How to Improve Egg Quality

When Pulling Down the Moon first opened our doors nearly 20 years ago, the word on the street was that there was nothing a woman could do to improve the quality of her eggs.  It's true that we're born with all the eggs we’ll ever have, unlike men who continually make sperm across their lifespan.  And while age remains the primary determinant of egg quality, it's not the numerical age that determines the egg quality, it's the age of the environment in which the egg matures that matters.  As we age, our body becomes more susceptible hormonal disruption, inflammation and poor circulation - all things that impact egg quality. 

So for years we've pushed against the message that you can't improve egg quality because time and again we saw improvement in clients’ egg quality when they used our methods - including acupuncture, massage, yoga and nutritional changes/supplements.  Flash forward to the present day and you will be hard pressed to find a Reproductive Endocrinologist who does not concur that egg quality can improve.  In fact, many refer their patients to us for that very reason. 

Strategies to Improve Egg Quality

So, here are our top 3 strategies for improving egg quality - and some ideas for ways to implement these strategies in your own life. 

1. Increase blood flow to your pelvis.  If you read our recent blog about the promising data around electroacupuncture and fertility, you know that we advocate strongly for fertility acupuncture to increase blood flow.  There are other ways to increase pelvic blood flow including yoga poses that stretch and open the hips, abdominal wrapping, FEM massage and self-massage, and practices like breathing and meditation that help to stimulate our body’s relaxation response, which serves to indirectly move circulation away from the fight/flight skeletal muscles to the abdominal and reproductive organs. 
2. Reduce oxidative stress.  Eggs are big honking cells that use a LOT of energy to develop and mature.  As such they are vulnerable (as are sperm which are smaller but reproduce very quickly) to oxidative stress.  Oxidative stress is a byproduct of the cellular processes that use oxygen, resulting in compounds that can actually damage cells and tissues.  While oxidative stress is a natural process that our bodies have many ways to cope with, our ability to manage oxidative stress declines with age.  In addition, our environment is increasingly filled with chemicals that increase the oxidative load in our body.  Ways to decrease oxidative stress include nutritional changes towards an anti-inflammatory diet and nutritional supplements like omega-3’s, antioxidant vitamins and CoQ-10 that have been proven to reduce oxidative stress.  Yoga, and other strategies that reduce stress can help, as stress can also contribute to the oxidative stress that can harm eggs.
3. Make yourself more stress-resistant.  So, if you’re now stressed about being stressed, please know this - while you cannot remove the stress and anxiety of the fertility journey, you can definitely change the way your body responds to stress.  That’s one of the things that is so powerful about yoga.  We call it a “stress rehearsal,” where we do some (slightly) uncomfortable poses and practice remaining calm and relaxed.  That way, when stressors arise off the mat, we have tools to manage the stress response - which is great (remember what we said above about the body’s relaxation response and its power to increase blood flow and decrease oxidative stress). 

So, there you have it, our top tips for improving egg quality.  Please know we’re here for you if you have any questions or if you are interested in exploring our yoga, nutrition, massage and acupuncture programs for fertility.  Click here to contact us or call 312-321-0004 to chat with us directly!