The Fertility Sisterhood_Episode 4: Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix

The Fertility Sisterhood_Episode 4: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

Lara Messerlian:
1 in 6 couples struggle with infertility, and we know that the environment plays a big role in how our bodies reproduce.

Carmen Messerlian:
In the Fertility Sisterhood, join me, Dr. Carmen Messerlian, Harvard epidemiologist and fertility expert, and my sister Lara, as we discuss what everyone needs to know about how the food we eat, the water we drink, the air we breathe, and our everyday environmental exposures impact our health and therefore our fertility.

Lara Messerlian:
Now let's dive in and learn how we can clean up our lifestyles not only for ourselves, but for our future generations.

Lara Messerlian:
Did you know that many over-the-counter and high-end products that many people use every day are actually really bad for your reproductive health and fertility? I didn't know this until my sister started telling me about all the chemicals hidden in the products I was using daily. I thought that purchasing expensive products or otherwise purchasing products advertised as containing high-quality ingredients meant that they were safe, but I was wrong. Your personal care products, including your shampoo, body lotion, face cream, makeup, and cosmetics, contain toxic chemicals otherwise known as endocrine-disrupting chemicals or EDCs. That impacts your normal hormonal activity in your body, changing the way your hormones function in your body and, in turn, your fertility and your partner's fertility. Beyond EDCs have also been associated with poor reproductive health outcomes such as low birth weight and pregnancy loss. I searched researched chemicals and their impact on fertility after my sister kept telling me repeatedly to stop using these products. There are some very good websites like EWG, short for Environmental Working Group, and Skin Deep Database that now help people compare products and make better decisions when purchasing personal care products. What do we mean by personal care products? Carmen, let us hear your thoughts.

Carmen Messerlian:
Okay, so, well, what we mean by personal care products, defined pretty broadly to be anything that you put on your body, really. So we're talking about makeup and cosmetics, lipsticks, lip balms, nail polish, cheek blush foundation, concealer, mascara, eyeshadow, eyeliner, any type of cosmetic you put on your face is considered a personal care product. But in addition to that, we're talking about things like moisturizers, sunscreens, body lotions, bath and body wash, deodorants, shampoos, conditioners, toothpaste, hair products, including dyes and relaxers, gotten a lot of attention lately, relaxers, hair relaxers or straighteners and other strong products like perms that you use in your hair. On top of that, perfumes and colognes are really also a personal care product, especially the brand name ones, they are known to contain toxic chemicals that harm our fertility. And this is the kind of things that I study in my lab at Harvard, and not only myself, but countless scientists across the globe have now identified personal care products as one of the number one sources of exposure to EDCs. And we know that many of the chemicals cause reproductive harm, not only to you as a female, but also when your male partner uses it to him as well. And the period of exposure that we're concerned about is not just during pregnancy, which seems to be a time where women change what they do and how they do things, the things that they put in their bodies, or the things they eat. But even more importantly is the period before you try to get pregnant is a time when you can try to detox yourself from all of these things, and this is what this episode is about.

Lara Messerlian:
So it was really overwhelming to learn about EDCs in my everyday products. It seemed like they were in everything. Although research and using EWG database really helped, it was still hard to understand what chemicals I was really trying to avoid, where to start, and what to focus on. I just wanted to say a little bit, it, even though you kept telling me over and over again not to use those products, it was really hard for me to really understand what you meant and understand how it actually really affected me. I really thought that some of the stuff I was buying was good quality products and had no idea that they had chemicals in them and that the chemicals were actually really harming me. So can you tell us a little bit more in-depth about the chemicals?

Carmen Messerlian:
Yeah, I remember those conversations with you when you were struggling to conceive and had so many challenging cycles. And my message was always the same, I was like, stop doing your nails, stop wearing perfume, stop putting lipstick on. And it felt like it was being a really critical sister and so mean and unempathetic, but at the same time, when you were living in New York and trying to get to work and look, play the part that you had to play at your office, the look was part of it, and it frustrated me that you didn't really take this kind of message seriously. And it's so important for people trying to get pregnant to really understand that these products are harmful, and we have ample tons of studies that show that they're a major source of exposure to things like phthalates. Phthalates are one of the big classes of chemicals that we study, and they're found in these personal care products in fairly large concentrations. Phthalates are normally considered plasticizers meaning, and we've talked about this in some of the other episodes, meaning that they're used to make plastic soft, and they're added to improve their durability to products. So we talked a lot about that in the household stuff like in your kitchen, you have a lot of phthalates in the packaging with your food and in the Tupperware and in the saran wrap and many different things in your kitchen. But really, there's another kind of phthalate too that aren't just used as plasticizers, they're used as what we call solvents, and they're put into these products to help sustain the product scent and color so it keeps that product colored and scented. And so that's why these companies make personal care products, they want them to smell nice and look nice, and so they add phthalates to help get the product to have those functions or those qualities.

Lara Messerlian:
So like eye shadows, and, so would they be like eyeshadow and cheek blush and.

Carmen Messerlian:
Yeah, because again, eyeshadow and cheek blush has coloring, and so for the coloring to adhere to the other parts of the product that the powdery stuff to make the powder colored, they add phthalate to it, and then you put it on your skin. And we know that there's transdermal absorption, meaning that it goes through your skin, that product, the lipstick on your lips. Not only will you lick your lips and ingest it through your mouth, but it will actually transfer from your skin into your bloodstream directly so your body will absorb those chemicals, phthalates being one of them, into the skin through those products, through your lipstick, through your eyeshadow. Perfume is another obvious way that phthalates get into our bodies when you use perfumes they have sent to them, and for the scent to adhere to the liquid, they add phthalates to it, and so, fragrance has quite a large concentration of phthalates in it. And we need to cut these chemicals down so that these products down in our body so that we can absorb less into our bodies and have less exposure overall.

Lara Messerlian:
Just an aside, that also is we're talking about purchasing a house, and you mentioned carpets and furniture and medical devices and all kinds of, sorry, not medical devices, but outside of personal care, this week I was talking to you about my home environment and possibly purchasing a house, and we talked about carpets and furniture and other home accessories and cleaning products. What's in there that is harmful to reproductive health?

Carmen Messerlian:
So, like I mentioned, the phthalates are a big source of exposure. These products, these personal care products are a big source of exposure to phthalates, but these personal care products have more than just phthalates. They have other chemicals as well that we also know are reproductive toxicants. Parabens are another group of chemicals. You might have heard the word BPA. BPA has gotten a lot of attention in the last 10 or 15 years. They are also added to products to make them have these qualities, and so we find them in water bottles and children's toys and receipts. When you go to the grocery store, and you get a receipt, or anywhere where you get a receipt, I never touch receipts because they're a source, again, of exposure to BPA. We also find parabens and BPA in canned foods and are also a source of exposure to parabens and BPA. And they're used in products like personal care products to, again, make the product have its function, and parabens are added to moisturizers, very commonly, and to soaps, and especially liquid soaps and deodorants because they actually help the product maintain a shelf life. We end up being exposed to them because these chemical companies sell parabens to personal care product companies so that they can last longer so that they have a longer half-life on the shelf. So instead of it going bad in 2 or 3 months, it could last 6 or 9 months or 12 months before it expires, and so it's common to add parabens. They have an antimicrobial, and that helps make the product last longer. Similarly, triclosan is added to toothpaste, and hand sanitizers, and mouthwashes, and dental hygiene products. Again, because they have, triclosan has an antimicrobial property, and so it allows us to keep that product on our shelf longer, but as a result of adding these chemicals into these products that we put on our bodies, there's many studies showing, my studies and others showing that triclosan and parabens, and BPA, and phthalates are reproductive toxicants. They've been linked to miscarriage to a longer time trying to get pregnant, reduced male hormones like testosterone. These chemicals are antiangiogenic, meaning that they reduce male hormones, and they're also estrogenic, which means they disrupt estrogen pathways as well, so they hurt our hormonal health in males and females, and that can increase the time it takes you to get pregnant. If your endocrine system, which regulates your ovaries and your testes, it doesn't work well then or not optimally, then it can disrupt ovulation, it can disrupt spermatogenesis, which is how we make our sperm in men. And then it can also disrupt really early embryo programming, how your embryo gets formed, so you have a higher risk of things like pregnancy loss or miscarriage. Moreover, these studies show, including my own, that these chemicals reduce babies' weight, fetal growth is affected, gestational length, or the age at which your baby's born. How many weeks it stays in your tummy can be affected. So we see a higher risk of preterm birth in women who had higher levels of exposure during pregnancy and before pregnancy and the preconception period. So the goal is really to inform women that are trying to get pregnant and men trying to get pregnant on how to reduce their exposure, how to know the sources of exposure, how to know what to do, what to buy, and how to buy safer products.

Lara Messerlian:
So what about PFAS? It's another thing that we talked about just in our own personal lives this last week. Again, as I mentioned, I was looking at new housing situations with my husband, and we had a couple conversations about PFAS. It's just something that you are bringing to my attention again with all the other chemicals I'm supposed to be aware of. Tell me about that a little bit.

Carmen Messerlian:
So PFAS, they're called per and polyfluoroalkyl substances, so PFAS is the acronym. They're also known as Forever Chemicals. They are dangerous synthetic man-made chemicals that don't break down in our bodies. They stay in our bodies for a very long time, for three, four, five, six, up to ten years, in the decades, or in the decade. They can be found in everything, in your water, and in your food is the major source of exposure. But something that doesn't get enough attention is that they're also found in nail polish, in makeup, in our personal care products, that these companies that make these chemicals sell them to personal care product companies, again, because they have properties that help the product make it better. So it makes a certain product waterproof or lasts longer in nail polish. It makes the nice, beautiful coating. And it doesn't seem like much when you get your nails done. How can that end up in your body? But we do have studies that show that if you measure the concentration of these chemicals before and after getting your nails done and the concentration in your body goes up after getting your nails done. So there's, again, it goes through the nail bed into your bloodstream and gets absorbed. And these chemicals are known to cause cancer and liver disease, and poor development in children. They, a new study came out this past week showing it decreases your fertility and impacts your chances of getting pregnant. And so, really important that PFAS and phthalates and parabens and BPA and triclosan aren't found in personal care products, in your makeup, in your shampoo, in the hair straighteners and perms that, permanents that you use, and colorants that you use in your hair. And so the message that I use in my research and when I'm talking to doctors and people making policy, I've been working for the EPA for a while now advocating for changes in how we regulate these chemicals and products, but that takes a long time for those changes to happen, so my job is really to inform the public of knowing where you find these chemicals and how you can decrease your exposure to them. And we have messages around that on how to swap out products and how to decrease the products, and how to identify the products that have these chemicals in them.

Lara Messerlian:
So one trick you taught me, which I'm going to share with the audience because I found it really helpful, and along my journey, I've been telling people one on one and sharing information with colleagues and friends as I can. One trick that you taught me is, if it doesn't specifically say on the label, no parabens, no phthalates, no this, no that, you have to assume that it's in the product. So specifically needs to say it is not included. When I was buying stuff for personal care products or whatever, I would check, you know, one label versus another. And one may, sometimes it's tricky because they'll say, oh, no parabens, no BPA, but it doesn't say no phthalates, for example. So I'd have to find products that have all of them listed as not in the product, so then I would feel comfortable buying that specific body wash or shampoo or makeup or whatever it may be. So I think that's really one trick of when you're out there shopping, look at the labels, and it has to specifically say no paraben, no BPA, no phalates, no fragrance, and if it doesn't say that specifically, you have to assume it's in the product. Correct me a little bit about how we can avoid these toxins. And also tell me a little bit more about regulations. Shouldn't these products be regulated? Shouldn't they, shouldn't there be some kind of standard? I know I live in California, and we have something called Prop 65 where you have to inform the consumer products that expose you to chemicals that can cause cancer and cause, you know, other disruptors. So why, what is going on with regulation in the United States, and what is, what are your thoughts on that?

Carmen Messerlian:
Yeah, that's a big question I'm very passionate about. Unfortunately, here's the news. There's tens of thousands of chemicals in production in the United States, and many of the chemicals that I've mentioned, the classes of chemicals like phthalates and phenols or parabens and triclosan and PFAS are produced, they're called high production volume chemicals that are produced in the billions of tons per year across the globe in the United States. In 2018, for example, pesticides, which we didn't talk about today but is another group of chemicals and phthalates, are produced in the millions to billions of tons per year, so they are literally ubiquitous everywhere, it's so hard to avoid them. And the government in the United States, and I mentioned the EPA, which regulates how these chemicals, the safety on these chemicals, and the policies around the production, and where they're allowed to be found or not found or banned from, and some of these chemicals, like BPA, was banned from baby bottles, for example, in 2012, and in some children's care products, phthalates have been banned. The problem with the system in the United States is that a chemical company can make product, these chemicals can be manufactured, lab-made synthetic chemicals, the proof of principle is not put on the chemical company to show its safety. We, as scientists, myself at Harvard and others have, and the government, the Centers for Disease Control, others and the NIH, we have to study each and every one of these chemicals one by one to find out what is wrong with them, what is the harm, where is the study, where is the impact? What is the biological mechanism? What kind of effect does it have in the population? Who's at risk? What are the vulnerable groups? And we need to do that in real-time with scientific dollars that are given to us by the NIH to study these, so it takes us a long time. I've been at Harvard for ten years and a long time to get the data that we need to support then going to the EPA and saying DEHP, diethylhexyl phthalate, is bad, it causes miscarriage, it causes preterm birth. We see it associated with a whole bunch of adverse outcomes in men and women and in children, and it takes decades to get the EPA and the government to respond and say we're banning DEHP from being in products A, B, C, and D. They regulated them in children's products, that took ten years or more. Guess what happens? The chemical industry knows that we're trying to stop DEHP from being put in certain products, so they've already come up with ten, 20, 30 alternatives to DEHP. Dinch is one example of a replacement to DEHP. So while we're regulating DEHP, the chemical industry is now producing and circulating an alternative, and now we need to study the alternative. It's a never-ending goose chase of trying to catch up with the chemical industry. That's a billion to trillion-dollar industry with us scientists, with several million dollars trying to identify what harm is being caused by these chemicals to women and men, and children, and it's an impossible task and a very frustrating one, because there's other countries that actually, chemical industry has to prove safety before it puts a product, a chemical, out into circulation, into products. And in the US, because of laws that have existed for a very long time, we have not that type of protection, and it's really hard to get a product to not have a chemical in it. So it's on the onus of the individual company. There are brands out there, we won't name them, that have taken this very seriously and have chosen to market and produce products that have no phthalates, no parabens, no BPA, and they are intentionally trying to market to people to offer them a solution without having to wait for the government to tell companies to stop putting these things into our consumer products. And so it's very frustrating from a science point of view, as a scientist and epidemiologist, it's extremely frustrating as a mother to kids that are teenage kids, boys, and throughout the entire time of being a mom, trying to find products that are safe alternatives, it's so hard. And yet you go today opened up a package of ham, and it's put in plastic. And I know that the ham that I'm cooking for my kid is covered in phthalates and PFAS, and there's nothing I can do because I'm, unless I have a farm and cook my own ham from my own pig, you're going to buy any kind of food out in the grocery store, it's going to be highly contaminated, and there's nothing we can do about it. So that's a very frustrating, dire kind of sad perspective, but it's the truth. And we've been trying to catch up to the chemical industry as scientists for decades, we can't, we never will. They produce tens of thousands of chemicals in the United States, and we've only been able to study a fraction of them, the tip of the iceberg of them. We've been able to study only a couple hundred of them. And we know already that the ones that we've studied are very harmful to our reproductive health. We don't know about the tens of thousands of other ones that are circulating. We don't even have the way of measuring them in our bodies or even identifying them, and so we're really behind the game. So the job, part of the job of this podcast is to help people understand what is out there and how to make better choices. And we talked about the Environmental Working Group's website, Skin Deep, which is an excellent source of information for people. They can look up that product and search for ones that are safer. The Silent Spring has an app called Detox Me, I'm a big fan of. Also great resources on my Harvard website for people to get information, but these are some of the concerns we have. And today, I'm testifying at the State House against a pesticide, in favor of a pesticide bill to get rid of pesticides in our state of Massachusetts. There's a lot of grassroots groups that are trying to stop this, but we're always chasing behind a much bigger industry than we have in terms of resources.

Lara Messerlian:
So this is really, can be really overwhelming. And I know I've felt very overwhelmed by this because as you're saying, if there alternatives to these harmful chemicals are more harmful chemicals, how do you recommend avoiding them in, if they're in everything from our food to our furniture to our personal care products, they just pivot, the industry pivots. So if they're going to say no BPA, no phthalates, no parabens, they're going to put something else into the product that, as you said, hasn't been studied. So how is it that we can avoid these chemicals? How what steps can we take as consumers?

Carmen Messerlian:
Yeah, so this is what I do, and this is what I'm going to share with you, which is look, for, like you said, the labels. The labels say a lot. Phthalate free means phthalate free. It should say phthalate-free, paraben-free, phenol-free, BPA-free. Usually, that means that particular chemical is not in the product, But there are, as I said, BPA alternatives like BPF. And so when your can says BPA-free, you can be sure that there's BPF or BPs, and they don't label that, so it's tricky. What I suggest people do is a couple different things, which is really to A, reduce the number of products you use, personal care products that use every day. So if, for example, in my particular situation, if I'm just going to be on Zoom all day, I don't need to put on makeup, I won't wear makeup on those days to avoid my, to reduce my exposure, or maybe I'll just put on one product like a little lip gloss. I won't put all kinds of makeup on my skin. Makeup, reduce the amount you use and reduce the number of products you use and reduce the frequency in which you use those products. So three days a week is better than seven days a week. Two days a week is better than three days a week, going from ten products to five products a day, that's a win. Going from five products to two products a day, that's a win. These are the kinds of messages that I share, and reducing the amount that you use. So if you're going to put moisturizer on your face, use less. If you're going to put moisturizer on your body, use less. If you're going to use shampoo, use less. Decrease the number of products you use like mousse and hairspray and gels. These all contain really harmful chemicals, and the more products you use, the higher your body concentration is. We have studies that show this, the number of products determines how much of these chemicals wind up in your body, and so turn down the dial on everything. Swap out for fragrance-free everything, use nothing with fragrance. I tell my teenage sons this all the time because they like to put on cologne, and it's disturbing to me. I spent this past week working on the EPA, and we talked a lot about fragrances and colognes being a major source of exposure, and putting on cologne and perfumes is not healthy if you're trying to get pregnant or if you're infertile or struggling. These are really strong, big sources of exposure and really affect your ability to get pregnant and to maintain that pregnancy. So turn down the dial on all the products that you use on your body and stick to that while you're trying and planning for a baby.

Lara Messerlian:
So you mentioned your, my nephew is your teenage son. So is, I'm curious, is it something that could have like long-term damage, or is it something where, for example, in my case, I did like a major two-week detox and got, I wasn't eating out, I wasn't putting any moisturizers or any hair products or did a solid detox. And then, luckily, for in my case, I was able to conceive after a really huge detox. So is it something where there's going to be long-term effects of having this exposure for, let's say, teenagers and beyond? Or is it something where the more you detox yourself and the less exposure you have, your chances can increase again without those chemicals in your body?

Carmen Messerlian:
Yeah, that's such an important question. I love that question because two things we can explain is, first of all, your detox was like a month because we were camping, remember? And so there was no exposure for you during that time at all, there was almost zero. So your body went from really high levels to really low levels, and then you conceived in the next cycle, and that was incredible. So the thing with these chemicals, the ones that I talked about, like phthalates and phenols and triclosan, they are, and benzophenones, which are found in UV blockers, so sunscreens also a no, no. The chemical sunscreens, especially, they're short-lived chemicals. They don't stay in your body very long. Their half-lives are how we measure how long they last in your body is in the hours, like 3, 4, or 5 hours, 7 hours, 12 hours. The problem is that we're chronically exposed every day through so many different sources, so it's like we're always exposed, even though it doesn't stay in your body for that long, you drink another glass of something, or you put another round of lipstick on, or you go out at night, and you put on a whole bunch of perfume and put on more makeup and hairspray. You're routinely exposed, and it's chronic. And so if you detox, the good news is that if you go off everything for a month or a week, especially before you try to get pregnant in the weeks or months leading up to that, your body will decrease in its exposure and can adapt to that decrease. It can regulate itself better. It can start being healthier in terms of how it produces hormones and how it makes eggs and sperm. And those chemicals, those ones that I just mentioned, they're short-lived chemicals, if you remove them out of your body and out of your day-to-day experience, your body will have lower concentrations in it almost immediately. Within 2 to 3 days, you can really change the amount that's in your body, and then your body can adapt and start to form more healthier pathways around your reproductive health, so that's a win. And the window of exposure is the other thing. So the preconception window is so important. It's a period of really high vulnerability for the eggs and sperm that you're making, but it's also the greatest window of opportunity to change and detox your body because you have not made that baby yet. You're planning and trying to make that baby, and if you detox in that period, you have the highest chances of getting pregnant, helping your body get pregnant, helping it make good, healthy eggs, good, healthy sperm, healthy endometrium. And so it's really important to focus in the weeks and months before you get pregnant, because once you get pregnant, there's not much you can do. And when we're talking with the effects on children and fetuses and adolescents and teenagers, we know that, through studies that what a mother is exposed to during pregnancy and what a father and mother are exposed to before pregnancy can actually impact that fetus and that child and that teenage boy or girl and how that child grows, and that's what we're talking about, future generations, that's the name of this podcast, is how to clean up your lifestyle for future generations. It's because we have really deep science, deep research that shows that the window before pregnancy and pregnancy could impact how healthy your child is. It can impact its IQ, its neurodevelopment, its risk of allergies and asthma, its chances of getting pregnant when they are adults, and their reproductive health is impacted by what you are doing now before you get pregnant. There's solid studies on this. And so this is why I'm so passionate about future generations and future health. The way we're going to get to healthier children is by helping our bodies before we get pregnant, males and females both, eggs and sperm both, quality of the egg and sperm, and the information that's carried on that egg and sperm transmits across generations, this is called epigenetics and transgenerational, multigenerational epigenetics, and that's the mechanism by which these chemicals and these environmental exposures can impact your child and my child, my teenage sons. And there's compound effects of what I did when I was pregnant versus what they're doing now as teenage boys. And so, we don't have enough follow-up studies to look at the windows in preconception pregnancy and childhood and adolescent-hood, but this is something I'm really passionate about and something I'm working on in the company that I'm a founder of, V Science, and part of why I'm interested in this work and translating solutions for the public, for people that are trying to get pregnant across the globe.

Lara Messerlian:
Great, so there you have it. It's not just taking your prenatal vitamins and trying to get pregnant, and checking your cycle. It's making sure that you're detoxing, you're decreasing your exposure, you are as clean and fit and healthy as you possibly can, both you and your spouse or husband or partner, before conceiving pregnancy, before conceiving. And that will help you into your pregnancy and into the future generations as you move forward in your life course. So the four top key takeaways. Swap out your products for fragrance-free ones, swap out products for phthalate, paraben, triclosan-free. Put less products on, so instead of slathering three pumps of body lotion, try using one or try not even putting any lotion on, that's why I don't even bother with the lotion, forget it. Try using less, use products less frequency over the course of the week, so go from using something three times per week to two times to one time per week, and then decreasing the amount of products you use in general; so instead of putting instead of using moisturizer and eye creams and lip balms and all kinds of layering, just go for one product for your skin and one product for your hair, instead of putting three products in your hair, try using one product in your hair and decrease your exposure as best as you can, both in your personal products and in your food and in your lifestyle. And don't forget, you're not just doing this for you, but you're doing it for your future generations.

Carmen Messerlian:
That's really good takeaways. I love them, and I know that these are challenging for people, but they are so important, and they actually make a difference.

Lara Messerlian:
And they make a huge difference. Huge difference. In my case alone, I spent years trying to get pregnant, and I really thought I was completely infertile. I was having really terrible miscarriages and late, late miscarriages as well, in one case in my second trimester, which was horrifying. And to this day, my heart still aches because I missed that baby that I lost. But I detoxed so much for that month period before I conceived, and now I have a beautiful two-year-old little girl. And hopefully, that'll give, while we all have our, in my case, I still carry the weight and the sadness from the loss. Without taking these really active measures and steps to detox myself, I would not be in the position that I'm in, and I wouldn't be a mother today. And hopefully, that gives people a little bit of encouragement that if you're struggling with infertility like I did for a very long time, there is still hope, and things can change. And I was even someone who was late in the game. I was in my late 30s, early 40s, before I even had a baby, so if it can happen to someone like me, it can happen to you. You just try to detox and go see your doctor and do all the things that my very intelligent sister are telling you to do, like she told me. And I was one of the lucky ones.

Carmen Messerlian:
And you're in your 40s, it's true. And I lost hope for you too, and it was really sad, but game changer when you went from like max personal care product exposure in New York to zero when we were together in that tent with dad, dying, and having no choice but to camp outside in nature and not having access to anything except for a hose, water, and some basic food.

Lara Messerlian:
By the way, this was all during the COVID. And FYI to the listeners during this, the quarantining during COVID.

Carmen Messerlian:
Quarantining during COVID, So we could spend time with dad, and we had to quarantine for several weeks before we could see him. And we had no choice but to go and camp outdoors because there was nowhere to go, but that was a game changer for you. And the message here is that it's so overwhelming when you have a challenge with your fertility, and you get this diagnosis, and your partner gets this diagnosis, and you feel like hopeless, there's nothing you could do. There are things you can do. You can improve whatever measures you have in your day-to-day life to improve your health through your lifestyle, cleaning up your lifestyle with personal care products and household products and food and diet. Next week, we're going to talk about fitness and fertility. There are things you can do that can improve and optimize your chances. It may not guarantee that you'll get pregnant, but it can optimize and maximize your chances of getting pregnant and take the power where you have it. Take the power where you're, where you have choice. We don't have a lot of choices around diagnoses and our age, but we do have choice on what we put in our bodies, what we eat, what kind of exercise we do, how we take care of our mental health and physical health, and those are the things that this podcast is about. It's about focusing on the things you do have control over and helping to empower couples to make healthier choices where they can and hoping for the best outcome possible that people can get pregnant and carry a healthy baby and deliver that baby and that baby has its maximum healthy potential. So we're doing it not just for the chances of getting pregnant, but for the health of our offspring, the health of our children and how they age and how they grow and how they become adults. And that's what this is about, that's the key message in the overall podcast, it's about cleaning up your lifestyle for future generations. It's for your child's health and for your grandchild's health. And maybe in the next episode, we'll talk about my passion around the multigenerational effects and how your eggs and sperm that made your child or will make your child will also make your grandchild will be exposed to whatever you're doing today, your grandchild, through the eggs that are in the baby that you're making, and that's pretty powerful when you think about it. So the eggs that made you were in your grandma, and it's hard to grasp that, but they were. Whatever your grandpa was doing and whatever your grandma was doing before they got pregnant impacted you today and your health and well-being, and your chances of getting pregnant. So this is about really improving generational health, and making those changes can really support you in your future offspring.

Lara Messerlian:
Thank you for listening. We hope you enjoyed our little conversation here today, and I hope you found it informative and interesting, and we'll see you next time.

Carmen Messerlian:
Thank you for listening to the Fertility Sisterhood, brought to you by Rescripted. We hope it has left you feeling more educated and empowered about the role environmental factors play in our reproductive health.

Lara Messerlian:
If you've enjoyed this week's episode, be sure to visit SEED-Program.org to learn more about Dr. Messerlian's research. To stay up to date on the podcast, follow Rescripted on Instagram and TikTok at @Fertility.Rescripted or head to Rescripted.com.

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