Trying to conceive? Egg quality matters.
As the rate of infertility increases, I thought I would write a blog post about the importance of egg quality in preconception care.
It’s more than just testing your AMH (Anti-Mullerian Hormone) to get an idea of ovarian egg reserve.
There’s no specific test for egg quality…yet it’s crucial for not just fertility, but live births, and a healthy baby who grows into a healthy child. It literally impacts not just your child’s health, but your future grandchildren…it’s THAT important!
Our egg quality declines as we get older, and in the presence of oxidative stress caused by our environmental stressor, nutrient deficiencies and other key factors.
Steps to take to improve egg quality
It's no surprise that diet, lifestyle, environmental exposure to toxins, stress and almost everything impacts egg quality via what we call "epi-genetic" mechanisms, whereby these factors can actually switch on or off certain genes. Also, as we age our mitochondria declines, which has an important role in our DNA health.
Egg quality can be impacted for 6 months and sperm quality up to 2.5 months by many factors that are actually in our control. In conjunction with the obvious no alcohol/smoking, below I have outlined a few important steps to optimise the quality of your eggs and sperm as apart of preconception care:
Be mindful of what you put into your body
Eating nutrient-dense foods before TTC, include wild salmon, sardines, and other low mercury fish. Pasture-raised eggs, chicken meat. High antioxidant vegetables in many colours. Probiotic-rich foods including yoghurt, kefir, kombucha, sauerkraut are also important.
Be mindful of what you put on your skin
Remove as many environmental toxins from your life as possible and focus on organic/spray free foods, clean beauty products ( SLS, SLE, Paraben free), Use glass containers for storage not plastics, natural cleaning products, etc etc
Get quality sleep, ideally more than 7 hours per night
To enhance sleep, reduce blue light from screens after sun down, turn off bright lights, otherwise invest in blue light blocking glasses. Have a nice wind down routine i.e. cup of chamomile tea, read a few pages of a book, lights out the same time each night. 10mins of exposure to morning light outside as soon as wake - this all helps to set the circadian rhythm.
Maintain a healthy weight and move your body and reduce stress
This helps with mitochondrial function, detoxification, insulin and glucose regulation, cortisol/adrenaline production plus about 1000 other things! Don’t know where to start? A nice walk in the morning or afternoon for 20mins with the furr baby, partner, etc. A gentle beginners yoga class. Build up from there!
Support your mitochondria and hormones
Take key nutrients that are practitioner-grade to support egg quality. Especially if you are over 30. These include things like Ubiquinol, Vitamin D, Zinc picolinate, activated methylation nutrients like Folinic acid/ methyl/hydroxy B12, glutathione and others such as Nicotinamide Riboside; an important precursor nutrient for the krebs cycle (an energy based cycle within the mitochondria).
Our eggs (oocytes) and sperm are one of the most abundant locations for mitochondria, thus it makes sense to try and improve our mitochondrial health as much as possible. Our mitochondrial health plays an important role in DNA, which in turn determines the health and quality of our eggs and sperm. This not only increases chances of conceiving and carrying a healthy term pregnancy, however also impacts your child’s DNA and what they might be susceptible to in terms of health later on in life.
This can impact the health of generations to come so do you yourself and your future grandkids a favour and invest in preconception care and aim to be the best version of you - to give them the best version of themselves.
To find out how my clinic can help with preconception care, book in for a free 15 minute health chat.
Bec xx
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