Greetings, SuperFriends!

Today we are joined by Dr. Ann Shippy. Dr. Shippy has an incredible story of starting medical school late in life, going on to become a functional medicine doctor and then a successful entrepreneur, building her entire brand with books, in the clinic, with supplements, and more.

But, even more interestingly, her area of specialty is extraordinary wellness, which she is pursuing by using cutting-edge science, testing, and the latest genetic research to find and treat root causes—and not just the symptoms—of illness. In other words, her area of specialty, and what I wanted to talk on this whole episode about, is preventative maintenance – how do we avoid getting the disease, so that we won't have to treat it.

I've been really fascinated by this, as in my own life I'm looking more and more at people around me aging and getting all kinds of weird ailments and afflictions, and I've been asking myself how I, someone who aspires to become SuperHuman, can avoid that whole mess altogether.

So, in this episode, you are going to learn a lot about that, and you are going to learn some really interesting things we haven't talked about on the show before. I really enjoyed this conversation with Dr. Ann Shippy, and I'm sure you will too!

-Jonathan Levi

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In this episode, we discuss:

• How did Dr. Ann Shippy get into medicine? [4:20]
• How does Dr. Ann Shippy learn? [9:00]
• Deciding to open up a practice [11:35]
• What are some changes that you can make to prevent illnesses? [12:30]
• What diet template does Dr. Ann Shippy advocate for? [18:00]
• What can we practically do to reduce our chances of cancer? [20:30]
• What do we mean when we are saying “toxins”? [25:20]
• What are some things you can do to figure out your baseline? [29:00]
• Dr. Ann Shippy's opinion on fasting [32:45]
• Every Life Well – Dr. Ann Shippy's nutrition brand [38:20]
• Some homework for you by Dr. Shippy [42:00]
• One product or service that Dr. Ann Shippy can't live without [43:50]
• Where can you learn more about Dr. Ann Shippy? [44:45]

Resources Mentioned in This Episode:

• Dr. Ann Shippy's books on Amazon
• Liposomal Glutathione
  • Dr. Ann's Every Life Well
  • Essential Pro
  • Readisorb
  • Researched Nutritionals
  • Quicksilver Scientific
• ProLon Fasting Mimicking Diet
• Every Life Well
• Dr. Ann Shippy's website
  • Brain Guide

Favorite Quotes from Dr. Ann Shippy:

TRANSCRIPT:

Introduction: Welcome to the award-winning Superhuman Academy Podcast. Where we interview extraordinary people to give you the skills and strategies to overcome the impossible. And now here's your host, Jonathan Levi.

Jonathan Levi: Before we get started, I want to take a moment to talk to you guys about personal development. You see if I've learned anything over the last five years of hosting the show, it's that the journey of self-improvement never ends. There's always a way to improve and grow. That's why my team and I have recently launched Superhuman Squad, an all-access pass to our full library of personal development courses.

Think of it as the Netflix of personal development for just $49 a month. You get access to each and every one of our premium courses, which sell for as much as $399 each best of all, you'll be the first to gain access to our new courses, courses that we're developing in partnership with some of the most esteemed thought leaders we've ever hosted on the show to get started, simply visit superhuman academy.com.

Greeting, Superfriends, and welcome. Welcome to this week's episode, which is lovingly handcrafted. Thanks to a lovely review from Brielle Kaylin from Canada, who says palpable five stars and an ever-changing podcast that promotes self-growth and reflection while keeping you mentally stimulated throughout each episode, highly recommended has shown me how to live my own life in a positive.

Proactive manner and less reactive has me hooked. Well, thank you so much, Brielle. I really love that. Review it. It almost brought tears to my eyes the first time I read it. So thank you. Thank you. And for those of you who haven't left a review or who have please leave reviews? I know I'm like two months, three months, four months behind on reading them on the air, but I will read your review out and I do appreciate it.

On to today's episode. You guys, today, we are joined by Dr. Ann Shippy. She has an incredible, incredible story of starting medical school, late in life, going on to become a functional medicine doctor and then a successful entrepreneur building her entire brand with books in the clinic and supplements and fascinating, but her area.

Of specialty is extraordinary wellness and using cutting-edge science testing and the latest genetic research to find and treat root causes, not just symptoms. So her area of specialty and one that I wanted to spend really the entire episode talking about is preventative maintenance. How do we avoid getting the disease so that we don't have to treat it?

I've been really fascinated with this. As in my own life, I'm looking at more and more people around me and my family and my social circles, aging and starting to get all kinds of weird ailments and afflictions. And I've been trying to ask myself, how can I, as someone who aspires to become superhuman, how can I just avoid that whole mess altogether?

I think in this episode, you're going to learn a lot about that. You're going to learn about some really interesting things we haven't talked about on the show. I learned a lot. And I'm sure you will too. So please enjoy this wide-ranging conversation with Dr. Ann. Shippy.

Dr. Ann. Shippy welcome to the show. How are you?

Dr. Ann Shippy: Thanks for having me. I'm excited to have this conversation with you.

Jonathan Levi: Likewise. It seems very well-timed because just the other day I was saying to my wife that we need to be doing more, to be on the lookout and be preventing a lot of these things that unfortunately are starting to happen to friends and family as they get older and just feel like we could be proactive instead of reactive.

So this is really good timing.

Dr. Ann Shippy: I love that there's so much that we can do to really make a difference in the trajectory of our health. And actually, instead of feeling like we're aging, we can feel like we're getting better with age. 

Jonathan Levi: I love that. Now, as the title, a doctor gives people a little bit of a clue.

You are a doctor, but I want to hear a little bit of your origin story. How did you come to be passionate about health? What was the turning point where you said, this is what I'm going to devote my life to?

Dr. Ann Shippy: It's been quite a journey. I started out my career as a chemical engineer working for IBM and I really loved it.

I was into the middle and executive management side of things, and I was getting to lead teams that I felt were doing really great things like getting chlorofluorocarbons out of our manufacturing processes years before they were mandating and really leading the industry. But I went on vacation when you're and I came back in my life was never the same.

And I went from doctor to doctor trying to figure out what was going on. I did every test that they recommended for me. And the answer that I got was like, well, I know you were fine before your vacation, but you're just going to be broken. And now you just need to manage the symptoms. Wow.

Jonathan Levi: And did they have a reason? Why did they know what was going on with you or what it was no idea?

Dr. Ann Shippy: All they could tell me was from biopsies and things is that I had a lot of inflammation in my gut. 

Jonathan Levi: Wow, but no idea why. Thanks. Modern medicine.

Dr. Ann Shippy: Yeah. And it was before the internet.

Jonathan Levi: So they put leeches on you. And that was the cure, right?

Dr. Ann Shippy: For time, uh, for the period of about six to nine months, I read everything that I could find that I thought would be helpful. And then I started looking outside the box. I went to see a nutritionist and a naturopath. Acupuncturist. I tried a whole bunch of different diets, even learned a little bit about Ayurvedic medicine and miraculously, my gut started healing up and I started being able to put weight back on and have energy and not look like I was dying and feel like I was dying.

And it got me super fascinated with how the body works, that I woke up one morning and decided to go to medical school. 

Jonathan Levi: Wow. And what age were you at this time?

Dr. Ann Shippy: About 30, 30, one 30. I started medical school at 32. Good for you. I was very fortunate that I was in a situation that I could just, you know, make a plan and change and that I had most of the prerequisites for medical school.

I had never taken a biology class. In college, but I had all the other prerequisites. So all I had to do is brush up on my physics and organic chemistry and chemistry and take a couple of biology classes and then take them, get. So, it all happened really, really quickly, but I did that because I knew that medicine could be practiced differently.

I didn't know the path that I was going to take or how to get there, but I, I knew I really wanted to have the MD background because there are so many amazing things about allopathic medicine. It saves lives every day. And I wanted to, you know, have the credentials to, and the, the tools in my toolbox to do that.

Jonathan Levi: Wow. Really cool.

Dr. Ann Shippy: And that's going ahead. I had my first child and then in residency had my second. So when I finished residency in internal medicine, it's kind of tired and I had these two little kids, so I just went into. Allopathic medicine, uh, you know, as an internist where, you know, you're seeing 20 patients a day, and you kind of know what prescriptions and tests you're gonna order within five minutes.

And I had really veered off my original path of what I wanted to do medicine differently, but here I was doing the same kind of medicine that didn't really help me. Right. So a couple of years into that, I developed a couple of autoimmune disorders. Oh, no one is called Sjogren's syndrome and you get really dry eyes and dry mouth.

Like I could not be comfortable talking if I didn't have a mentor gum in my mouth and I was always putting eyedrops in and I, the other one increases your risk for getting, having a stroke. So then. You know, I had done a lot of, um, rheumatology in medical school and residency. So I knew that the answers weren't good for that.

Like they could kind of band-aid the symptoms and suppress your immune system, but there was nothing that was going to fix it. And my toolbox and that's when functional medicine, the type of medicine that I do now started to be on the map. They had little courses that they did one a couple of times a year with like 40 to 50 people.

And I found them. And really learn to get back to biochemistry and physiology and use the. Latest technology and testing to dig deeper than what we do in the allopathic medicine and figured out what I needed to do to reverse my auto-immune disorders. So then that gave me the confidence to open up my own practice and start doing the medicine that I had really dreamed of doing.

Jonathan Levi: Wow, your story is so incredible to me and I love it because it's such a beautiful example. You know, people think that we can't continue to learn in. Adult age that will never learn as well as we did, but clearly you're learning more. I mean, I'm sure it is a chemical engineer was quite a lot of learning, but med school and then functional medicine on top of it.

That's just incredible. Tell me a little bit about how you learn and how you learn so much. I mean, what was your strategy going back? And especially as you're starting a young family and learning so much.

Dr. Ann Shippy: Well, I think part of it is I was born in a family of educators. My mom was an elementary school teacher and my dad taught at the university of Kentucky in the curriculum and instruction, you know, the teaching teachers have a teach department.

And so it was just always so important. And I remember sitting at the dining room table sometimes with my dad things so frustrated because he would never just tell me the answer. You know, if we were working on math or I was working on writing a paper and I just want it, like, just tell me the answer, just tell me what to do.

And he would never do that. It was so important to him, for us to learn how to learn, learn how to figure out the answers themselves. So he taught us strategies on how to learn. From a very young ages and I'm just so grateful to my dad for that, because now I know I can really take any topic that I'm curious about and read about it.

And then kind of, I think of myself as being a kinesthetic learner, like I liked, you know, to learn a concept or. I have a hypothesis about something and then try it on, see how it really works and what happens with the idea and explore it further. And that somehow just really gets deep into my brain. If I just sit down and try to memorize things, I'm really bad at that.

I like, I, I really didn't know that I was smart until around seventh grade. Well, because so much of the learning was, you know, just memorizing things. And I, that's not how my brain works. I, I really have to use the information. And that's when I, you know, when math started to be problem-solving, like learning algebra and geometry and calculus, where you get taught a concept and then you get to apply it in lots of different situations. That's what I love.

Jonathan Levi: Incredible. Incredible. So coming back to the timeline, I mean, first, when you went to get your medical degree, it was, it sounds like largely because of your passion for learning and for understanding how people can get well, and then you go on this path of functional medicine. And at this point, it sounds like I'd kind of realized that you wanted to do this for other people.

Dr. Ann Shippy: I didn't want, it was, it's kind of like this, not on my watch. Right? It's like, I know there's different answers. And a lot of that people can rather, you know, rather than just taking a headache medicine or a proton pump inhibitor for heartburn, like why is the body doing these things? If your brain's not working well, if you're feeling brain fog, What is really going on, that's causing your biochemistry and physiology to be out of balance, and then let's direct the body in the right direction so that it can heal.

Jonathan Levi: Yeah. So I'd love to get into some of the things. I mean, I know this is a really broad topic. I mean, there's unfortunately so many different diseases, ailments and afflictions out there that we could probably spend an hour just talking about one and the ways to prevent it. But. Talk to me a little bit about some of the common ones.

I mean, things that people can start doing right away, changes that they can make in their lives that are proven scientifically to help stave off certain types of ailments.

Dr. Ann Shippy: Yeah. I love this topic because I tend to have two types of patients, either the ones that are so L they sit there at the first visit and say, If you can't help me, I'm giving up.

Like I just, I just know there's no hope I can't get better with what you do. And then there's, they're highly motivated. Like I am, I feel like I'm pretty healthy now, but I want to really stay healthy. And so we start with some foundational things that there's really great. Data with, and then we can dig as deeply as they're interested in doing and very extensive laboratory testing.

But some of the main principles that I see help, both groups of people is to really get their diet. Right. We really are what we eat and the whole field of Nutrigenomics. So how the. The molecules in the food, not just the, you know, macronutrients, the carbohydrates, fats, and proteins, but how the molecules in our food really inform our genes on how to express themselves and really guide the details of the biochemistry and physiology at the end, somatic and cellular.

Membrane levels, the mitochondria, all that kind of thing. So just getting our diets super healthy can make a big, big difference. So eating vegetables, like one of the things that I think is causing this big shift in children's health is that so many kids are just getting fed, really junk food, you know, the chicken nuggets and French fries most of the time.

So they need to be eating. The good vegetables, right from the get-go too. And then as adults, I think a lot of times the vegetables aren't as available in the restaurants and things. And so, you know, we just don't prioritize getting them in our daily routine, but we need to be eating at least a cup of cruciferous vegetables a day.

Wow. So the cruciferous vegetables are the broccoli cauliflower, cabbage, kale, bok choy. There's a whole big, long list of them that you know, you can get in any grocery store and we need to figure out how to have them on a day in and day out basis. And then it's great to also get a cup of greens, the data on reducing the risk for cancer, for improving brain health, or really supporting our immune system.

And detoxification is tremendous. It's like, it should be headline news every day and somehow it just gets lost in the mundane. And it's so easy to do. And you just saute some are regular for breakfast or have some chopped cabbage that you can quickly make into like a vinegarette slaw with. Um, I love the Paul Newman's and, um, balsamic vinegarette, and just five minutes.

And you've got a good salad that you can throw into things. And it's just not that hard to do. Most days then sleep is so important. And I think that's something that we, we continuously don't prioritize cause we, you know, get caught up. So it ends up in the thing or we're just prioritizing other things.

But the fascinating data is that we actually detoxify our brains while we're sleeping. Right. There's something called the Glymph system that we really need that sleep to help our brains to do that detoxifying and rebuilding. And then it has so many other benefits.

Jonathan Levi: Absolutely. Yeah. Many people don't realize, but the brain literally cannot get rid of metabolic.

Waste products unless it's in a specific stage of sleep. So it's not actually enough to sleep. You better be getting through all the rights stages of sleep. Even if you're saying, well, I'm sleeping, you know, I sleep six, seven hours a night, but your sleep is interrupted. You're not getting good quality sleep then.

Yeah. You're not moving that metabolic waste product out.

Dr. Ann Shippy: It's so, so important. And then one of the other big things that I see in my practice every day is how much we're being impacted by her environment. The little bits of metals and chemicals and pesticides that we're exposed to, you know, one day. May not make a difference, but these little exposures that happen every day accumulate and then start to really interfere with very important physiological functions in the body.

And there's even big links with auto-immune diseases. And this increase in cognitive decline that we're saying diabetes, that's pretty much linked with every disease state that we're seeing these big increases in. So there's a lot of things that we can do a little bit at a time. To avert that buildup just by avoiding things.

So being aware of what we're putting on our skin, even the mattress that we're sleeping on, a lot of the memory foams are very toxic for us. Oh, wow. Yeah. And then avoiding plastics, like the plastic bottles, microwaving in plastic, things that are so part of people's day-to-day routines that they don't even think about them.

Jonathan Levi: Now you mentioned diet and the importance of diet. I'm going to ask a leading question that I think I know the answer to based on some of the books you've published, but what's the diet template that you advocate and recommend to your clients.

Dr. Ann Shippy: I'm almost wanting to change the name of it because it's gotten so, so, um, Americanized, but I, I really advocate for the paleo diet based on the research that Loren Cordain has done.

So the Hunter-gatherer diet and, uh, that cuts out a lot of the refined foods, the weight, all the high gluten foods, and the grains, as well as dairy. Uh, which is where a lot of them, now there's a lot of misinformation on what paleo is, cause they're throwing in even cheese sometimes, and then, uh, lagoons. So what your plate ends up looking like is to do it.

Healthfully is at least half of the plate is vegetables and it can be a mix. You know, the crucifers that I talked about earlier, but you know, a lot of the others with the squash and asparagus and that kind of thing. And then I think most people do well with at least a little bit of animal protein. It doesn't need to be every meal, but I see a lot of amino acid deficiency.

If people don't put at least some animal protein in, but you want to get it as healthy as you can. Organic cross-fed range tree. Chicken or poultry, the healthiest eggs that you can find. And then a little bit of fruit. I think a lot of times people are way overdoing the sweets in their diet, even if they're the healthier ones like the honey and maple syrup, which I think are fine in small amounts, or are doing a ton of fruit.

And then you need good fats. The low-fat diet that came out in the seventies and eighties was so bad for our country. We need good fats to make up our cell membranes and our, our cell membranes are now we know they're the brains of the cell really. It's so much even more important than the exact DNA that we're, that we're born with.

We have to have a cell. Healthy cell membranes to have the chemical messengers, to get into the cell where they need to go and their makeup, a fat. So we need good to make a threes and sixes. So the, a little bit at the good fish that's as clean as possible. And then the nuts and seeds are so, so important.

Jonathan Levi: Absolutely. Now I want to ask specifically about some diseases that people are worried about, and that are really pernicious in our society. The big one that I'm concerned about given kind of my family's history and health history, and just looking around. Is cancer. I mean, what can we practically do besides the things you know, that we've already talked about to really reduce it?

Dr. Ann Shippy: Chances of cancer. Yeah. It's been fascinating really looking at that problem, you know, the way that I do, you know, a lot of times people will come in right after they've been diagnosed with cancer. And so then I'm always looking for, okay, well, how did this happen in the first place? And it. Often comes back to levels of inflammation and people's body and how well their detoxification systems work and how well they met the late.

So the inflammation a lot of times is caused by, you know, a high inflammation diet. So you can address that by applying the kind of diet that I talked about, the actual healthy paleo. Then from the detoxification standpoint that can get fairly complex with some patients. But what I find is that by being super proactive with not getting the environmental exposures, And by assisting the body in detoxifying.

So things like taking supplements that are lysosomal glutathione and some binders, the Blippar support. We start to see the toxins pouring out of their body and their levels coming down. And then having the dietary things that support detoxification. So those cruciferous vegetables, leafy greens, onions, and garlic, the high vital nutrients, like the berries as well as supplements that really help with that. So things like our spiritual and curcumin are amazing.

Jonathan Levi: I've been doing a turmeric. I haven't gotten to curcumin, which is kind of a more refined form. But what I do is I do a, I take my high-quality fats. So a coconut liquid, not coconut milk with lots of fat and a little bit of pepper because one podcast guests with the Iveta background explained that it makes turmeric 2000 times more effective, a little bit of black pepper, a little bit of honey, a little bit of cinnamon, which is also an antioxidant.

And then just a whole bunch of turmeric. Blend it, and it's like the most delicious thing ever.

Dr. Ann Shippy: Oh, that sounds so good. I'll have to try it. Good and cinnamon, like if you do a pub med search on cinnamon, it's so highly studied. So that's actually, one of the things that I love to recommend is. Put throw cinnamon and everything.

So like this morning, I'm, I'm sitting here with a cup of matcha tea with cinnamon in it and a, and a green smoothie that I throw cinnamon in. So that's, that's a great addition, I think, with the tumeric. And then of course, with the tumor Mark, one of the important things about tumor is that it needs to be organic, both the cinnamon and the tumeric.

Really really journey to be organic. I would recommend having as much of your food and spices and supplements and things be organic as possible, but especially those two, because when they do look at the incoming material, that is up to 80% of the tumor can be contaminated to a point where you really wouldn't want to eat it.

Jonathan Levi: Oh, wow. Okay. So, I mean, ideally, we want to buy either powdered or the actual. The route, but making sure that it's organic.

Dr. Ann Shippy: And some of the pharmaceutical grade supplement companies really do a great job of going that extra mile to get the absolute cleanest curcumin.

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Now one thing doctor should be, that you talked about was toxins. And that's another term like paleo that I think gets used by marketers a lot. You know, these patches will take the toxins out of your body. So I've been curious recently to the end, I'm going to leverage the opportunity to learn more about it.

Like when someone like yourself, who actually knows what they're talking about, talks about toxins. I mean, what are those, is that like oxidants or is it like actually toxic substances in our body? Like, explain to me a little further on what toxins means to a doctor.

Dr. Ann Shippy: Well, and it probably, you almost need to be talking to a functional medicine doctor.

That's really looking at these levels and patients because if you just talk to the average and day or Dio, they're not going to have that window into what's happening now. So it can be heavy metals. So the mercury aluminum from things like Illumina cans and aluminum foil, or the rest of the Juul led that scenario environment that, you know, comes in through ours.

Our consumer goods and our food and water, or it can be the pesticides that were sprayed. We can come back to this and talk about it in more detail, but glyphosate is becoming a huge issue. So that's the main. Pesticide that's sprayed and fumigant that's sprayed on our food and then there's the volatile organic compounds.

So it's the things that are outgassing, especially in our buildings, in our homes, from things like paint and carpet and furniture cabinetry. And then there are just the other, like fracturing kinds of chemicals that are ubiquitous coming through in our air, in our water, as well as I just did a whole bunch of research around automobile exhaust and how it changes our gene expression.

So there's a study that just came out that looked at. The changes in gene expression for women that have a bigger exposure to car exhaust increase the risk for breast cancer. So things like living near a big highway, or like working in an environment where there's more gasoline exhaust. So like lawn care where they're, you know, using the lawnmowers and things or in a warehouse where they're having the machines to move around the house.

Uh, warehouse materials. So, and then it can even be in some of our, our hobbies and things. I see this over and over again with people who are artists and they're painting or using other materials to make art. Yeah. Some of the sickest people actually that I've seen are people who are doing that kind of thing as their career.

And because they're just not, uh, not thinking about the solvents that they're using and the paint fumes and that kind of thing. So I can go on and on about this, but yeah.

Jonathan Levi: I'm glad I asked because it's like, you know, if you look at the classical definition of a toxin, it's like, rattlesnake poison or mold spores or all this other stuff, but it does seem like in the common kind of nomenclature, it's become much more.

It's become a word for stuff you really don't want in your body.

Dr. Ann Shippy: I appreciate you making that distinction too because there's the acute poisoning. Which they, acute poisoning takes a much higher dose in a short period of time. Whereas more of what I'm seeing is an issue is the chronic poisoning. It's a little bit of this, a little bit of that a little bit here today, a little bit tomorrow, and then gradually building up.

Jonathan Levi: Right? Absolutely. So. What are some of the things that people can do because I think people know that they understand what they're up against? They want to know, you know, how affected am I? And I know you had mentioned earlier on in the episode, you know, very, very extensive, which sounds like very, very expensive testing, but what are some things that the average person should do to figure out whether or not they need to go down this path and kind of what their baseline is like, what are they working with right now?

Dr. Ann Shippy: Yeah. If you can do the testing with the functional medicine doctor, I would definitely do that, but I don't think most people need to do that, but I think most people should assume that they've had some accumulation of toxins in their bodies and that they need to be proactively getting it out. So the dietary things that I mentioned before.

If you're doing that most day, that's at least a good foundation, but then there are certain supplements that are great to take to really help open up the spickets and then let the Texans out. So I really think most people benefit from taking at least a little bit of liposomal glutathione. And there's some information about that on my website, and then taking at least a little bit of a binder.

So the binders that help to pull it out through the gut are things like charcoal, clay-modified citrus, pectin, and silica. And again, you don't need to be doing it every day, but if you're doing it often, it can really make a huge difference.

Jonathan Levi: This is the first time that I'm hearing about liposomal glutathione and I'd love to hear more about that.

Dr. Ann Shippy: Oh, that's my favorite because I see such a tremendous impact from doing that. So it's a form of glutathione that instead of your gut digesting it. And breaking down into pieces and then having to put it back together. So your body makes glutathione all the time, but it gets depleted from dealing with all these toxins and then some people have a genetic predisposition to not make it very well.

So when you take it in the light, the Zoma form, it gets absorbed right into the bloodstream already. Yeah.

Jonathan Levi: Wow. That's cool. So glutathione is, is essential, uh, a regulator of kind of oxidative stress or an antioxidant.

Dr. Ann Shippy: It is, it's one of the most powerful antioxidants, but then it actually directly helps to metabolize and lead the toxins out of your body.

Jonathan Levi: Wow, I'm buying it now, what brand do I need?

Dr. Ann Shippy: So we have one on our website that I love. It's every like, well brand, but then I become a life assembler. I am kind of sore because I liked it. You know, there are different reasons to use different brands, but there's also one by a company that's called essential pro, but I really like, and then, uh, ready, soar.

Researched nutritionals. Oh, and Quicksilver. So those are kind of my five favorites. And they all have good a time just does not taste good. It's got a sulfur molecule on it. So the different companies have found different ways to make it palatable, but none of them are great.

Jonathan Levi: I was thinking that I'm looking and there's one, that's like an organic fruit flavor and I'm like, I wonder why they don't just give it to me in a powder. Like everything else.

Dr. Ann Shippy: Yeah, no, I, um,

Jonathan Levi: I'm getting a Quicksilver scientific liposomal glutathione with lemon-mint.

Dr. Ann Shippy: Yes. That's the one that one of my sons, uh, likes the best. He'll be like he's 17 and he's like, mom, I'm adequate of fine. Can you grab some, he stays on top of it cause he can really tell a difference in how I feel by taking it on a regular basis.

Jonathan Levi: That's really awesome because I'm all about reducing oxidative stress. I try to do as much of it as I can. In fact, one other thing that I want to ask you about is the last thing I've heard that is fascinating and more specifically, extended fasts two, three, four days can also be a major preventer of disease.

Dr. Ann Shippy: That is such a great topic and there's so much misinformation out about it. So there's intermittent fasting. If anybody has done any research on that will have heard that term. And then there is, you know, water fasting or juice fasting, and then there's something called fasting, mimicking. Where you're fasting, your body thinks you're fasting, but you're still eating a little bit.

So the best research is really showing the benefit is really around the intermittent fasting and the fasting-mimicking that fasting, fasting either the juice fast or the water fast can really have some detrimental effects. And you can actually be pulling bone and muscle and then having it be very difficult to replace.

Whereas if you do the fasting-mimicking or intermittent fasting, you don't have that issue. And then there's another issue that I see with any of that. And that is when you're. Releasing that a lot of times you're releasing toxins. So it's really important to be doing some detoxification support while you're doing the fasting.

So the intermittent fasting that I see does has the best effects for most people. You actually want to just not eat for 12 to 14 hours. Later in the day. So most people I find it's actually better to get up, have at least something for breakfast, and then just quit eating early, you know, like maybe five o'clock and then don't eat breakfast again until sometime around seven.

The next day, there are some people that feel best if they don't eat breakfast. And so they do their fast earlier in the day, but I'd actually prefer it a more later in the day. And then the research around the fasting-mimicking diet is. Dan by, uh, Valter Longo. And they have less that I heard the actual number was a little over a year ago.

They have about $41 million from the NIH because they're seeing such incredible results with diabetes, dementia, cancer. Autoimmune disorders. So they had so many studies going on because they're seeing such a tremendous effect by this. And then the company that actually provides the five-day fasting-mimicking plan is called a ProLon.

The product is called ProLon. So everything that you eat and drink is in the box for five days and it's, so it makes it very, very simple to implement. And it's a really great company because they're doing a whole lot with a big portion of the proceeds, either going back into research or going to nonprofits and your question on cancer, this is actually probably one of the best things that you can do is do this five day fasting, mimicking diet each month.

Jonathan Levi: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And it kind of clear out, clear things out and I've heard, and I'm not sure if, if I believe this, but I've heard that some forms of cancer cell can't survive a fast like that.

Dr. Ann Shippy: That's exactly what they're seeing. So in their research, they're seeing just the fasting-mimicking a lot of times is as effective as doing chemotherapy and knocking out the senescent cells.

But you know, it takes doing this the five days, multiple minutes in a room. And then when they combine the chemotherapy or whatever the treatment is for the particular cancer, it's an exponential improvement. Cause very exciting research because. I think it's really going to change the trajectory of a lot of these illnesses, but especially cancer treatment.

Jonathan Levi: Yeah. People don't realize, but chemotherapy is not that effective. Unfortunately, not nearly as effective as people think. And it's, it's quite awful. I mean, having known many people who've gone through it again, unfortunately. It's really terrible to come to your body full of poison. It's really awful. So anything you can do to have to do less of that or make that more effective.

So you only have to do at once is pretty powerful stuff.

Dr. Ann Shippy: It really is, but I am very leery about the multiple-day fast. I think that that can really actually decrease metabolism when you're done and can have some losses that are very difficult to recover from, you know, to build backbone and build that muscle can be very challenging.

Jonathan Levi: So I've done a three-day and I liked it, but I think it's telling that I haven't done it since. You know, and I, I felt great after, but it was challenging on a few different levels, for sure.

Dr. Ann Shippy: They found the fasting, mimicking that, you know, where you're still eating a little something. I just said I can be very challenging towards the end of the fifth day.

Jonathan Levi: Right. And I imagine the little something is like super high fat, so you can at least keep yourself in ketosis.

Dr. Ann Shippy: Exactly. It's so like your stack might be all of that for a particular day.

Jonathan Levi: There you go. Something to definitely keep the blood sugar low enough that the body thinks it's fasting. Exactly. Now I want to talk about every life.

Well, and not because you asked me in any way to talk about it, but you're actually quite the entrepreneur. You've got like a huge line of products here. Tell me how that came about.

Dr. Ann Shippy: Well, that's actually one of the things that I feel compelled to help with now, I have all this information in my head after 13 years of doing functional medicine and going through multiple health crises myself, and I feel compelled to help to share that information because of it.

I have quite a backlog of patients for my office. So how can I take the best of what I've found and get it out into the world? And that's where every life will come from. And we're also doing some work around helping prepare for pregnancy. So getting your body all built up and detox before you decide to have a baby.

Jonathan Levi: And that would be very impressive. I mean, I guess you really see that coming together, the fact that you were a chemical engineer and a doctor and a functional medicine doctor, where did the entrepreneurial skills come from? Because I mean, I'm going to articulate to our audience. Like there are, I don't know how many SKUs you have here, but there are a lot of products you've built.

Like what seems to be quite a sizeable nutrition brand.

Dr. Ann Shippy: I have a lot of help. Okay. That's smart. Yeah. I felt like as I'm, you know, making this shift into helping more people that it's like learning multiple new languages, here we go with learning again. Right. It's right. It always comes back. Create a website that can get good information out and get blogs published.

And. Totally and write books and understand marketing and, you know, on the financial stuff, how do you even keep track of all this stuff? So it really has been, uh, you know, in some ways these last four or five years have been even more challenging than going to medical school and having babies at the same time, because it is really challenging.

And I would not say that I have it mastered yet.

Jonathan Levi: Incredible. So you have a whole team that's helping you develop these products, ship them, market them, write about them, obviously go through all this stuff of, you know, the standards of food and, and all that kind of thing.

Dr. Ann Shippy: Exactly. Yeah. It definitely takes a team of a wonderful team to pull it all off.

And then I really am. So blessed. I've got an incredible group of people in my office that are, I feel like are truly extensions of me with taking care of our patients. Each one of them has huge hearts and cares so much about making a difference with our patients every day. So that's been the biggest lesson that I've learned is when I hire people, their hearts and their intentions are the most important quality I look for.

Jonathan Levi: Right, right. And all of this grew out of your practice. I mean, one day you said, you know, we should do a supplement, and then it just grew and grew and grew into a blog and everything else. 

Dr. Ann Shippy: Yeah. It's like, how can I get this information? That's so vital, you know, from me. The lens that I look at the world through the end of this kind of chemical engineering, science, nerdy brain.

How can I get that information out into the world? Tell more people, because I don't want people to have to go through it, what they're going through and what I see the patients go through. I may even what I've gone through myself.

Jonathan Levi: Totally. Okay. Let's start getting to the windup questions here because I've just been so fascinated by the conversation.

I've completely lost track of time, some homework for our listeners to do while they wait for next week's episode.

Dr. Ann Shippy: You know, some of the things that we've talked about, so, you know, get your cup of Christopher's vegetables in start looking at your sleep and, you know, goal of eight hours and getting through all the stages of sleep, add cinnamon to everything you can think of.

Start to think about how to eat more paleo. One of the things we didn't talk about that I really love is the, if you've got access to an infrared sauna pop in that to start detoxing or on our website, we've got a, um, a detox bath that I say makes a huge difference to start to get some of the environmental toxins out or, you know, start some liposomal glutathione.

And then learn something new, sign, something you're interested in and, and start to learn about it because, uh, you really can make a difference with your brain. So I, one of my fun little stories is I'll go in and out of finding time to learn, to play the guitar. And then I'll see things like, Oh my gosh, I can actually type better.

Jonathan Levi: Right. Yeah. We call that brute force learning that your ability to learn anything is going to impact your ability to learn everything. And I see it in the weirdest of ways I've recently picked up and become obsessed with and don't laugh knitting. Oh, I love that. I'm addicted to knitting and I do it whenever I'm on long calls, not podcasts, but long, like our two-hour team meeting every week.

I'm just kind of knitting my way through it. And it's just had an impact on me. I haven't got a business deal because someone was like, Oh, you're such an adorable guy. Just sitting over there and knitting yellow. Let's do it. Let's go.

Dr. Ann Shippy: Great.

Jonathan Levi: Yeah. Pretty cool. So. Okay, that's really good homework. What's a product or service you simply couldn't live without?

Dr. Ann Shippy: Product or service that I couldn't live with. That is my life is so I'm included, Diane. I really know that that changes the trajectory of my health,

Jonathan Levi: The Amazon Alexa list. So it's it's happening. Good, fantastic. Uh, complete this sentence for me, most people would be much better off if they just.

Dr. Ann Shippy: Are kinder with themselves.

Jonathan Levi: Yes. 

Dr. Ann Shippy: I love that one. I feel like a lot of times the inner conversations drive our limbic system to be in survival state rather than being encouraging and loving. And that can make a huge difference as to our body's ability to do that. Continuous repair.

Jonathan Levi: I love that. I really, really love that.

And I think that's a great note to end on. Just be, I want to give you an opportunity to let people know where they can reach out and learn more about all the stuff you're doing and check out your 5,000 different products that you've managed to develop while raising a family and going to med school.

Dr. Ann Shippy: It's AnnShippymd.com and, um, people especially listening to your podcast, Matt, and I, enjoy a handout that we've put together on the brain. So it's AnnShippymd.com/spring.

Jonathan Levi: I love that. Awesome. Dr. Shippy, it's been such a pleasure chatting with you. Thank you so much for coming on.

Dr. Ann Shippy: Thanks for having me. This was super fun.

Jonathan Levi: Awesome. Let's talk again soon.

Closing: Thanks for tuning into the award-winning Superhuman Academy Podcast. For more great skills and strategies or for links to any of the resources mentioned in this episode, visit superhuman.blog while you're at it please take a moment to share this episode with a friend and leave us a review on iTunes. We'll see you next week.