Welcome to the first episode of The Eggspert Nutritionist podcast. It’s so lovely to have you here.
I am really looking forward to helping you boost your egg quality & fertility so that you can get pregnant and stay pregnant and help to support your IVF success if you’re needing a little help from assisted reproductive technology.
In this episode, you’ll learn why your egg quality is so important on your path to becoming a Mama!
Whether you have just started trying, if you’ve been trying for a while, trying again after a devastating loss or if you’re going down the IVF path, egg quality is super important and sets the foundation.
What is egg quality exactly and what does it mean?
It is a term used to describe an egg’s potential to result in a viable pregnancy after fertilisation.
Essentially, your egg quality influences how long it takes to become pregnant (both naturally and via assisted reproductive technology).
Research very clearly shows that egg quality is one of the most important factors in determining whether an egg will fertilise with sperm and and then develop into an embryo (and if you’re going through IVF, this will make sense to you, making it to the blastocyst stage).
Egg quality also determines whether an embryo is capable of implanting in the uterus and becoming a healthy, viable pregnancy.
Poor egg quality is significantly more common in women who have difficulty getting pregnant (it is often the culprit for women with unexplained infertility) and those who have, sadly, a history of multiple miscarriages.
I want to share something really interesting with you…
You are born with all of the eggs (follicles) you will ever have. So think about this for a second…
When you were in your mother's womb, you already had all of your eggs. Millions of them in fact.
When your grandmother was pregnant with your mother, she actually carried the egg that would one day develop into you. How amazing is that! Three generations in one body at the same time.
It's important to know that as you age, your egg count does decline.
Every time you ovulate and then menstruate, you're essentially losing another egg.
Although you can't control your declining egg count, thankfully, there are so many things that you can do to support your egg quality.
Your egg quality is heavily influenced by your diet, lifestyle and environment.
Approximately 90 days before ovulation, an egg starts to mature in preparation for the event.
This is the most crucial time as it is when many things can happen that affect egg quality both negatively and positively.
The research is showing that a diet rich in protein, antioxidants and an abundance of nutrients improves egg quality and puts a halt to ovarian ageing.
There is also research to show that limiting your exposure to environmental toxins such as BPA can help to support egg quality.
There are many well studied supplements such as CoQ10 that have been shown to help improve egg quality and melatonin in the IVF context.
In future podcast episodes I will be sharing with you the many ways in which you can support your egg quality and increase your chances of bringing a healthy and thriving baby home.
The key takeaway message from this episode is that the choices you are making today in regards to your diet, lifestyle and environment are either having a positive or negative influence on your egg quality. I want to help you make those choices positive ones.
My mission is to bring you up to date, evidence based strategies so that you can make informed decisions and feel empowered.
Although ovarian ageing is inevitable and you can't stop your egg count from declining, what you can have a really significant and positive influence over is your egg quality.
It's not about the number of eggs you have left. I want you to forget about the number and shift your focus to the quality of the eggs you do have left.
All it takes is just one lucky egg and of course one lucky sperm to make a baby.