Egg quality is an often-overlooked component of fertility. However, it’s important for a healthy pregnancy and a healthy baby. Whether you’re trying to conceive naturally or using fertility treatments like IUI and IVF, egg quality can affect conception, implantation, and ability of the embryo to grow properly.
Egg quality can be easily influenced—which is both good and bad. For high quality eggs, it’s important to eat a well-balanced, nutrient-rich diet, get in gentle movement, and avoid chemicals that can cause inflammation in the body. Eggs take about 3 months to become fully mature so it’s ideal to prepare for pregnancy at least 3 months ahead of time. Note that if you’re planning on an IVF retrieval cycle soon, it’s still worth it to make any of these changes to ensure you have the best chance possible for the developing eggs. However, if you are in a position to wait, taking 3-6 months or even a year can make a huge difference in your overall fertility and egg quality. This can mean your chances of conceiving naturally are as much as 80% higher or doubling your chances at a successful IUI or IVF round.
Diet and Egg Quality
A diet high in antioxidants and low in inflammatory foods supports good egg quality. Antioxidants help protect DNA from damage and can be found in plant-based foods. Fill your plate up with lots of fruits and vegetables instead of simple carbs. Simple carbs are highly processed grains and sugars like white breads, pastas, cookies, and chips. They actually contribute to oxidative stress which is what damages the DNA in our cells.
Processed foods are inflammatory for all of us but, there are other foods that some may be sensitive to. Food sensitivities can vary from person to person and even vary from month to month. This is because food sensitivities are driven by an immune response from leaky gut. You can learn more about how to determine your food sensitivities in my blog post on gut health .
You should be getting these nutrients in your prenatal vitamin but, first and foremost, it’s important to get these nutrients from whole foods. That’s because we often find there are important coenzymes that help with absorption (how the body uses it) included in whole foods that aren’t always included in a supplement.
Eating a well-balanced diet is also important for egg quality because it helps keep your blood sugar balanced. Too many refined carbs and sugars—especially in the absence of protein and fat —leads to a blood sugar roller coaster. This means there’s a constant fluctuation between insulin and cortisol being released casuing an inflammatory response in the body. This inflammation damages our eggs. Ensuring that each meal is balanced with a healthy portion of protein, fat, and complex carbohydrates (like sweet potatoes, legumes, or whole grains) can help avoid this.
Lifestyle and Egg Quality
Egg quality is often affected by inflammation and hormonal imbalances. Inflammation can be caused by stress, blood sugar dysregulation, and environmental toxicants. Fortunately, we can do a lot to limit these in our lives.
If you’ve done any sort of research into how to improve your fertility, it’s likely that you’ve seen stress come up A LOT. It’s the unfortunate truth that if we could “just relax” it would help fertility. Easier said than done, I know. When it comes to stress, the best thing you can do for yourself and your fertility is to take a realistic look at what’s creating stress in your life. Eliminate what you can and learn how to deal with what you can’t. A solid community care network and self-care practice is key when it comes to dealing with the stress that you can’t actually remove from your life.
Support can be found in a variety of places like
- An infertility support group
- Close friends
- Family
- Your partner
These people are here to help you so don’t feel like a burden for reaching out and asking for help. It’s also important to make time to care for yourself.
This can look like:
- Alone time
- Time spent with friends
- Getting enough sleep
- Eating right
- Exercise
The chemicals in our everyday life (environmental toxicants) can contribute to hormonal imbalances and inflammation. Things like air pollution or the chemicals used in our workplace may not be in our control but, there are things you can do at home to reduce the toxic burden on your body.
Focus on these three important areas when clearing out the toxins:
Kitchen
Consider the tools you use for cooking. Most non-stick pans contain toxic chemicals known as PFAs which can be hormone disruptors and cause inflammation in the body. Getting rid of nonstick pans is a good place to start. I suggest using stainless steel, cast iron, or ceramic enameled like Le Creuset instead.
The next place to look is where you’re storing food. When plastic containers are heated (even if they are BPA free), they leach chemicals into your food that mimic estrogen this can throw off your hormone balance and damage your eggs. Switching to glass is preferable.
Another commonly overlooked source of toxins your kitchen is your drinking water. Drinking water can contain chlorine and other chemicals that disrupt the gut and then create inflammation in the body. Consider buying a pitcher water filter or a RO system to make sure you are getting clean, toxin free water.
Cleaning products
The products we use to clean the house are often full of unnecessary and highly toxic chemicals. Some of the most disruptive are sulfites, phthalates, and parabens. All of these can disrupt hormones or cause extra stress and inflammation in the body. To see how your cleaning products rate, check out EWG.org. You can also use this site to help you find better more fertility-friendly cleaning products and even beauty products.
Beauty products
Using safer beauty products is important because we put them directly on our skin daily. Some of those same chemicals listed above are also found in what we use to wash our hair and bodies as well as what we put on afterwards. One of the most important things to look out for in your beauty products is fragrances and parfums. These are almost always made with phthalates which can be damaging to our hormones.
While it may seem overwhelming and expensive to have to overhaul your whole house to remove these toxins, remember every little bit helps. It’s totally ok to go slow and replace things as they run out.
Supplements For Egg Quality
When considering what supplements to take for improving your egg quality, remember that it’s always best to get as much of these nutrients from real food as possible. Supplements serve to supplement our diets. However, it can help to also look into taking some of these supplements to help improve your egg quality.
CoQ10 and vitamin C are both potent antioxidants and are worth discussing with your doctor to see if they may be good for you to take while you’re trying to conceive. You can also ask about a general antioxidant supplement. If you have PCOS, myoinositol can help with blood sugar balance as well as helping boost the quality of your eggs. You can also consider anti-inflammatory supplements like turmeric, ginger, and CBD. No matter what you choose, it’s important to remember that it takes about 3 months for the egg to fully mature and ovulate so it will take this long for the supplements to make a difference as well.
As we discussed, egg quality can be easily influenced so making any of these changes can be helpful to improving your egg quality and fertility.
Have you tried any of the above? Share what you’ve done or are planning to do in the comments.
1 thought on “How to Improve Egg Quality Naturally and Why You Should Care”
Comments are closed.