EP 398 Beyond Symptoms: A Longevity Doctor’s Approach to Fertility, Gut Health, and Whole-Body Vitality with Dr. Jennifer Timmons, MD
In this episode, I sit down with Dr. Jennifer Timmons, MD, a board-certified family physician and longevity doctor, to explore why fertility cannot be separated from whole-body health. After more than a decade in traditional primary care at UCLA Health, Dr. Timmons recognized how often the conventional system waits for disease rather than addressing the dysfunction beneath it. She now blends functional, precision, and longevity medicine to help her patients build true vitality from the inside out.
We talk about why your terrain matters as much as any protocol, how gut health quietly drives inflammation and autoimmune conditions, and why so many seemingly unrelated symptoms trace back to a compromised gut lining. Dr. Timmons walks us through the role of leaky gut in fertility, the importance of blood sugar stability for egg and sperm quality, and the everyday lifestyle inputs that influence cellular health, including light exposure, circadian rhythm, time-restricted eating, and microplastic exposure.
She also shares which longevity practices are accessible to everyone, why social connection turned out to be one of the strongest predictors of long life in Harvard research, and the simple food order and movement habits that move the needle most for metabolic health. This conversation is a thoughtful, grounded look at how to support the body so it can do what it already knows how to do.
Key Takeaways:
Fertility is a reflection of whole-body health, not an isolated system. Optimizing your terrain matters as much as any procedure or protocol.
Gut health is foundational. Leaky gut and compromised intestinal lining can drive autoimmune conditions, inflammation, and impaired nutrient absorption, all of which affect fertility outcomes.
Even a nutrient-rich diet cannot do its work if the gut barrier is inflamed. Healing the gut lining is often the missing piece in fertility preparation.
Chronic inflammation is one of the biggest drivers of disease and reproductive dysfunction. Identifying and addressing inflammatory triggers can shift the entire picture.
Blood sugar stability directly impacts egg and sperm quality. Simple shifts like eating fiber and protein before carbs, walking after meals, and avoiding late-night eating make a real difference.
Light, circadian rhythm, and meal timing are powerful regulators of hormonal and cellular health. A simple 12-hour overnight fast offers measurable benefits without extreme restriction.
Microplastics and environmental toxins are quietly impacting reproductive health. Fiber, NAC, sweating, and reducing plastic exposure all support your body’s natural detox pathways.
Longevity practices are accessible to everyone. Whole foods, movement, quality sleep, clean water, and strong social connection are the real foundations of a long, healthy life.
Social connection is one of the strongest predictors of longevity, even more than diet or socioeconomic status in Harvard research. Community is medicine.
Guest Bio:
Dr. Jennifer Timmons, MD is a Longevity Physician and the Founder and Medical Director of Timmons Wellness, a concierge medical practice providing hyper-personalized healthcare. With over 10 years of experience practicing traditional primary care at UCLA Health, along with advanced training in Functional and Integrative Medicine, Precision Medicine, and Longevity Medicine, Dr. Timmons is committed to helping people enjoy longer, healthier lives through a customized care model. Her expertise includes hormone optimization, metabolic and cardiovascular health, proactive disease prevention, weight management, and more, encompassing both proven strategies and innovative technologies. As Founder and Medical Director of Timmons Wellness, she helps people move beyond basic wellness toward longevity medicine, and build sustainable habits that increase not just the years of their lives, but their number of healthy years.
Connect with Dr. Jennifer Timmons:
Website: TimmonsWellnessMD.com
Instagram, TikTok, YouTube: @JenniferTimmonsMD
Disclaimer: The information shared on this podcast is for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended as medical advice. Please consult with your healthcare provider before making any changes to your health or fertility care.
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Speaker: [00:00:00] Episode number 398 of the Wholesome Fertility Podcast. Welcome to the Wholesome Fertility Podcast. I'm your host, Michelle Orbits. Today's conversation speaks to something so many women on the fertility path may sense, but rarely hear validated by a Western-trained physician, that fertility is not a separate department of your body, it's a reflection of the whole.
My guest today is Dr. Jennifer Timmons, a board-certified family physician with over a decade of experience in traditional primary care at UCLA Health, who now practices longevity and functional medicine as a founder and medical director of Timmons Wellness. After years inside the conventional system, she recognized what many of us already feel, that modern medicine is brilliant in a crisis situation, but often too reactive when it comes to prevention and the slow erosion of vitality that many times can impact fertility.
In this [00:01:00] episode, we explore why optimizing your terrain matters as much as any protocol. We talk about gut health and its link to autoimmune conditions and inflammation, why leaky gut shows up behind so many seemingly unrelated symptoms, and how chronic inflammation disrupts the body's ability to rebuild.
We also get into everyday factors that influence egg and sperm quality, including blood sugar stability, circadian rhythm, time-restricted eating, and microplastic exposure. What I love about this conversation is how grounded it feels. No extreme protocols, no fear-based messaging, just a thoughtful, science-informed look at how to gently support the body so that it could do what it already knows how to do.
So let's get started.
Welcome to the Wholesome Fertility Podcast. I'm Michelle, a fertility [00:02:00] acupuncturist here to provide you with resources on how to create a wholesome approach to your fertility journey
Michelle: Welcome to the podcast, Dr. Timmons. So happy to have you
Jennifer: Thanks for having me, Michelle. I'm so excited to be here
Michelle: Yes. So, we just had a great pre-talk about how fertility is kind of a reflection of the whole, and I'm very excited to really dive deeper. But before we get started, I always love having an origin story of how you got into the work that you do.
Jennifer: Yeah. So, I'm a family physician and did traditional primary care for over 10 years you know, as like a general practitioner, just, you know, who you saw as your primary care doctor and in the, sort of in the system doing traditional medicine and it gave me a lot of experience and exposure and to...
What I realized through all of that is that our [00:03:00] traditional system is, is often too reactive and just kind of waiting until you're sick to, to fix the problem versus, you know, trying to be more proactive and look for underlying dysfunction before it causes a problem, and it's kind of like, you know, systems-wide problem that our, our medical system has.
And I just started to get more and more frustrated that I was seeing people with chronic disease come in, you know, and just with the way that the sort of insurance forces the visits to be so, you know, insurance reimbursement forces the visits to be so short for practices to even be profitable that it's, you know, I had no time to discuss the things that would actually make a difference with chronic disease like, you know, dieting and, or, you know, di-diet changes, food changes, exercise, and things that take a little bit more time to discuss and help patients, you know, make those sort of changes.
And, you know, the quickest thing is just giving... And what's part of the system is just giving a medication and a prescription to sort of blunt [00:04:00] the, the symptom and not really solve the underlying problem. So I kind of, I've also grew up more with parents who were more holistic and were with a, that sort of background, and so I sort of began to see that, you know, integrating that more into the way I practice was gonna be the way, you know, that felt more aligned with what I believed.
And so I ended up leaving primary care and learning, training on my own, doing more functional medicine and longevity medicine and learning more about lifestyle medicine and how how to use diet and exercise and lifestyle habits as medicine and also precision medicine and precision diagnostics and how to more accurately look into the body and see the dysfunction that's un- you know, underlying things that are going on and be able to, find ways to address them before they actually have to become like a d- you know, a disease and a problem.
So I've been doing that for the last you know, f- more recently for the last couple of years. And I started my own [00:05:00] practice called Timmons Wellness, where I'm seeing patients doing that, u- using that approach, and it's been amazing. I've had patients have such amazing transformative results, and it's been really great and fulfilling for me to see and to practice that way.
So, I've been also trying to wanna s- you know, spread the word of this kind of way of medicine with my social media accounts and trying to do more podcasts and just educate people that there's, you know, a way of doing, practicing medicine and thinking about medicine that can kinda blend this traditional medicine, like my background, with more of a holistic approach.
Michelle: I love that. And I love the fact that you really kind of realized it on your own. Maybe it was also the upbringing that you had where you really understood the importance of wellness overall and like taking care of your body and being a little more holistic. But it's, it's true. It's, it's interesting 'cause my husband's a, an emergency medicine physician, and I, I think w- where Western medicine shines is usually like the [00:06:00] more trauma.
The, the technology's like bar none, you cannot compare,
you know, the, the different devices to be able to really like look into the body and, and also just the technology even for IVF is phenomenal. And so that's where I think that everybody has their place. But when it comes to like more preventative things or more chronic issues, I don't know that they really have it down.
Like even my husband says like, he always says it's almost like, killing a fly with a sledgehammer. Like, and then you're breaking everything else and, and you, you didn't really need to do that.
Jennifer: Yeah. Yeah, I definitely am all for traditional medicine for, you know, still, and it's great for acute care, for emergency care, for so many things. It's amazing that we have it, and I definitely think there's a place. But ex- again, for prevention and chronic disease management now that we, you know, the main diseases of our sort of time in society are things that are, you know, these, these sort of diabetes, high blood [00:07:00] pressure, heart disease is the number one, you know, cause of death, and cancers are all related to our lifestyle habits and can be prevented, you know, using sort of lifestyle medicine techniques.
And, and then in the fertility front, you know, really, I, again, I agree that having these infertility techniques in modern medicine is amazing, but also doing everything you can in your body can make a huge difference to make that successful.
Michelle: Totally. And that's where I think that that conversation needs to happen because even if you are to use IVF, if you're not preparing the quality of your eggs, if you're not preparing lowering inflammation and getting the uterus in the right place for re-receptivity, then it's almost useless 'cause then you're wasting money.
And that, and that's where I'm, I'm usually like the last person that they come to, and I'm sure you as well, which by the way, I love functional medicine. I, I send people to functional medicine doctors all the time. Like, it's so powerful and I think that it really does [00:08:00] utilize like the, the aspect of testing that's a little more modern with with a more holistic kind of root cause perspective.
And I just think that it really looks under the hood a lot more. When you were talking about precision, is that what you meant, like functional testing?
Jennifer: Yeah. Sort of get more, you know, like you'd say modern. A lot of these tests that are considered new are actually, you know, they've been around for 10 years. They have, like, so much data and research backing them up, but that's like, can, can sometimes feel new to the, the traditional medical model, which
Michelle: I'm comparing it to like the 300-- 3,000-year-old
Jennifer: Oh, Chinese medicine. Yes. No, it's definitely new for that. But even like within, you know, a lot of functional medicine and sort of precision medicine are just more able, more nimble and able to adopt new technologies that come out and new testing and see data and sort of adopt it more quickly than I think sometimes than the traditional medicine model.
But definitely definitely there's so much wisdom [00:09:00] in, you know, the, the thousands-year-old Chinese medicine model too, that I love to try to learn about and incorporate too.
Michelle: Yeah, there's definitely-- I mean, we, we look at it in one way, and then there's the mainstream model, which looks at like blood markers, but more-- It doesn't look as nuanced as, as functional medicine. So that's where I, I think like it's a type of testing that I would say is much more aligned with really the older medicine as well, because you're, you're able to detect very very subtle things.
Like with us in Chinese medicine, we're able to detect blood deficiency before it becomes anemia and is obvious for the mainstream. But functional testing is able to detect things also before it goes to the mainstream labs or types of labs that are more available and that insurance covers and is more like, you know, available to the mass public.
But functional medicine I think is just incredibly useful and powerful. And even for me as much as we utilize our [00:10:00] own diagnostic skills, if you start to get into the functional testing, I'm able to detail my supplements a lot more, and it just, it, it changes the whole trajectory of the, of the protocol.
Jennifer: It seems like there would be a really great marriage between what you do and, you know, the functional medicine approach
Michelle: Oh, yeah. And, and sometimes, like I said, you know, in certain cases, I actually send them to-- I'll find a functional medicine doctor that can go even more deep because that's what they do all the time. Like, I'll dabble and there's definitely like overlap, but I think that, you know, there's definitely so much benefit, especially with gut health.
I think that that's something that is huge, and I'm sure, like, that's probably the majority of what you look at
Jennifer: Yeah. Yeah, it's, it's really has an impact on all the other parts of our, our body and our system. So, you know, optimizing your gut health, even if you're having some issue that seems totally unrelated, some skin issue, some, you [00:11:00] know, fatigue or brain fog or really, you know, so many of the other symptoms that show up in our, across our whole body can, can be improved with optimizing your gut health and often are start from some dysfunction there.
So
doing circles tests, like looking at your microbiome, looking at the products that the postbiotic products that your body's making. Are you making enough of those? Looking to see if your, you know, the tight junctions in your gut are holding tight and able to keep out the toxins and, you know, keep in the nutrients, 'cause I think also that's like a you know, you can eat a very nutrient-rich diet and take all the right supplements, but if your, you know, gut is not, the gut barrier lining is not strong and healthy, then you're not able to absorb the nutrients that you're being exposed to.
So, and that's with fertility so important, looking, ma- making sure you have all of your nutrient levels optimized and you could be doing all the right things, but if that's not, that key isn't in place too, then it's not gonna work
Michelle: Absolutely. [00:12:00] I mean, that's like a, it's like such a big thing too, like the big myth of you know, "Oh, my digestion's fine. I go to the bathroom every day. It's firm, it's not loose." And I'm like, well, you know, there's more, way more,
Jennifer: more to the story for sure.
Michelle: And so let's talk about that actually. I mean, you had mentioned a couple of things, and I th- I think that another thing that's really fascinating and interesting is you know, the link between autoimmune conditions and gut health, and even endometriosis.
It's almost like directly, like there's always some kind of gut component to it, and it's this inflammatory process where it's one thing to have inflammation. It's almost like stress. Stress is okay, but chronic stress is not okay. Inflammation is actually a very natural part of our body, but chronic inflammation is where we start to bump into issues, and then it, it, it really impacts the energy with which our body's able to rebuild.
Jennifer: Yeah. That's so true. Yeah, and I think when we look at, again, like [00:13:00] with functional medicine, we can go deep, dig down to look at the different inflammatory markers, the different parts of your gut that are, you know, like, see where, what is going wrong where, and be able to determine the, if inflammation is starting there and then work on that level to try to quell it.
But you're absolutely right that chronic inflammation is really the driver behind sort of most of the m- most of the diseases that we, we know of and think about
Michelle: And so do you, do you find patterns usually with like autoimmune conditions and in the testing? Like with gut testing I'm sure. But like, uh, what are some of the things that you'll see? I mean, I know that every person's unique, but there are definitely some patterns or like links with certain conditions.
Jennifer: Yeah. So a lot of times with autoimmune conditions, we see signs of what we call sort of leaky gut, which just means that the integrity of the intestinal lining is not strong and [00:14:00] tight. So normally, the cells that line your intestines have, you know, these junctions that are-- the cells all line up very nice and tight, and they have these transport molecules that let certain, certain things in, certain things out, and when they get inflamed, it just kind of becomes loose, and things can get in and out that are not supposed to be crossing back and forth.
But, so for certain conditions for a lot of times, pat-patterns emerge for things that are autoimmune at, at a, ha- you know, have an autoimmune background. So things like LPS, which is a lipopolysaccharide, you can see that become elevated. And so there's a certain pattern of testing that we see that even though it could be a completely, like you said, endometriosis or hy- Hashimoto's thyroiditis or different autoimmune conditions that still have that autoimmune component, and often behind that a- you know, the driver behind the autoimmune component is problems with those tight junctions.
Michelle: And what usually causes that? Just inflammatory foods, [00:15:00] processed foods maybe additives that they put into like thickeners, 'cause I know that that can impact the microbiome
Jennifer: So that's kind of the million-dollar question, and the answer is that why it's hard to answer is 'cause there isn't just one cause, and two people could be sort of submitted to the same, you know, assaults, like the same, you know, level of ultra-processed food and, like, one person might be fine, but the other person, for all the other reasons that we maybe can't exactly define, might be that that might just be too much for their system.
But you're exactly right, that it's-- So it's basically a combination of factors, and so when we're treating it too, we don't always know exactly which thing, but we have to kind of pull back everything and then, you know, add things, you know, add things back one at a time and see. But basically,
Michelle: It's like elimination diet or
Jennifer: Yeah. Elimination diet of, like... And pull back as much of the toxins and the exposures, and then let everything heal and see if you can handle things little by little. But yeah, definitely [00:16:00] ultra-processed foods are a big culprit. Yeah, and like you said, the emulsifiers in foods. And even sometimes, you know, natural foods have these emulsifiers that basically turn into, like, a soapy, sort of sudsy consistency in your gut and are very damaging to the gut lining.
And and then once you s- you know, some-- Once you kind of get a little bit of inflammation, foods, there's a lot of foods that are, that have the opportunity to be more inflammatory, and they aren't in every single person, but are often inflammatory, and especially if you already have a little bit of dysfunction going on.
So things like dairy and gluten and eggs and peanuts, and these are foods that can be healthy and fine and part of your diet, but for a lot of people, they can cause inflammation. They're sort of prone to being inflammatory foods and are harder t- for our bodies to digest. And then even other foods like broccoli or, you know, things that are clearly just health foods, it can be [00:17:00] in-inflammatory, and there's testing we can do with, like, food sensitivity testing that looks for looks at these different foods and sees if inflammation is being caused by that food.
And if you're having inflammation to even, like, healthy foods, eliminating those for a while and allowing everything to heal and then kinda slowly adding them back can be really
Michelle: Yeah, I've heard a lot about the carnivore diet. Not for full term 'cause you, of course, you need vi- variation, but even for short term, it can really, like, lower the inflammatory markers for people who are autoimmune, like have autoimmune conditions
Jennifer: Yeah, there's that. I think that is one option. There's other sort of anti-inflammatory autoimmune diets that really take away any of those foods that are known to be that to cause inflammation sort of in you know, are more commonly causes of inflammation, and then just really simplify. I think one thing to keep in mind, which you mentioned too, is that a lot of times those diets are [00:18:00] not meant to be forever.
You know, they are good to use for a while and, you know, some people get stuck in this, like, elimination diet restrictive phase, and that can be problematic too, 'cause, you know, they feel a little better when they're really restricting all these different foods. But then, you know, and it's hard to eat, you know, add back.
But it is important, you know, for a lot of people, if you can, to try to rebuild the, the integrity of the gut lining and then add back the healthy foods as you, you know, are feeling better.
Michelle: Yeah, and it makes sense. It's, it's like anything. It's like, if your skin's like really sensitive, you take a break from whatever you're using, but then you can reapply a product that normally you're fine with, but when it's really super inflamed and sensitive, you shouldn't be putting on there. So it's kind of similar.
I-- That's just how I imagine it with the gut. It's like it's temporarily allow yourself to just kind of rebuild from scratch and then allow it to come back. And it's kind of similar... I mean, there's so many fad [00:19:00] diets that are sort of a one-size-fits-all, and you had mentioned everybody responds differently to everything.
So I think that could be also like a slippery slope. You know, people are like intermittent fasting, ketogenic diet. For some people, that might work for a little bit. Or even, you know, I like to do kind of like the late-night fasting rather than skipping breakfast. What are your thoughts about like timing of, of eating or the importance of that?
Jennifer: Yeah. I think that you know, they call like intermittent fasting or time restricted eating, I think that there's been a lot of data that supports at least a 12-hour window. So if you can have a 12-hour window of fasting, so not eating for 12 hours, there was like a Norwe- a Finnish study that showed decreased risk of breast cancer, of y- basically all-cause mortality, that there's, you know, a huge benefit to having that 12-hour window.
And it seems like the, you know, there was-- there's other studies that seem, you know, say up to 14 to [00:20:00] 16 hours is kind of ideal. But for sure we see that at least the, the threshold for getting a, a big, big benefit is 12 hours. And I, I think that's something that pretty much everyone should do. I mean, there's
Michelle: Yeah, and it's not
Jennifer: really trying to like build muscle and you're a teenager and you know, okay, maybe it's different. But generally for an adult population, the 12-hour window of a fast is is great. And that's, you know, not that unusual. Most people mi- a lot of people might just do that naturally on their own.
But basically, let's say you eat dinner by, you know, by done by 7:00, eating dinner, and then don't have breakfast till 7:00. So that's a very reasonable amount of time, and it just means like, don't snack after dinner and don't, I think that's a fair minimum that I just definitely recommend.
There's great data to back it up. And then a longer fast, I think depends. Fourteen to 16 hours you know, can be helpful too in some cases. And definitely it depends on what your goal is. Like if you're just looking at sort of longevity markers and what we call autophagy, [00:21:00] which is your body's cellular cleanup system, that starts to activate with longer fasts.
So that's great if that's the goal you're tr- sort of looking at. But what doesn't happen during that cleanup phase is like a more building phase. So if you're like trying to do fertility protocols where you're wanting to like, you know, build a really hospitable environment for a implantation, then maybe you don't want these longer fasts.
So it, you know, it depends on what your current, current goal is. But for sure, a 12-hour fast, you know, I think is very helpful, and that allows your body to have enough time to get into that rest and digest phase and to to break, you know, to have a rest from that, yeah, the 12-hour fast is definitely a,
Michelle: Yeah, and it, definitely, I think at least three hours before you go to sleep really does make a difference also on the quality of sleep you have. And then I was, I heard recently that when you have melatonin... Well, we always used to say this with, Ayurvedic medicine, when the sun's strongest, that's the best time to eat.
It's when your agni, the digestive fire, is increased. But [00:22:00] now research is coming out that when melatonin comes out or at night when the light goes down and it's dark, of course, we have a melatonin rise, and when that happens, there's more of a tendency of insulin resistance or like the insulin goes low, so it's not a great time to eat.
And, you know, thousands of years ago they've been saying that just because of the sun, because the sun reflects our own yang digestive fire, where we're able to like burn it off, and that... So yeah, that's one way to describe it. And now like, it's interesting how research is kind of like saying the same thing and it's
Jennifer: love when research kind of catches up to what, you know, people have known just living on this earth and being part of nature and being part of our natural rhythms, and then we're finally able to explain it by science, and we're like, "Oh, now it's true."
Michelle: And then also the whole circadian rhythm, that I find fascinating
Jennifer: Yeah. And that kind of links in and is so important that we're learning more and more how important light is for our cells for, you know, now all these devices are [00:23:00] popular red light masks and, and we understand how light is directly impacting our cellular processes and, and for our circadian rhythms that, like, the low-level light in the morning where the sun is low on the horizon and the wavelengths are longer, that light when it goes into your eyes, goes to the part of your brain that, you know, releases melatonin and helps get the melatonin to rise at night, and then helps you with your cortisol curve and helps that be, you know, a gentle rise in the morning and slow sort of, slowly going down in the afternoon and versus this steep rise and fall.
And it's just, yeah, it's interesting, like you said, how the sunlight is so directly and light in general impacts our cells.
Michelle: Yeah, and it's interesting 'cause, um, you know, we're taught to think that cortisol is bad, but it's actually great in the morning. We want it high in the morning.
Jennifer: One thing just in backs of the light, I was recently read this was reading about how the LED lights that we now [00:24:00] have in a lot of buildings are-- They were s- we sort of replaced the older incandescent bulbs, like you think of like the old light bulbs, with these LED lights because they're more energy efficient.
So like, you know, 20- over the last 20 years, there's been a big push to replace them. They last longer and they're more energy efficient, but they don't have the full spectrum of light, of wavelength of light as the, you know, as the sun. And even an incandescent light bulb is not gonna be the same, obviously, as the sun and that type of light, but it's still at least a full spectrum light wavelength in that our cells are really, you know, the mitochondrial health and the parts of our cells that require these different light wavelengths are really you know, being d- sort of it's detrimental to our health to be in buildings all day long with LED lights.
Michelle: Yeah, it's pretty crazy. And also even just like the artificial light at night. But yeah, that's like this new thing that they're starting to realize, and who knows? I mean, you know, fertility's been declining. We don't know. Is it that or, you know, it's just [00:25:00] the, the million dollar question, like you said, 'cause there's so many different aspects.
But I think what it really comes down to is really coming back to nature
Jennifer: Yeah. Yeah, and when you mentioned the sort of fertility declining and all the different factors,I think that one thing when people are trying to optimize fertility that you can recommend is, you know, if we don't know what's, you know, why, try to peel away all the, all the layers that you can that are-- could be impacting you.
So, you know, again, like with the ultra-processed foods, trying to get the toxins out of your environment, like detoxing your environment, thinking of toxins. Well, how are you getting the toxins into your body and like the air you breathe. So if you, you know, need to either open your windows at night or use an air purifier what we put on our skin, which absorbs toxins, you know, the cleaning, the cleaning supplies and the, the-- that's in our environment.
And then a huge one is, you know, what we're ingesting and eating. So if you, you know, are trying to avoid the pesticides and herbicides and the microplastics, [00:26:00] which get into our body a lot of times because of ingesting them. So trying to like eliminate the ways that you're getting added microplastics like plastic water bottles, plastic cutting boards, you know, eating, heating your food in plastic containers, because we definitely know all of those things are impacting fertility too.
Like they did a study looking at found microplastics in ovaries and testicles
Michelle: I know.
Jennifer: And and then those microplastics aren't just sitting there. They're leaching, you know, BPAs and chemicals right into the tissue that is, you know, so hormone
Michelle: So scary. It really is. Are there supplements? I know that there's some for microplastics
Jennifer: Yeah. So one of the best things for getting rid of microplastics is actually eating fiber. So fiber can help bind up the microplastics in your intestines and help you eliminate them versus having them be absorbed. And the, they did, recently did a study that the type of fiber is called beta glucan that's [00:27:00] in oats is related to that.
But all fiber is good at binding that. Other things that can help support your body's detox system, other supplements like NAC, which is N-acetyl cysteine, which helps you-- helps your liver. It's kind of the precursor to glutathione and the master kind of detox molecule in your body. So that is really helpful in detoxing, you know, chemicals out of your system.
Sauna and sweating is, Or any type of sweating, so from exercise, from sauna. Sweating is a great way to detox chemicals out of your system. And then also the sauna raises your, you know, body temperature and initiates some cascades of, sort of biochemical cascades that help you detox as well.
Michelle: Amazing. And then I know that you also work with longevity, which we were talking about before, is so important for fertility 'cause what we're always working on, regardless if I have somebody who's in their early 30s or mid-40s to late [00:28:00] 40s, you know, I still work on egg quality regardless and sperm quality.
So all of those things really it comes down to longevity. It's everything that helps longevity helps your reproductive health really.
Jennifer: Yes. Yeah. And it's a lot of times I think especially in our day and age, longevity, like right now, is like such a buzzword, and people think of it as being like these fancy devices and, you know, like that is inaccessible or like only for, you know, wealthy people that are like getting facelifts and... But it's like longevity medicine, the basis of it is really accessible to everybody, and it's the things like eating a whole foods diet, you know, drinking enough clean water that's, you know, filtered water, moving your body every single day, you know, getting good quality and quantity of sleep.
And then a huge one that we don't think of as our like health is our emotional health and
Michelle: Yes.
Jennifer: you know, your emotional health is so important as far as, like you said, stress reduction. And [00:29:00] I always like to cite this study that I read at, that they did at Harvard that looked at all the determinants of health and longevity and things like the food you're eating, your socioeconomic status.
They, you know, they were thinking those would be the two that would be most strongly linked with longevity. That was kind of when they went into the study. But actually, the thing they found that was the most strongly connected was social connections. So people, like it didn't matter, like it's... That was more strongly connected than even like movement and healthy diet, which we know is hugely important.
But that people who had strong social connections was linked with, you know, the, with longevity. So I think it's important not just, you know, social connections within your family obviously is very important, but also within your broader community.
Michelle: Yeah
Jennifer: It's... Yeah, I think we sort of underestimate the importance of that in our societies where we're kind of all clustered away doing our own thing.
Michelle: Oh, yeah, big time. I, I think that that is actually really powerful. There's nothing like it. I, I think that [00:30:00] we, we need each other. We need people. And and a lot of people actually, there was a, a lot of benefits and there were some studies that showed that group therapy really helped improve chances of conception.
I believe it was through IVF, so it helps fertility as well. I mean, I'm sure it helps everything. If it helps overall health and longevity, I'm sure it helps everything.
Jennifer: Yeah. Yeah. And it's one of those ways maybe we don't exactly know how to measure and quantify just yet, like, you know, some of these things that we've known in tradit- you know, like, you know, in traditional Chinese medicine or we, we sort of inherently know in our souls that it's true. I think maybe we don't know how to quantify that in science terms yet, but it's for sure very important.
Michelle: Yeah, for sure. Anything else come to mind as far as things to consider for longevity, like, really making your cells younger, perhaps even working on mitochondria? I know you, you had mentioned also the red light therapy
Jennifer: Yeah. Well, one [00:31:00] key thing for sort of cellular health, longevity for egg quality, sperm quality, is maintaining a stable blood sugar and maintaining your metabolic health. And that, you know, as we age sort of naturally is harder to maintain and is so important for fertility when you're younger too.
And what I mean by that is, you know, maintaining sort of a stable blood sugar and not an elevated blood sugar. And so doing that with... There's definitely you know, just basically eating a sort of the right foods of protein and fiber and whole foods, and then moving your body, especially after you eat, you can...
You know, your muscles then take up the glucose you're eating versus letting it get stored as fat. But maintaining a healthy metabolism and stable blood sugar is so, so important.
Michelle: Yeah, it's hugely important for inflammation as well. And I know that I actually was-- I saw, I heard about this and then I looked into it, but I thought it was really fascinating. There was a guy I guess that that's what he [00:32:00] does. It's like, he's like an influencer and he might have been a doctor, I don't remember, but I just saw the, like, Facebook Reel.
I mean, sorry, Instagram Reel. And he had checked his blood sugar, like, and tested out this theory of cooking rice, just regular rice with with regular oil versus coconut oil, and then free-- putting it in the fridge and then reheating it afterwards. So there's a process of... that happens when you cook it in coconut oil and then you freeze it or, or put it in the fridge and then rewarm it.
It actually lowers the glycemic index. And he tested it and he really did see a decrease of blood sugar
Jennifer: Yeah. So I think what happens there is like the, the resistant starch gets formed, which resistant starch is, you know, with carbohydrates, there's starch in them, and then resistant starch means it's like the bonds in the carbohydrates are harder [00:33:00] to break down, so
Michelle: Which is great for your gut health.
Jennifer: Yeah, so it stays in your gut longer, feeds your microbiome, and is slower to be digested, so it doesn't-- as soon as you eat it, it doesn't cause this big blood sugar spike.
But there is, you know, a whole theory, or not theory, we sort of now know that if you heat food, so the same with, you know, potatoes or pasta a lot of those starchy foods, and rice too, if you heat it and cook it, and then cool it off, as it cools, those resistant starches form. So you could cool it off, put it in the fridge, and then get it back out and reheat it the next day.
When you reheat it, usually the, those bonds don't get broken, and the resistant starch stays in the food. So it's a great way to be able to eat, more of those, carbohydrate-rich foods, which have other benefits. There are certainly benefits. we definitely need carbs. Just not too many all at once.
But also, like with potatoes, they have, you know, potassium and vitamins in them that we, you know, need. So it's a great way to be able to eat more of those carbohydrate-rich foods without [00:34:00] as much of a blood sugar spike. And it-- Like you saw, you know, I,
Michelle: I thought that was very interesting.
Jennifer: similar, but it really does blunt that glucose curve.
I actually wore one of those continuous glucose monitors for a while and, like, tested out different things
Michelle: you did? That's
Jennifer: did my own little test
Michelle: what did you find?
Jennifer: Yeah, I found the things that, you know, really did move the needle as far as helping stabilize the blood sugar is moving your body after you eat, so like a 10-minute walk after you eat.
You know, I would start to see my blood sugar rising after eating, you know, something more carb-rich, and then you start walking, and it immediately sort of dips back down. The other thing that does seem to work is the order in which you eat your food. So if you start your meal with something that has more fiber, so like a vegetable first can sort of get your stomach digesting and coating your stomach in a way that once the carbohydrate hits it, it's you know, dissolves more slowly and causes a more gentle blood sugar rise.
So yeah, the order of the food and vegetables first. Also apple [00:35:00] cider vinegar before you eat at the start of a meal can be really helpful too. And again,
Michelle: Diluted.
Jennifer: it is at the-
Michelle: hurt my teeth.
Jennifer: Oh, yeah, you
Michelle: so so I always say dilute that, but
Jennifer: Yeah. the the optimal thing is, like, have a salad, so you have your vegetables and some vinegar dressing.
I saw that too. I did a little test for myself doing-- eating something carbs and then eating it with the apple cider vinegar first. And that worked. Yeah. But I think, you know, then you have to have that with you. I think the ones I like the best are things you could do anywhere, anytime, which is the order in which you eat your food and moving your body after you eat, I think are two key sort of hacks
Michelle: Oh yeah, for sure. And I, I think that the whole idea of like having fiber with the carb or before the carb, it kind of goes into why it's better to eat the fruit than have the juice 'cause then you're gonna get direct sugar right into your bloodstream
Jennifer: Yeah, you miss out on all the sort of the other, the healthy [00:36:00] parts of the fruit with just the, yeah, just the sugary fructose
Michelle: Yeah. It's so interesting. I, I just think that food is so interesting. Food's amazing. It it's incredible how impactful it is, and I love the fact that you realize that as a doctor, the importance of knowing that for your patients. I think it should become mainstream. I'm surprised it hasn't yet.
I mean, it, to me, it's just so crazy because it's so impactful and it's so important
Jennifer: Yeah, that's kind of part of my mission is to like spread the word that like this doesn't have to be some different kind of medicine that's you know, holistic or like this is just makes sense. This is just, you know, common sense and this should be part of, this should just be medicine. Like, you know, I think this traditional, can be part of traditional medicine, be incorporated into what doctors learn in medical school and, I think it, it's, it wouldn't require that big of a shift to have this happen and I'm hoping that we're sort of getting to that point that more and more [00:37:00] people are becoming aware and wanting to learn these things and, I'm hoping that there's a society-wide sort of cultural shift happening that will hopefully allow this to become, become more of, taught in medical school and have the, be able to be at least in the preventative medicine realm, like where family medicine and other doctors who deal with chronic disease, can be taught these principles and just incorporate them into what their, their guidance is with their patients.
Michelle: I think, I think so because I, if you think about it, it's almost like a bottom up now because the people are getting, I guess, the good aspect of social media. Now obviously there's a good and bad of everything, but the good aspect of it is that people are starting to learn a lot. I mean, they're getting educated about what to eat and how to eat it, and like really, you know, there's people like you going online and explaining things to people that they probably haven't heard of with their primary care physician.
So [00:38:00] what I see happening is over time, people asking the questions and then that sort of influencing the practitioner to start to learn more.
Jennifer: Yeah, that definitely happened back when I was at UCLA and doing just sort of, you know, just basic primary care. Sometimes patients would come in and, you know, sometimes they ask you, you know, "I've Googled this and I think I, you know, have cancer and I'm dying," when they have, like, a cold. And, you know, they definitely come in with those sorts of ideas.
But, whenever patients have any ideas about what's going on them, with them, I always like to listen because people are... do know, you know, they're intuitive about their own body.
Michelle: I love that you say that. I, I th- I wish all
Jennifer: yeah.
Michelle: thought that way.
Jennifer: No, I, but I always... You know, maybe they don't know the exact, you know, medical thing that's the reason, but, like, if they're saying, "No, this feels really severe.
This doesn't just feel like a..." you know, listen to that 'cause there's often clues. But also when patients would bring in things that they read or learned about that I hadn't learned about, I [00:39:00] think sometimes for doctors it can be intimidating because you're like, "Well, if, my gosh, if that's such, like, a revolutionary thing, you'd think I would've heard about it, so it must not be true."
Or, you know, I think there's the temptation and sometimes, you know, doctors get intimidated and are like, "No, that's, you know, that doesn't sound right. I don't, I don't know about it, so it's not... No, no, no." But I think to be able to learn from y- your patients, say, "Oh, wow, that, you know, sounds interesting. I haven't heard about...
Let me, let me look into that and I'll get back to you," or, "Let me learn about that." So I do think you know, it's can be a two bidirectional flow of information.
Michelle: Absolutely. Well, this is awesome. I loved our conversation. This is so important. I think it's really important for people to understand. I love picking the brains of doctors anyway, just because there's always things that I learn, even though I kinda do my research, but I learn so much every time I talk to people like like you professionals, and just to...
Because there's so many different perspectives of the same thing, and I think that we all come down to the same [00:40:00] conclusion, is that really it's all about coming back to nature, eating, like, food grown from nature, whole foods the way it was meant to and intended for our bodies and, and also listening to the intelligence of our bodies and what's underlying, you know, the root causes.
I think that that's something that-- It's a thread that goes between functional medicine traditional Chinese medicine, naturopathic medicine. It's really looking... And even homeopathic they do it a little differently, but it's all about really coming down to the root, because if you don't get the root, the weeds are gonna keep growing.
Jennifer: Yep. Yeah.
Michelle: So if people are interested and wanna find out more about you, how can they find you?
Jennifer: So they can find me on social media platform. So Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube is at JenniferTimmonsMD. Or I also-- So I put out a lot of, you know, this sort of content there on my social media. And then also have a website that's Jennifer [00:41:00] Timmons... Or sorry, timmonswellnessmd.com. And also have, you know, blog posts that I put on there, more educational content.
I also have a page of products that I recommend and like that are not for sale from there, but just to see them, see, you know, clean, non-toxic products and things like that. So, and also there's a way to request to, a membership sort of request to work with me if you're interested in that.
Michelle: Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Dr. Timmons. It was such a great pleasure speaking to you today
Jennifer: Yes. Thank you so much
Speaker 2: So that concludes today's episode. You can find all of the links mentioned on the episode notes. If you're enjoying these episodes, please take a moment to share and leave a review. Reviews mean everything to podcasters, and I really enjoy hearing from my listeners. You can find me on my website at www.michelleorbitz.com.
You could also reach out to me on Instagram, and I [00:42:00] love getting DMs from my listeners. My handle is @thewholesomelotusfertility. I thank you so much for tuning in today, and I hope you have a beautiful [00:43:00] day.