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What if the most important step you could take for your child’s future health happened before pregnancy even began?
Today’s generations are facing unprecedented health challenges: rising rates of infertility, chronic disease, allergies, asthma, neurodevelopmental conditions, and metabolic issues are becoming alarmingly common in children. But science is revealing something empowering: you have more influence than you realize.
By addressing key areas like nutrition, detoxification, hormone balance, emotional health, and metabolic resilience before conception, you lay the foundation for:
Your future baby’s health doesn’t start with the first heartbeat, it starts with the health of the egg, the sperm, and the body they come from.
This is called Preconception health – the state of your body, mind, and environment before conception – plays a profound role in not only fertility outcomes, but also in the lifelong health of your future child.
Preconception is your window of opportunity to create the strongest possible start. And functional medicine gives you the tools to make it happen – naturally, proactively, and powerfully.
Preconception health refers to the health of both parents during the months, and ideally years, leading up to conception.
While prenatal care focuses on supporting the mother and developing baby during pregnancy, preconception care focuses on optimizing the health of the egg, sperm, and the entire body before pregnancy even begins.
It’s about creating the strongest biological environment possible for:
Preconception health includes a wide range of areas, including:
A healthy pregnancy doesn’t begin the day you see a positive test – it begins months before, with the choices and foundations you build today.
Whether you’re planning to conceive naturally, considering assisted reproduction, or simply want to support your body for the future, preconception health is your starting point.
It’s never too early – or too late – to optimize your body’s readiness for the incredible journey ahead.
You’ve likely heard advice about prenatal care, but what happens before pregnancy matters just as much, if not more.
The weeks, months, and even years leading up to conception set the biological blueprint for your baby’s growth, development, and lifelong health.
Emerging research shows that factors like nutrient status, toxin exposure, blood sugar balance, hormone health, gut microbiome diversity, and emotional well-being in both parents can profoundly shape:
Studies in epigenetics reveal that parental health at the time of conception can influence gene expression in their children impacting resilience, metabolism, immunity, and cognitive development for life.
In today’s modern world, preconception health matters more than ever. Factors like nutrient-depleted diets, chronic stress, environmental toxins, and disrupted gut health can silently impact fertility, conception outcomes, and your child’s future health potential.
But the good news is this: By optimizing your health before you conceive, you can dramatically shift the odds not just for conception, but for creating a vibrant, thriving next generation.
This is the power of preconception care. It’s about giving your future child the healthiest foundation possible and giving yourself the healthiest start to parenthood.
Most traditional healthcare systems focus heavily on pregnancy care but offer little to no guidance about optimizing health before conception.
You might be told to start a prenatal vitamin, avoid certain foods, or simply “try for a year” before seeking further help if conception doesn’t happen naturally. But this limited approach misses a crucial opportunity.
The truth is: Your body’s readiness for pregnancy is built long before conception happens.
Subtle nutrient deficiencies, toxin exposures, hormonal imbalances, gut dysfunction, and metabolic issues can quietly undermine fertility and impact early development, often long before conventional testing would detect a problem.
Quick Insight: Research shows that many fertility challenges and pregnancy complications have roots in imbalances that begin months or even years before conception.
This “health gap” leaves many hopeful parents navigating uncertainty alone, feeling like they’re doing everything right, yet still struggling with fertility, miscarriage, or unexplained issues.
Functional medicine steps in to close this gap. It offers a proactive, personalized, root-cause approach to optimize your health before conception, not just wait for problems to arise.
You deserve more than “hope for the best.” You deserve a clear, empowered path to building the healthiest possible beginning for you and your future family.
In functional medicine, we see preconception as a unique opportunity not just to improve fertility outcomes, but to profoundly shape the lifelong health of your future child.
Instead of offering generic advice or waiting for problems to arise, functional medicine takes a proactive, personalized approach to optimizing preconception health at every level.
Functional medicine asks:
Through advanced functional testing and comprehensive health assessments, we explore:
With this information, we create a personalized preconception optimization plan that addresses your unique needs and goals, supporting your body’s natural fertility, strengthening your future pregnancy, and optimizing your baby’s genetic expression and lifelong health potential.
Functional medicine gives you the tools to shift from uncertainty to clarity, from passivity to empowerment, and from hoping for health to actively building it.
For nearly two decades, Dr. Ann Shippy has guided individuals and couples on their journeys to parenthood, developing a highly effective, science-driven preconception protocol along the way.
What sets Dr. Shippy’s methodology apart is the unique combination of:
In addition, Dr. Shippy brings profound expertise in genetics and epigenetics, offering insight into how both inherited traits and environmental influences shape gene expression and long-term health.
Her comprehensive, personalized approach helps uncover and address the often-overlooked root causes that can interfere with conception or influence a child’s lifelong development, empowering families to create the healthiest possible beginning.
Creating the healthiest foundation for conception and pregnancy doesn’t happen through one change or one supplement, it happens by strengthening the systems that influence fertility, cellular health, and early development at every level.
In functional medicine, we focus on six core pillars that work together to optimize preconception health for both parents:
Each of these pillars plays a vital role in preparing your body and your future baby for the healthiest possible start.
Let’s explore each one.
Nutrition is the foundation of fertility, cellular health, and early fetal development.
The nutrients you supply your body before conception don’t just support your own vitality, they help build the tissues, organs, brain, and immune system of your future child.
Optimal nutrition:
However, even with the best intentions, modern diets often fall short. Soil depletion, food processing, digestive issues, and increased nutritional demands during preconception mean strategic supplementation is often necessary to truly optimize levels.
Prioritize a Nutrient-Dense, Anti-Inflammatory Diet: focus on organic vegetables, fruits, high-quality proteins, healthy fats (like wild-caught fish, avocados, and olive oil), and fiber-rich plant foods.
Target Key Fertility Nutrients: support your body with optimal levels of:
Consider Personalized Supplementation: Functional testing can identify specific nutrient gaps, allowing you to customize a preconception supplement plan rather than guessing.
Balance Blood Sugar Through Nutrition: Eating balanced meals that combine protein, healthy fat, and fiber helps stabilize glucose and insulin critical for hormone balance and fertility.
Minimize Inflammatory and Processed Foods: Reduce or eliminate added sugars, refined grains, industrial seed oils, and artificial ingredients that increase inflammation and oxidative stress.
[Practical Tip: Every meal you eat before conception helps build the foundation for your future child’s cells, brain, and immune system. Fuel your body with intention.]
Learn More: Top Supplements for Fertility and Preconception Health
Your body has a remarkable ability to detoxify naturally, but in today’s world, the daily exposure to environmental toxins is higher than ever.
Toxins from food, water, air, personal care products, and household chemicals can quietly accumulate in your body over time, leading to:
Optimizing your body’s natural detoxification systems and reducing your daily toxic burden is essential for creating a healthier environment for conception and development.
Support Your Liver and Detox Pathways: Eat cruciferous vegetables (like broccoli, cauliflower, and kale), garlic, turmeric, and berries to provide nutrients that boost liver detoxification.
Filter Your Water and Air: Use high-quality water filters to eliminate contaminants like heavy metals, pesticides, and chlorine. HEPA air purifiers can reduce mold, dust, and chemical pollutants indoors.
Choose Non-Toxic Personal Care and Household Products: Avoid products containing parabens, phthalates, BPA, synthetic fragrances, and harsh chemical cleaners.
Sweat Regularly: Exercise, sauna therapy, and movement stimulate the lymphatic system and encourage toxin elimination through sweat.
Use Targeted Detox Support If Needed: Functional testing can reveal toxin burdens. When appropriate, supplements like liposomal glutathione, NAC, binders, and herbal detox support can aid the body’s natural elimination processes.
Minimize Plastic Exposure: Store food and beverages in glass or stainless steel containers instead of plastic to reduce exposure to endocrine-disrupting chemicals like BPA.
Learn More: How to Be Safe in a Toxic World
Balanced blood sugar isn’t just important for diabetes prevention, it’s a critical foundation for fertility, hormone health, and healthy pregnancy outcomes.
When blood sugar is unstable with frequent spikes and crashes, it can:
Optimizing blood sugar health before conception supports both fertility and the future metabolic health of your baby.
Balance Your Meals: Combine protein, healthy fat, and fiber at every meal to slow glucose absorption and prevent spikes.
Reduce Added Sugars and Refined Carbohydrates: Limit intake of sugary snacks, beverages, and highly processed foods that disrupt insulin balance.
Prioritize Movement: Daily movement – even simple activities like walking after meals – helps regulate blood sugar and improve insulin sensitivity.
Manage Stress: Chronic stress raises cortisol levels, which can destabilize blood sugar. Incorporate daily stress resilience practices like breathwork or mindfulness.
Support Sleep Quality: Poor sleep disrupts glucose metabolism; aim for consistent, restorative sleep patterns.
Consider Functional Testing: Tests like fasting insulin, HbA1c, and continuous glucose monitoring can reveal hidden blood sugar imbalances early, allowing for targeted interventions.
Learn More: Blood Sugar Balance and Fertility Optimization
Your gut health doesn’t just influence digestion, it plays a critical role in fertility, hormonal balance, immune function, detoxification, and even emotional resilience.
A thriving gut microbiome:
When the gut is imbalanced through dysbiosis, leaky gut, or infections, it can quietly drive hormonal imbalances, inflammation, autoimmune tendencies, and fertility challenges.
Optimizing your gut health before conception is one of the most powerful ways to protect your own well-being and give your future child a stronger, healthier start.
If you’re experiencing any of these signs, your gut ecosystem may need support, but strategic action can restore balance and resilience.
Eat a Fiber-Rich, Plant-Diverse Diet: Feed beneficial bacteria with a wide variety of fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, and legumes.
Incorporate Fermented Foods: Include foods like sauerkraut, kimchi, kefir, yogurt, and miso to introduce beneficial probiotics naturally.
Minimize Gut Disruptors: Limit processed foods, refined sugars, artificial sweeteners, and unnecessary antibiotics that can harm microbial diversity.
Heal and Seal the Gut Lining: Use gut-healing nutrients like L-glutamine, collagen, zinc, and omega-3 fatty acids to support barrier integrity.
Consider Targeted Probiotic Support: Functional testing can help identify the right strains needed to rebalance your microbiome effectively.
Address Hidden Gut Infections or Imbalances: Comprehensive stool testing can reveal dysbiosis, parasites, yeast overgrowth, or inflammation early before symptoms escalate.
[Practical Tip: When you care for your gut before conception, you’re not just improving your digestion, you’re creating a healthier immune blueprint for your future child.]
Learn More: Does the Microbiome Hold the Key to Longevity and Health?
Hormones are the master messengers that orchestrate fertility, conception, implantation, pregnancy, and early development.
Balanced hormones:
When hormones like estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, thyroid hormones, insulin, and cortisol are even slightly out of balance, fertility can be quietly impacted, sometimes without obvious symptoms at first.
Addressing hormonal health before trying to conceive creates a stronger, more stable biological environment for new life to begin and thrive.
Support Blood Sugar Stability: Balanced blood sugar supports healthier insulin, cortisol, estrogen, and progesterone rhythms, protecting ovulation and fertility.
Prioritize Quality Sleep: Deep, restorative sleep is essential for regulating melatonin, growth hormone, thyroid hormones, and adrenal balance.
Manage Chronic Stress: Chronic cortisol elevation disrupts reproductive hormone balance; daily stress resilience practices are critical for preconception success.
Nourish Hormone Production: Fuel your body with healthy fats, sufficient protein, antioxidants, B vitamins, magnesium, and zinc to support hormone synthesis and detoxification.
Minimize Endocrine Disruptor Exposure: Reduce exposure to BPA, phthalates, parabens, and other hormone-mimicking chemicals found in plastics, personal care products, and processed foods.
Consider Functional Hormone Testing:
Personalized testing can uncover subtle thyroid dysfunction, adrenal dysregulation, or sex hormone imbalances early, allowing for targeted support.
Your emotional state is not separate from your physical fertility, it’s intimately connected.
Chronic stress, unresolved emotional trauma, and persistent mental strain can:
Emotional health isn’t just about feeling better, it’s about creating a physiological environment where conception, pregnancy, and early development can unfold optimally.
Cultivate Daily Mindfulness Practices: Incorporate meditation, breathwork, or gratitude journaling to calm the nervous system and reframe stress responses.
Strengthen Emotional Support Networks: Nurture relationships that offer true emotional connection, validation, and encouragement.
Practice Nervous System Regulation Techniques: Use tools like Heart Rate Variability (HRV) training, yoga, gentle movement, or somatic therapies to build adaptability and resilience.
Protect Your Mental Energy: Set healthy boundaries around news consumption, social media, work stress, and emotional energy drains.
Address Deeper Emotional Patterns if Needed: Therapy, coaching, or emerging modalities like neurofeedback or trauma-informed care can help resolve old emotional wounds that may impact biological health.
Prioritize Rest and Joy: Create space for pleasure, creativity, laughter, and restoration in your daily life; all essential for healing and thriving at a cellular level.
Learn More: How to Reduce the Effects of Stress on Health and Biological Age
When it comes to preconception health, much of the conversation traditionally centers on women. But science is clear: Men’s health matters just as much.
The quality of a father’s sperm, including its DNA integrity, mitochondrial health, and epigenetic markers, plays a critical role in:
Sperm health is highly sensitive to environmental factors, but it’s also highly modifiable. Because sperm regenerates approximately every 72–90 days, strategic changes made even a few months before conception can have a powerful impact.
Prioritize Nutrient-Dense Eating: Focus on foods rich in antioxidants (like vitamins C and E, selenium, and zinc) to protect sperm DNA and mitochondrial health.
Support Detoxification: Minimize exposure to plastics, pesticides, heavy metals, and endocrine-disrupting chemicals. Support liver function with cruciferous vegetables and consider targeted detoxification protocols if needed.
Balance Blood Sugar and Metabolism: Stabilize blood sugar through balanced meals and regular movement to support hormonal health and sperm quality.
Manage Stress and Sleep: Chronic stress and poor sleep both impair testosterone production and sperm quality. Prioritize restorative sleep and daily resilience practices.
Limit Alcohol, Tobacco, and Recreational Drugs: These substances are directly toxic to sperm health and genetic integrity.
Consider Targeted Supplementation: Coenzyme Q10, carnitine, omega-3 fatty acids, and specific antioxidants may support mitochondrial function and sperm motility.
You aren’t just passing on your genes to your future child, you’re passing on how those genes are expressed.
Epigenetics is the science of how lifestyle factors like nutrition, stress, toxin exposure, sleep, emotional well-being, and environment influence which genes are “turned on” or “turned off.”
This means that your choices before conception can have profound, lasting effects on your child’s:
The preconception window, the time when eggs and sperm are maturing and when your body is preparing for conception, is a powerful opportunity to influence your baby’s genetic environment for the better.
By optimizing your health and environment before conception, you can:
You’re not just creating life; you’re shaping a legacy.
Every positive choice you make today helps write a healthier story for your child’s future.
Taking control of your preconception health doesn’t have to feel overwhelming. Small, consistent steps add up to powerful transformations for you, and for the future life you’re preparing to create.
Here’s how to begin:
Don’t wait for fertility struggles or health issues to arise. View preconception as an active investment in your vitality, your fertility, and your future family’s well-being.
Assess how you’re currently supporting:
Even small improvements across these areas create significant momentum.
No two bodies – or journeys – are the same. Advanced functional testing can uncover hidden imbalances, deficiencies, or early warning signs that allow for targeted, personalized strategies.
Based on your test results and goals, design a plan that integrates:
Work with a practitioner trained in functional preconception care to create a roadmap that fits your unique needs and life circumstances.
Preconception optimization isn’t about perfection, it’s about creating consistent biological momentum toward health, resilience, and readiness for new life.
Every healthy meal, every toxin avoided, every stress recovery practice, every night of restorative sleep builds a stronger foundation for the future.
Practical Tip: The most powerful gift you can give your future child is the gift of a healthy start. And that journey begins with the choices you make today.
Ideally, 6 to 12 months before trying to conceive. This gives your body time to optimize nutrient levels, balance hormones, improve detoxification, and positively influence egg and sperm quality. But it’s never too late, meaningful improvements can happen in just a few months.
Absolutely. Optimizing your health before IVF, IUI, or other fertility treatments can improve egg quality, sperm quality, implantation success, pregnancy health, and even the health outcomes for your future child.
Yes! Men’s nutrient status, toxin exposure, and lifestyle choices significantly influence sperm health, conception success, and the future child’s genetic expression. Both partners contribute 50% of the DNA and 100% of the environment for early development.
Start by addressing the core pillars:
Personalized testing can reveal where you’ll benefit most.
Preconception optimization is even more important. Functional medicine focuses on improving your underlying health, not just managing symptoms, to give you the best chance of conception success and a healthier pregnancy.
No. Optimizing your health now benefits you immediately by boosting energy, mental clarity, hormone balance, resilience, and overall vitality. And when the time is right, your body will be ready to support new life from a position of strength.
If you’re ready to move beyond just advice and create a personalized plan for vibrant fertility, a healthy pregnancy, and a thriving next generation, we’re here to guide you.
Whether you’re just starting to plan or actively preparing for conception, your choices now can shape a lifetime of wellness for you and your future baby.
Start your journey with Every Baby Well® today. Every baby deserves the healthiest possible beginning… and so do you.
Your healthiest future – and your future family – starts now.
Let’s build it together.
