what increases egg count in females to have children

April 04, 2022 Post a Comment

Many women believe that how many eggs they have left—their egg count—is the primary indicator of their fertility. But, while egg count is function of the equation, the true driver of fertility is egg quality, and the decline in egg quality is a natural, inevitable result of age.

Here'southward what you lot demand to know nigh fertility and egg quality:

Declining egg quality and fertility comes naturally with historic period.

You've probably heard this before, but let united states reiterate: Women are born with all the eggs they'll e'er have, typically 1–2 1000000. Over fourth dimension, that good for you egg supply decreases in two ways. Kickoff, women lose eggs each month—about a thousand a month after puberty—and past age 35 have only about 6% of their remaining egg count.

Secondly, with historic period there's a decrease in egg quality, which is a chip more circuitous. You're born with all your eggs, only for virtually of your life, they remain dormant in your ovaries in their young, "primordial" form. That is, until they're called to action during a particular month—the month they'll potentially exist ovulated. Just before ovulation, these eggs go through a process of maturation, including jail cell division (called meiosis). Older eggs are more decumbent to errors during this division process; that's why it's more likely that older eggs, one time ovulated, will contain aberrant DNA. If you lot retrieve back to high school science, Deoxyribonucleic acid is what tells a cell to do what it needs to do. Then without healthy Deoxyribonucleic acid, an egg can't perform its function: make a good for you baby. And equally you age, more of your eggs get unhealthy.

Your other eggs remain tucked abroad within your ovaries, affected by the aging process (nosotros don't know exactly how), but generally unaffected by the majority of the wear and tear the rest of your body weathers. This has pros and cons: while your egg health doesn't seem to be meaningfully impacted by the cumulative influence of everyday toxins or illness, it's as well not meaningfully improved by antioxidants, supplements, or nutrients that might support healthy cells in other parts of the body.

All women have some percentage of aberrant eggs. Co-ordinate to studies of embryos created from eggs of unlike ages, women in their early on 20s have about 20% abnormal eggs, while women in their 40s have upwards of fourscore% aberrant eggs. This decline in egg quality and fertility is seen across populations.

About eggs with abnormal Deoxyribonucleic acid, also known as "aneuploidy," don't fertilize at all, hence the human relationship betwixt fertility and egg quality. A small percentage may fertilize, only result in miscarriage, and an fifty-fifty smaller per centum may consequence in genetic disorders for the baby, such as Down syndrome. Declining egg quality is why nosotros see miscarriage and Down syndrome at much higher rates in women over 35.

Fertility is driven by egg quality.

Okay, so both egg count and egg quality affect your fertility—but egg quality is really the boss here.

Think of your fertility as a gumball machine. Each month in a natural menstrual bicycle, your body withdraws one gumball (egg) from the automobile (your ovaries). That egg is either salubrious or unhealthy. As y'all historic period, y'all take fewer gumballs in the machine, and a college percent of the gumballs are unhealthy, lowering the chances that the one you lot go far a given month will be able to issue in a healthy babe. That's why information technology can take much longer—many more than menstrual cycles—for older women to become meaning.

Fifty-fifty when fertility medicine comes into play, the relationship between age, fertility, and egg quality affects chances of success. Fertility treatments like in vitro fertilization use hormone medications to prompt the ovaries to produce multiple eggs in ane cycle, merely some of those eggs will still be abnormal (how many are aberrant volition depend on your age). So while IVF can assist increase the chances of finding some healthy eggs, it can't make more of your eggs healthy. If a woman in her 40s retrieves 10 eggs in an IVF cycle, it's likely that only 10–20% of those eggs will exist normal. If she retrieves 20 eggs in two IVF cycles, all the same only 10–20% of those eggs will be normal—only she'll have more to work with because she retrieved more.

That's why nosotros run into failing success rates as women age, even when using advanced reproductive technology like IVF. If at that place are very few salubrious eggs to piece of work with, the adventure of success is depression.

There's no fertility test for egg quality.

The fertility testing that exists, often called ovarian reserve testing, tests for markers of your egg count, not your egg quality. Fertility tests, like anti-Müllerian hormone levels, tell you lot how many eggs you lot have left, which can help predict how many eggs you'll be able to retrieve during an egg freezing or IVF bicycle. This is of import info—simply it's only part of the picture.

The only way to know for certain if an egg is chromosomally normal is to attempt to fertilize it, and, if fertilization is successful, to perform a genetic test on the embryo; the egg quality of an unfertilized egg, which is only a single prison cell, can't exist safely tested with current medical applied science. However, because errors in our eggs' DNA happens naturally and inevitably over time, and because the touch of age on egg quality is consistent and universal, your age can give doctors a very accurate motion picture of what percentage of your eggs are normal.

That'southward why a fertility assessment and consultation hither at Extend Fertility includes not just a claret test and an ultrasound, merely a conversation with a doctor, who can assistance you empathise your individual fertility test results, your predicted egg yield, and your take a chance of success with egg freezing.

Get started.

There's non much you lot tin practise when information technology comes to improving your egg quality.

Egg quality is not a calibration of healthy to unhealthy, with measures in between—it's a binary state of either normal or aberrant. Once an egg divides with abnormal DNA, information technology can't exist fixed medically or "healed." In other words, one time an egg becomes aberrant, it can't become normal again.

The decline in egg quality is driven solely by age, with a few exceptions. Women who smoke cigarettes typically accept fewer eggs and a lower percent of healthy eggs, and go into menopause an average of 4 years earlier than women who don't smoke cigarettes. According to ASRM, female smokers going through IVF have thirty% lower pregnancy rates than patients who don't smoke.

Egg quality can also be affected by exposure to systemic, toxic medications, like the chemotherapy drugs used in treatment for cancer. Manifestly, while smoking is completely preventable, cancer treatment is not something you'd forgo for the sake of your eggs. That's why many women freeze their eggs before cancer treatment.

Lastly, egg quality and overall fertility may exist affected by other reproductive illnesses, such as endometriosis. Studies (1, ii) demonstrate that women with endometriosis have fairly high pregnancy rates when they undergo IVF with eggs donated by a woman without endometriosis. Simply when it's the other way around—when women without endometriosis do IVF using donor eggs from women with endometriosis—success rates are "significantly reduced," leading experts to believe endometriosis may bear on egg quality.

There's no prove that specific diets, herbal treatments, acupuncture, yoga, massage, or other culling therapies can meliorate fertility and egg quality. The bulk of the nutrients that people often associate with fertility, such every bit folic acrid, are really only helpful for women who are currently trying to excogitate, because they support the developing fetus—but they don't have whatever event on the eggs inside your ovaries.

While some alternative therapies like massage and yoga tin help women feel more relaxed during an IVF or egg freezing cycle (and mental health is really of import!), we circumspection that women shouldn't rely on them to significantly improve success rates, and shouldn't exist swayed by marketing that presents these treatments equally "natural fertility solutions." We wish it was that easy, but the scientific support just isn't there—in that location's no "anti-aging" treatment for your eggs.

Learn more than about culling medicine and fertility .

The only way to preserve your egg quality and fertility is through cryopreservation (freezing).

Cryopreservation, such as egg freezing, is the only technique that currently exists to extend your fertility. Eggs that are retrieved from the body and cryopreserved don't become damaged with age like the eggs in your body, then their wellness is essentially frozen in time—giving you the power to apply those healthy eggs for a pregnancy later on, when your natural fertility and egg quality has declined.