Learn how to improve your egg quality and get pregnant

1. Overview

In terms of male and female fertility there is a massive difference. Men on average eject between 40 million to 1 billion sperm compared to the woman that generally only produce one egg a month. Therefore it's critical to improve the quality of the woman's egg to maximise the chances of getting pregnant.

2. The lifespan of an egg

Knowing how to improve egg quality will improve your fertility and help your chances of conceiving and having a baby, where it's natural conception or using assisted reproductive technologies such as IVF.

Each egg has a life span of around 85 days. During those 85 days, the quality of the egg is based on the woman's general health. The human body is a survival organism, it will only support fertility if there is enough resources left after your daily needs have been meet. It doesn't understand that your job is secondary to your fertility, it just sees what's going out in terms of energy and what's coming in and what's left over for egg quality.

3. Factors that reduce egg quality

If you're dieting, working or exercising excessively or don't get enough sleep, your body will be weak and there won't be enough resources to produce good quality eggs. To improve natural fertility, you need to improve your general health over the lifespan of the egg (120 days).

Avoid this things which can cause poor egg quality:

Smoking
Trans fats
Illegal drugs such as cocaine and mdma
Free radical damage
Plastics
Chemicals (environmental factors)
Reproductive medicine (over stimulation of the ovaries and exposure to oxygen in the fertility clinic)
PGS/PGD testing
Freezing your eggs
Poor mitochondrial function
Poor overall health
Oxidative stress, which your reproductive endocrinologist will try to minimise

It's especially important to improve the quality of your eggs before starting any reproductive medicine treatment such as IVF. Most fertility clinics don't think or help you improve your egg quality before starting fertility treatment and will start straight away and will stimulate your ovaries to produce around a dozen eggs.

4. Poor ovarian reserve

If your overall health is poor or you have a low AMH level, stimulating your body to produce this many eggs can dilute the quality of them, making it less likely to reach blastocyst (day 5 embryo) in the fertility clinic lab before it's transferred back into the woman's uterus. Having poor egg health can increase the occurrence of chromosomal abnormalities.

If you have a low AMH level (poor ovarian reserve), you should try my top 12 tips below and allow several months before trying either naturally or with IVF.

5. How to improve egg quality

Here is my top tips to improve your egg quality:

It's a good idea to take nutritional supplements such as DHEA 25-75mg, coenzyme Q10 600mg and melatonin 2-4mg every day
Don't diet. If you need to lose weight exercise instead
Eat 3 meals a day and optimise your fertility diet with foods that are high in protein with lots of sea food
Don't work night shifts
Don't sleep after 10pm, sleep before
Don't exercise more than 3 times a week
Have acupuncture weekly
Practice mindfulness or meditation to reduce anxiety and stress
Take Chinese fertility herbs
Take a good quality prenatal supplement every day
Reduce stress by having acupuncture or practising mindfulness, meditation or yoga