How Much Can Everyday Chemical Exposures Affect Fertility?

Reproductive epidemiologist Dr. Carmen Messerlian and I talk about the months before conception: why she sees them as a window of both vulnerability and opportunity for both partners, how she thinks about body burden without chasing perfection, and why she believes our story begins in our grandmothers. Below is the full transcript of our conversation.

About Carmen: Carmen Messerlian, PhD, is a reproductive epidemiologist and the founder of Vie, a fertility platform for couples. As a professor at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, she studied how environmental exposures, including chemicals such as phthalates, phenols, and PFAS, relate to couples’ fertility and pregnancy outcomes. She was previously at McGill University.

 

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Transcript

Disclaimer: My guests speak for themselves. Where a guest states a conclusion more firmly than the published research does, that is their assessment, not mine and not Ruan Living’s. I bring people on because their thinking is worth hearing, including where I would phrase something differently. Nothing in this episode is medical advice. If you’re going through fertility treatment or have experienced a loss, please talk with your physician before changing your treatment or care based on this conversation.

Transcript lightly edited for clarity and readability. Timestamps correspond to the episode audio.

Introduction

[00:00.294] Sophia Ruan Gushée: I'm in menopause, postmenopause, technically, which I just learned about this year. I have three beautiful daughters. I'm not gonna have more children. So I asked my guest on this episode, a fertility specialist, a reproductive health scientist, does my reproductive health still matter? And what about for someone who is younger and never wanted children at all, doesn't plan on having children. Does her reproductive health matter? And what about for men? I kind of knew how she'd respond because years ago, when I interviewed Dr. Shanna Swan for the podcast, Dr.

Shanna Swan is a pioneering scientist on how endocrine disrupting chemicals influence reproductive health. She wrote an important book on it called Countdown. But Dr. Shanna Swan already talked to me about how reproductive health can be a signal of overall health. But our guest in this episode elaborated on this further and really changed how I think about my own body. And this conversation isn't just for women. This is a conversation I wish I had heard in my teens, 20s, and definitely when I got engaged to be married. Our guest is Carmen Messerlian.

Carmen Messerlian is a reproductive endocrinologist who has spent more than 20 years studying why conception comes easily for some people and not for others. She spent part of her career at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, researching how our natural, built, and social environments may influence fertility, pregnancy, and children's health. She now leads Vie Science, a company she founded to bring that research into practice. We recorded this conversation in June 2025 when Vie was still in development, but as of now, September 2026, it's launched. So check it out. It'll be linked in the podcast show notes.

Once you accept that reproductive health is worth paying attention to, whether or not you plan on having children in the future.

[02:25.848] Sophia Ruan Gushée: Some follow-up questions are what shapes our reproductive health? In this conversation, you'll hear about the non-genetic factors, the factors that are easy for you to control that can support or harm your reproductive health. It includes the food we eat, the water we drink, the air we breathe, the products we use every day. The part that Carmen has spent a lot of her career on is that more important than your exposures is when you are exposed. So let's dive right in and start exploring how everyday chemical exposures affect fertility or our reproductive health, and when does it matter most? Mm.

Why reproductive health matters beyond having children

[03:17.518] Sophia Ruan Gushée: Quick note before we begin. As always, my guests speak for themselves, including where they state conclusions more firmly than the published research does. Nothing here is medical advice. If you're going through fertility treatment, have experienced a loss, or are undergoing other healthcare challenges, please talk with your physician before changing your treatment or care based on this conversation. I think your work is so Profoundly important. I loved reading about you, listening to you on other podcasts and interviews, and learning more about what you're doing. For my audience, for our detox warriors, would you introduce yourself?

Because you do a variety of amazing things. Yeah, thank you so much for having me, Sophia. I'm really grateful to meet your audience and to meet you. And I love to tell you a little bit about myself. My name is Carmen Messerlian. I'm a scientist at my core. I research and understand how the environment impacts fertility, pregnancy, and child health and reproductive health across the life course. I look at the environment most importantly, the natural built and social environment and how those factors influence our health and well-being. From the time we're eggs and sperm to the time we die.

And I spent my career at Harvard as a scientist, as a professor, researching the causes of infertility and how the environment, like endocrine disrupting chemicals, impact fertility. Before that, I was at McGill University. I'm Canadian by birth at McGill University in Montreal, where I've also studied in fertility clinics how couples get pregnant and what the factors are that are related to the success of that pregnancy.

And apart from my scientific work, which has fueled my passion around helping couples get pregnant, helping women have health and well-being from the inside out, and how important our fertility health is to our overall health. And how I want every woman on this planet to have everything they've ever desired, to have have it all, because we all we deserve it. And I'm extremely passionate about women's health and I'm extremely passionate about couples' health.

[05:36.962] Dr. Carmen Messerlian: What I think is really important for many people is to be in a relationship, whether it's same-sex relationship or heterosexual relationship. How do we nourish and nurture healthy relationships? And how do we improve our environment so that we have what it takes to build lifelong meaningful relationships? And my company, my science, my my work in my own home, my advocacy is all geared towards improving generational health, improving child health, because for me, The first generation is the couple, the second generation is the child.

And if we want to improve children's health, we need to start with the couple, with the individual, and then the couple. And so that's what I'm very passionate about. There's so much to talk about, but this is who I am. I'm a I'm an advocate, I'm a crusader, I'm a champion for women's health. And my work and my science has allowed me to have the opportunity to create and build the foundations of. company that allows us to achieve enormous outcomes in women's health. There's so much to dive into with what you just shared so far.

But for those listening who maybe are not considering having a child in their future, would you talk about why reproductive health also is relevant to those who are not looking to have children in the future? How it can be an indicator of overall health and lifespan, health span. Thank you. That's a beautiful question and critical because when I talk about reproductive health and fertility health, it's not just to make babies. Our reproductive systems, both men and women, is your fuel for your future health. It's the engine that drives every other cellular process in your body. We are brought into this world for reproduction.

That is our primary core function. And every cell in our body is programmed for that to survive to the next.

[07:37.016] Dr. Carmen Messerlian: Generation, right? So even if you don't want to have children, your reproductive health is an essential marker of your longevity and your health span. So we want to invest in our fertility. We want to invest in our reproductive health because that's an investment for our brain health, for our bone health, for our heart health, for our mental health, for our vitality and energy and expression of who we are. And if we don't have reproductive health.

We have a hot, like if our reproductive health is in jeopardy or at risk, then we risk every other, every other part of our body, every other organ, every other system to not go in, to not be in balance, not be in homeostasis. And so when we just think about just taking our reproduction, just thinking of it as a fertility making or a baby making kind of engine, that kind of is the wrong message because it allows us to make an excuse for not protecting our most vital. Aspect of our bodies, right? And if we protect and invest in our fertility, we're protecting and investing in our lifespan, in our health span, in our aging.

So what we see is that when our reproductive age is in decline, when we have accelerated reproductive aging, we also accelerate aging on every other system. And usually what we see is reproductive aging is the first sign of overall aging because. The woman's in her 30s, you're not going to notice that she has heart disease or bone disease or metabolic disease. What you're going to see is her cycles are irregular. She's having, you know, you know, menstrual cycle irregular. She might have PCOS.

She might have a whole host of other types of underlying conditions that tells us that her reproductive system is in jeopardy, which is then a marker for stuff down the line. And so we don't want to ignore the PCOS. We don't want ignore the irregular cycles. We don't want to ignore the premature ovarian failure and say, well, I don't want babies anyway. So that's fine. We want to take care of that part of our bodies. We want to look after the systems that cause that to be in balance because that'll protect that woman or that person's health down the line. And so we don't want to see reproductive aging happening prematurely.

We want to extend the reproductive lifespan for every individual, whether you choose to have a baby or not. Extending that lifespan allows us to live longer and healthier lives.

[09:56.534] Sophia Ruan Gushée: I'm interpreting what you said as if something happens with your reproductive health early in your 20s or 30s, like PCOS. Silver lining in that is that it's an advanced look, inside peek into how your other organs or biological systems are doing. And so what's good for your reproductive health. It's also good for your brain and nervous system, immune system and everything else.

Dr. Carmen Messerlian: Beautifully said, extremely well said. And I love that because that's a reframing that I use also in my company and in the work that I do is that take that data point that you're getting.

That's the first sign that something's going off in your biology, in your aging process that might be the first sign that can prevent, you can identify that early, you can address it early because now you're at risk. I consider that an at risk for premature aging or premature metabolic disorders or Premature immune system disorders or cardiovascular disease disorder. So here we have a first sign, PCOS or irregular menstrual cycles or some other symptom. Let's get to the cause and the root of that so that we can prevent all the other things. Now it's a gift to us.

It's an opportunity to listen to our body, to tune into our body, to understand what are the factors that might be driving this and for us to address it. It's a high-risk opportunity to reduce and prevent future. Outcomes that we don't want. And so to me, it's a marker of fertility, but it's also kind of a window into other things that are happening. And because it's a window into other things that are happening, it's a great opportunity for us to like leverage that to address the root cause of what we don't want is women saying, like, put a band-aid over it.

Let's mask it with a whole bunch of medications and other stuff instead of really going to why is this happening to my body? What where's the root of this?

[11:51.288] Dr. Carmen Messerlian: Does it have roots from when my mother was pregnant? Does it have roots from when I was a little girl, a child? Does it have roots from when I was a teenager? Does it have roots from something I'm doing currently or in the last few years? Where are those pain points in your reproductive history that we can uncover and then address and then mitigate so we can continue being more fertile, being reproductively healthy and expanding your life, you know, your reproductive life cycle so that you don't reach menopause early. You don't have complications in perimenopause. You don't have transitional issues around hormonal decline.

That now we've kind of mitigated the prematurity of that. And we've allowed the natural lifespan and extend that natural lifespan. And now we put in healthy strategies in place that can protect your heart, your brain, your mental health, your neuro, you know, your neurochemistry, neurobiology, your immune system, and all those factors that we as women, as we're aging, and I'm I'm in that aging stage now where I'm still very vital because I look after my body and I still enjoy a lot of energy, my mental health state, whereas women can have a lot of challenges in this phase and they're not feeling their best, right?

They're not feeling their best in their late 40s. A lot of women struggle with imbalances in their hormones. So how do we understand what is causing the imbalance? And how do we harness what's good in us and then take away the bad stuff and keep putting good stuff in, right? But it's a process of learning about ourselves. And how can people explore the root causes of their infertility or other health issues? So there's a lot of factors that go into this, right? So first and foremost is your hormonal balance, right? A lot of us struggle with hormonal imbalance. Even young women in their 20s and 30s can struggle with hormonal balance.

My company V, we've done pilots now and we've I've met with dozens and dozens of women who in their late 20s and early 30s are having significant hormonal imbalances. And those hormonal imbalances, it's not that your hormones are out of balance or something that's causing your hormones to be out balance. And that's a marker telling your body like,

Hormonal health, root causes, and learning your body

[13:57.218] Dr. Carmen Messerlian: Things are out of sync. My cycles are out of sync. I'm not ovulating. I'm having long periods. I'm having excessive bleeding, or I'm not having periods at all. So here's a sign. Nature has created a sign for us, right? Your menstrual cycle is a great marker of your health. And if you look at it and try to understand it, it's a sign for us to pay attention to something else that's going wrong. Right. Cause in the in a healthy human and a healthy body, women in their 20s and 30s should be ovulating regularly and having healthy cycles. And there's know there's there's range and variability in that but there should be some balance there.

What a lot of women struggle with is complications around that. And so how do we address the root cause if we look at what are the what are the factors that might be driving this nutrition, sleep, exercise, diet, exposures to endocrine disrupting chemicals, the exposure to you know to UV light, to daylight and outdoor exposure and What is the, you know, what kind of water are you drinking? And how many chemicals are in that? What kind of mattress are you on? Is there thyroid disruptors in that? All kinds of factors that drive your hormonal, you know, your hormonal balance.

And so we start looking at these factors that are controllable, the factors that we have some opportunity to modify. We're not going to look at genetics because we can't do anything about whether or not you have a genetic predisposition. But for the most part, these conditions are environmental and Environment plays a huge role in our health and well-being, but we have choice in our environment. We have opportunities to expose ourselves to some things and not expose ourselves to other things. And what we try to do is guide women around what you should choose that's good, what you should avoid that's bad.

And how do you make those choices in a day? And how does that kind of create rebalancing of your hormones? The first thing you need is data and tracking, right? You need information to understand your body because a lot of women, from the ones that I've met, just don't know, you know, just even they're educated and intelligent. Have degrees and everything. They just, there's such a lack of knowledge of, is this normal? Right. I've, you know, been bleeding for 10 days straight. Is that okay? Or I haven't had my period in eight weeks. Is that okay?

And I don't know if I'm ovulating and I don't, you know, a whole bunch of questions around their metabolic health. And so we try to look at the root causes by addressing exposures, understanding the biology and getting information about what your hormone status is.

[16:11.468] Dr. Carmen Messerlian: And then looking at other markers because they're paired with stuff. So what about your mood and your energy and your sexual interest and all these other markers of your health and well-being, right? Those are indicators of what's going on inside. We could see your skin, your hair, right? Your appetite, your sexual interests. These are all markers of your well-being and health. And so you could collect data with wearables, you could collect data with blood tests, but you could just look at yourself and spend time taking note of your health and well-being by creating mindfulness around around your body and around your systems and noticing yourself, your sleep, your energy, your mood, your concentration. Like I take take notes of myself. I've been doing it for decades, but like I have a status of what's going on in me all the time, from the time I wake up to the time I go to bed, right? And you're trying to make correlations between Constantly, of course. And so this is one of the ways that I've been able to develop so many insights for my company is by my own process for 25 years now. I've been taking information about my own body and trying to understand.

For example, parts of my menstrual cycle, I'm hyper productive. My concentration is high. My output is high. My creativity is high. Other parts of my menstrual cycle, I have a lower mood. I'm more introspective. I'm more in touch with my feelings. I'm less outward, more inward. So how do I harness that so I could be productive? Because I know not to book certain things in certain parts of my menstrual cycle, not just when I'm on my period, but like my luteal phase, I'm extremely prolific and productive. And I can write a lot and think quickly and stay up.

I don't need as much sleep because you're pretty, you know, your body's in a different kind of metabolic and hormonal state. And so I use that to my advantage, right? In the first part of my cycle, when my body is trying to make eggs.

[18:00.908] Dr. Carmen Messerlian: Or release an egg, more tired, I'm more sluggish until I ovulate and then I'm fine again. Right. So the first part, especially in your late 40s, what I've noticed is your body is harder to ovulate. It takes more metabolic energy and it's kind of fighting and driving this process. And it's like, am I gonna make it? Right. So trying to get up a hill, but now you've got like the age on your back, right? It's like weight. And you're trying to climb the stairs and you're like needing to get to the tenth stair, and you're only on The seventh, and you're like, my God, am I gonna make it to the tenth step? Right. You got this big weight on your back.

So I feel that as a woman and I'm very in tune. So one of the important things about getting to the root causes is tuning into yourself. Tuning into yourself. Like forget, forget this. I don't wear, I don't have wearables. I don't personally like them because my wearable is me, right? I'm my own wearable. I integrate my own data points and I sit with myself. And I feel myself and I know myself and I I'm very in tune with my body. So I don't need a device to tell me that my stress is through the roof and I haven't slept and my heart rate variability is off. I know when my heart rate variability is off. I don't need a device to tell me.

So I'm a believer in wearables. I think they're important if you have no other means of understanding your body. But what I try to train and and do in in V is for women. To be their own barometer, to be their own measure, to be their own guide, because we have innate wisdom, innate signatures in our DNA that guide us. And how do we tune into that information that's in us that knows I'm ovulating, I'm fertile, this is the day that I should have sex with my partner. Because if you tune in, you're gonna know. You're gonna know so clearly that your body is sign, you know, signaling to you, I want. this for myself. I want to be with my partner.

And you have the ability to learn that about yourself. Everybody, we all have it. It's not a magic trick that I have that other women don't have. It's just that I've developed it like a muscle over over decades.

Physicians, personalized care, and lifestyle

[20:09.036] Sophia Ruan Gushée: You and I are very similar in our outlooks and values. Earlier you mentioned that very smart people don't realize how many environmental exposures or lifestyle choices influence their health outcomes. Would you talk about even physicians? Most people, and I did for a long time, assume that doctors know everything there is to know about health. And with life experience, I realized how specific their training is. Like Western trained doctors, it they're amazing and they're brilliant for their specialties, but it's like a lot of them aren't even trained on how nutrition influences health outcomes. Would you speak to that?

Dr. Carmen Messerlian: Yeah, it's a great question. I want I want women who are part of your audience to be their own advocate and not that I'm saying don't trust physicians, but I've had my physician tell me all kinds of stuff that wasn't good for me, right? They're like, you don't need this, you don't need that, you need this, you need that. And I'm like, no, trust yourself. Ask yourself, is this what I need right now? Like it's really important to really know yourself. And so I do agree, like, especially when it comes to hormone balancing and Doctor didn't even want to give me an AMH test. She's I don't know how to interpret that.

So I'm not sending you for that test. Right. And I'm like, this is years ago now, like past I'm past the stage where I won't where I would care about my AMH. But at the time it was valuable to me. And she's like, I don't know how to interpret that. So why would I send it to you? And anything related to hormones and perimenopause, I mean, all of my friends have been advocating for them. They're going through all kinds of transitional hormonal issues. And They go see their doctor, not putting them on HRT, not advising them to get on any type of hormone replacement therapy. They're in huge hot flashes and all kinds of symptoms.

And they're like, go take black cohosh, she'll be fine. Like that was, and I'm not against nutritional supplementation. I think there's huge value in it for hormonal balancing. And I I do it myself, and I'm very big proponent of it. But I do think that, like, first of all, there's judgment, clinical judgment involved. There's bias for medicine.

[22:21.144] Dr. Carmen Messerlian: Clinical judgments involved that it has to do with your training, your own personal biases come in there. What you're doing, what you feel is good for you impacts if you're a woman, what you're going to recommend another woman. It's just human nature. It's not that they're bad doctors. It's just that that's what you advise. And if the guidelines don't suggest it, they don't suggest it, right? They're like, well, there's no guideline on that. So I don't know what to do. So there's nothing for me to offer you. They just stick so regimentedly into their. rigidly into their guidelines and the insurance is the other part, right?

So it's like, the insurance doesn't, you know, I can't bill for that. So I'm not going to advise that or I can't offer that or I can't do that. So are we really practicing holistically? Are we actually medicine right now and like Western medicine, you know, if you got something serious, you need to go see a doctor. But really there's so many opportunities to get the kind of help like hormonal help. There's all kinds of online companies for women, perimenopausal companies and menopausal companies. They're way better than any physician that you go see in some big medical center, right?

They just give you the recipe that they give everybody else. It's like one size fits all. This is what we give you. Go home, right? But you need personalized, you need customized, you need to. I might be in my 40s and I might be biologically responding like I'm in my 50s, or I might be in my late 40s and biologically responding like someone who's in my early 40s, like much earlier. So you can't just look at my. Chronological age and say, this is what we do for you because that's what we do for everyone at 49, right? Personalized. What is your body saying right now?

And how can we offer a solution that's targeted to your needs, targeted to your biology, targeted to your exposures? And that's what my company's doing for the fertility space, but other companies are doing that for perimenopause space and male health space. And this is the wave of the future for healthcare. It's not going to be going to see the traditional MD who's like, I don't know. You know, go drink, you know, go go take some chicken noodle soup kind of thing when you have a cold, right? They gotta understand that, you know, and I I hope medical schools, you know, advance, but it's it's gonna be a long process. We can't wait.

And the people on, you know, the people on your audience can't wait until the medical training improves. That's gonna take decades to get doctors trained where they're advocates for nutrition and supplementation and sleep and all these things, exposure to till daylight.

Nature, grounding, and EMFs

[24:39.468] Dr. Carmen Messerlian: You know, UV and ultraviolet light is so important to how we regulate our circadian rhythm and our mood and our neuroendocrine system is guided by, you know, daylight and exposure to green space, exposure to blue light from the earth from the sea, not blue light from your screens. And so blue space, not blue light, nature, how important that is. Grounding, how important that is, right? Nobody prescribes you grounding, but I ground myself every day because that's how At least twenty, thirty minutes a day, minimum, every day. Every day, minimum. Do you just walk barefoot, or do you go to the beach? All of them.

Go outside barefoot, walk outside barefoot, lie on the ground outside on the dirt, no matter where I am, lie in the sand. I never I never use a beach chair ever. I think those are terrible. Like not terrible, but I like don't even use a blanket. I just lie on the sand, you know, and lie there. Imagine how for me therapeutic it is to sit just in the dirt on the ground in the sand. I come out, I feel like I I don't know how people feel when they're on like a high or something, like if they're on drugs, I don't know what that feels like, but you feel so elevated. I feel so in touch.

And the default mode network, the part of your brain that overactivates and you know, is the mind that's sort of preoccupied, kind of just melts away and you become so attuned. It's a very meditative process. And I get endorphins out of it, I get dopamine out of it, right? I get all these things that are beneficial for me. So, and I tell people on my program.

[26:11.896] Dr. Carmen Messerlian: Go and spend time outdoors barefoot. That's all I want you to do this week. Like nothing else. Like if you do anything, that's the one recommendation. Balance and harmonize yourself because your cells, they're energy, right? They're matter, but they're light and they're energy. And so aligning the energy in your cells is really important to your body's harmony and how it balances itself. So the charge in those cells. actually is relevant to your health. And like to for us to ignore physics and ignore science is kind of surprising, but it doesn't sell and doesn't make anybody money. So, you know, it's free to go outdoors.

Sophia Ruan Gushée: Since you brought up energy and harmonizing with nature's energy, would you share your thoughts on how the electromagnetic fields from our technologies influences our biology?

Dr. Carmen Messerlian: Sure. So I'm not the best person for this because I'm not, I'm not a good practicer of what I preach. You know, not my phones, I'm not good at this. So I work a lot because I have a lot of jobs and I love what I do and it energizes me and I feel great. But I usually like last night I worked till 1 a.m. and I was up at 6 30. Not good for my sleep. And I meant to sleep longer, but I forgot to turn off my alarm. So, you know, I mean, there's not a lot of data. Right.

We just we just don't have a lot of evidence. Not enough, at least, has been published to show what the impacts are of like electromagnetic fields from your phone, from your computer, from your devices, from your, you know, your Wi-Fi systems in your home. But like just scientifically, we know that there's fields of energy that are integrating into your home and those come into your body. I mean, that's just physics, right? So we can't deny the physical reality.

[28:06.914] Dr. Carmen Messerlian: What we don't know is like what level, what frequency, how much, the level of exposure, the you know, the timing of exposure, you know, the vulnerabilities that you might have genetically and otherwise. So for me, maybe it doesn't have an effect. Maybe it does, I don't know. But for someone else, that level exposure at that period of time could be a signal that causes a trigger into some cellular process that's not good for them, right? That could cascade into inflammation or into cancer, into metabolic. disruption or other things. So there is a scientific rationale and modality involved. So there is a potential pathway.

We're not denying that. What we don't know is the strength of the association, the level of magnitude that that might have and the impact on the individual versus the collective, right? The aggregate, we don't know if in a group of people if you expose them and not expose them, are there differences in the outcomes? But we know for some people, They might be more at risk. Like, is it me? I don't know. We have no idea who that rat at risk person is until they show up with something. And maybe it's the 5G, or maybe it's all the other stuff they're doing, right?

Their bad diet, their lack of exercise, their stress life, you know, their stress levels and cortisol levels. So it's hard to take away the effects of everything else. Like for me, I sleep with my phone next to my bed. It's not in my pillow, but it's on my bedside. I've heard of Doctor Deborah Davis and Dr. David Carpenter. The name sounds familiar, but I don't know their work.

Genetics, epigenetics, and fertility

[29:39.736] Sophia Ruan Gushée: Their work would be really interesting and relevant to what you're doing because they are accomplished scientists who have been pioneers in studying and vetting peer-reviewed studies on how the EMFs influence human health and development. And so it's a similar idea as the toxic chemicals and heavy metals. Early life exposures have meaningful effects and Blah, blah, blah. But they I'll I'll email you their websites because there is a lot of science on it. How much influence does someone have if they are genetically predisposed to something?

Dr. Carmen Messerlian: A lot. Tremendous. So just because you have a gene doesn't mean it's going to get expressed.

So we are born with forty six genes, twenty-three from our mother, twenty-three from our father. The zygote fuses and creates forty-six, you know, a human being with forty-six genes if you're, you know, chronolog chromosomably normal. And those are inherited genes. But and this is the big but, is that the expression of those genes is through what we call epigenetic measures or epigenetic Processes, those epigenetic processes, if you will, it's like think of it like a recipe, right? You have a chocolate chip cookie recipe, and you're a chocolate chip cookie, I'm a chocolate chip cookie, right? We have the same ingredients, right?

But my cookie might taste very different from your cookie. What are those things that cause the cookie to be different? We're based on the same, same recipe, right? So there's expression on each of each and every one of our genes has a little mark, have marks, right? They These marks can turn that gene on, or turn that gene off, or make it express a lot, or make it express a little. So that's what we call like hyper and hypomethylation of a gene. That process tells that gene to go forward and express the protein or pull back and hold off expression. That is modifiable by the environment, by everything that you're in contact with.

And the interesting part about our epigenome that gets

[31:51.054] Dr. Carmen Messerlian: program when we're a little baby, a little embryo in our mummy's tummy. So the eggs and the sperm, they have a methylation signature on their DNA, right? Then just before fertilization, they both erase their epigenetic signatures. They fuse and they bond and now they have 46 chromosomes. And then there's a second level of erasure as the 46 creates and then a remethylation In a very gender, in a very biologically sex-specific way, that re-methylation process programs the embryo to develop a certain way.

So that period of time in the very early stages of pregnancy is when our initial epigenetic signatures get programmed, which tells the embryo how to grow and develop, right? Which tells the embryo how I and you are going to form based on the genetics we have. Now, that epigenetic signature on Our DNA is lifelong. Okay. Just think of it like a sheet of music and you could play the music over and over again, but you could play it differently every time. The think of the notes as the DNA, the genetics, and how you play the music and how you express the song is your epigenetics. So you could play the song over and over again, right?

And every time it's going to be a little different. So what changes that? The pressure that you put on the pedal when you're playing the music. The sound, the tone, how you press the butt, you know, how you press the key. Those things are all modifiable. So in the human body, the environment is like putting pressure on that gene to express a certain way. And that's the environment will register information. It says, press that button right now. It needs to be pressed. And that comes from the outside. So you could have genes, but it doesn't mean it's going to get pressed, right? It's like pressing a key.

Some keys will get pressed and some keys won't get pressed. And so how do we choose what keys to get pressed and what keys don't get pressed? It's what we do. What our environment is, positive and negative environments. Some positive environments create positive expression, negative environments can create negative expression, but it's all about adaptation balance. And so some things might be out of sync, but then something else might kick in to try to rebalance it. And so that's what creates health and well-being.

It's not just the genetics, it's really this massive impact from everything else that goes on outside of genetics that impresses on those keys. And so

[34:13.121] Dr. Carmen Messerlian: Could have a gene for all kinds of diseases. It has it can raise your risk. It can even double or triple your risk, yes, because now you have the gene that's necessary for that disease. But if you don't have the E or the environment to drive the biology, because it's E environment times B, biology or genome that creates health and wellness. And you need both to merge together to have the expression of that gene. And so yeah, I don't, I don't want people to fix say that they have a gene, therefore they're disease and never gonna have health. Like, You have so much control, right? Is that true of fertility too? Or fecundity? Believe it is.

So it depends on where you're at, is a very contextualized question. So if you, you know, if you're 45, I'm going to say no, you biology is set and your control is very limited, right? Like you're at the tail end of your reproductive, you know, longevity or reproductive lifespan is in is in the latter stage, and the chances of ovulating are lower, and the chances of a live birth are even lower. So you don't have a lot of control whether or not you're going to ovulate one more healthy egg in the next. Five years before you hit menopause or zero healthy eggs between now and the end of your, you know, this the beginning of menopause.

And so it's still possible. People can still get pregnant 45, but I'm gonna say you don't have as much control over it. So you could do all kinds of health promoting things. It doesn't mean you're gonna have a baby. Now, if you're 27 or 30 and you tell me, do you have control over your reproductive health? And I say, Yes, you do, because your reproductive lifespan should technically be at least 20 more years. And

[35:50.072] Dr. Carmen Messerlian: Fertility is not a static state. It's a dynamic state. It changes minute by minute, hour by hour, week by week, month by month. It can go forward, it can go backwards, it could stay stable. It's not static. It's not a fixed state that's only in a downward. It's not, it's not linear in a linear decline. There's variability in the processes that eventually goes downwards, right? But there's variability. You could be, I was probably more fertile and my. mid and early 40s than I was in my late 30s. Why? Because I had some health conditions in my late 30s that diminished my fertility.

But then when I recovered from that disrupt, you know, I had a brain tumor, other story, that caused me to be amenorrheic for several years. I was definitely not fertile. And that caused a lot of other hormonal disruptions in my body. But when I recovered from that, I had a period of great fertility and I was more fertile in my 40s than I was in my late 30s. So it's not a fixed state. So you could have PCOS at 30 and still be fertile at 35 and recover from PCOS and get to the root causes of PCOS and address PCOS, even though you might have a genetic predisposition for PCOS or endometriosis or other things and even premature ovarian failure.

I mean, there are some cases that aren't fixed. You're, you know, you lost function of your ovaries, but in other cases, There's, you know, reversible. Like we can lose function of our liver and regain function of our liver, our lungs. We can lose function of part of our lung and regain function in our lung. Our brains can recover from injury. Our ovaries can definitely recover from injury. Definitely recover from injury. So, you know, the message is we don't know for each person what that threshold is and if we can reverse it, but there are definitely things that can be done to improve the odds of success.

And improve your functioning and your ovarian functioning and your reproductive functioning.

Everyday chemical exposures and water filtration

[37:51.374] Sophia Ruan Gushée: Love that. What do you wish more people knew about toxic chemicals from our everyday products?

Dr. Carmen Messerlian: Yeah. So one of the things I want to move away from in the conversation with the conversation in public is yes, chemicals are harmful. We don't need more studies. I'm one of the people who've led studies in this area. And I'm like, what we need to do and what I want people to know is that you can do something about it. Right. There's so many things you can do to get those chemicals out of your home, out of your body, out of your water, out of your food, all the things you have control over.

I'm not saying you control everything, like the milk in my fridge right now. It's not in a glass container. But if it was in one of these glass containers and I and I bought in a glass container, it doesn't mean that it doesn't have phthalates in it because the process of making milk from the cow to the bottle is contaminated. So I'm not going to worry about the fact that there's phthalates in my milk or in my cheese or in the meat that I'm eating. But guess what? Am I going to purify my water so that I'm sure that my water is clean and doesn't have chemicals in it? That's something I can control.

And that's something I'm going to try to reduce my body's exposure to. Things that are not easy fixes, but all the things that you have choice over that you could replace in your home, replace in your farm, you know, you know, your bathroom cabinet, your kitchen cabinet, your fridge, your, you know, your utensils, things that you have control of. When you buy something, buy the stuff that's better for you. Buy the stuff that's less toxic. That's what I want people to know. Don't worry about what is happening here. We just know there's global impact and injury to your body, right?

You don't want this stuff in your body, in your child's body, in your partner's body, in your dog's body or your cat's body. We want these chemicals out of our homes and out of our food and out of our water. Period end. So that's what I want people to know.

[39:39.854] Sophia Ruan Gushée: Do you have a favorite water filter?

Dr. Carmen Messerlian: : I have a reverse osmosis underneath my sink. Yeah. It's not necessarily my favorite. Don't have any endorsement for any company. This is an Aquasana system. There's other ones too. I do think having an RO system is one of the best things you can do. You drink, you know, several liters of water a day. It's a vital source of our well-being. It's a major source of exposure to chemicals. And it's a relatively affordable mechanism to reduce the body's burden of chemical. whole host of chemicals by one thing, right? It's just one.

If you could just do one thing, that's the one thing I would I would tell you to do is get a proper water filtration system and drink all your water out of that. All of it. What do you wish more people knew about some of the most compelling findings from your research on how chemicals affect fertility, both male and female? That the preconception window is the window of greatest vulnerability and greatest opportunity. And that's where you should focus your attention. By the time you know you're pregnant, the epigenetics of your baby has already been set.

And that epigenetic signature is a hundred percent impacted by the chemicals and the food and the stress levels and your state before you get pregnant. And so if you want to improve your chances of a successful baby being born and a healthy baby being born,

The preconception window

[41:03.256] Dr. Carmen Messerlian: Focusing on the preconception window and not just for you, but as importantly your male partner, because I've published many papers on how important men's exposures are to fertility outcomes, pregnancy outcomes, child health outcomes. And so don't take the whole responsibility for yourself, get your partner on board. And it's never too late, even if it's past the preconception period. It always helps to reduce exposures. Hundred percent because there's it's additive too, right? There's effects across the across many windows, including postpartum in your child, you know, once your baby's born. So every window is important.

Sophia Ruan Gushée: What do you wish more people knew about what scientists know about our body burden?

Dr. Carmen Messerlian: What I wish people knew was just how, you know, if you look at what's in people's blood and urine in the United States and any country in the world, it's upsetting to me to know just how toxic our environment is and how much we're carrying as in our bodies, the burden that we're carrying in our bodies with these chemicals. And in, you know, just the the sheer knowledge of that is upsetting. What I want people to know is that.

Body burden, resilience, and generational health

[42:15.564] Dr. Carmen Messerlian: The best thing you could do is focus on the things that you have control over because even me and super knowledgeable and know every source of exposure possible. At least I think I do. I can't control everything and I still have exposure in my body and my children do. I can't protect them 100%. But focus on the small things that you can and always tip the needle towards better and healthier and less exposure, right? And don't worry about, you know, having a bad week or a bad month or a bad day. Just always focus on what can I do today to make it better. That's it. Just erase yesterday, right?

Just you can't do anything about you had pizza out of a cardboard that was flat, you filled with flame retardants and PFAS. Like, what am I eating today? And how important your nutrition is to mitigating the effects of those chemicals. So you have these exposures that are bad, but you have such powerful tools in your toolbox, which is nutrition and diet and stress management and sleep, to counteract the effects of these chemicals and the harm that they cause. And so focusing on reducing the bad. And upping all the good stuff is extremely powerful. What do you wish more people knew about the fetal origins of adult onset diseases?

Well, that was my whole thing about the preconception window and why I'm so invested in the preconception window for couples is because it's the number one powerful creator of future generational health. And so that what your grandmother and your grandfather were doing when they conceived your mother impacts your health today, right? So that's the fetal origins of adult disease that it's not even just your mother's pregnancy, it's your grandmother having your mother.

[43:53.506] Dr. Carmen Messerlian: And the eggs that were in your mother when she was when your grandmother was pregnant are you. And so the exposures in your grandmother exposed your eggs and so the eggs that formed you. And so this is not hokey pokey stuff. This is science-based stuff. This is published in some of the best journals in the world, like Cell and Science, showing the multi-generational, transgenerational effects of the environment on the eggs and sperm and on embryos and on generational health. And so.

Why that's important is because that preconception window gives you power into your pregnancy, but into your child's health and into your child's child's health or your grandchild's health. So you want generational wealth, focus on generational health, invest in your your own body's eggs and your partner's sperm, because that'll guarantee two generations of improved outcomes. So that messaging can be upsetting if, for example, you know, your grandmother or grandfather was a heavy smoker or, you know, worked in the farm fields with lots of pesticides.

Sophia Ruan Gushée: What do scientists know about the ability to reverse some of the less optimal genes that we inherited?

Dr. Carmen Messerlian: Yeah. So it's not so much the genes as the epigenome. So the epigenome signatures that get transferred in. I agree with you. That is a I've had that question brought up even in class, in my classes that I teach at Harvard about, you know, students say, well, that just seems so deterministic. Now I'm screwed. My my dad was, you know, my granddad was, or my grandma was, you know, exposed to A, B, C, D, E, F, G. So you are at risk.

So we know that, you know, for example, cardiovascular disease is higher among you know, if your grandparent was born in the famine or during times of stress, you're you have a higher risk of heart disease. Like grandchild has a high risk of grand heart disease and other diseases as well. So early identification is very important. And knowing that you have there's an effect. So it's like gene, it's like inheriting a bad gene. It's inheriting a bad genome or net, you know, a genome that could be harmful.

But you do have, like you said and you brought it up, the postpartum window, the childhood window, the adolescent window, the adult window, that

[45:55.574] Dr. Carmen Messerlian: Middle aged window, the later age window, every day you have an opportunity to choose health, right? Every day you have an opportunity to address people that have diseases can overcome diseases, right? So what is that about, right? How do we improve our cells, our organs, our tissues? What do we do today? Hydration, nutrition, stress management, exercises. For sure, the number one thing, right? Besides sleep and nutrition, exercise. So being aware of that, being aware of the things that you have control over. It's just like your genetics, you don't have control over the genes you inherit.

If you inherit the breast cancer gene, you can't change that, but can you change everything else? I think that's the message that I want people to take is that there's healing. There's always healing. Your body always wants to heal. Your body always wants to recover. Your body, every cell wants to thrive, right? That's we're programmed for it. So Learning and understanding how you can improve your self's desire to be healthy. What can you do to make yourself better? I love that messaging. We're designed to thrive. I love hearing that from scientists. We are. We're programmed.

Millions of years of genetic and epigenetic signatures have created life today. It's millions of years of evolution, programmed for survival, programmed for survival. Every choice is programmed for survival. Every single step over millions of years has been programmed to adapt and to thrive and to flourish. And we have a responsibility to keep that going, right? And so even if we're faced with exposures in the environment, we're programmed to overcome that. It's guaranteed that our genetics and epigenetics will be.

[47:37.144] Dr. Carmen Messerlian: Flushing out bad stuff and reprogramming for better stuff, right? It's just how we evolve. And so really understanding that and thinking evolution from an individual level, not just a collective level, but my individual evolution and how are my cells improving. And it's not just about like the environment it is, but it's about like harmony and energy and adaptation, right? It's about adaptation. And that's bigger than just eating well. It's about being well, right?

Sophia Ruan Gushée: What do you wish more people knew about miscarriages?

Dr. Carmen Messerlian: They're common. There's there's 30% of pregnancies and in miscarriage.

It's the number one most common outcome of any pregnancy that it's nature's way of protecting and preserving life. It's about adaptation, evolution, and survival. And as painful and awful as it is to experience one, and I have myself, a way of healing around that is accepting the loss as part of your own development, your own. Journey, your own self-knowledge, your own ability to appreciate life and appreciate loss and aligning your energy with that.

It's a story to be told and to be held within you that's like a pivotal period where you come to realize how connected you are to human life and not losing that and appreciating that and also accepting it is part of how you evolve as a person, right? As a man or a woman, that that loss is. part of your history and integrating it and healing from it is part of your fertility journey. And even if you don't end up with a live birth baby, it's still part of who you are. And I think being still within really understanding it for what it means to you is what I want people to know is that it's a healing journey for you. And it's there for a reason.

Miscarriage, IVF, and preparing before conception

[49:34.35] Sophia Ruan Gushée: What do you wish more people knew about assisted reproductive technologies? Like IVF.

Dr. Carmen Messerlian: So my my opinions are a little different than than most people's because I don't think IVF is the solution and it's not the answer for our fertility decline and for our infertility problems on the population level. I don't think IVF can ever meet the need of couples across the country or across the globe. So few couples can access IVF. It's something that has enormous financial barriers, religious barriers, socioeconomic barriers, geographic barriers that we need solutions outside of the IVF space to meet the need of couples across the globe.

And The failure rates are 70 to 80%. We're sold on fear. We fear people into IVF and we tell them their bodies are broken and they need to be fixed with heart surgery. So it's like telling someone, you need open heart surgery, you have heart disease, and waiting until they have a heart attack before we treat them. For me, and what's so important is we don't treat people when they have a heart attack. We look at risk factors early in life. We identify those risk factors and we prevent the heart attack, right? We prevent them from needing open heart surgery. Why should we treat fertility any differently than that?

We should look at fertility as I don't want you to have open heart surgery. I don't want you to have IVF. That's an invasive, high risk procedure that's very expensive and very emotionally taxing on a woman and on a partner and her, you know, her partner. And I want women to have health before they end up there. I want to stop the cascade of people flowing into the IVF landscape. I want to capture those women and those couples early and prevent them from going downstream into the IVF space if they need it. I support them. I want to, you know, want to improve the odds of success because people will need that treatment.

People will need open heart surgery. But can we prevent so many people going there? Yes. What can we do? Identify at risk people early, treat them, care for them, prevent fertility decline, right, from going too far. And so to me, that's how I see fertility in IVF.

[51:27.488] Sophia Ruan Gushée: Soon do you think people should start looking into their fertility health? And like how long if someone is ex if a couple's excited to have a to start trying to conceive, how soon should they start detoxing their home and life? I mean, probably is the sooner the better, right? But is there a minimum number if like a couple has been struggling to get pregnant? Let's say they are gonna do IVF, which is a huge investment. Would you say take at least three months before you try? Cause that could have such a big impact on the quality of the sperm and eggs.

Dr. Carmen Messerlian: Of course. So three months is the minimum. It takes three months to produce sperm.

Each cycle, like if I'm ovulating today, that egg did not just start 28 days, you know, 14 days ago. That egg has been in my body since my mom conceived me. But more importantly, like the harvesting of that egg or the recruitment of that follicle took months and months and months. And so investing in your health at least three months ahead can improve sort of, you know, general state and well-being in your body. and detoxing takes time, new habits take time, new lifestyle takes time, nutrition and changes to your diet take time. So minimum three months, I say six months.

And it's never too early to because these things are all health-promoting things. They're not, you're not taking a pill, right? So to me, like we want to avoid taking the pill. So can we do things before we need the medication? Right. Because IVF is like a medication.

So, what are all the other things that we could do so that we don't rely so heavily on Ozempic and IVF and open heart surgery, can we install, instill and educate, instill good habits, educate couples, support them to make better choices and help guide that journey for them so that when they do show up to get, you know, to start trying that their bodies are already at a at a very great foundational level.

Vie Science

[53:23.33] Sophia Ruan Gushée: What do you wish more people knew about Vie Science?

Dr. Carmen Messerlian: Hmm, that's a good question. Why do we wish people knew about Vie Science? Vie Science is a disruptive platform that allows you to improve your fertility journey in the most holistic way possible and allows you to have great control over your reproductive success. And it's a place of hope. It's a place of healing, it's a place of health. that's what we're selling. We're selling hope, healing, and health. We're not selling fear. We're not scaring people into buying stuff.

We want to guide you and educate you, support you and nourish your body, mind, and spirit so that you and your partner produce and create a beautiful life. And again, what's good for your fertility or reproductive health is good for all other biological parts of you. Yep. And it's yeah.

[54:17.846] Sophia Ruan Gushée: And so how can listeners learn more about you and Vie Science?

Dr. Carmen Messerlian: Thank you for that question. So we're about to launch, not so soon, but very soon, our full platform. So we've been working behind the scenes for years now. But our product is going to be coming to market, our real product, because we've been doing pilots that were what I call a manual version of V. So the back engine's been in development, but the front end has been me. And we want to scale to millions and millions of people. And we can't have me do all millions and millions of interventions. So The platform allows all, you know, many couples to get on boarded, to get a V-score.

The V-score is a holistic score about your fertility. It's not just your eggs and sperm, it's about who you are, your joy, your intimacy, your mental health, your sleep, your, you know, your spirit, your emotional well-being. Where do you lie in all these important factors that drive your fertility health? And we help improve your V-score. That's one of the goals, but we also help you. Bond with your partner, align with your partner. I mean, personalize everything to each individual couple. And if you don't join with your couple, we always care for whoever joins individuals as well. But with that, we create personalized interventions.

You have an opportunity to speak to an agentic AI version of me called Ask Dr. C or Dr. C. You can call her on the phone. You can talk to her on your, you know, on by text. you can have personal one-on-ones with me if you book them. This will still be available in the first version that we that we go to market with. And there'll be opportunities to, you know, be part of a community that's going to be extremely supportive. So we're not quite at the stage where we can launch fully and have people start the new platform, but you can log on my website.

You can get on the list, you know, the wait list for the product, and we'll be launching a marketing campaign in the next couple of weeks.

[56:19.704] Dr. Carmen Messerlian: with some new investment. So we are VC backed and with that backing we're you know we're able to hire teams of people to help us kind of get bring this product to to life into the market into couples into couples homes.

Ultimate Home Detox™

Sophia Ruan Gushée: Thank you, Carmen. If this conversation got you excited to detox your home and lifestyle of toxic exposures from what you buy, own, and do, then remember that the Ultimate Home Detox is here to help. The Ultimate Home Detox is a one-year program, starting with the 40-Day Home Detox™, which is a guided journey to help you detox the products and routines that you have. Room by room, product by product.

So you'll end up with detox stickers, Love Test Detox Stickers, to help remind you if maybe you want to not replace products that had a high toxicity score, or if you want to maybe use some sparingly. And then there's stickers for the products that had a low toxicity score and that you enjoy. And those stickers help. You and those you live with, remember which products are ones you want to keep buying and that are safe to use and which ones are more risky.

And then following the 40-Day Home Detox is one year at the D-Tox Academy, which will help you continue to identify safer products and routines to implement in your life to decrease the toxic exposures in your home and your routines. It's a methodical, practical way to act on so much of what Carmen and I talk about in terms of reducing everyday exposures from the products you buy, the water you drink, and so many daily parts of our lives that can be detoxed pretty easily when you just know what to do. And the ultimate home detox focuses on exactly that. It helps you identify the small changes.

[58:28.556] Sophia Ruan Gushée: you can make from what you buy, own, and do that could yield outsized returns over your lifetime and over generations. I read every application. And if it seems like there's a good fit based on your application, we'll have a 30-minute conversation to explore more deeply whether it makes sense for you to join the Ultimate Home Detox. You can learn more at ruanliving.com. The specific link to more details on the program are in the podcast show notes. As always, the guests speak for themselves. Their conclusions are their own, including where they state them more firmly than the published research does. Nothing in this episode is medical advice.

I hope it helps you and your physicians and your healthcare team to ask wiser questions so your next wise choice is. Even easier to make. Thanks for tuning in. Until next time.

 

Please note that guests speak for themselves. Their conclusions are their own, including where they state them more firmly than the published research does. Nothing in this episode is medical advice.

Sources

1. Bygren LO, et al. “Change in paternal grandmothers’ early food supply influenced cardiovascular mortality of the female grandchildren.” BMC Genetics, 2014.
2. Painter RC, et al. “Transgenerational effects of prenatal exposure to the Dutch famine on neonatal adiposity and health in later life.” BJOG, 2008.
3. Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology, 2022 national data, as reported in “SART data indicates rise in IVF use in 2022,” Contemporary OB/GYN, 2024.

Mentioned in this episode: Vie (vie.science) · Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health · McGill University