Latest / She’s Smart / Aimee Raupp: Fertility, Hormones & What Your Body Is Trying to Tell You

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Aimee Raupp: Fertility, Hormones & What Your Body Is Trying to Tell You · She’s Smart

• 0:02
  Hey, everybody. Welcome to She's Smart. I'm your host, Maria Robotham.
• 0:06
  Each week, we sit down with incredible women to talk about life,
• 0:10
  work, and everything in between.
• 0:16
  Today, I'm joined by Amy Raup, bestselling author, fertility expert,
• 0:21
  and a true advocate for women's health.
• 0:23
  She's written multiple books on fertility and hormones, including yes,
• 0:28
  you can get pregnant, and the egg-quality diet, and for over 20 years has helped
• 0:33
  women around the world better understand their bodies and improve their fertility outcomes.
• 0:38
  What I love about Amy is that she doesn't just talk about getting pregnant.
• 0:41
  She talks about why our bodies are struggling in the first place.
• 0:45
  We get into everything from hormones and stress to the environmental factors
• 0:50
  that are impacting women in ways we're only just starting to understand.
• 0:54
  Whether you're trying to have a baby, already have kids, or you're just starting
• 0:59
  to feel those shifts in your 40s, this conversation is for you.
• 1:03
  It's honest, it's eye-opening, and it might just change the way you think about
• 1:07
  your body and your health.
• 1:09
  Just a quick note, this episode is for informational purposes only and is not
• 1:14
  intended as medical advice.
• 1:16
  Always consult with your health care provider before making any changes to your
• 1:20
  health or wellness routine. Now, let's get cozy as we connect.
• 1:26
  Learn, and laugh together on She Smart with today's guest, Amy Raup.
• 1:58
  Amy, welcome to She's Smart. Thank you so much for having me. Thanks for coming on.
• 2:02
  So glad that we have all these great women friends in common that tell us who to talk to and bring on.
• 2:08
  Beautiful little town. I love our town. I'm obsessed with our town. I drank the Kool-Aid.
• 2:13
  Same. I'm so in. I can't say no to anyone that needs help and wants Weston to
• 2:18
  be great. I'm like, done, done, done.
• 2:20
  What do you need from me? I want to start with you and how you found your way
• 2:24
  into this work. fertility specialist, author of five books, an advocate for women's health.
• 2:30
  Can you tell us a little about your journey towards to this?
• 2:34
  Yeah. So, I mean, the original plan was to go to medical school.
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  That was always like the plan. And I was, you know, undergrad biology and chemistry.
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  And then I didn't get into medical school the first time I applied.
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  I didn't do well. My MCAT's so devastating, but turned out to be one of the
• 2:48
  greatest pivots of my life.
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  And then that led me to studying Chinese medicine.
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  And I wound up getting a master's degree in traditional Chinese medicine and
• 2:59
  came out and was just going to like do general private practice,
• 3:02
  you know, women's health.
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  And I was in New York City.
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  A lot of my clients were like PR, you know, and all sorts of things.
• 3:12
  Authors, you know, just really amazing women.
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  And one of them said to me one day, She said, you're just so passionate about so many things.
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  Do you ever think about writing a book? And I was like, no, but maybe.
• 3:25
  Sure, I like that, you know.
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  And anyway, there was like a bunch of little things that kind of came together.
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  One was a producer at The View. I was on The View.
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  Like I started having these kind of like spotlight moments where I was like,
• 3:34
  this is fun in the sense of like, oh, the mission can be bigger than I ever thought it would be.
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  Versus like just hanging my shingle somewhere and just kind of having this private practice.
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  And so I wrote my first book in 2010.
• 3:49
  Called Chill Out and Get Healthy.
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  And then things just really changed from there where it's like then I started
• 3:54
  doing lots more interviews and like just kind of shifting to this.
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  I guess the best way I would say it is like thinking the mission much in much
• 4:02
  bigger terms than I kind of ever planned. And the fertility stuff,
• 4:05
  you know, kind of landed on me. I didn't choose that.
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  But back when I first started practicing as an acupuncturist and herbalist,
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  you know, the main people that came for treatment were women and women in their
• 4:17
  30s and 40s with period problems, hormone problems, like all the things.
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  And so it just became what I saw.
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  And I wasn't a mother at that point in time, wasn't really even on my radar.
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  Honestly, I was in my early 30s and had just broken an engagement.
• 4:32
  So I was kind of like, I'm just going to go like do my thing,
• 4:35
  live in the city, have some fun.
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  I just I've been a serial monogamous up until that point. So I was like,
• 4:40
  let me just go out and like live, write some books, you know what I mean?
• 4:44
  Help other people make babies and like figure out what I want to do.
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  And so my second book, when I wrote the first edition of Yes,
• 4:51
  You Can Get Pregnant, that really changed everything because then all of a sudden I became.
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  It was one of the first like natural fertility books on the market in,
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  it was 2013 or 14 that it came out.
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  And so that shifted. People started reaching out to me from all over the world.
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  It was before Zoom. We had Skype. Hey, can you do a Skype consult?
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  Skype, yes. Give me advice. And I remember like in my apartment,
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  literally I had my little MacBook Air and I was doing these Skype calls.
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  I didn't even know what to charge. It was like before online business was a thing.
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  And then things just really started to shift. All of a sudden,
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  I shifted into this online space and having courses and all we had was Facebook.
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  We didn't have Instagram or TikTok back then.
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  And then it kind of unfolds from there. Then I wound up meeting my husband and
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  having our child at 41. And then I think that maybe...
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  For women trying to conceive, especially later in life, it was like,
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  oh, she actually practices what she preaches and she is an expert in this.
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  And so, yeah, it all unfolded. And somewhere along the lines,
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  I started Amy Rout Beauty, which is like my non-toxic skincare line.
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  So I just have lots of little things. Now I have a supplement line, too.
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  Oh, but I have questions. That's coming up. We've got supplement questions.
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  So what made you choose? What brought you to Chinese medicine?
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  So I was studying. Like, my plan was to go to medical school.
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  I didn't get in the first time. So I was doing a graduate level program out at UCSD, Diego. Yep.
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  I'm a California girl. Oh, love it. Born and raised outside of San Francisco.
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  Oh, so great. I still say that's home, even though I've lived here way longer. Yeah.
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  It's like I, when I didn't get in to medical school, like I said,
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  it was a big, it crushed me, you know, on any levels because I was really academic.
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  I just, you know, not a great standardized test taker. Yeah,
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  that happens. Which is normal.
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  And, you know, so I decided to go into a graduate level program and I was kind
• 6:31
  of hopping around and I wound up at UCSD.
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  I was working in a lab there. We were studying Alzheimer's disease.
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  It was pretty basic. I was really just trying to check a box to get into medical
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  school, to be totally honest.
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  The man that I worked for, he ran the lab, Dr. Miller, and his wife was going
• 6:46
  through some health issues.
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  And they were using Chinese medicine, acupuncture, as one of the modalities.
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  Now, mind you, they're both like PhD MDs, these brilliant, I was like, alternative medicine.
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  I was so kind of, he's like, you got to read this one book. He gives me this
• 7:01
  book. It's called The Web That Has No Weaver.
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  It's written by Ted Kaptchuk. He's a traditional Chinese medicine practitioner
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  and also professor at Harvard.
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  Anyway, read the book. There was another guy on my floor who was a neuropharmacologist,
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  but he was also an herbalist.
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  And he taught at the Chinese medicine school, which was just down the street in San Diego.
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  And he said to me one day, he's like, you should come. You should just come and check out.
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  It's such a great institution. And it's like a four-year program.
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  Like it was a serious endeavor.
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  And yeah, just something I like went to like an open house. And I just like
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  sat in this room one day and like listening to them talk. And I'm like,
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  I think this is for me because it was like Western medicine was,
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  my grandmother had Alzheimer's at the time.
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  She was severely depressed and that was like the trigger for her.
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  Yet here I am studying Alzheimer's and we're so isolated of like,
• 7:49
  let's look at this protein and what it does to the brain. I remember always
• 7:52
  saying in our team discussions, are we missing a bigger picture though?
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  Like what about diet? What about mindset? What about lifestyle?
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  And it was like crickets. Like everybody was just like, what is she talking about?
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  She's crazy, you know. but not the neuropharmacologist and not Dr. Miller.
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  They both were like, they literally pushed me. Dr. Miller said to me,
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  he's like, I think you're going to get out of medical school and just feel not fulfilled.
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  He's like, you just, you want to like get into the nuts and bolts of things.
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  And like, you're so macro, whereas, you know, where I was headed was super micro.
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  So anyway, there you have it. And I kind of never looked back,
• 8:24
  you know, it was great. I mean, I didn't graduate that.
• 8:27
  Degree until I was like 29 years old. So I was in school from five to 29 or
• 8:31
  preschool, I guess three to 29.
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  I didn't go to grad school until after college, worked, then went to grad school
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  because I was like, I don't know what the hell I want to do.
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  Literally didn't know what I was. I had like seven different majors in college.
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  And at one point I went to Boulder. I was paying for college myself.
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  My dad was like, can you just graduate? I don't care, but just be done.
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  Just like be done with it.
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  So it ended up being Italian because that was, I was studying it the entire
• 8:57
  time. I got to live in Italy. I'm Italian, my heritage.
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  And I was like, well, at least I've got enough courses to get this one done. Totally.
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  And then I was like, what the hell am I going to do? It's so interesting because
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  now that I have kids and I have a 13-year-old, so we've got some time,
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  but you start thinking about it now, which is terrifying.
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  And he has one idea of what he wants to do, and we're going to let him go through
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  with it, but you're already talking about it. I know.
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  It's crazy. And I had no, I thought I wanted to be a doctor when I was his age.
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  I was literally reading Grey's Anatomy at night in my room, preparing to go
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  to Johns Hopkins and be a doctor.
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  I love that. And I was great under pressure. If someone was bleeding,
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  I still to this day, I'm great when there's some sort of thing happening. I'm a Capricorn.
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  I think everything shuts off and I go into that cold mode. Totally.
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  But I didn't, I was not the great person. Yeah.
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  I wasn't the academic. My best friend, she was the academic.
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  She was going to Dartmouth. She was valedictorian.
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  Like, she's beyond smart. I'm like...
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  I didn't know what the hell I was going to do. So I feel like these journeys
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  take us where they're. We go where we're supposed to.
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  I hope that our kids get that experience as well. I agree.
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  I hope that they find their way. I always say to my son, it's just like,
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  you have so much time to figure that out.
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  And you're allowed to change your mind at any point. Like my husband changed his career.
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  What was he? 44.
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  Like left the banking industry and now works for like more of like a fintech guy and in a startup.
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  And that's a cool thing for my son to know about. You know what I mean?
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  My father retired early and went back to college. In his 50s, he went to UCSD.
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  Get out. Because he only ever had a bachelor's in engineering and he wanted
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  to teach one day. And so he was like, I'm going to finish this degree.
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  You get permission, I think, from your role models, too, of like, you can always change.
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  Even for me, if you would have told me, oh, I'd be writing books,
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  giving up my clinical practice where I see patients at a brick and mortar for 21 years.
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  I'm literally like, OK, I'm moving on. Or that I'd be like online coaching women
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  all over the world. No, like what?
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  I'm happy I didn't become a
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  medical doctor. I wouldn't have had these freedoms to do all these things.
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  So it's like, you know, Gabby Bernstein says obstacles are detours in the right direction.
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  I love her. I love her. I've read all of her books and take her courses.
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  She's here in the CT. Is she really? Yeah, they live up in Cornwall.
• 11:22
  Oh, I didn't know that. Well, I've taken many of her courses.
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  I'm a super attractor. She's great. She's great. So did your perspective shift over time?
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  About this holistic approach? Or have you always had this in you where there
• 11:36
  was that natural element to kind of everything you were doing in your life?
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  I think I always had it. So my mom owned a gym.
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  She was an entrepreneur back in the day. So in like the 80s,
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  I grew up in like her fitness center, Flex Fitness, you know,
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  and she was like an aerobics instructor and she had a gym.
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  And love it. So I grew up around both my parents had their own businesses. So entrepreneurs.
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  And then I worked at like the health food store in town. Even in college,
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  I worked at the health food store.
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  I did also do time and like some of the emergency rooms and things like that.
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  But yeah, I was always thinking about, I guess, health from an overall perspective.
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  I think I always had that in me and kind of thought, I don't know,
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  that medicine was where it was going to like land for me.
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  But now I look back and it was like, I think I did always have this inclination
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  that, you know, health is so much more than just, I don't know,
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  your lab work. That's been a huge conversation lately.
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  I was just chatting with another guest
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  and we were talking about how it's all
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  integrated right you need certain medications
• 12:40
  because you have certain ailments that the medications help but
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  there's another part of it that western medicine and america in particular we
• 12:49
  do not gravitate towards it's like oh you're finally sick great here take this
• 12:53
  instead of hey how about we all take our vitamins and how about we all eat well
• 12:57
  and we all have a great workout and move our bodies.
• 13:01
  I know. And we I don't understand it to this day because it's very much how
• 13:04
  we approach life in our house. It's well-rounded.
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  I think all of my friends are the same way. Like we all are of that mindset.
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  Like you can't just go to a doctor and ask for pills. Like it's not going to
• 13:17
  fix anything. What else is there? Exactly. I'm a huge fan of integrative medicine.
• 13:20
  One of my closest friends and business partners is a reproductive endocrinologist.
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  You know, like I'm a big supporter of IVF and I'm a big supporter of like all the things, but...
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  I also am a big supporter of understanding the root cause and the reason why.
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  And like, how can we fix it from all the angles? I always say to my girls,
• 13:38
  it's like efficiency is the name of the game.
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  So however we can get you there the fastest, but the healthiest.
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  And so, yeah, that's super important to me as well.
• 13:46
  Why do you think so many women are struggling with fertility right now? The environment.
• 13:52
  And that's a very broad answer. I think since the 80s, we've introduced over
• 13:56
  100,000 chemicals to our environment.
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  They are known as endocrine disrupting chemicals. They are in our bath,
• 14:01
  our beauty products, our household, our drinking water.
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  I mean, the medications we take, they are everywhere.
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  And it's no longer just correlation. Like there's clear causation between endocrine
• 14:12
  disrupting chemicals and decreased fertility, imbalanced hormones, sperm quality.
• 14:17
  So I think that's a huge leading cause. So, for instance, since like the 70s
• 14:23
  or back in the 70s, we'll say one in 12, women and their partners were dealing
• 14:28
  with fertility challenges.
• 14:29
  We're currently at one in six. Been about 50 years and there's no way our genes change that fast.
• 14:35
  It has to be our environment. Like our genetics just don't change like that.
• 14:39
  And we're seeing now a leading cause. So when I wrote the first edition of Yes,
• 14:43
  You Can Get Pregnant, which I wrote in 2013, came out in 2014,
• 14:46
  and then I just did the revised edition in 2025.
• 14:50
  Male factor kind of like wasn't even really talked about. It was like,
• 14:53
  oh, yeah, 20% of the cases, we're up to 50% of the cases are now male factor.
• 14:58
  And some of that is like, honestly, just like people didn't report it.
• 15:01
  The diagnostics were terrible.
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  Like, of course, it's not you. You're a man. You're fine. It's just like,
• 15:06
  oh, well, it's clearly your age. Right. You're 33. You're 35.
• 15:09
  You're 38. Like, clearly, it's just all you.
• 15:12
  Diagnostics have gotten better. And maybe now we're actually like opening up
• 15:16
  to think about the other things.
• 15:18
  But the environmental toxins, I think, are a no-brainer. And then I would also
• 15:22
  like add to that when I talk about environment,
• 15:24
  if you will, the emotional burden or the stress
• 15:27
  on women you know we just do it all
• 15:30
  and some will argue well it's women waiting longer last year
• 15:33
  was actually the first year that we had less teen births and more pregnancies
• 15:39
  in the 40s than any other year ever in the history of time so like we are we
• 15:44
  are that's amazing okay that's like something's working something is something
• 15:47
  is working proud of this where I'm like, yes, birth control. Brilliant. Brilliant.
• 15:52
  Yes. Yes. But more women in their 40s are having children.
• 15:56
  So some doctors out there will make the argument, well, clearly it's because
• 15:58
  women are waiting longer, but it just can't be all that because women were having
• 16:02
  children in their 40s decades ago.
• 16:05
  It was just, that's what you did. You know, you just weren't really using birth
• 16:08
  control or practicing those methods.
• 16:10
  There's also a large amount, if you look at the data, a large amount of terminations
• 16:15
  for women in their 40s too, when they accidentally get pregnant or Because they
• 16:19
  already have their family and no judgment against terminations. I'm so pro-choice.
• 16:22
  But the environment is probably the most major impact.
• 16:25
  There's also clear correlations at this point, not causation,
• 16:28
  between the increased rise in ultra-processed foods.
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  Like in the 80s, 10 percent of our diet was ultra-processed foods.
• 16:35
  57 percent of our diets now in America, ultra-processed foods. 57 percent.
• 16:41
  That is terrifying. Terrifying. Terrifying. And it's beyond like seed oils.
• 16:46
  Like everybody talks about the seed oils.
• 16:47
  It's like it's beyond that. It's just like, you know, in Chinese medicine we
• 16:50
  say if it sits on your counter and it doesn't go bad, you shouldn't eat it.
• 16:53
  Yeah. We live in like farm country, you know.
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  But most of the country in the world, you know, doesn't have that luxury.
• 17:01
  They don't. They don't have access to it. They're not given access to it.
• 17:04
  We don't do a good job helping our farmers give other people access to it.
• 17:07
  You go into other countries. You're a...
• 17:09
  I lived in Italy. Yeah. You can eat anything? I know. Anywhere.
• 17:12
  All my friends who are not necessarily celiac, but sensitive to gluten,
• 17:16
  go to Europe and they're like, I was fine.
• 17:20
  We joke. We joke that the cereal tastes different. Yeah. The drinks taste different.
• 17:24
  It's the pesticides, though.
• 17:25
  So the laws around glyphosate, which is the most used pesticide in the United
• 17:29
  States, are really- Is that the big brand whose name I won't mention just in
• 17:32
  case? Okay. It's that one.
• 17:34
  Widely used here. We spray our grains like I think two or three times with glyphosate
• 17:40
  standardly here in the U.S.
• 17:41
  In Europe, they still do use it.
• 17:44
  But I feel like if we use it, I forget like the percentages,
• 17:47
  they use like a tenth of what we use, maybe even a 20th.
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  And so I agree. I've traveled a lot and I've always had a gluten sensitivity.
• 17:55
  Whenever I'm not in this country, I am perfectly fine. And I always I said this years ago to people.
• 18:00
  I'm like, I actually think I have a pesticide issue. I don't have a gluten issue.
• 18:03
  Yes. I don't have celiac.
• 18:05
  But I can't. And so if I make my own homemade sourdough, I can eat a slice every day.
• 18:09
  And I'm using the good flour and all the things. And I got my starter from, it's an Italian guy.
• 18:14
  So it's like, anyway. Fatsomano? Yeah. It's like a non-U.S. starter.
• 18:18
  I think the environmental, it's crazy. It's crazy the amount of toxicity and
• 18:23
  the toxic burden. And then talk about the plastics.
• 18:25
  There's just so many things. I just think our bodies aren't capable of handling
• 18:28
  it. And I like to kind of put it into reference of like, it's not that the fertility
• 18:33
  is like an on-off switch. It's more like a spectrum. And so we just kind of
• 18:36
  have to reduce the burden and then eventually like the fertility gets restored.
• 18:40
  But nature is really smart and the body is really smart. If it has other things
• 18:44
  to take care of, it does not prioritize fertility.
• 18:46
  And so that's kind of what my job is. I'm always like, okay,
• 18:49
  where's the burden and how do I lessen it so that the fertility can come back online, basically.
• 18:54
  Fascinating. So the body does that because it knows it's about to produce another
• 18:58
  human and that needs to have number one priority.
• 19:00
  Yeah, exactly. Like it's the biggest toll. You know, it's the biggest task.
• 19:05
  Yeah. What are we getting wrong as a society when it comes to women's health and hormones?
• 19:12
  Oh, and this has been such a top of conversation lately. Like that it's out there. I am 47.
• 19:18
  I'm taking the Dutch test in a couple of weeks, but I use it all the time with Glenn.
• 19:23
  Yeah. I'm starting to feel, you know, funky in different ways.
• 19:27
  I wasn't sure if it was the seasons because it was I was in snow for so long and needed sunshine.
• 19:32
  But the sweating, like there's things happening, right? I started HRT probably around your age.
• 19:37
  I mean, test, don't guess. I'm a huge fan. I have a functional doctor I work with. Yes.
• 19:41
  Oh, I love that phrase. Test, don't guess. I mean, yes. Yes.
• 19:45
  Don't just freaking buy it off the internet, people. So this is a huge topic
• 19:49
  of conversation. We all listen to Dr. Mary Claire.
• 19:51
  We all read the books. We listen to Christine Dunst, who's my nutritionist. What are we getting?
• 19:57
  What is confusing us? What are we getting wrong with women and their hormones?
• 20:01
  I think first off, we're not listening.
• 20:02
  And the people you're seeing are most medical professionals out there.
• 20:07
  Like, if we're going to talk about perimenopause or menopause,
• 20:09
  there was zero training on it. Zero, like less than two hours,
• 20:12
  I think, in all of medical school. And same with nutrition.
• 20:15
  So never take advice on nutrition from a medical doctor.
• 20:18
  And I love medical doctors. Like I have best friends that are medical.
• 20:21
  I'm not putting them down. I would say it in front of their face right now.
• 20:24
  I'm the one you take advice from on nutrition, not them. Well,
• 20:26
  I always find it so funny.
• 20:28
  That the doctors that we were seeing growing up were, my doctor was very healthy,
• 20:33
  but most of them were not healthy human beings. And they're the ones who are
• 20:36
  trying to tell you like, oh, no, you need to be healthy and do this.
• 20:39
  It's like, well, you're not really practicing what you preach, are you?
• 20:42
  I still will hear a reproductive endocrinologist say to my patients,
• 20:45
  like, diet has nothing to do with fertility.
• 20:47
  And I'm like, have you read any of the data that's come out in the last decade?
• 20:50
  Like, or are you just too busy to read the research because that's it's beyond frustrating.
• 20:56
  But so I think it's that I think I think there's just a lack of connecting the dots.
• 21:00
  And there's also just this, you know, I do think I mean, talking about Dr.
• 21:05
  Marie Claire, like she was on some, you know, podcast or TV show.
• 21:09
  She said something about how when she was in training, you know,
• 21:13
  she went to report back to like her supervisor and he was like,
• 21:16
  oh, what we have here is I think it was like a whiner.
• 21:19
  It was just like a woman like complaining about her symptoms.
• 21:24
  Like it was like, give her an antidepressant. It was like something like that,
• 21:26
  like so dismissive, just brush her off.
• 21:30
  You know, we don't have time for this kind of thing. Like, so it's like,
• 21:33
  oh, so we're just emergency medicine. Is that all we are?
• 21:36
  We don't want to improve quality of life. Like it's so important.
• 21:39
  And so I think about that all the time. Like my girls have to reach out to me.
• 21:43
  Pay out of pocket. I'm not covered by insurance, like coach with me to get the
• 21:47
  right guidance on the right tests, the right interpretations of the data.
• 21:51
  I'm grateful I have a job, but I also think it's such a symbol of like how wrong the system is.
• 21:57
  It's like, shouldn't we start here and then make decisions?
• 22:00
  I mean, I think there's lots we're getting wrong, but I think mostly it's just dismissive medicine.
• 22:05
  And it's so compartmentalized, right? So you see your endocrinologist for your thyroid.
• 22:09
  You see your gynecologist, you know, if you're lucky, if you get one who's actually
• 22:14
  up on the research and going to the conferences on bioidentical hormones or
• 22:17
  peptides or things like that. You know, and they're out there. They exist.
• 22:20
  But most of them? Yeah, but even the ones that I've seen, they...
• 22:26
  It's like, OK, spread your legs. Let's check your vagina. OK, you good?
• 22:30
  And then it's just like, oh, you know, sex isn't as pleasurable.
• 22:34
  Oh, well, that's just age. Yeah, just go get some lube. I'm like,
• 22:38
  that's not really. I don't feel like that's what I need.
• 22:41
  I think I need more than that. And I think a lot of women are catching on. It's just great.
• 22:45
  I think more of us need to keep vocalizing it and asking the right questions
• 22:49
  and kind of pushing them to be better.
• 22:51
  This is where I like, you know, social media is, you know, I have such a love-hate
• 22:56
  with it, but it's also a huge part of my business. But I think this is where
• 22:59
  social media is amazing at changing the game.
• 23:02
  It's changing the conversation. It's educating people. And we have like a global
• 23:05
  reach and that's phenomenal.
• 23:07
  Yeah. More people, more women, more women. Power. So where do you feel like
• 23:11
  conventional medicine is failing?
• 23:13
  Huge fan of Western medicine and
• 23:15
  half of my referrals after a new patient consult are to certain doctors.
• 23:20
  But where I think it's failing is I think there should be a tighter ethics committee
• 23:25
  with how they talk and gaslight patients.
• 23:27
  The gaslighting that I hear and see about is appalling.
• 23:31
  There should be more education around lifestyle and diet.
• 23:34
  There should be more education around preventative medicine.
• 23:38
  So I just think it's just you prescribe a pill for every problem.
• 23:42
  And then there are some nutritionists and alternative experts out there that
• 23:46
  literally prescribe a supplement for every problem. I also think that's problematic.
• 23:49
  So it's more like meeting the client where they're at, understanding their lifestyle
• 23:54
  and trying to figure out how we can make it work for them while using Western
• 23:59
  medicine. I think obviously it's super useful.
• 24:01
  You know, I'm a big fan of thyroid medication. Yeah, I'm a big fan of lots of
• 24:05
  things, but also really understanding like the root cause.
• 24:08
  And so that's I think that's where it's missing the boat is the root cause piece.
• 24:12
  Yeah. Well, let's dive into fertility. Sure.
• 24:15
  So you talk about fertility as an overall reflection of your health,
• 24:19
  right? So explain what that means. What does that look like?
• 24:22
  And what I like to say is health is, you know, not just your labs, right, or your age.
• 24:27
  It's really, you know, nutritionally, mental, emotionally, environmentally,
• 24:34
  physically, I think relationship-wise, right?
• 24:37
  And that's a very, like, Chinese medicine basis. You know, we say a woman who
• 24:41
  lives in accordance with the Tao, as in like the Tao Te Ching,
• 24:44
  she can conceive or should be able to conceive up until the age of 49.
• 24:49
  And so that means like she's living like a balanced life, like she's following
• 24:54
  the seasons and probably eating with the seasons.
• 24:56
  She's maintaining like healthy, joyful relationships. She's moving her body.
• 25:00
  She's getting sunlight, eating quality foods.
• 25:03
  So that's kind of always the core of the work that I do is this like getting
• 25:07
  and now we have terms for it.
• 25:09
  Circadian rhythm work, nervous system work. Like we have terms for it now.
• 25:13
  We didn't always. Ten years ago when I wrote the first edition,
• 25:16
  we just kind of said getting back in touch with nature is kind of how we talked
• 25:19
  about it. But yeah. Yeah.
• 25:21
  So it's always like that version better because the bigger words just start to confuse me.
• 25:25
  Well, it's like someone being like, and I'm smart, you know,
• 25:27
  and that's great. I'm so proud of you.
• 25:30
  But, you know, it's it's funny. You know, I have to like talk in those terms
• 25:33
  a lot now because it's like what leads. But yeah, it's understanding that fertility
• 25:39
  is, it's like a signal, just like your menstrual cycle.
• 25:42
  It's a signal of how things are working or not in your body.
• 25:46
  Just like your skin, too. Your skin is a big signal.
• 25:48
  Yes, big signal. External manifestation of internal health. It's something Chinese
• 25:51
  medicine has always said.
• 25:52
  So I think some people get offended when I say like fertility is an extension
• 25:56
  of overall health, but it truly is because it's strategic.
• 26:00
  Like the body's really smart. If it doesn't have the resources for procreation,
• 26:04
  it doesn't prioritize it. And I know others would be like, well,
• 26:07
  crackheads get pregnant all the time.
• 26:08
  They do. They're typically, you know, I think the younger we are,
• 26:13
  the more we can get away with. Sure.
• 26:15
  Yeah, absolutely.
• 26:17
  So let's talk about the women who aren't necessarily getting pregnant right
• 26:20
  now, like myself. I am done. Love my two boys. I don't want any more.
• 26:25
  So why should we be thinking about and caring about our fertility?
• 26:30
  Great way to position it. And I think we're thinking about fertility similar
• 26:34
  to the menstrual cycle of like, and some of my colleagues say this,
• 26:37
  so it's not my term, but I'll use it. Like, it's the fifth vital sign.
• 26:41
  It is a vital sign that we're still ovulating and menstruating.
• 26:45
  That's going to start to shift, right? Probably more into the early 50s.
• 26:50
  But that's like our perimenopausal stage.
• 26:54
  But I think if we're thinking from a perspective of fertility being not necessarily
• 26:59
  that we want to get pregnant,
• 27:00
  but a sign that we're still ovulating and menstruating with regularity and our
• 27:04
  hormones feel balanced and we're noticing the changes and figuring out how to best support that.
• 27:11
  I think it's really important. It's so important from like a cardiovascular
• 27:13
  perspective, bone health perspective, mental health.
• 27:16
  Like, I mean, this is the time where we can get really kind of crushed.
• 27:20
  Bone health decreases the most significantly in the first five years of menopause.
• 27:27
  Oh, wow. All the calcium deficiency? It's the drop in estrogen.
• 27:31
  And so that's where, like, I'm a big fan of, this is where Western medicine,
• 27:34
  big fan of bioidentical HRT.
• 27:36
  This is where it's important. You know, like, I started playing around with
• 27:39
  estrogen and progesterone, even some testosterone, probably,
• 27:42
  like I said, 47, 48, when I started to see the changes.
• 27:45
  And like, you know, that's why it's also important to like, have your hormones
• 27:48
  checked regularly. So you can see when things start to shift.
• 27:51
  Not just like, oh, your FSH is high. You're clearly in menopause.
• 27:54
  Or your periods are irregular.
• 27:56
  This is perimenopause. Like, what does that even mean? Perimenopause is a period
• 27:59
  of time that can last for 10 years.
• 28:02
  So, like, what does that mean? Like, we should have a gauge on these things.
• 28:06
  And as they're shifting.
• 28:07
  And so, if we, you know, we don't maybe have to say that we're still working
• 28:10
  on our fertility in our late 40s.
• 28:12
  But we really want to think about our hormones as a vital sign. Yeah.
• 28:16
  Oh, yeah. I mean, we're all checking it. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
• 28:20
  I have the cycle app that I follow. I like that. Because I'm, again, a Capricorn.
• 28:24
  So I have to make sure all these, this is how I control life. Yeah.
• 28:28
  And track your symptoms. I mean, I think it's so important to track symptoms.
• 28:32
  And I think it's so important to, you know, at that yearly gyno,
• 28:36
  do a lot more than just your pack.
• 28:38
  Right. Or your mammo. But they just need to give us the time and then not dismiss
• 28:43
  us when we say all these things that are happening.
• 28:46
  Because now you're doing the Dutch. That's $300 out of your pocket.
• 28:48
  And whoever's going to, you know, review that. And then the supplements that come with it.
• 28:53
  Wouldn't it be nice if, yeah, our insurance was covering that.
• 28:56
  It was just kind of standard. And we were looking at more than just FSH.
• 29:00
  And, you know, there's so many other important hormones. I'm literally on my
• 29:04
  drive here. My one friend was like, so I just saw my gynecologist and she just ran these tests.
• 29:07
  Can you review them? I'm like, yes, I need to see the whole panel and I'll tell
• 29:10
  you what's missing. I mean, that's half my job. I'm like, well,
• 29:12
  they didn't test for this and they didn't test for that.
• 29:14
  Insulin resistance is another huge thing. As our fertility declines or as we
• 29:18
  hit, you know, perimenopause, it's like the number one thing that happens to
• 29:22
  us is we become less sensitive to insulin.
• 29:24
  And that's the weight gain. That's like all the shifts in our bodies.
• 29:28
  All of us, I'm doing the same things. My diet hasn't changed.
• 29:31
  My exercise hasn't changed. and every month I've gained another two pounds or
• 29:34
  something like that. It's crazy.
• 29:36
  So I'm a huge fan of continuous glucose monitors, like especially in like our
• 29:41
  late 40s into the 50s so we can really understand how our body's reacting to
• 29:46
  insulin, blood sugar. So curious about one of those.
• 29:48
  Very curious to like stick one on and see what happens. I learned so much about my body. Really?
• 29:54
  I've been doing this work for 21 years. Like I eat super, like I do all the
• 29:58
  same things and all the same things I preach, But same thing,
• 30:01
  my body started to shift in this way that I was like WTF.
• 30:05
  And the glucose monitor just taught me a lot. I basically just should eat ground
• 30:09
  beef and broccoli all day long is basically what I've come down to.
• 30:12
  It's really funny, though. So growing up, I'm Italian, Irish and Spanish.
• 30:16
  So the kitchen is a big part of our lives.
• 30:18
  But it was just food, right? They were just like all the food.
• 30:22
  And it wasn't necessarily a process of how does it make you feel when you eat
• 30:26
  certain things? And as I got older, it took a long time to...
• 30:32
  Kind of figure that out. I mean, I had eating disorders. I had all these other things.
• 30:36
  So at one point I just wasn't eating, but eventually that made its way out of my mindset.
• 30:40
  And now when I eat, it's like, what makes me feel good?
• 30:45
  What are the things that I can wake up the next morning and not be like, crap?
• 30:48
  Because I don't want to wake up feeling like shit. I know that if I'm going
• 30:52
  to have some wine and enjoy my margarita with my girlfriends, I'm going to
• 30:55
  The next morning, I'll either feel okay or not. We've decided that one margarita
• 31:00
  and a glass of wine, the next morning we feel fine. Yeah, exactly.
• 31:04
  Like, it's been tested. And I have to be done by 8 o'clock. It's been tested.
• 31:08
  So we're like, okay, this is a night where it's one margarita,
• 31:11
  and it's just lime juice. It's not the sugary stuff.
• 31:14
  And a glass of wine, and we're good to go for the next day.
• 31:17
  Anything more than that, it's like, you're tricky. But you said beef and broccoli.
• 31:21
  And I'm like, if you put salmon on my plate and some arugula and greens,
• 31:26
  maybe some hemp seeds, I will feel fantastic.
• 31:30
  It's not always what I can get and what I'm going to go to, but it's realizing
• 31:34
  what makes you feel good and then not doing the should.
• 31:38
  Well, I should be doing this. I should be doing that. It's like, why?
• 31:41
  Let's just feed ourselves well. I agree. When I work with clients,
• 31:45
  I have them do a food diary.
• 31:46
  I have them log what time they woke up, how long they went between waking and eating.
• 31:51
  What they ate, portion sizes, how they felt right after, how they felt a few
• 31:55
  hours later, what their bowel movement was like that day.
• 31:58
  And like, literally, it's like deep dive inspection.
• 32:02
  And they learned so much. And I get to point out like, see, when you have that,
• 32:06
  this is what happens the next day. Or I got really bloated here.
• 32:09
  It's like, okay, well, let's trace it back. And it's not always directly related
• 32:12
  to food, but food is our primary medicine and it should be.
• 32:15
  So the quality of it's so important. But I agree, like the cleaner you eat.
• 32:19
  And I think about that That too, though, even like now I think we're so conscious
• 32:23
  of it as we're getting older and really paying attention.
• 32:26
  But how many people in their 20s and 30s are walking around just basically at like 80 percent there?
• 32:33
  You know what I mean? Like they could be feeling even 70 percent.
• 32:36
  They could be feeling so much better. They're just not connecting the dots.
• 32:39
  And they can get away with it. OK, so that brings us down to like the daily
• 32:43
  habits. If you can narrow it down, what are your top three, five things that
• 32:48
  actually move the needle for women?
• 32:52
  Sleep. Sleep is super important. It's where the body restores.
• 32:55
  I think it's smart to be in bed before 11 and sleep seven to nine hours.
• 33:00
  Actually, sleep and get sleep.
• 33:01
  Do not doom scroll. And like, I would add to that caveat of sleep.
• 33:04
  I'll keep it in the same category. Like, really try to manage your blue light at night.
• 33:08
  It's definitely screwing us up. It's screwing up our melatonin.
• 33:10
  It's screwing up our hormones. Like, lots of data on it.
• 33:13
  What's the standard? Is it like an hour before you fall asleep?
• 33:15
  Two hours before you fall asleep? But there's like, you can do the red light
• 33:19
  on your phone now. I can show you how to do it. What's that?
• 33:21
  You literally change the color settings at night till it becomes red.
• 33:25
  So you're getting less blue light.
• 33:27
  You can wear blue light blockers. I wore these amber glasses if we watched TV
• 33:30
  at night. Like my son wanted to be on his iPad last night because he was busy with soccer.
• 33:34
  And it's after sundown. And this is how crazy I'm like, well,
• 33:36
  you have to wear the red glasses. And he was like, OK.
• 33:39
  And he has a blue light blocker on it. But like the screens and the light at
• 33:42
  night, it just screws up our melatonin, which then cascades into our hormones.
• 33:47
  So, yeah, ideally an hour before bedtime, no screens.
• 33:50
  But that's hard. I like to walk at night, you know, so we try to even a half hour.
• 33:55
  But you could do you can change out your lights and really address the blue
• 33:59
  light from so many perspectives. But so I would say sleep.
• 34:02
  Movement, obviously, you know, it's pretty standard 30 to 45 minutes of movement
• 34:06
  five times a week. I think it's really important for women as we're getting
• 34:11
  older, more strength and cardio.
• 34:13
  Always, always, always, always quality food and a focus on protein.
• 34:18
  I also would say, you know, it depends on where you're at, but intermittent
• 34:22
  fasting is really not ideal. I don't think until we're well into our 50s for
• 34:27
  women. Oh, interesting.
• 34:29
  Why is that? Because it's not super supportive for hormones.
• 34:34
  And so say you're perimenopausal and now you're ovulating less frequently.
• 34:39
  You know, the progesterone is really important.
• 34:42
  Progesterone comes to our cycle after we ovulate.
• 34:45
  Intermittent fasting, we can see a correlation with lower progesterone in those women, too.
• 34:50
  So we're like, we could be worsening the cycle changes, you know,
• 34:53
  making them happen faster.
• 34:54
  So I try to say no more than 12, max 14 hours between last meal.
• 35:00
  You could still stop eating at like 7 or 8, you know what I mean?
• 35:03
  And limit your carbs at night. I think all those things are really smart,
• 35:07
  but you can get the bulk of your calories in those 12 hours,
• 35:09
  like 7 to 7 or something like that.
• 35:11
  And with that, I would say protein forward. I've been doing this a really long
• 35:14
  time, and I don't mean any offense, but vegetarianism, I just don't see it working. Not for women.
• 35:19
  It's just we're too deficient and too dry from it. there's certain vegetarians
• 35:25
  that can do it if they're like soaking their nuts and seeds and all these things but like.
• 35:29
  You just got to eat some protein. Don't have coffee on an empty stomach.
• 35:31
  That would probably be a very important one to add collagen to your coffee.
• 35:37
  Okay. Can we talk about the collagen? Let's talk about the collagen for a second.
• 35:40
  Because I have tried it. I've done the really expensive, lovely, I felt like shit.
• 35:48
  So it could be a histamine reaction. Do you get allergies? I do.
• 35:52
  I'm also allergic to nightshades. Yeah. So I have cases like that.
• 35:56
  So I was like, but I want the collagen.
• 35:58
  I want the skin. and I want to feel tight and great. And I'm like,
• 36:01
  I just don't know if I can do it.
• 36:03
  So then, you know, drink good quality bone broth. That's what I would say is
• 36:06
  like another way. Oh, do you have good bone broth?
• 36:08
  Yeah. So that's another way. And then if you can't do collagen in your coffee,
• 36:12
  then usually I'll just be like, literally like a handful of almonds or sunflower seeds.
• 36:17
  Oh, I already have this. Something simple before you have the coffee.
• 36:20
  It's like the coffee on the empty stomach, especially as we are in our 40s and
• 36:24
  50s, this is a number on cortisol.
• 36:26
  Yeah. But just in general for women. You know, it's like one of my top rules.
• 36:30
  But I love that idea of adding the collagen to the coffee because mine had like 19 grams of protein.
• 36:35
  Oh, yeah, get 20 grams of protein. First thing in the morning.
• 36:36
  In everything. It's great. And don't work out fasted. Like that is another normal.
• 36:40
  A lot of women do that. Yeah. I used to. My whole life I did it. Yeah.
• 36:45
  So stress. Let's talk about stress. It plays a big role in everything.
• 36:50
  So we talk about stress management and what women can be doing a little bit
• 36:53
  to help them, especially when it comes to fertility and also cortisol.
• 36:58
  Yeah. So, you know, there's an interesting piece of research I put in the new
• 37:03
  book about stress resilience and so how they were measuring a stress response and the impact,
• 37:11
  I think, on women undergoing IVF. But they noticed that the women...
• 37:14
  Were more stress resilient, meaning they could bounce back faster,
• 37:18
  had better IVF outcomes.
• 37:19
  And then they noticed, oh, and these are the same women that eat a balanced
• 37:23
  diet and move their body every day.
• 37:25
  And I was like, well, that makes sense because the body feels,
• 37:28
  I always think about a sense of safety is the biggest thing.
• 37:31
  And so what stress does to us, yeah, is kind of like that fight or flight response,
• 37:36
  like where we feel like we're being chased by the lion or the tiger or the bear.
• 37:39
  And it does. it sets off a cascade of events in the body that basically put
• 37:43
  the body in this chronic fight or flight mode. And it's like self-preservation
• 37:47
  mode versus like the other mode is relax, reproduce and rest,
• 37:52
  right? That's really where we want to be.
• 37:54
  So stress, we know, impacts our hormones. It impacts our cognitive functioning.
• 37:58
  I mean, just across the board, impacts our sleep and then our recovery.
• 38:02
  So to balance stress, I mean, I think first you have to be aware of it. Yeah.
• 38:09
  Some people just are on autopilot and they do not realize.
• 38:12
  So, I mean, reflection, like pause for reflection doesn't have to be meditation,
• 38:15
  but like, do you have like a journal practice?
• 38:17
  Even if it's like a bestie that you're talking with or just this,
• 38:21
  you really need, I think in order to change anything or change a belief,
• 38:24
  you have to acknowledge it first. Right.
• 38:26
  And also realize like I've always been like this, like super high functioning
• 38:30
  and always have like 17 things.
• 38:33
  But as I'm getting older, you know, and I've been therapized,
• 38:36
  it's like, well, that was clearly like a coping mechanism.
• 38:39
  You know, clearly I did those things to just feel value and feel worthiness
• 38:43
  and just like busy, busy, busy.
• 38:44
  So for me, that was like a retraining as well of like, I don't need to be busy
• 38:49
  to be productive or successful or to be worthy, right?
• 38:52
  One thing I'll say to my clients all the time is like, how much of you are you
• 38:55
  giving away every day versus keeping for yourself?
• 38:58
  That always stops people where they're like,
• 39:00
  Oh, no, I give everything away, like, all day long, like, to my boss,
• 39:03
  to my job, to my family, to, you know, my partner, whatever it is,
• 39:06
  to my fertility journey, if I'm working with them on that.
• 39:09
  So it's about, again, like, that self-preservation. And so, I mean,
• 39:13
  I know meditation's great, and I think exercise, exercise for me is a great
• 39:17
  way to, you know, reduce stress.
• 39:20
  Community, so important. Like, we just, we need, we need our people, you know.
• 39:25
  I just I was like on a phone call yesterday and I
• 39:28
  when I hung up I was like this person thinking about
• 39:31
  her and I with Michelle to the other day like when I left it was like she's
• 39:35
  so good for my soul like it's just more of that we need that that that is the
• 39:41
  antidote to stress I think like we're not going to avoid stress we have stressful
• 39:44
  lives we have a lot on our plate like that's just accept it this is just how it is but like,
• 39:49
  What are you putting on your plate that's absolutely necessary versus like the
• 39:52
  fluff? You know what I mean?
• 39:55
  I'm getting clear of the fluff lately. Oh, yeah. I love it. It's very freeing.
• 40:01
  And it's also, I get that state of mind because I just closed my one business
• 40:06
  and restarting another business.
• 40:09
  And there's a building process, right, that I did back 15 years ago when I started
• 40:14
  Style by Riso. It was easy to build it because I was younger.
• 40:17
  I was in it, you know. and it's hard to
• 40:20
  be building now because I'm so used to
• 40:23
  go go go go go go go but we're sitting in it we're
• 40:26
  like let's do this thoughtfully let's say no to things that don't
• 40:29
  work meaningful things that we want and it makes so much more sense and we're
• 40:33
  so much happier down the road yeah but it's a hard thing to not be busy all
• 40:38
  the time yeah and it's not necessarily good it's not necessarily good and it's
• 40:41
  like I just I just identified this for myself too even from a business perspective
• 40:45
  I've been in this like rinse and repeat mode for like years.
• 40:49
  And it was working. Like a hamster wheel. And I'm like, I don't know.
• 40:52
  But is it still working for me?
• 40:55
  Yeah. I don't know that it is. I'm ready to change. But taking those moments
• 40:58
  to just, and then to get comfortable with the discomfort.
• 41:02
  That's hard. Yeah. It's hard in a mental way. It's not like hard as some people
• 41:06
  might have very hard things, but it's hard to sit with that.
• 41:09
  That's where I think like nature is so important. Like getting,
• 41:11
  you know, like obviously now the sun is out for us here. And it's like nature
• 41:15
  and just getting outside, like gardening.
• 41:16
  Like, you know, I mean, I'm like obsessed with all of that.
• 41:20
  We all need that. I know not everybody has that luxury, but it's really just
• 41:24
  identifying, like, always, like, what lights you up.
• 41:26
  That's what I, you know, think about from a nervous system perspective.
• 41:29
  Like, things like, you know, I'll say to patients, like, I want you to sing
• 41:32
  in the shower every morning. Like, from now on in the morning,
• 41:34
  no news. You're listening to your favorite music. And maybe you're dancing.
• 41:37
  Maybe, like, it sounds silly, but it's so good for you.
• 41:41
  You need more of that. All right, let's talk about supplements.
• 41:43
  There's so much out there So many supplements How do women cut through this noise? Yeah.
• 41:49
  I mean, I use the Dutch test a lot, and we do the stool test, too, with our patients.
• 41:54
  Again, I would go back to tests don't guess, but I think the basics,
• 41:58
  we all need to know what our vitamin D levels are, and they should be at a good
• 42:01
  level. And if they're not, you need to supplement.
• 42:04
  You need to take it with food. I'm sorry to interrupt you. How does that affect
• 42:07
  fertility, low vitamin D? Because it's a hormone. It's not a vitamin.
• 42:11
  It's literally a precursor to all your other hormones. Yeah. Yeah.
• 42:15
  Yeah. And Americans don't get enough. So that's also, like, the nature piece.
• 42:18
  Like, spend 10 to 20 minutes at least a day outside, unprotected,
• 42:24
  no sunscreen, ideally before 11 a.m.
• 42:27
  And then you don't have to worry about, you know, sun issues,
• 42:29
  although I got some sunburn last week. Oh, if you could see my back from Florida. It's okay.
• 42:35
  My husband did a really bad job applying sunscreen. He was like,
• 42:38
  I'm going to do this, la, la, la, la, la.
• 42:40
  And I have a mark that looks like a hand, basically, on my back. Yeah, thanks, husband.
• 42:45
  So, yeah, vitamin D, it's just critical. in so many things. And then I would
• 42:50
  say like good quality B vitamins.
• 42:52
  Again, like methylated B vitamins are...
• 42:56
  You know, they're impacting thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of enzymatic activity in the body.
• 43:02
  So a quality B, methylated, quality D, ideally with K, know your levels, test don't guess.
• 43:10
  It's pretty straightforward and simple. But most people are in like the 30s
• 43:14
  and you really need to be between 50 and 70 nanograms per milliliter.
• 43:18
  I do think a quality omega-3, most of us, you know, we want that omega-3 to
• 43:24
  6 ratio. We want less sixes, more threes.
• 43:28
  And even if you're eating, like, people will be like, but I eat salmon every
• 43:30
  day. It's like, guess what? The quality of our food is, even the best quality
• 43:35
  of food is still compromised.
• 43:36
  I guess magnesium is huge for women, especially as we're aging.
• 43:40
  Take it every night. Yeah, same. I love it. Oh, I should have brought you my
• 43:42
  magnesium oil. I make one.
• 43:44
  Oh, love that. Put it on my shoulders. Yeah. So good. It's just like,
• 43:48
  and you can do it too. Like, you can get good magnesium salts, take a bath every night.
• 43:52
  Magnesium, glycinate usually, or just, you don't need the oxides.
• 43:55
  And if you're constipated, you need to look, basically, don't take magnesium to poop.
• 43:58
  Please don't drink coffee to poop. Don't take magnesium to poop.
• 44:01
  I think that's kind of the basics of what I'm thinking about from a perspective.
• 44:05
  And then that's where, like, then you fine tune. Like creatine,
• 44:08
  I also think is good for us as we're aging from a muscle perspective,
• 44:11
  a cognitive perspective. I take that every day.
• 44:13
  Quality electrolytes, not the stuff with the crap in it, like good quality electrolytes.
• 44:20
  But again, we're all so mineral deficient ones. Pure.
• 44:24
  Okay. It's pink and it tastes like watermelon. Oh. But I mistakenly put an entire thing in a water bowl.
• 44:29
  And I called Christina. I was like, it's really salty. She's like,
• 44:32
  oh my God, Maria, don't put the whole thing in there.
• 44:35
  That's so funny. I mistakenly had like God knows how many milligrams of sodium. But a sprinkle.
• 44:40
  Yeah, a sprinkle. And it's fantastic. Even just good quality sea salt.
• 44:42
  Literally. Yeah. It's a salt you need. And it tastes good. I feel hydrated throughout the day.
• 44:47
  Like, yeah. No, I really, I love that. Yeah.
• 44:50
  All right. The emotional side we've kind of touched on, but let's go into the
• 44:54
  fertility side of the emotion and the pressure as a woman that we feel to when
• 45:02
  we have that calling to get pregnant.
• 45:04
  So I married my husband and maybe we'll have children one day.
• 45:07
  I knew I'd have them, but my journey wasn't like I need to have.
• 45:11
  And then one day I looked at my husband and I was like, I need to have your
• 45:14
  babies. And that's just how it happened.
• 45:16
  And we were very fortunate that we were able to get pregnant and I didn't have issues with that.
• 45:22
  But the pressure for women who want children and are having problems having children.
• 45:28
  Let's talk about that, the emotional carry that women are taking on.
• 45:32
  It's so hard. It's so hard. And what are you seeing in your practices with women now?
• 45:37
  And the ability to get pregnant, is it a different era now as we get pregnant
• 45:42
  than it was when we had children?
• 45:44
  So I have a 13-year-old. 13 years ago, I had my first kid.
• 45:47
  Is it different now? Are women more aware?
• 45:50
  I think they're more aware. I mean, I was practicing in the space of fertility,
• 45:53
  you know, that long ago, 21 years.
• 45:56
  So it's like, I think the trend has been the same. I do think there's a greater awareness now of, like—.
• 46:05
  Time ticking, you know, or the pressures of like, oh, you should probably do
• 46:09
  this young. You should probably freeze your eggs.
• 46:11
  And I know for certain all the data that is spewed to us is not 100 percent correct.
• 46:17
  And so there's a lot of fear mongering, which then creates a ton of pressure.
• 46:21
  I don't think that you can safely just say, oh, I'll have kids at 45.
• 46:25
  Like, no, you know, but I think you're safe to wait to 35, 38,
• 46:29
  even 40 if you're living very intentionally.
• 46:32
  But the pressure and the emotional toll, I mean, it's just that thing.
• 46:36
  Like, it breaks my heart because it's like.
• 46:38
  Why is it so easy for Maria and it's not for me? Like, what did I do wrong?
• 46:42
  What did I do to deserve this?
• 46:44
  That's like the feeling. It's so hard. And it's like, isn't this what I was
• 46:47
  trying to avoid in all my, like, teen years and into my 20s?
• 46:51
  And then now it's this hard? Why is it so hard?
• 46:54
  And why is, like, the only option I'm given is I have to go to IVF and spend
• 46:57
  our entire savings on it or refinance our house or take out money for our loans.
• 47:02
  And only have two options through insurance or something like that. Right.
• 47:05
  Crazy pants. And so it's so I think they're becoming,
• 47:08
  I would say, like, thanks to social media, honestly, I think,
• 47:12
  and maybe practitioners out there like me and in the books, you know,
• 47:15
  that are out there now, it's like people are more educated about what they can
• 47:19
  do to optimize their chances.
• 47:22
  But it still is falling like, you know, it's there's still just a huge gap in diagnostics.
• 47:31
  And I think that's that's a big problem, you know, and then it's super frustrating
• 47:35
  because then it's like, well, I mean, literally like this is what they hear.
• 47:38
  Well, you have to have three miscarriages before I do that test.
• 47:40
  Like what? I'm sorry. What?
• 47:42
  But WHO, that's like a standard. I'm sorry. You have to have three miscarriages
• 47:45
  before we do that hysteroscopy.
• 47:47
  Oh, but you could pay for out of pocket, but it'll be like, you know,
• 47:49
  a thousand dollars because you pay for the anesthesia. holy shit, why?
• 47:54
  They've just adjusted it now. It's a recommendation, though.
• 47:57
  After two miscarriages, we can do some of that testing now.
• 48:00
  But why would you make any woman go through that more than once and just take the damn test?
• 48:06
  How difficult is that? So it's things like that where it's like,
• 48:08
  so it's not just this burden of like, my body is failing me,
• 48:13
  I can't do this thing that looks so easy for everyone else.
• 48:16
  But then in order for me to figure out why my body is not doing this thing,
• 48:21
  you have to spend it's another full-time job dealing with insurance and dealing
• 48:25
  with the doctors and getting the second opinions hiring people like me right it's like,
• 48:30
  This is it's insanity. I'm so backwards. And they likened the trauma of infertility
• 48:35
  to having a cancer diagnosis.
• 48:39
  That's how traumatic it is. Like I took on for years and I'm a huge Gabby fan and all that like.
• 48:45
  Do a ton of mindset work with my clients, but it was probably like five years
• 48:48
  ago, I was like, I'm going to hire a psychologist for my team.
• 48:52
  Like, I need a trauma therapist.
• 48:53
  She needs to be on the team. And honestly, I did that with respect because I
• 48:56
  was like, mindset isn't enough, you know?
• 48:59
  And not that I believe in mindset work totally, but like meaning,
• 49:03
  this is real deal trauma these women are going through and their partners.
• 49:07
  It's so significant. And they need someone else to talk to who's not just their
• 49:10
  partner. That's right. Who gets it.
• 49:12
  Who gets it. And the girl on my team has gone through miscarriages. She had her own journey.
• 49:16
  It's, like, really helpful to be heard and seen by someone who's not just,
• 49:22
  you know, checking a box for you, you know.
• 49:24
  Yeah, and there are so many of those out there. It impacts relationships.
• 49:29
  So how is fertility impacting relationships? Some people will say it's made
• 49:34
  them the closest they've ever been because they went through this hard thing together.
• 49:37
  But sex becomes a chore.
• 49:40
  It's not fun anymore. feels forced or just like, what's the point?
• 49:45
  It's not working anyway.
• 49:46
  You know, so it becomes about making a baby versus connecting with your partner.
• 49:51
  Finances are usually tight. So that's another stress. Yeah, you feel like you're failing each other.
• 49:56
  That makes me want to cry saying it, you know? Yeah. It's hard. It's hard to watch.
• 50:00
  But I also will say like on the other side, it's making me so emotional,
• 50:03
  but it's like when I get to see them together as a couple like on our
• 50:06
  Zoom or something like that like they are so
• 50:09
  unified in this desire too which is absolutely beautiful
• 50:12
  like i think these children are so lucky i can't wait for them to come through
• 50:15
  do you know what i mean that's how i think about it like they're so wanted and
• 50:18
  they're so desired but it's hard it's hard and like once the girls get pregnant
• 50:22
  it's kind of like we have a joke about it it's not really a funny joke but it's
• 50:25
  like you spend the first 20 weeks worried about losing the baby and then the
• 50:28
  second 20 weeks like holy shit i'm having a child what the fuck i've been in
• 50:32
  the other group for so long. Like, I don't know what to, I don't belong in this group.
• 50:35
  It's a very, and I always say to my girls, I'm like, you're going to have to
• 50:39
  unpack that when you get to the other side because it's serious PTSD. Yeah.
• 50:42
  I'll never forget when I had Easton. I had Easton at Lenox because we lived in New York and.
• 50:48
  I was reading about being pregnant and what I'm supposed to do while I'm pregnant
• 50:51
  and how to stay healthy while I was pregnant.
• 50:53
  And then he arrives. I had no idea how to change a diaper. I had no idea how to put him on my boob.
• 51:01
  He was tongue-tied. He wasn't latching. Like, there are all these things that
• 51:04
  no one freaking tells you about.
• 51:06
  They gave me a book on, like, the standardized book that they hand everyone, and I didn't say read it.
• 51:12
  It was like, what do I do now? I have a baby. Yeah.
• 51:16
  You don't have a free hand to read it. I have nothing.
• 51:19
  Is it on audio? Can we talk about the clock, this theoretical clock, right?
• 51:24
  What's real and what's fear-based messaging about this, the clock that we behold?
• 51:30
  Biological clock is ticking.
• 51:32
  The truth is, yes, fertility declines with age, right? And obviously,
• 51:36
  as we hit perimenopause and we're ovulating less, you have less opportunities to try.
• 51:40
  The pool does diminish over time, so meaning the pool of eggs that we are born with.
• 51:46
  You could also say quality can decline over time, too, if you're kind of doing
• 51:50
  the same old, same old, and you're not, you know, there's a lot we can do now
• 51:53
  to maximize egg and sperm quality even as we age.
• 51:56
  But so there are truths there.
• 51:58
  There's this whole notion that like over the age of 35, all your eggs go bad.
• 52:03
  That's like kind of what they say to everybody, the fertile cliff, they call it.
• 52:06
  It's so not a cliff. It is a downward slope. I think the most realistic statistics
• 52:12
  that we have at this point was a large study on 20,000 eggs.
• 52:16
  So these are just eggs, not embryos, women going through IVF.
• 52:19
  Even women in like their mid-30s, about 60% of their eggs are still chromosomally
• 52:23
  normal. Women in their early 30s and 20s, about 80 percent of their eggs are
• 52:27
  chromosomally normal. So to like give you reference.
• 52:29
  So like, sure, 80 percent until our mid 30s, then maybe 60 percent up from mid 30s to 40.
• 52:34
  Then it goes to like 50 to 40 percent into our mid 40s.
• 52:41
  And I like to break that down with my girls. I'm like, okay,
• 52:43
  so you're 44. 50% of your eggs are still chromosomally normal.
• 52:48
  What they don't talk about is like, what are the other things that impact getting pregnant?
• 52:51
  The sperm, the uterus, your environment, and the level of inflammation in the body.
• 52:56
  So those are like the main factors. Those are the truths.
• 52:58
  Then there's also research that's been around for like 20 years questioning
• 53:02
  this whole thing of like, are we really running out of eggs?
• 53:05
  It's like solid research questioning it. It's a huge piece of,
• 53:10
  it creates a lot of drama when you bring this up in the medical field because
• 53:13
  it questions longstanding dogma. Nobody wants to question that.
• 53:16
  But like the original models about women running out of eggs were literally
• 53:19
  done on rhesus monkeys and rats in the 1940s.
• 53:23
  And then they were never questioned for like 40 years.
• 53:27
  So what this one researcher, his name is Jonathan Tilly of Northwestern,
• 53:31
  and other people have reproduced his work.
• 53:33
  And there's human trials, not just animal trials, which these are all the things
• 53:36
  that I get backlash for. so this is why I know what to say, that there's these
• 53:40
  ovarian stem cells that can be like triggered, like turned on or turned off.
• 53:43
  And there's the argument that we actually are creating more follicles even as we age.
• 53:47
  And there's newer technologies too. Like in my latest book, I have this whole
• 53:50
  chapter on fertility innovations, ovarian PRP, their stem cells that they're
• 53:55
  doing that can really activate the pool of eggs that are left.
• 53:59
  So it's changing. Technology is changing and things are changing fast.
• 54:03
  But even women in menopause, so like you're dormant, you've stopped ovulating,
• 54:07
  you haven't ovulated or menstruated in a year, you still have like a thousand
• 54:10
  eggs left in their ovaries.
• 54:12
  Wow. So we don't really run out, which I think is...
• 54:16
  That should be argued. Yeah. It's not the whole story. It's true that things decline.
• 54:22
  But now I say to my girls all the time, I'm like, I know your doctor is questioning
• 54:25
  what I've told you that you can improve your egg quality or sperm quality,
• 54:30
  even as you get chronologically older.
• 54:31
  But research regenerative medicine. Look into all the biohacking that's going on.
• 54:35
  Like, it's mitochondria. The ovaries next to the brain and the heart,
• 54:39
  the ovaries have the most mitochondria in a female body. And so it's mitochondrial
• 54:43
  function is the key to maintaining ovarian health.
• 54:47
  And whether you want a baby in your 40s or not, but that's the key.
• 54:50
  Because the ovaries are our lifeline.
• 54:52
  Like we stop ovulating, we just start to decline.
• 54:55
  It's so much of our, all of our health parameters decline when we stop ovulating.
• 55:00
  So what can we do to maximize that ovarian health?
• 55:03
  And then also that's where I think the HRT can come.
• 55:05
  I also, I'll use HRT with women that are still trying for kids in their mid
• 55:09
  40s, but need more support. It's a brilliant option.
• 55:13
  Can we talk about ovary health? What is that and what can we do?
• 55:17
  Yeah. I mean, so it's hundreds of thousands of mitochondria in the ovary and
• 55:23
  they age just like everything else.
• 55:25
  And so it's about maximizing mitochondrial function, which basically is still the same stuff.
• 55:30
  Yeah. You know, limiting your toxic exposure, getting the right rest,
• 55:34
  moving your body, eating the right diet, supplements, lifestyle, mental health.
• 55:39
  And then now, yeah, I mean, in the world we're in now, it's like we could do
• 55:43
  things like ovarian PRP. We could do stem cells.
• 55:46
  They're doing it outside the country, outside the U.S. And now it's like the
• 55:49
  world is small in that sense.
• 55:51
  Like, I just have girls just flying to Spain or the Bahamas and they're doing
• 55:54
  these stem cell treatments.
• 55:55
  A couple grand, you know, but peptides, I think they're huge,
• 55:58
  big fans. We were just talking about peptides over the weekend.
• 56:01
  There was a big chain of discussion about it. And is a peptide just GLP-1? Is a peptide different?
• 56:07
  Are they different types of peptides? It's just a strand of proteins.
• 56:09
  That's all it really means. And different types of strands of proteins,
• 56:12
  right? That affect different things.
• 56:13
  Everyone's talking about peptides. I don't know enough about them.
• 56:17
  GLP-1, MOTC, those are some big ones that are out right now, which is rapamycin.
• 56:23
  But peptides are, you know, in your food, like collagen's peptide.
• 56:26
  So, like, you want to think about it. But these, yeah, these are quality,
• 56:32
  hopefully, derived peptides that, you know, we're injecting or taking orally to maximize function.
• 56:38
  But I just started my own substack, and the first two pieces I wrote were on
• 56:42
  GLP-1s and fertility and the impact.
• 56:44
  And, like, microdosing. You might not even, but to follow the thread we were
• 56:48
  talking about before, the insulin resistance piece, that's huge.
• 56:51
  And it's huge for us in our age group.
• 56:54
  This is what's happening. So that's why it gets so much harder for us.
• 56:58
  But insulin resistance impacts mitochondrial function.
• 57:00
  These GLP-1s are maximizing mitochondrial function.
• 57:04
  And then there's the MOTC is doing that too. Some of them are more studied than others.
• 57:09
  I think we'll learn more. There's still technically not all of the other ones
• 57:14
  besides the GLP ones aren't legal.
• 57:16
  The semerellin is, rapamycin is used in the U.S. though at this point.
• 57:20
  But a lot of, they're just all away from the U.S. at this point. Okay.
• 57:24
  What makes your approach different when it comes to fertility and helping your.
• 57:30
  We call them your clients or your patients?
• 57:32
  Either. Your clients from what women might be experiencing in a traditional
• 57:36
  setting. Like they go to their regular doctor and they're like,
• 57:38
  we're having problems having children. How do you differ in that?
• 57:43
  I'm using this term, regenerative fertility approach.
• 57:46
  Like it's, that's it. You know, and I'm looking at every angle.
• 57:49
  I mean, I look at, you know, when girls come to me, it's like,
• 57:53
  well, I need to see every IVF cycle you went through.
• 57:55
  I need to see the meds you used. I want to see the eggs you retrieved.
• 57:57
  I want to see, like, I look at every detail possible and put the pieces together with them.
• 58:02
  So I've been coined the fertility detective and that's kind of what I do.
• 58:06
  So that's what makes it different. But I'm not, I'm also different,
• 58:09
  though, from a lot of the alternative practitioners out there that I'm not anti-Western medicine.
• 58:14
  I'm totally, if you want to go the donor egg route or you want to go donor sperm
• 58:17
  route, you want to do surrogate, I don't give a shit.
• 58:19
  Like, I just, I'm going to help you get to baby. But also remember,
• 58:23
  donor eggs isn't always the solution for a lot of people.
• 58:25
  Like, you're not getting pregnant for other reasons. We have to look at that.
• 58:28
  You could go spend all that money on a donor egg and still not get pregnant
• 58:31
  because we never looked at the why.
• 58:33
  If not just your egg quality. And so, yeah, that's what makes me different.
• 58:36
  And I think I'm hopeful. I also had pregnancies in my 40s. I'm relatable.
• 58:40
  Can we please talk about your Amy Roth beauty? Sure.
• 58:43
  So wait, I'm going to show this little box because I'm going to put this in
• 58:47
  the Instagram. Look how pretty this is.
• 58:50
  This is going to go up. I'm going to open it. And I want to hear all about this.
• 58:54
  Why did you start this? I always had really sensitive skin.
• 58:58
  Okay. Rosacea or just sensitive skin? Eczema. Okay, eczema.
• 59:03
  I can't wait to slather this. It's organic body butter.
• 59:09
  Glow balm? I put more balm on my lips. That's my tallow balm.
• 59:12
  It's a brand new product. It's a brand new product.
• 59:14
  Our Weston girls are. Oh, lip and. I'm not letting my. Grayson can't steal this.
• 59:18
  Grayson, you can't have this. He steals my chapstick.
• 59:21
  Sometimes he'll use my Chanel lip gloss because it needs chapstick and there's
• 59:24
  nothing else. And I'm like, it's not going to color your lips.
• 59:27
  Don't worry. Just put it on.
• 59:28
  This is beautiful. So tell me about this. What brought you to this?
• 59:31
  You have sensitive skin.
• 59:33
  When I wrote my first book, Chill and Get Healthy, that was 2009.
• 59:36
  I wrote that book. 2010 it came out.
• 59:39
  I had a chapter in there called Beauty You Can't Buy at Sephora.
• 59:42
  And it was a lot about internal beauty, like ego, that kind of stuff.
• 59:46
  But then also I started touching upon the endocrine disrupting chemicals.
• 59:49
  Not many people were talking about it. There was literally like one Huffington
• 59:52
  Post article on like the whole topic.
• 59:54
  Anyway, when I wrote that book, I said to myself, when it comes out,
• 59:57
  you know, I'm adopting, I'm going to do everything I say.
• 1:00:00
  Anyway, I started playing around with my own skincare line just because I was
• 1:00:05
  a chronic eczema sufferer.
• 1:00:07
  And most things on the market were like just my skin didn't agree with.
• 1:00:11
  A lot of chemicals, too, and those creams that are supposed to be helpful, right?
• 1:00:15
  And I went to Greece one summer with one of my good friends from college and her grandmother.
• 1:00:21
  I mean, she was in like her 80s and her skin was plump, wrinkles plump,
• 1:00:25
  but gorgeous. And I was like...
• 1:00:28
  What do you put on your skin? She was like, olive oil every day.
• 1:00:32
  And I was like, olive oil? That's interesting. And like one of my other friends,
• 1:00:35
  her Italian grandmother, olive oil.
• 1:00:37
  My other good friend, they're Hindu.
• 1:00:41
  Her grandmother, ghee, on her face. And I'm like, this is fascinating.
• 1:00:45
  So I started researching it. And I started creating my own stuff.
• 1:00:48
  I played around with ghee and coconut oil and olive oil.
• 1:00:50
  I started putting it on my skin. People started complimenting me on my skin all the time.
• 1:00:53
  And I had a very entrepreneurial boyfriend at the time. And he was like,
• 1:00:58
  when are you got to start bottling this stuff like this? This is crazy.
• 1:01:01
  You know, you just sell it to your patients. Just sell it in the clinic, whatever.
• 1:01:05
  So, yeah, Amy Rapewdy was born in like 2012 or something like that, 2013.
• 1:01:10
  And then over the years, it's grown and it's fun to give it as a gift.
• 1:01:13
  And it's a good little side hustle, too. But my rule of thumb is if you can't
• 1:01:17
  eat it, it shouldn't go on your skin.
• 1:01:18
  And of course, like, yeah, I basically wear all non-toxic makeup.
• 1:01:22
  I mean, if I have a photo shoot or something like that or whatever,
• 1:01:25
  you know, I'll deviate from the plan. But the skincare routine stays the same.
• 1:01:29
  It's like super clean, non-toxic.
• 1:01:31
  And now it's trending, too. And this is small batch made.
• 1:01:35
  It's handmade by me. I have someone that comes in in bottles and packages,
• 1:01:38
  but everything's here in Weston. Wow.
• 1:01:41
  Yeah. God, we're such a cool town. I know we are. I mean, I started.
• 1:01:44
  These were born in New York City in my Soho apartment, but they now live in
• 1:01:48
  Weston. Now we're just going to take them as ours now.
• 1:01:51
  Okay, a couple quick questions. One thing women are overcomplicating. Wow.
• 1:01:56
  Maybe how to manage their stress. You know, I think it could be simpler than
• 1:02:00
  that. You don't need a bunch of tools. Sometimes you just have to be outside
• 1:02:03
  and put your feet in dirt.
• 1:02:04
  And like really like one quality friend. Like, you know what I mean?
• 1:02:08
  Like don't even think about or just like some kind of community something,
• 1:02:12
  you know, or time in nature, gardening, dancing.
• 1:02:15
  Like it doesn't have to be that complicated. Yeah, I agree with you on that. One habit you swear by.
• 1:02:22
  One habit I swear by. I think it would be protein before coffee.
• 1:02:26
  Protein before coffee one thing you've changed your mind about
• 1:02:29
  over the years maybe the amount of supplements that people need
• 1:02:31
  to take yeah if you get the good
• 1:02:34
  quality ones the right ones yeah it's just like it goes back
• 1:02:37
  to like the what are we over complicating you know it's like i think simple
• 1:02:40
  wins the game yeah yeah i like simple what are you personally working on right
• 1:02:44
  now in your own health or life so literally before i got here i've decided i'm
• 1:02:50
  gonna put this rinse and repeat that i've been in with the business mode of
• 1:02:53
  taking a little bit of a sabbatical like June, July, and August.
• 1:02:56
  I mean, I'll still continue to work, but I just launched that book and it's
• 1:02:59
  just like all the things. And I'm like, I need, I think I need a,
• 1:03:02
  like a social media detox.
• 1:03:04
  And, and just for me of like, I want to slow down to then really see like what's
• 1:03:13
  working, what's not, and what's next. Yeah.
• 1:03:17
  It's fun. It's also terrifying. It is. I mean, I just had to send like two emails to my team that I love.
• 1:03:22
  And I'm like, so for June, July, and August, Guess what? You're not working.
• 1:03:25
  We're taking a time out. I call those times out for myself. Yeah.
• 1:03:29
  I'm just real excited. One of my other clients planted the seed about like a
• 1:03:32
  sabbatical and I was like.
• 1:03:34
  You know, I've been the breadwinner for the last few years, and there's a lot of pressure on that.
• 1:03:39
  And I love it because I was never in the position to be able to do that.
• 1:03:42
  So, like, it's a fun thing, but it's also like I'm starting to feel like so
• 1:03:46
  many people rely on me that I was like, that's what I need. I need a little break.
• 1:03:51
  And my husband, you know, he can step back up a little. That's right.
• 1:03:54
  That's right. Yes, they can.
• 1:03:56
  All right. What's giving you hope right now when it comes to women's health?
• 1:04:01
  Yeah, the conversations, they're shifting. The research is shifting.
• 1:04:04
  There's so much more focus on actual women in research, which also wasn't a
• 1:04:08
  thing until the 80s. So just FYI, we're really behind.
• 1:04:11
  And it takes 10 to 15 years for research to actually hit the clinics.
• 1:04:16
  So it's crazy. That's always so fascinating to me how long it takes.
• 1:04:20
  So I'm really excited about that. I'm excited about the innovations in fertility
• 1:04:25
  because it's like I'm excited about the peptides.
• 1:04:27
  Like to me, it's like, oh, yeah, I might be out of a job in a decade.
• 1:04:30
  But like, I don't know. It's really exciting because it can really change the game for so many people.
• 1:04:34
  And I just hope people can get access to the things that they use. Yeah.
• 1:04:37
  All right. So last question. If every woman listening could walk away with just
• 1:04:41
  one message from you, what would it be?
• 1:04:43
  I think from a health perspective that you're a lot more resilient than you
• 1:04:46
  believe and that you have a lot more power in how you age and in your overall
• 1:04:51
  health and what your life looks like then, I think you've been led to believe.
• 1:04:55
  I got chills just now. That's a good one. Amy, thank you for joining me.
• 1:05:00
  Thank you. This has been a blast and a half. Let's do this over a margarita. Yeah, please.
• 1:05:04
  Yeah. One margarita. One vessel. One vessel. And then we're done.
• 1:05:07
  Organic wine. Has to be organic. Or the organic wine.
• 1:05:10
  Thank you so much for joining me today on She's Smart. New episodes drop on Thursdays.
• 1:05:15
  Don't forget to subscribe, like, and share. Stay cozy.