Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCPPresident at Five Journeys, Functional Medicine & Wellness Provider, Best Selling Author, Passionate Champion for Health

Why Start with a Clean Diet for Fertility @AnnShippyMD

12 May 2026 · 0 min

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In this brief dialogue, two clinicians discuss the initial approach to a fertility workup for couples, regardless of sexual orientation. The first clinician asks where to begin, and the second emphasizes starting with a solid foundation by adopting a clean, whole‑food diet. The conversation then seeks clarification on what a “clean diet” entails in the context of fertility optimization.

a couple comes in and they are— whether they're heterosexual, not heterosexual, where do you start the workup with them?
I'd like to start with just laying some solid foundation with a really clean diet.
So what does that mean to you?
Yeah, the, um, it means what they cut out and what they add in, right? So there's a study that came out on sperm. It was so profound on the impact of the ultra-processed foods. So they took men and for 3 weeks They fed them highly processed food in one group, and then the other group got unprocessed foods, just whole foods, hardly packaged. Dramatic difference in the ultra-processed foods in just 3 weeks. But sperm take 74 to 86 days to make, right? So in 3 weeks, they could see changes in hormone levels and the quality of the sperm dramatically reduced with the ultra-processed foods.