasis.
• 31:46
  And so that is the reason that a lot of my concierge practice patients will end up like
• 31:51
  weaning themselves off of their anxiety and their depression medications because we do get
• 31:55
  healing all of a sudden neurotransmitters are produced in serotonin is produced and they forget
• 32:03
  to take their medications. Sometimes I'm like, okay, well, you shouldn't really do that. We need
• 32:07
  to do this in a methodical way, but I can't tell you how many times my patients have just forgotten
• 32:11
  to take medications because they're feeling good. So it's all a system. It's a complex web and
• 32:20
  I always say like, you know, every system in the body is relevant to fertility. There is not a
• 32:26
  single system that we can disregard. And when we shift one thing, the whole body shifts, which is
• 32:31
  why, you know, it is when I work with couples and like, this is a process where we're going to
• 32:38
  be tweaking on a very regular basis as we start to see how the body responds.
• 32:44
  Yeah, wow. I really love this conversation. Given that you've worked with so many different
• 32:52
  individuals, couples, given that you yourself have gone through re-evaluating your own,
• 32:58
  you know, life and dealing with root cause as well, what are some practices that you have found
• 33:06
  are very effective that the person watching or listening to this could immediately take away
• 33:10
  and start incorporating in their lifestyle? Yeah, that's great. Well, first and foremost is food is
• 33:17
  food is, food is central, you know, it's your fertility. One of the things that I say right off
• 33:24
  the bat is anti-inflammatory diet, right? If we can just start by doing simple things like
• 33:29
  eliminating gluten, dairy, corn, peanuts, alcohol, tobacco, what am I forgetting? I think those
• 33:40
  are the big ones, but you know, if we can get, because the reality is that 90% of the population
• 33:47
  or more have some sort of intolerance or insensitivity to one of these foods, they just don't realize
• 33:53
  it. And so there's like a subclinical sort of, it's sort of like a slow-burning fire is what I
• 33:58
  call it, you know, in our bodies when we're eating these types of foods. And then, you know, if you
• 34:04
  want to keep it really simple, just perimeter shop, right? Premeter shop and, you know, because then
• 34:11
  what are you doing at the perimeter of the grocery store? You're going to purishables. Anything in
• 34:15
  the middle that can live on the shelf for a really long time is probably not great for you. So
• 34:20
  when I tell my couples to go to the store, you know, I tell them, just don't buy anything that's
• 34:25
  not perishable, you know, anything that is perishable, it's going to be healthier for you. And if possible,
• 34:31
  get your food from a local farmer's market, you know. And then of course, when it comes to like,
• 34:39
  you know, going down the road of seeking help for fertility, I always encourage my couples,
• 34:44
  like you really want to take a step back and wean into root cause medicine. Like, don't go running
• 34:49
  straight to IUI or IVF before you've really had an opportunity to work with a provider who can
• 34:55
  address the root cause. And, you know, and I always, I also think one of the critical things that
• 35:02
  couples can do is to take a break from trying, you know, again, shifting from baby making to a
• 35:08
  love making is huge for personal biochemistry. And that is actually one of the things that I
• 35:13
  ask my couples to do when they work for me work with me, you know, and I only ask them for three
• 35:18
  months. Like, let's just take a break from trying for three months. Let's get into a place where we
• 35:23
  celebrate our period for three months. Let's get into a place where you guys were doing date,
• 35:28
  night, some connecting and making that a priority with your time for, you know, a little while,
• 35:33
  you know, and weave it into your life. I actually have a behavioral analyst on my team that
• 35:38
  coaches these couples to because sometimes it's hard to form new habits. And it's hard to
• 35:44
  lean into a new way of doing things and connecting. But those are probably the critically important
• 35:51
  things that I think will jumpstart a healing journey is to, you know, again, nourish the body,
• 35:59
  decrease inflammation, focus on human connection and love. You mentioned and I'm curious that
• 36:05
  there sometimes are couples that you, after you interview them, that you decide not to go with.
• 36:11
  Like, so what is it that they show up with that makes you feel like it might not work out for them?
• 36:19
  So great question. Well, I would say first and foremost, obviously there may be couples that
• 36:25
  have an organic issue, but I can't help. What do you mean, like, like, by that what's organic and
• 36:31
  she? For instance, like a woman has both philopian troops blocked. Got it. Okay. I'm like, I can't get
• 36:37
  your pregnant naturally. You know, and I'm very transparent and honest with couples that I'm like,
• 36:44
  this isn't going to work, you know, or if I have, you know, a woman who I've had women over the age
• 36:49
  of 50 come to me. No, like, I've never had a baby. I really want to have a baby and I'm like, okay,
• 36:54
  well, you know, and I ask some basic questions. And if they're not even having a cycle, you know,
• 37:00
  there's some very clear biological reasons that I'm like, I'm not going to set you up for failure.
• 37:05
  You know, that being said, I would say the other factor that that I consider is, you know, because
• 37:14
  I'm not giving anybody a magical prescription. I'm not writing a prescription that is going to
• 37:20
  fix the body the way the traditional paradigm paradigm has programmed, you know, people to believe,
• 37:27
  you know, you go to the doctor, you get a prescription and you get all better, right? That's how we are
• 37:32
  trained, you know, traditionally to think. And my support requires participation.
• 37:40
  And so if I don't feel like there is enough buy-in for change or I don't feel like,
• 37:47
  you know, there is a supportive system because some of these changes are hard, you know, and,
• 37:54
  and so if I feel like that's not present, you know, I'm not in the business for setting
• 38:01
  anyone up for failure. And I tell them that at the very beginning of our call. And like, this
• 38:05
  is about not only figuring out if I'm the right for you, but if you're the right fit for me,
• 38:11
  you know, and if this is going to work because I've been, I've failed in my fertility journey time
• 38:18
  and time again. I know how hard and lonely the journey is. And so I want to be, you know,
• 38:24
  the secret to success. I want to be setting people up to win. And if I see signs or red flags,
• 38:32
  whether it's biochemical or, you know, emotional or well, actually, emotional is not an issue because
• 38:38
  I can, I can help emotional. But if I find red flags, you know, if I have some, if I have a guy
• 38:44
  get on there and, you know, he's not willing to change at all, you know, he's drinking every night
• 38:51
  and smoking weed and smoking cigarettes. I'm like, you know, like there's only so much that I can do
• 38:59
  for your sperm quality if you're not willing to embrace change, you know, and we don't have to do
• 39:04
  it all at once. I mean, the other big thing about it is that I meet people where they are,
• 39:08
  right? So I don't have anything against somebody coming to me, you know, with a smoking habit or
• 39:14
  whatever it might be. But my whole thing is, are you open to listening to your body and what it
• 39:19
  might prefer? So I'm not telling you to give everything up. I'm just asking you to listen to your
• 39:25
  body because as you start to heal, if you can participate, you actually may find that the things
• 39:32
  that you once loved are not going to be as palatable. And are you open to listening to your
• 39:39
  body, right? I'm sure you've experienced this a hundred times over, right? When you change,
• 39:44
  like as a chef, like you're asking people to change their, their, the way that they eat, you know,
• 39:50
  I'm all about people listening to their body, yeah. Yeah. But I'm like, you know, your body is
• 39:55
  going to tell you what it likes and dislikes. And your body is going to tell you when it is
• 40:00
  way for change. And just, are you open to that? You know, and as long as I have an openness and
• 40:07
  a curiosity, that's enough. You know, and I would offer to you, you said in, in, in there that you
• 40:16
  failed your reproductive health. And I would offer that it will, that, that now we can look back and
• 40:23
  say, you know, you actually didn't fail that, that life needed you to go on that journey so that you
• 40:29
  would come here so that you could help so many people. Like sometimes we, we, in the moment,
• 40:33
  something can feel one way, but we don't really know sources plan for us, you know what I'm saying?
• 40:42
  We don't, we don't know what the end result is, just like, and just like we don't want the people
• 40:48
  in your practice to be focusing on just having a baby, but we want to focus on the holistic journey.
• 40:53
  I would say your holistic journey has, is, is absolutely successful.
• 40:59
  Yeah, no, I agree. And I, I tell my kids too all the time, you know,
• 41:06
  life happens for you, not to you. Yes. Right. And every obstacle, every bump in the road,
• 41:14
  we may not understand in the moment why it's happening, but at some point things become
• 41:19
  abundantly clear. And that, there's one more thing that I think is critically important too,
• 41:25
  that I really want our audience to understand. And, and this is a part of my mission and message too,
• 41:31
  is I feel like on the fertility journey. Because of the traditional paradigm and how it works,
• 41:38
  every time I want a couple who can't get pregnant, when I have a baby, they need to go pay a
• 41:43
  reproductive endocrinologist and go through rounds of IUI and IVF, they have a baby, they go back,
• 41:48
  they do IUI, IVF, and it's like this cycle. But what my whole mission and messages is,
• 41:54
  if we heal the root cause from the inside out, you can rinse and repeat everything that you learn
• 42:01
  to have as many babies as you want. Because it's sort of like you crack the code in your body,
• 42:07
  right? You heal it from the inside out. I can't tell you how many of my couples will struggle,
• 42:12
  they'll get pregnant with me. And then they go off and they have their baby. And then I just had
• 42:18
  an email from a client about a month ago that said, you know, my baby is five months old,
• 42:26
  and I'm so fertile because of you that I just got oops, pregnant with my second baby before I was
• 42:31
  ready. I'm just like, yes, that is awesome. You know, and that happens time and time again,
• 42:39
  because what they're learning and their time with me is how to optimize health and fertility,
• 42:46
  of course, in the process. But then a lot of times they feel so magnificent on the other side of
• 42:54
  it that they can't go back to the old way. And it just becomes this natural tendency to
• 43:00
  and a massive lifestyle shift to health and to fertility and to abundance and to possibility.
• 43:08
  And so what I'm seeing is that these couples are not just having one baby, but I'm like,
• 43:12
  we're in some repeat what I teach you, like take notes, keep a notebook. If you fall off the
• 43:17
  wagon, go back to your notes, you know, don't come pay me again, you don't have to. You have
• 43:21
  everything you need. And so it's also about empowerment and about, you know, health advocacy,
• 43:27
  which I think is also very much lacking in our culture. And teaching them to ask the right
• 43:35
  questions, their provider, teaching them, you know, what to accept and what not to accept.
• 43:40
  Obviously, we want to respect, you know, all providers. And I have respect for, you know,
• 43:45
  I mean, obviously the entire institution of medicine, but to lean in with curiosity
• 43:53
  to what they're getting. You've been talking about when people come in like focusing on the journey,
• 43:58
  right? So we're talking about individual journeys. But what about the journey of humanity?
• 44:06
  And in many ways, we have veered so far away from our humanity of what's natural, of what's
• 44:15
  ancestral. That do you almost think that what's happening with fertility and what's potentially
• 44:23
  not going to happen with fertility, meaning that people are going to struggle even more with
• 44:27
  pregnancy is, is in a sense humanity's journey of like, hey, we need, we need the course
• 44:33
  character. We need like, do you think it's about something deeper than just the individual's issue
• 44:39
  of fertility? Oh, absolutely. It's a whole ecosystem, right? And it's sort of like we're getting
• 44:48
  further and further from the heart of it all and distracted, right? And I mean, there are so many
• 45:01
  outside factors that are coming in and pulling us away from the center of reproduction and
• 45:09
  the center of fertility and the center of humanity. So yes, I can definitely resonate with that.
• 45:15
  Where I feel like our culture is a whole, we're on this hamster wheel, which I often call a road
• 45:23
  to nowhere. And I feel like that road to nowhere is making us less and less fertile and less and less
• 45:33
  in touch with the things that will keep us healthiest and the things that will drive longevity and
• 45:42
  help the span. So yes, my 100% agree. So let's leave the audience then with this. So if you could
• 45:50
  wave a magic wand and bring back one ancestral practice, what would it be? Oh gosh.
• 46:02
  Well, I think simplicity. I think simplicity is one of the things that we often overlook right now
• 46:13
  in our society. I feel like everything is a lot more complex than it needs to be. And when I think
• 46:18
  about ancestral health, I think about simplicity, right? Less about convenience. I mean, everything
• 46:27
  now is more about convenience. And so we need to get away from that. Kind of go back to our roots.
• 46:36
  What do you think is an example of simplicity? You know, we're choosing something more complex,
• 46:44
  but we could just, this other choice is actually far simpler. I know I'm putting you on the spot on
• 46:48
  that, but do you think there's an example you could give around that? Well, I mean food is a
• 46:57
  really easy one. I feel like life has become about, again, this hamster wheel and the convenience of
• 47:06
  the food. And the convenience of food and simplicity is bliss. It might take a little bit more time.
• 47:14
  But I also feel like when I think about ancestral health, I think about meal prep, I think about
• 47:22
  families creating meals together in a kitchen, you know, with real ingredients. And the conversation,
• 47:30
  the love and the connection that happens in that environment, I feel like has pretty much gone out
• 47:36
  the window. You know, I personally don't know many people who have that type of culture
• 47:42
  in their home. I'll be honest, I struggle with it myself just because of the pace of life.
• 47:48
  But if we could get back to simplicity when it comes to food and simplicity in terms of time
• 47:58
  management and connection, I feel like it would probably breed health in ways that we haven't seen
• 48:04
  in a very, very long time. It's been really nice talking with you. This has been a really powerful
• 48:09
  conversation. I really hope that the people watching or listening are able to take something
• 48:17
  away, particularly because whether you're trying to get pregnant or not right now, I think this
• 48:23
  conversation of like looking at yourself as that onion and that, you know, we want to peel away
• 48:29
  each layer and we don't want to, you know, and look for the root cause of whatever is
• 48:34
  ailing us that you don't have to be trying to have a child or not to still look for root cause.
• 48:41
  Or as you say, you don't have to be trying to have a child to still care about root cause,
• 48:46
  like this applies to anyone. So thank you for this conversation.
• 48:52
  Thank you, James. Was it pleasure?
• 48:54
  How can people work with you or what's the best way for people to find you and reach out to you?
• 49:01
  Probably the best ways on Instagram. My Instagram page is your functional doc. It's a very easy
• 49:09
  to find me there. You can also search by my name. My website is doctornashotletheap.com. That's
• 49:15
  pretty simple, but Instagram is the best way. I encourage everybody to DM me there because I am
• 49:22
  the person behind the DMs. So it's not about, it's not an assistant, it's not a team, it's actually me.
• 49:29
  So I have lots and lots of conversations with women on Instagram who are looking for support. So
• 49:37
  if you want to talk directly to me, that's a fast track. Wow, that's a great tip. There you go,
• 49:42
  everybody. Just go to Instagram. DM the power of VM. Thank you again. Thank you for joining us
• 49:50
  and thank you all for joining us. It's so powerful having these conversations with people like
• 49:56
  doctorna shot and what we're really getting to the heart of humanity, I would say. You know,
• 50:02
  that it's about us trying to reclaim our humaneness. So thank you for all being curious enough to
• 50:08
  listen. Thank you for sharing it with your loved one or the person that you think could hear this
• 50:14
  message. And I ask one thing of you every every week is just stay curious. Thank you.
• 50:23
  Thank you so much for joining me on every day ancestral. If you enjoyed this episode, hit
• 50:29
  subscribe so you don't miss the next one. You can find the show notes links and resources
• 50:34
  mentioned at eatpluck.com. That's EATPLUCK.com. And hey, if you know someone who'd get something out
• 50:45
  of this, share it with them too. Stay curious, live well, and keep it ancestral.