Debunking the Age Myth: Your Real Fertility Clock Revealed

Today we're talking about filtering out the noise.

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This sounds stupid, right? Like really, really, really dumb to be like, why do we need to talk about filtering out the noise? But here's the reality.(...) I had a patient this week who had a conversation with an IVF doctor. She's 43. Her AMH looks great. Her hormones look great. We've been working with her for almost nine months. She got pregnant. She unfortunately had a pregnancy loss, which was really, really, really rough, honestly.

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And the takeaway for us was we need to do more testing.

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They need to. My thought is like it would probably help to have some genetic workup for that couple just to make sure that we're not missing anything that we can't test for. And she went to the doctor. She went to this clinic and they told her your pregnancy losses are because of your age. They did no testing. They did no trying to understand what else is happening. We actually have done some tests before she even went to that doctor and found that she might have some low grade autoimmune thing happening under the surface.(...) And the doctor looked at it and said, yeah, that's irrelevant. It's really your age. And that's what matters.

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And she walked out of that. Luckily, she did not fall into the trap of hearing this doctor's negativity and feeling like it was the truth. That's the worst thing that can happen. But of course, we had prepped her. She went in super strong. She was like, all good. I got this. Don't worry about it. I'm not worried. You shouldn't be either. This is what she told the doctor, which I'm so proud of her for. But I realized as I was talking to her that so many women struggle with this, especially around the age thing. So here's the reality, you guys. Your age, your biological age has a fifth to do with your fertility.

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This is what I mean by that. Your biological age or your actually that should be chronological age. Your chronological age has maybe a fifth to do with your fertility equation. The reason I say that is because your chronological age is just what changes as you pass another birthday. Right. Like it doesn't have anything to do with what's actually happening in your body.(...) However, there is a way for you to figure out your phenotypical age or biological age is sometimes referred to or even more specific, your ovarian age to figure out what is happening inside the body. Now, phenotypic and biological age we use in our practice all the time. So we actually want to know what your body thinks its age is. So, for example, I'll just talk about myself for a second.

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I'm 44.

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My bio age is 34.(...) So basically my body thinks it's 10 years younger than it actually is. And the reason that that matters is because that's actually what's happening inside my body. That's my cellular aging. That is telling me that my the impact that my environment has on the cells in my body is better than the average 44 year old by 10 years. That's pretty significant.

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And what that also shows is that that's going to have an impact on how my body perceives what's happening with the hormones.(...) So that's not to say that I'm going to go into menopause 10 years younger. We'll see. I don't know yet. But what I do know is that my hormones are not in perimenopause time yet.(...) Hallelujah for that. I'm not excited for that time. And also my body is really kind of preparing to respond to my environment as a 34 year old, not as a 44 year old. And when it comes to fertility, if age is such a big important factor, then we really have to expand our definition of age to. Really focus on the biological age, not our chronological age. Does that make sense?

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So that's first and foremost, I want you guys to expand the definition. I want you to figure out your phenotypical age.

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We can I'm going to put this out there. We can offer this analysis to you if you would like. So if you are wanting to figure out your phenotypical age, we can do that. There's a couple of tests that we will need.(...) And based on those results, we can give you your phenotypical age. So that's something that's figure outable.

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You can message us on Instagram at holistic fertility doctor if that's something that you want to do. Sorry, this was definitely not where I intended to go with it. But now that I'm talking about it, I'm thinking some of you might want to know what your phenotypical age is. And there are not a ton of doctors out there that are figuring this out for people. So if that's something you need or want, please reach out. We'll we'll figure out how to support you.

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The second piece of that equation is your specific ovarian age. And ovarian age is figured out by what level of epigenetic change is seen in the eggs and the ovaries.(...) So there's a way to test for that. And that test is much more expensive, which is why we don't do it on everyone. But if that's something you want, we can point you in that direction as well. So that test is about 500 ish dollars and it will age your ovaries. So if your ovaries are 34,(...) then that is great news, right? Because you can relax a little bit and you can say, oh, I have a little bit of time. I can figure this out.(...) And the coolest part about all of this, you cannot reverse your chronological age. But you can reverse your bio age, your phenotypical age or and or your ovarian age. And that is being studied right now. So the processes that we use to reverse ovarian age or bio age are very interesting from the aspect of fertility, because so much of what you are going to hear from a doctor and so much of what you what I'm suggesting you filter out is this age-related conversation, because it's constant. Everywhere you go, somebody's talking about, oh, my God, you're 40. Are you still thinking about having kids? Are you sure you're going to have kids?

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it that's science. So in the: 1800

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When that happened,(...) priests decided, oh, it must be that fertility just drops off of a cliff at 35.(...) Because women over 35 are not coming in to baptize their children. What's happening?(...) It was more of a question.(...) It turned into women are not coming to get their children baptized after 35. So it must be that fertility drops off of a cliff at 35. And when you look at studies, which granted, there are not mass studies across the world population right now. So the studies don't exist. We have accepted this as science when there is no proof.(...) And when you look for studies, there are very small scale studies. There are like 127 people, right? Like very, very, very small. But what they are showing is that there is about a 3% decline between the age groups of 25 to 29 and 35 to 39. So to me, that tells me a 3% decline is certainly not a drop off of a cliff.(...) And we need more studies like it would be great to have more research that shows whether or not this is a problem.(...) But until we have those studies, if we want to buy into the rhetoric of age, then we should really define age differently than our birthdays. Our birthday is not the determinant of whether or not we can have a child.

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So if you are in this stage where you are being told it's your age, it's your egg quality because of your age,

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it's a pregnancy loss because of your age, and they are not doing any testing.

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And the question mark is around whether or not you will be able to conceive based on your age as the deciding factor, which honestly, I think that there's way more scientific data that you could base this conversation on. But the noise is coming out of the age conversation, so I have to speak to it. I'm going to just tell you what it is. So if you really want to evaluate your fertility, I believe that you should be looking at antimalarian hormone AMH,(...) FSH, follicle simulating hormone, luteinizing hormone, that's LH,(...) and estradiol at the minimum on cycle day three.

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Plain and simple. Like, that is going to be a way better determinant of whether or not you are going to be in a good place to conceive or not.

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But if you want to have this conversation about age, let's shift the conversation to phenotypic age. Let's shift it to bio age and really have a more tangible conversation about it because now we're understanding what's happening cellularly, what's happening in my body, what is my ovary think is happening with my body and hormones and how the environment is playing a role on my genes and the interaction of those.

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All of those factors are much better determinants of whether or not you're going to be able to conceive. And once you have that data, I encourage you to stick to what you know, based in science, rather than what your doctor, someone who's never done a workup on you, someone who just doesn't think outside the box is going to tell you about your age. Here is why.(...) When you get caught up in these conversations or you get caught up in this idea that this is the thing that is affecting your fertility negatively, it will.

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Right. Like when we don't tune out the noise, when we are impacted by something that is so tangible and like tangible in the sense of like, oh, I have another birthday coming up around the corner and I'm freaking out because now I'm 35. If that is the conversation happening in your head, get the science, get the data behind it. And if that science, if that information is giving you something besides the reliance on your numerical birthday, then you have something else to rest on and you have something to do about it. So for example, if instead of 34, my bio age came out to be 54,(...) I would literally put myself into a mode of like, what do I need to do to reverse my age? Because there's no way I want to be 10 years older than my biological age. Right. And I feel like that's completely plausible to do. So I have seen it enough in my practice. I know it's possible and I know that we can do that. So it is not the only factor that's going to affect your fertility. And the good news is if now this is different if you're already metaposal. So if your hormones already decided, if your body already decided it said menopause, that's unfortunately a time that it's too late. That cutoff is beyond the point where I can be of service. But if you are still cycling, you still have hormones, you still have eggs in your ovaries, yet your biological age is older than your chronological age. Then there is something tangible that we can do to help reverse your age, to help improve the quality of your eggs so that it does not impact your fertility. And I think that's great news. So I don't know about you. I want you to tell me, like, let's have a conversation about this because, as you can tell, I'm super passionate about women being told misinformation, being told you're too old, your eggs are too old. All of these things that are so common. And I don't think that it's coming out of negativity. It's just coming out of what they think is science. And unfortunately, it's not science. It's not been proven. But this is the commonly accepted truth of our time. So let's question that truth.(...) And once you start to question it, once you start to put into context what it is about your body, it should become a lot easier for you to say, oh, I can rest on the fact that my biological age is 34.(...) I don't care what the numbers say. I don't care what the doctor says, because my body thinks it's 34. So let's work on that. Let's optimize what I need to optimize. Let's focus on my hormones, if I need to focus on my hormones. And let's optimize my fertility from that aspect and not worry so much about the fact that I'm 44. I'm not trying to have a kid. But if I was, that's what I would be thinking.

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And I would literally question all of what is happening around me, what people are talking about, what even women say to each other in moments like this, which is,(...) again, like not helping our fertility. Because once we start buying into this, once we start freaking ourselves out, that level of stress is going to have a negative effect on our fertility.

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And it almost never leads down a good path. So this, I hope this conversation helps you. I just wanted to share it from the place of, like, I'm so proud of our client who had that conversation with her doctor and walked out head high, like, screw you, it is not my age. I know better. Like, I know my body, I know what's happening. I understand more about my body than I did nine months ago before I started working with Omatma and team.(...) And now I have the context to have a conversation and not take it so personally. And I have the information to back it up and say, that's not science, like, I'm okay with whatever you want to say. But if I decide to go down the path of IVF, I know that I am in the best possible place to have the best possible results, even if you think the chances are bilge.

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Because I know my body, I understand the data, I understand the labs.(...) And that is the level of confidence that we want for all of our clients. So I wanted to share that with you. I hope it gives you something to think about. And if you decide that you want to figure out your biological, phenotypic age, just give us a holler, send us a message.(...) I will figure out if there is a high demand for this, I'll figure out how we do this. But I want people to get the information and the knowledge. I want you to have that information in your hands so that you can make the best decisions for you. I'll see you next time.