What’s Really Driving Infertility—and What You Can Do About It

Mark Hyman, MD

Dr. Mark Hyman is leading a health revolution—one focused on using food as medicine to support longevity, energy, mental clarity, happiness, and so much more. Mark Hyman, MD is a practicing family physician and an internationally recognized leader, speaker, educator, and advocate in the field of Functional Medicine. He is the founder and director of The UltraWellness Center, Founder and Senior Advisor for the Cleveland Clinic Center for Functional Medicine, a fifteen-time New York Times best-selling author, and Board President for Clinical Affairs for The Institute for Functional Medicine. He is the founder and chairman of the Food Fix Campaign, dedicated to transforming our food and agriculture system through policy.

He is a co-founder and the Chief Medical Officer of Function Health. He is the host of one of the leading health podcasts, The Dr. Hyman Show with 150+ million downloads. Dr. Hyman is a regular medical contributor to several television shows and networks, including CBS This Morning, Today, Good Morning America, The View, Fox, and CNN.

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Full Transcript

Automatically generated. Please forgive any typos or errors in the following transcript. It was generated by a third party and has not been subsequently reviewed by our team.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Welcome to Office Hours. This is our dedicated one on one space to go deeper, get clear, and explore what truly moves the needle for your health. I'm Doctor Mark Hyman, and each week, we're gonna pull back the curtain and share the insights, the research, the lessons that don't always make it into our conversations with guests. Because at the end of the day, you are the CEO of your own health. And for many of you, your family's health too.

And you might not feel it all the time, but you have far more power and agency than you realize. I'm glad you're here. Today, we're diving into one of the most personal and the most emotionally charged topics I get asked about, fertility. Now so many of you have written in with questions about unexplained infertility, irregular or missing menstrual cycles, hormone imbalances, PCOS, endometriosis, miscarriages, and what you can actually do to prepare your body for conception. Now these questions are deeply real, and they often come with frustration, confusion, and heartbreak.

Especially when the answers feel limited or incomplete. And yet, what I want you to know is this. You have far more influence over your fertility than you've likely been led to believe. So today, we're walking through your listener submitted questions and breaking down what's really driving infertility and what the challenges are today. From metabolic health issues to inflammation to nutrient status to stress to environmental toxins.

My hope is that this conversation is gonna give you clarity, and hope, and also practical steps you can start using right now. Whether you're actively trying to conceive, or whether you're simply planning to have a baby in the future. Let's start at the beginning here. Having babies. Really important.

This is where I see the most confusion, the most fear, and sadly, the most misinformation. The question is, what's actually driving infertility? Why is infertility on the rise? Is it age? Is it the environment?

Is it our diet? Is it something deeper? Infertility rates are rising due to a lot of things. The primary reason, and there was a book written about this by a Harvard researcher named Walter Willett called The Fertility Diet, about metabolic dysfunction. And I know you think, Doctor.

Hyman, you must be obsessed with this metabolic nonsense I hear about all the time from you. I'm sorry. It's just the thing that causes everything. It causes heart disease, causes cancer, causes diabetes, causes dementia, causes infertility, even causes acne, causes depression, causes mental health issues. I mean, it is a massive problem.

So I'm sorry if I keep hammering on this, but this is the thing you need to understand. This is what's driving primarily so much of our chronic disease, including infertility. Now there's other things besides metabolic dysfunction, and that means metabolic dysfunction, I mean sugar, blood sugar, insulin issues, which we've talked about a lot. Infertility rates are going up because of that. But also environmental toxins are on the rise.

Plastics and pesticides and metals and so many toxins we're exposed to. And I test these things in people, and I can tell you folks, they're rampant. Even myself, I try to eat a low toxin diet. I try to only have healthy cleaning products in my house, use healthy skin care products, I try to do everything right. And it's just impossible.

It's just impossible to avoid this. We live in a toxic stew. Now the other thing about toxins you should know is that they're highly hormonally active. Pesticides, petrochemical toxins. I read a book about this when I was starting to learn about functional medicine thirty years ago called Our Stolen Future by Theo Colmer.

And in this book, she talks about basically our stolen future, how our offspring are being affected by these environmental toxins. And you just talked about in animal models, all these hermaphrodites that were being born, now alligators and frogs, and you know, problems with fertility across the whole animal population. It's a real issue. And they are highly effective in binding to hormonal receptors, particularly estrogens. They call them xenoestrogens or foreign estrogens, they're endocrine disruptors.

They disrupt your hormonal system. Also microbiome plays a big role in hormone function, and we've taken so many antibiotics. Had such a crappy diet. Our microbiome is actually a piece of shit, if you excuse my French. It's bad.

It just needs we need to really get our microbiomes healthy, because that can play a big role in our health. And of course, stress. And there's actually another book I read many years ago about stress and infertility. There was a whole program at Harvard where they taught people to meditate who were having infertility, and they were getting pregnant at as high or higher rates than IVF treatment. So stress plays a big role.

Now age is another thing. For some reason, you know, we used to have babies as teenagers in our twenties throughout human history. Now our women are pushing it off to their thirties, late thirties, often forties, and they're wondering why there's so much infertility. Well, in medical school, I learned if you're 35 and over, we call it a geriatric pregnancy. It's a terrible term, I know, but it actually speaks to the idea that if you're 35, it's kind of late.

So you got to be gotta be careful. That doesn't mean you can't have babies after that. My sister had a baby at 42. Another good friend of mine had another baby at 42. Naturally, it's possible to do.

So I think if you keep yourself healthy and and young, you can do it. All right. So one of the real drivers of infertility. It's it's a lot of things that we we've talked about. It's metabolic health.

It's inflammation. It's environmental toxins. These are the massive drivers. Now what if you have normal labs? What if you have, quote, unexplained infertility?

You've done proper imaging. You've done all the labs. You can't conceive. Like, what do you do? This is where functional medicine really helps.

Because you can dig into this real findings of what's going on. I've had women who have subtle thyroid dysfunction. And we just had a story on our function health email where a woman had been struggling for thirteen years with all these health issues. And her doctor never checked her thyroid. They didn't even check the right thyroid numbers.

They checked maybe TSH, but they didn't check t three, t four, thyroid antibodies. So you have subtle thyroid changes. You can have inflammation that's causing infertility. You can have insulin resistance, which we talked about. You can be nutrient deficient.

You know, folate. I I had a I had a movie that I was in called Fed Up, and it wasn't exactly infertility, but this woman had recurrent miscarriages. And she was just having miscarriage after miscarriage, and one baby, got almost a term, and was born without a brain. It's called anencephaly. Terrible.

She was just struggling. And we she was the director of this movie, Fed Up, that I was in like ten years ago. And in the in the kind of tour of the movie, we were going on tour, going on TV and radio, whatever. We were riding in a cab in New York City, and she has her baby there and breastfeeding this baby in the back of the cab. And she's telling me that story where she read this article I wrote, I don't know, twenty years ago or something, on methylation, which has to do with b vitamins and folate b six.

And we know that if you're deficient in folate, it's one of the things you get in prenatal vitamin, that actually you will have trouble potentially with birth defects or miscarriages. And she read this article, she went to her doctor, she had her doctor check homocysteine, which again, most doctors don't check, they'll check folate, which usually may not be a problem on the lab test, but the homocysteine is a better test. And we do that at Function Health, and that's part of the the panel that we create as a baseline. And that was elevated, and the doctor said, okay, I'll just give you folate. And she said, no.

No. Doctor. Hyman says to check this gene to see if I need a different kind of folate. And he checked the gene. She had the gene.

And we also checked that at Functional Health called MTHFR. And then she took folate in the right form called methylfolate. And guess what? She was able to have a normal, healthy baby. So nutrients can play a big role.

Toxins. So I've had in other women who struggled, and we've found lots of heavy metals. We've detoxified them. They've gotten babies after that. Gut health, again, another important thing.

A lot of women and people in general have gut health issues. Number one reason people go to the doctor. So there's a lot of things you can identify and treat that you can really focus on. Subclinical thyroid issues, autoimmune issues, chronic stress, mitochondrial issues, gut issues, toxin load, all these things we can measure in functional medicine. And when you look at some of those things that can actually help besides doing all this, there's some lifestyle things that make your eggs better.

Getting quality sleep, balancing your blood sugar, optimizing your nutrient status, lowering your toxin exposure, all these really help to improve the quality of eggs. And by the way folks, sperm too, because it's not just women here that are the problem. It's guys too. Guys' sperm is a problem. Men's quality of sperm is going down and down and down.

And stay tuned, I'm doing a podcast with Stanford urologist Michael Eisenberg coming up soon that's going to go deep into the problems with sperm and sperm quality in society today, and how that's contributing to infertility. And we're going get into that. But right now, we're going talk about how to help improve your metabolic health, because that's really an important factor. The fertility diet is an example, but I I would go even further. People could go on the blood sugar solution, ten day detox diet.

You go to 10daydetox.com. It's the best way to reset your metabolic health. And of course, I created it, but it's it's out of my own practice and experience. And you know, what I learned with patients, I simply write about, I talk about, and I teach about, because I want not just my patients to have the benefit, I want everybody to have the So balancing your blood sugar is key. Getting rid of the starch and sugar, having more protein, having more good fats, having more fiber, less of phytochemicals, getting your insulin stable, exercising, building muscle, all those things make a profound difference.

And even small changes can make great improvement in ovulation hormone balance. And, you know, PCOS is the most important example of this where women have a lot of infertility when they have polycystic ovarian syndrome. But it's not an ovarian problem. It's it's a nutritional problem. They call it ovarian syndrome, but it's actually nutritional syndrome because it's related to the starch and sugar in our diet.

Okay. So okay. Not everybody. Some some small subset of people with PCOS are thin and healthy, but still have this problem. But for the majority, it's because of our starch and sugar diet.

So what else can you do to improve your quality of eggs, to improve your likelihood of having pregnancy that comes to term? It's eating real food. It's getting rid of ultra processed food. It's having enough omega three fats. It's getting rid of inflammation triggers like gluten and dairy.

Dairy is a big problem for a lot of people, by the way, and can cause a lot of inflammation in the body, a lot of gut issues, a lot of autoimmune dysregulation. I like goat and sheep better, but you know, you just want to be careful. Next, you want to do the best you can. Now not make yourself crazy, but the best you can to avoid environmental toxins. So there's a great website, ewg.org.

I'm on the board of the this group, it's the Environmental Working Group. And they've done incredibly deep research on how to source all the things that have low toxin levels. What foods to eat, what fruits and vegetables have the lowest pesticides, what have the most to avoid, what animal products you can eat that are safe, and how do you choose animal products? What about fish? What have to lease mercury and toxins?

What household cleaning products you should have? What facial and skin care products you should have? You go to Skin Deep, it's really a great app. It's part of their work. I filter my water at home.

I have a reverse osmosis filter. I have air filters in the house. And actually, I think I need more because I I just did my indoor air quality, and I had a device that I used to measure it. And I actually have a fair bit of indoor air pollution. And it's actually often a very toxic environment for people.

And then just be smart. Like, you know, there's there's a lot of plastics. So plastic bottles and plastic cookware. And I mean, people microwave in plastic. Still be stupid.

The other thing people don't know is BPA is a huge endocrine disruptor. BPA also causes insulin resistance. Or bisphenol A. Used to line cans, bottles, they've taken some of that out, but they replace it with something just as bad till they, you know, ban that again. But BPA is also on credit card receipts.

It's on the gas station receipts. It's on all that stuff. So you don't wanna touch that stuff. People say, you wanna receive them like, no You know? So be careful, those.

Those trap your hormones. Next thing you can do to improve fertility is help your gut. So lots more foods that support your gut microbiome. Lots of fiber. Nuts and seeds, fruits and vegetables, some whole grains, some beans can be very helpful.

Fermented foods, sauerkraut, miso, kimchi, natto, tempeh. All these fermented foods can be very, very helpful. Prebiotic foods can be helpful. Asparagus, and there's some artichokes, and onions, and you can just kind of go and chat GBT and look up what are prebiotic foods, and you'll you'll see what they are. And then you can also use probiotics as a way to support your gut health.

And I think most people in society today should be on a basic probiotic. It's almost like a foundational supplement. Multi fish oil, vitamin D, and a probiotic. And I probably add magnesium to there. It's a basic foundation for everybody, given the massive nutritional deficiencies we have.

And those can help estrogen metabolism, they can help your immune system, reduce inflammation, they can improve your ability to absorb nutrients. So they're all very helpful. Okay. What else can you do? Well, you can learn how to regulate stress in your nervous system.

And when you're chronically stressed, it disrupts ovulation, lowers sperm count. I mean, if you take a bunch of soldiers who are healthy 20 year old guys, and you march them overnight, their sperm count drops dramatically. Their testosterone drops dramatically. Your thyroid drops dramatically. So stress affects every system in your body, including fertility, ovulation, sperm production.

So learn some simple practices, because, you know, stress happens to you automatically, but learning how to activate your relaxation system is an active process. So meditation, breath work. Andy Huberman calls it non sleep deep rest, which otherwise is known as yoga nidra. It's been around for thousands of years. You can go to Spotify and just do yoga nidra, or go on YouTube, and and do a ten minute or twenty minute or thirty minute one.

Very important. Getting your sleep optimized also critical. Because if you don't sleep, your stress response is much higher. Exercise also really helps. It helps reduce the stress, but also improves your reproductive hormones.

These aren't really small tweaks. These are foundational things. These are root cause interventions that can really shift fertility outcomes even when your regular traditional workup looks normal. Now I mentioned PCOS earlier, polycystic ovarian syndrome. This is a common problem.

It causes a lot of issues, causes irregular menstrual cycles, heavy bleeding, can link to obesity, facial hair, loss of scalp hair, acne. It can be kind of bad. And it's fundamentally a metabolic problem, an issue of insulin resistance, inflammation, and all these things will affect your hormones. So the key is basically following what I just said, which is get your blood sugar balanced, get rid of starchy sugar, exercise, strength train, vitamin D, omega three. And there's a particular compound called inositol, particularly d chironostol or myoinositol also can be very helpful in improving.

This is published I read this thirty years ago in the New England Journal of Medicine. So well validated natural compound, you can get online, and it's really important. And I think, you know, getting your blood sugar balanced is such a key thing, and and I think we've talked about that a lot already, so I won't go over it. But that's really the fundamental issue here. Now when you start getting metabolic health, then guess what happens?

You start ovulating normally. You start having more regular cycles. You can do well. So I don't have to be cursed with this problem. It's forever with PCOS.

You can manage it. And I actually had just a good friend who had PCOS, and she got really healthy. And she's, you know, 38, and she just had a beautiful baby naturally. So the body can do that if you do the right things. All right.

What about coming off birth control and getting your body ready to have a baby? Someone asked, I've been on birth control for years. How do I transition safely off that? Well, I want to make sure, you know, people don't realize this, but the birth control pill actually depletes a lot of vitamins like b six, folate, magnesium, b twelve, zinc. So you got to get your nutrient levels up.

And I'm talking about just a good multivitamin. It's not going to be a big deal. It might take your hormones about three to six months to reset after stopping the pill. And you want to just track your cycle, say how you're doing, get your nutrition levels up, support your liver detoxification, and and help your body get back its natural rhythm. Birth control doesn't cause infertility, but can actually mask on your lung issues.

So you want to make sure you check all that. Next thing we want to look at is something called AMH. Now this is a basic test we do for women as part of the function health panel, the company I co founded. You can get a whole comprehensive view of your body for a dollar a day, $3.65 a year, and really look at everything that's going on, including all your hormones, all your metabolic health, all your nutrients, toxin levels, lots more. And there's a test we do called AMH.

That means anti mullerian hormone. And that's a test that measures your ovarian reserve. Now if it's low, does that mean you're infertile? And how do I kind of check about the fertile years, right, that I have left? So AMH is about the quantity of your eggs, not necessarily the quality.

Now quality is influenced more by things you have control over, like inflammation, your mitochondrial lifestyle. Your egg reserve is what you get. You're you're when you're born, you have millions. It dwindles to maybe a 100,000 when you're in your puberty, and then it dwindles even further. And by the time you're in your thirties, forties, it's it's much lower.

But the quality can be influenced by things that you have control over that manage inflammation, your mitochondrial health, lifestyle. If you have low MH, it doesn't mean you're hopeless. You can still conceive with low numbers. And it's possible to improve the quality of your eggs and actually have conception. So don't don't lose hope.

Men also, as I mentioned, sperm is a big factor here in having a baby, and that affects the quality of the embryo, the epigenetics, the way in which the sperm is developed is actually controlled by diet, lifestyle, toxins, all these things we're gonna talk about with Doctor. Michael Eisenberg from Stanford in the coming podcast. So speaking of sperm and male fertility, male fertility matters more than people think. People always think about the woman, and doctors focus on the women, but you gotta focus on the guys too. And and diet plays a big role in sperm quality, and sperm health is affected by a lot of things.

Sugar, of course. Alcohol, really bad. Plastics and chemicals, toxins are causing low sperm count. They're endocrine disruptors. Heat, so like saunas.

There's ice packs that guys use on their private parts for saunas, so you can do that if you want. Nutrient deficiencies also play a role. So you've got to get the nutrient levels up in men too. And and men's health has a lot of impact on many things that relate to pregnancy, like placental formation, your risk of having a miscarriage. Maybe your long term child's health is determined a lot by the health of the men.

So what do men need? They need antioxidants. They need zinc. They need omega threes. They need good quality multivitamin.

All that's really important. And of course, exercise also helps. So as I mentioned, we're gonna have a deep dive on male fertility. Don't miss my upcoming episode with Doctor. Michael Eisenberg.

He's one of the leading experts in the field, and we're going go deep into that. All right. So the next question is about in vitro fertilization, or IVF, and how to deal with the risks of the meds, and how do they detox after. A lot of people are asking about this. So let's sort of get into what they do.

What do IVF meds do? They stimulate your ovaries to make eggs, and then to help you stabilize the pregnancy in the early parts of the pregnancy. So a lot of hormones involved, A lot of short term side effects, but there are long term side effects. The risk is generally low, but they're still being studied. Now after you've kind of done this IVF treatment, how do you actually recover?

How do you how do you help? Because the amount of energy required to stimulate ovaries to make eggs is a lot. And what drives the energy production? Your mitochondria. So the mitochondria are the energy factors in your cell.

They help power hormone production, egg development, detoxification. They help your overall recovery. And there's lots of ways to support mitochondrial health. So you can eat rich foods and antioxidants, in lots of berries, leafy greens, colorful fruits and veggies, lots of omega threes, salmon, sardines, walnuts, chia seeds, all great. CoQ10, also very important.

Really important. Organ meats. Okay? People don't like them, but I love liver. They really help.

They're the most nutrient dense food in the planet. If you don't believe me, just go to Google and ask for a chart comparing the most nutrient dense vegetable on the planet with liver, and you will see it's not even a contest. It's like like this on the graph. Can't see my hands, but if you're listening, but it's it's a big delta. Oily fish really help.

Broccoli helps. All that's great. Also, string training, exercise, walking, cardio, all improve mitochondrial function. Deep restorative sleep also critical for healthy mitochondria. If you're working with a doctor or you want to try stuff on your own, you can try things like coenzyme q ten, N acetylcysteine or NAC, alkalipolic acid.

These are generally safe, but you want to choose the right products and and really work with someone who helps you understand what they are because they're kinda not your general multivitamins. And they also help liver detox, actually, by the way. These these can be very helpful. So your liver helps also clear hormones. They clear the medications used in IVF.

You don't wanna go cleanse, but you want it just in general support of your detox pathway. So So how do you do that? You eat foods that help detoxification. All the broccoli family, broccoli, collards, cabbage, brussels sprouts, onions, garlic, these all have sulfur in them that increases glutathione that is the main detoxifier in your body. Lots of water.

Herbal teas can be helpful. Dandelion is a great detoxifier. Ginger, peppermint, many other things can be helpful too. Lots of fiber that helps get rid of the excess hormones from your gut that get excreted from your liver, and you need to have them recirculate them, get them out of your body. Black seeds are amazing for this.

Beans, veggies, also great. Alcohol, definitely bad for you. I'm sorry guys, I love a good drink now and then, but there's no world in which alcohol is good, and the dose makes the poison so higher amounts, more frequent amounts are dangerous. It really raises estrogen levels, it really screws up hormones, it really affects sperm. So if you're trying to have babies, don't drink.

Also, sweating is really helpful. So detoxification through saunas, exercise, cycling, all great. Also, you want to reduce inflammation. So when you have hormonal stimulation, it can make your inflammation levels go up. That can show up as lots of symptoms like fatigue or mood changes, bloating, skin flares.

The key is to lower inflammation by eating whole food, unprocessed foods, lots of omega three fats. Same diet for everything pretty much. Right? Real food, low in sugar and starch, lots of omega threes, lots of fiber, lots of caliper fruits and vegetables, lots of anti inflammatory foods like, you know, that you can eat. Lots of turmeric, ginger, rosemary, all helpful.

All get rid of all the starch and sugar that really helps to reduce the inflammation in your body. Stress reduction, also stress makes you inflamed. So breath work, meditation, yoga, gentle movement all help. Get your nutrient levels up. That really helps lots of demand on reproductive health when you're doing IVF.

So you need lots of nutrients. Get B vitamins, folate, b twelve especially, zinc, magnesium, vitamin d, omega threes, iron, all really important. So you can get them through food, right? Eggs, greens, beans, nut seeds, wild salmon. Lots of good quality nutrients also available in a high quality prenatal or multivitamin.

You want to get your labs drawn to make sure you're knowing what you're doing. And that's really why I co founded Function Health. So just go to functionhealth.com. It's $365 a year for membership, twice your blood draws, dollar a day. It's your health, folks.

Prioritize protein. As your body goes through a lot, you need more protein. It helps you repair tissues and things. So make sure you get about a gram per pound of ideal body weight. 80 to a 100 grams usually is pretty good, depending on your body size.

Helps your hormones recovery from anything. Also, you know, your nervous system is taking a big toll when you're going through IVF. You know, a lot of people it's it's a hard thing emotionally. Know, infertility is hard, it's psychologically exhausting, it's stressful, You know? And this all affects your biology.

All affects hormones, thyroids, gut health, fertility, all this stuff. So simple practices, meditation, journaling, breath work. I do every morning breath work in bed for ten minutes. I do meditation in bed just before I get out of bed for the morning. I often have journaling practice in the morning if I can do that.

Just simple things can help, and it doesn't have to be a lot. Moving also helps. Getting all the energy out of your body. When you think about when you're chased by a tiger, there's a book called Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers, is they're chased by a lion, and then they run like crazy, they're freaking out, they're stressed, they're gonna get eaten. The lion catches one of them, and they all go back to eating, and the lion's eating the other zebra, you know, in the midst of this big herd, and they don't care because they know it's the lion's there eating this other guy.

So they basically discharge the stress through running as fast as they can. So exercise really helps. Also, social connection's really important. Meaningful connections are really good for your health. So you can just get support through other people who've been through IVF or just friends in general.

Make sure sleep is good, also really important. Good hygiene, like dark room, no screens before bed, you know, just wind down time, hot bath, earplugs, eye shades, whatever it takes. Also, you want to heal your gut because the gut plays a huge role in hormones. Gut health and hormones are super connected. IVF drugs can actually alter your gut motility, they can change your microbiome, they can affect your nutrients.

So make sure you eat a lot of the good stuff, like probiotic rich foods, yogurt if tolerated, kefir, sauerkraut, kimchi, all that's great. Prebiotic fibers, as I mentioned, garlic, onions, asparagus, flaxseeds, chia seeds, plantains, also good. Don't eat ultra processed foods. Never should eat those, they're not food. They cause lots of inflammation.

And then think about doing a gut reboot. Warm meals, soups, stews, cooked veggies, all that helps. And give yourself time. Like, it just takes time. You need usually a couple months, two, three months.

Recalibrate yourself after having IVF. The hormones, they need time to normalize. Your nervous system needs time to decompress. Your nutrient stores need time to rebuild. It's expected, so don't be too hard on yourself.

So next question is really about something that I like to talk about a lot, which is epigenetics. Now what are epigenetics? A lot to talk about, but I'm gonna help you understand it. The question really is, how do you influence your genes, and how long does it take to influence your genes through lifestyle changes that will improve your baby's health in the long term? How do you set yourself up with the right gene expression?

In other words, to conceive and have a healthy baby. So what are epigenetics? Well, you know what genetics are. You've got 20,000 genes, you've got 23 pairs of chromosomes, which all have all these genes on them. Those are fixed.

They're not changing. They're like keys on a piano. Right? You got 88 keys on a piano, but your epigenome means above your genes. Now think of the epigenome like the piano player.

It can play anything. Jazz, ragtime, rock, classical, you name it. You can play whatever you want on that thing, because it's the control of those keys that determines the songs that get played, the song of life that gets played for you. And so everything you do modifies your epigenetics, and in turn, will get passed on to your baby. And the good news is that you can change your epigenetics quickly.

It can happen within weeks. We do this with now epigenetic testing for biological age. How we measure age, because we can see where things are not going well, and we can actually test those, and they correlate with a different biological age that's different than your chronological age. So for example, I did when I was 62, I did my biological age, and I was 43. And then I did a whole bunch of stuff over the next two years to improve and fix my epigenome to be even healthier.

And when I was 64, I did my epigenetic age, and I was 39. So even though I got two years older, chronologically, I got four years younger biologically. So that's the power that we have of lifestyle and doing things that can change our epigenome. Now what affects it? Our diet is probably the biggest factor.

Again, the amount of sugar and starch we eat is just the problem. And the lack of good quality whole foods, the lack of fiber, the lack of adequate fats, good fats, protein, all are very important. So when you want to improve when you want to improve your you have to eat in a way that doesn't cause too much insulin production, which means low starch and sugar diets, higher fat, higher fiber, good quality protein, and so forth. Also, nutrients play a big role in this in regulating your epigenome. So vitamins, minerals, you want to have optimal levels.

And again, at Functional Health, the company I co founded, we allow you to test all your nutrient levels. Because your doctor usually isn't checking them. Checking homocysteine, methylmalonic acid, vitamin D, zinc, omega three fats. These are the things you should be checking to see where you're at. And I can tell you in our population, seventy percent and this is mind you, the level that the government RDA says you need to not get a deficiency disease.

So how much vitamin d you need to not get rickets? Or how much vitamin c do you need to not get scurvy? Not very much. It's a very different number than you need for optimal health. So at the level that is the minimum to prevent a deficiency disease, we see seventy percent of members of function.

We have over 300,000 members. Now seventy percent have a deficiency in one or more levels of their nutrients at the lab reference range, which is bare minimum, not optimal. So think about that. That's a big deal. So you wanna know your numbers.

Managing your sleep, managing your stress, all that leads to better egg and sperm quality, really improves your epigenetic quality. Fertility, pregnancy, and postpartum aren't separate chapters. They're part of one continuous story of hormonal shifts, metabolic changes, and deep transformation. And no matter where you are in that journey, I want you to know this. You're not broken and you're not powerless.

So much of what affects fertility is influenced by the foundations, nutrition, blood sugar balance, stress, sleep, nutrient status, and environmental exposures. Small consistent changes in these areas can have a profound impact over time not just on your ability to conceive but on your long term health and the health of future generations. Remember, you are the CEO of your own health and the choices you make today can shape your future. If you or someone you love is thinking about fertility, whether you're just starting to ask questions, navigating challenges, or preparing your body for pregnancy, I want you to know you're not alone. And this year, we're launching something new for our community called the Ultra Learning Series where you can connect directly with my team at the Ultra Wellness Center for deep practical conversations that make functional medicine simple and actionable.

Now our first workshop is functional fertility is happening Thursday, February 12 at 12PM Eastern Time. Doctor Cindy Geiger, who I work with for, I don't know, thirty years now, a long time, and Lisa Draymond, my nutritionist, will walk you through what really influences fertility from hormones and inflammation, to nutrition, environmental exposures, and whole body health for both partners because yes it takes two. This is a compassionate and it's evidence based conversation designed to give you clarity, confidence, and real tools, no matter where you are in your fertility journey. You're gonna find the link in the show notes, or just head over to Ultra Wellness Center on Instagram at Ultra Wellness Center, and you'll find out everything you need to know, and I really hope you'll join us. Thanks for joining me for Office Hours.

I love diving into these topics with you. Remember, you are the CEO of your own health, and every choice you make can move you closer to healing and vitality. I wanna keep these episodes as relevant and useful as possible. So tell me, what do you wanna explore next? What questions are you wrestling with?

What breakthroughs are you chasing? Share your ideas in the comments on social media or through the link in the show notes. I'm listening. Until next time, keep taking charge, keep asking questions, and keep showing up for your health.

Dr. Mark Hyman
If you love this podcast, please share it with someone else you think would also enjoy it. You can find me on all social media channels at Doctor Mark Hyman. Please reach out. I'd love to hear your comments and questions. Don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe to the doctor Hyman show wherever you get your podcasts.

And don't forget to check out my YouTube channel at Doctor Mark Hyman for video versions of this podcast and more. Thank you so much again for tuning in. We'll see you next time on the doctor Hyman Show. This podcast is separate from my clinical practice at the Ultra Wellness Center, my work at Cleveland Clinic, and Function Health where I am chief medical officer. This podcast represents my opinions and my guests' opinions.

Neither myself nor the podcast endorses the views or statements of my guests. This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not substitute for professional care by a doctor or other qualified medical professional. This podcast is provided with the understanding that it does not constitute medical or other professional advice or services. If you're looking for help in your journey, please seek out a qualified medical practitioner. And if you're looking for a functional medicine practitioner, visit my clinic, the Ultra Wellness Center at ultrawellnesscenter.com, and request to become a patient.

It's important to have someone in your corner who is a trained, licensed health care practitioner and can help you make changes, especially when it comes to your health. This podcast is free as part of my mission to bring practical ways of improving health to the public. So I'd like to express gratitude to sponsors that made today's podcast possible. Thanks so much again for listening.