All The Fertility Questions You’ve Been Scared To Ask with Dr Helen O’Neill

it's weird how it's become almost unfashionable to talk about fertility Dr Helen O'Neal is a leading expert in reproductive science she has a masters in prenatal genetics and Fetal Medicine and a PhD in stem cell biology whether it's periods fertility pregnancy postnatal Health hairy menopause menopause women are medically marginalized and completely sidelined what is the most common fertility myth that you'd like to Bast in fact a shocking proportion of women don't do men have a biological CL yes are there lifestyle changes that we should make in preparation for wanting to get pregnant yes definitely and what are the most common causes of infertility it's probably oh my God it scares me like I have this underlying fear that I might find something out this is just fear-mongering and I'm there saying I wish you heard the countless stories that I hear every single day of women saying why did nobody tell me lots to do I've just been planning out my day however with revolute as my main 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money join us and create your account today Dr Helen O'Neal is a leading expert in reproductive science she's a lecturer in reproductive and molecular genetics at University College London she has a master's in prenatal genetics and Fetal Medicine and a PhD in stem cell biology she is also the founder and CEO of futility Health an award-winning biotech business specializing in fertility testing that has raised over5 million pounds since launch fertility is obviously a hugely sensitive topic but it's also one that we never talk about for exactly that reason when I started this podcast I wanted to cover the important topic that we never get taught and I learned so so much from Helen that I really couldn't believe I think it's really worth saying that I completely understand that fertility can be a really sensitive topic it's totally understandable and what I do want to say is that if you are currently struggling to conceive or have any anxiety around fertility I personally would say that this isn't the episode for you but what I would really encourage for everyone else if you do decide to listen to this episode is that I think it's really easy to hear fertility sta statistics around women and feel terrified and feel terrified and therefore feel like it's fear-mongering I think that you know this is a really sensitive topic I don't I I don't know enough about it to be perfectly honest but I do also think that there is this huge data Gap and also huge discussion Gap when it comes to women's health and I don't think that we can at the same time as getting incredibly angry about this data Gap and about what we know about women's health and the fact that it is hugely understudied and under researched and underinvested in and at the same time shut down fertility statistics and learnings as complete fear-mongering so I just want everyone to bear that in mind I do want to very quickly say that in this episode women's health is used to refer to healthcare and research around female reproductive Health however as part of that I want to say that that is not how I personally would Define being a woman I really wanted to use this episode to just get out all of the questions that I would like to know about fertility the things that I've been terrified to ask the things that I wish we'd learn earlier it's incredibly interesting so I really hope you enjoy it as always if you do enjoy it please make sure to like And subscribe it really helps us to be able to get incredible guests on the podcast and to be able to have really important conversations like this one thank you so much for joining me today you're welcome I'm very excited to get into this I feel like um as I was just we were just chatting before the podcast started and I was just saying that as a team of young women writing this episode and going into kind of what we want to talk about what we want to mythbust what we want to know about was probably one of the easiest episode preparations ever um and I think that probably goes to show just how important this episode is talking about fertility talking about women's health um talking about gynec iCal Health all of the things that actually um when not a lot of top podcasts are on women's topics as a whole but even hosted by women etc etc there's not a lot of um kind of education we generally get on it so I have a lot I want to ask you today let's go so first of all um just to give some context on your kind of career your background it would be great if you could give me a little rundown of how you got to where you are today sure I have worked in mostly genetics and reproduction for a long time I have an undergrad in molecular genetics and then I did a masters in prenatal genetics and Fetal Medicine um in UCL and it was really that that made me just turn towards this complete fascination with how we as human beings are created I couldn't stop talking about the aspects of fetal medicine fertility embryology because every single one of us has a vested interest in how we were formed and so from that I did a PhD in stem cell genetics and developmental biology specifically looking at how the ovary is formed um and I I can't tell you how much of a love I had for just Discovery um really researching all of these amazing elements about how we function as human beings but it's amazing that the more in depth your knowledge becomes the further away you become in in ways from being able to apply that to day-to-day life so I um then got a lectur ship at UCL and I've been there for nine and a half years lecturing Master students and medical students about reproductive science Women's Health prenatal genetics and I absolutely love teaching I think it's the most incredible powerful tool that you can do is to ignite a passion in learning and understanding especially about our body um but I got to a point where all of that research and all of that teaching still wasn't serving the questions that I had about my own body and actually from a professional lens you feel so equipped to do you know talk about female reproductive Anatomy physiology genetics and as a human being and as a woman I was devoid of answers about my own biology my own fertility and that's a real conflicting place to be in when you're thinking about all of these statistics do they apply to you are you the exception are you the rule um no matter how prevalent some of those statistics are you're thinking am I okay or should I should I be doing something and so I started herity really trying to put the an analytical lens on how we approach problem solving and to me I found it so strange that we have an analytical approach to most things when we solve problems right we I always say that it really annoys me that we can plug a car into an analytic system and tells you what's wrong with a car and we've no way of plugging ourselves into a system and finding out what's wrong with us so much about health metric is you know look feel touch um there's no real hardcore you know analysis blood workm um molecular tools behind that and so that's really how I approached starting utility was to say right if I really want to understand what my fertility is I first need to understand General General Gynecology menstrual cycles symptoms external factors all of the possible variables that need to be taken into account and so that's really what's brought me to today is uh trying to create a solution tion and and spending years building it's funny when people say like when did you start her ility I'm like I mean nearly 20 years ago really if you think about the journey I've been on in in accumulating knowledge about the things that we can use to help us um but we've just spent the last few years really building all of the wha ifs around Women's Health and I think probably the most common thing that gets said to me is surely this has been done before right because it seems so obvious that this is something someone should have done but it hasn't I know and it's kind of I mean it's absolutely unbelievable because I remember when I spoke to you the first time and I was like oh my god of course this is exactly what we need of course we need one test where we can send it off and find out more for all of these different reasons but like as someone who's literally been battered around the NHS for about 15 years based on things like PCOS and endometriosis and still got no answers even when going private even when you know being like I will do anything like anything the fact that we still have I mean endometriosis is one thing the fact that you literally can pretty much only find out about it if we have a live operation on someone all of these different things in terms of women Women's Health and we come on to the dire state of women's health because you know it's something that very much needs to be talked about but also you know as soon as you start Shining Light on the topic and as soon as you start understanding that actually not only do we not know anywhere near enough about women's health but you know there was literally nothing done on it really prior to like when women were allowed in clinical trials in what 1993 or whatever it was which is just absolutely unbelievable and even after that um in 2000 four out of five of every clinical trial didn't include a woman and of the ones that did two-thirds of them didn't bother stratifying or looking at the data differences between men and women so even though some places are including a token woman here and there they're not analyzing the sex specific differences and now we know there are are huge sex specific differences between us naturally it doesn't take too much to kind of figure that one out um but looking at the data and seeing the differences and and analyzing it for them and prioritizing that there is a difference is still not happening yeah so it's no wonder that we have such a DI state in women's health because we also don't know the things we need to know scientifically not we individually well yes we individually but more so than that as a at a kind of industry and scientific level the information is not there because the investment has not been made into discovering anything so when we started um fertility started as a clinical trial and I got a government grant to build I applied for a grant to build predictive algorithms for gynecological pathologies in other words with my I guess my geneticist lens I thought for genetic conditions we screen a whole genome we look across multiple populations and we say these are all the people with the same mutation and they all have the same disease right it's like okay we can look for patterns here and that seems very intuitive And yet when it comes to Women's Health you know the most prevalent of women's health conditions there are no Solutions no answers they're still being called Elusive and yet we have cures for some of the rarest of genetic conditions and so it's this lack of prioritization and lack of data that really manifests within just continuing this perpetuation of poor science and poor poorly did research and so while we're speaking about this and the kind of you know as I said the dire state of women's health why what are the main reasons that that is the case like why is it so hard to get an accurate diagnosis as a woman or to get answers on pretty much anything when you go to the doctors unless it's something that would be prevalent across men and women it shouldn't be it it's simply shouldn't be we're 52% of the planet um it is not about the fact that this is too difficult let's face it we have figured out far more difficult things we've put people in space we have satellites going around the globe to make sure that we have telecommunications there are far more difficult things to figure out than Women's Health it's just that we do not prioritize Women's Health at all and unfortunately that is despite the rhetoric and the ongoing talk about better more investment into female Founders more investment into Women's Health it doesn't actually come true people talk more about it but even in you know the last 12 months the number of Investments didn't go up they went down and so there's this lack of thorough Financial investment but also any other kind of investment into priority it's like women are second class citizens nobody cares and this is never more true when you come a and look at every single life stage that women go through whether it's periods whether it's fertility whether it's pregnancy whether it's postnatal Health whether it's per menopause whether it's menopause women are medically marginalized and completely sidelined and nobody is Building Solutions across that life course so that's really why I feel so passionately that building a longitudinal data set that is informed by women not by necessarily just practitioners who say oh in my esteem opinion great but let's get some data there was um a big report on an ovulatory conditions and it was this huge diagnostic guide and not once in that entire report did they use the word data not once did they use the word patient and I read through I wrote a criticism on it um because it it annoyed me that at what point do we ask patients do we ask women do we say what's your experience how can we learn from you who is the professional in your condition to build solutions for that and how much of that do you think is because we I mean we know that women are more likely to be given anti-anxiety medication instead of you know if they're coming in with heart palpitations or whatever it might be it's more often seen as a as a kind of mental case rather than as a um physiological case we know that you know women in general are assumed to have more hysteria around certain conditions or certain feelings how much of that do you think has bled into the actual science in terms of you know you say they're not asking women about their own specific experiences do you think that's partly because of the way we see we perceive women when yes every bit of it is about the language that is used when describing women that the langu even don't you just said hysteria that's where the word hysterctomy comes from is like that women were his hysterical and to remove the womb is called a hysterctomy it's actually quite mind-blowing and there's a a medical Anthropologist who wrote a book and they went through the the language that we use in medical textbook so it's cemented in as if this is okay and it's even around like the the abundance of ejaculate and sperm versus the mere egg that is produced and and you can't really flip the narrative and say well you should be flipping the narrative saying like we have this one incredible powerful cell which is the largest cell in the body vers versus the sperm which is the smallest cell in the body and they need so many of them to just fertilize this one Queen and it's just so amazing how many even down to menstrual effluent menstrual waste you know not the fact that it is you a fundamental part of procreation and that it sustains life it's it's actually un believable how bias the language that is used even in medical terminology so when you that is perpetuated and we dismiss women it's almost like it's given a medical license you know like this is a this is a medical term and so we're qualified to call you crazy right so when it's written into the narrative kind of from the actual scientific point of view that can obviously be justified in a practical sense because obviously the owner should be on where the investment is the owner should be on probably governmental regulation ensuring we are covering both sexes when we are doing um these specific experiments whatever it might be but what can if anything we do as consumers and people to make the landscape better when it comes to women's health I think we need to Rally I think we need to work together as women I get on the tube and I see pressing is inappropriate upskirting is inappropriate do not you know staring is inappropriate all of these constant reminders that we are not safe in our society and that despite having created tools to help us with not getting pregnant have those tools been used as Weapons against us to control our ability to conceive and are we looking 30 years later at a entire generation of women who suppressed their ability to conceive and are now wondering why they can't and so I think this requires a rally where we support each other this is not just about creating answers but an evolution of solutions that we are working to create and it's strange that data has become a dirty word because of companies like meta and all of these other places who use your data against you but I would love to see a Rebrand of Health Data because if all of us were to Rally together and say I will give my information for the next six months I'm going to log I'm going to tell you I'm going to tell you what my symptoms are we would learn more in six months as women giving information than we would have done in the last 60 years of people sitting and saying how do you feel what does it look like so you received a government grant in order to be able to um create this kind of test or to be able to draw lines between certain what would it be certain certain pathologies and you know who who was having certain issues and why and what the things were to tie these things together what is the current version of this test that you've created in order to be able to help diagnose yeah so in a weird way it almost undermines it by calling it a test um but it's more of a journey so how it starts is with a health assessment so this is an online Health assessment where we have taken all of the international diagnostic criteria and guidelines for over 18 of the most prevalent conditions that affect women uh women's reproductive health and essentially it's like creating a calculator a lot of the symptoms that we experience can be quite Insidious or hard to quantify whether it's pain whether it's um the amount you bleed whether it's the location of the pain that you're feeling whether it's cyclical pain and so trying to really pull apart all of the different symptoms your menstrual cycle patterns your previous medical history um your background because if you have a um if you are black you're more prone to fibroids if you are it used to be said that if you are white you're more prone to endometriosis I now don't believe that I feel like white women are more likely to get a diagnosis and so all of these systemic um I guess there systemic R there's massive systemic race racism within Healthcare so removing all of that and saying how can we actually stratify somebody's risk according to their background is all in that Health assessment it's a very powerful Health assessment with internally embedded algorithms that help us to say actually your symptoms of this plus this plus this are a likely indicator for um PCOS so we're going to test you for all of the analytes that might give us better answers so we we actually tailor the panel of hormones that we'll test you depending on that combination of symptoms um so we'll look at various aspects of your reproductive Health whether it's your thyroid Health which many women have thyroid imbalance um whether it's your cycle um menstrual cycle health so your um how you ovulate how you bleed and then your ovarian reserve as well and then anything additional like your antigens should you have those specific symptoms so really taking into account all of the things that we should take into account in order to confirm a clinical diagnosis um and then the report that you get um we've coded over 54,000 clinical scenarios because we are obsessed with detail and saying what if what if you were this person what if you were this person because unfortunately at the at the present time we assume everyone's the same and so statistics are very unhelpful to individuals when you could be you know what's 20% is at high risk you don't know in the absence of knowing a thorough medical history actually you could be far in in a far higher risk category so it's about that personalization so that Journey even though I've just given you the real backend which is like how complex this algorithm the clinical decision tool the panel of floods will test you for the report from a person's perspective we are busy people we built this for ourselves knowing that going to an appointment waiting for an appointment speaking to a stranger having to get your blood taken um waiting for results being told well we'll call you if something's wrong but otherwise we're not going to call you are all hugely frustrating blockers to entry and so it's no wonder we self- dismiss when it comes to getting help one of the biggest reasons women say about not getting help sooner is that they say I just you know I I didn't think my symptoms were bad enough to Warrant it um and so from the user's perspective you can fill out this health assessment online on your phone um in bed um the test will arrive at your house the following day or or the next day you can do a blood test from your finger no need for a vena puncture and we validated and have all of our regulations for every single analy that we um that we measure and I've sh done clinical concordance studies to make sure that they are exactly matching venopuncture um the reason I give these details is because there's a lot more to making something accessible to people and making sure it's clinically valid and making sure you're regulated at the same time and then the report says right you can get a blood test anywhere when you get results right it's a screening test it'll tell you whether you're in range out of range but it won't tell you what those results mean in the context of your medical history in the context of the rest of your Bloods and actually what it actually means to we kind of want the tldr on things like we want to be told like what does this mean for me what should I do and so that's really what we've worked very hard to differentiate ourselves is to say for every single thing that we've tested you what is it why did we test it what does it mean for you and then all of the actionable insights to say these are the things that you can do um and so even though yes an element to it is a test actually it's much more of a journey and from that we then offer a full spectrum of Clinical Services so whether you need an ultrasound scan whether you need to freeze your eggs whether you need IVF whether you need a prescription whether you need HRT all of those things or to speak to a gynecologist or a fertility specialist there's a full full team uh that are there to support you no matter what and what I feel most proud about this is that you haven't really had to leave your house at all for any of this I mean it's completely groundbreaking as like just I I feel like any woman hearing about this it's it sound do you know what it sounds like an ad because it's so good I know you know when like as in because I can't truly believe that we have to go through the amount the amount we've gone through in terms of not truly knowing about our bodies in terms of not truly knowing okay I have period pains is it worse than the majority of people could it mean that I have a very serious condition or could it just mean that I have a period whatever it might be be thinking that you can take a blood test at home and at the very least be referred for further investigation if there is something that flags up in any way I mean to me it's it's almost ridiculous that that scene is so groundbreaking because it shouldn't be but what you're doing and having been able to kind of create that is just I mean it's incredible it's it's life-changing and I'm sure has been life-changing for a huge amount of women what what types of results have you seen from that in terms of the kind of you know in terms of your customers um it's been incredible to see I mean every single day we have people who are so ecstatic to have a diagnosis which sounds crazy that someone would be so happy to be given a clinical diagnosis and yet as you said you spent 15 years really with this kind of pingpong effect of going from Doctor to doctor to doctor to doctor with no tangible Solutions or answers and so when someone's been on that journey and finally being given clear answers for what they need to do next but also just knowing that it's not just them um that's one of the big things um I almost I get quite emotional when people say us say about um when people say about the babies that they have and that they wouldn't have if it weren't for futility we had get a message saying I wouldn't be holding my 9-month old if it weren't for her ility and that to me is is amazing um for the people who had premature ovarian insufficiency so that means they're essentially it's kind of like in basic terms like early menopause and display all of the symptoms of that all of the symptoms textbook symptoms of premature ovarian insufficiency and yet ignore it because they look great they look young they feel I mean okay they've got no period and they're not assessed for that so knowing that there are people for whom they wouldn't have been able to have children but we've actually helped them so early in their Journey like these I mean I'm talking mid 20s 28 people who thought like I never would have even thought of having children till I was in my mid-30s and and being able to help those people there there will always be people uh on the outside who say I don't want to know and that's fine but for the people who've always wanted to know know and that is a lot of people it's amazing that they can finally get some answers right absolutely and I think that you know we it's very classic and it's an especially social media based response the need for it to be tailored to yourself in terms of like I have no doubt that when we talk about fertility in this episode there will be some people who say well I don't want to know and I'd rather not know and it's it's frustrating that I even have to know to think about these things in my mid-20s or whatever it might be it's like yes AB absolutely correct it is it's frustrating that that even could be a consideration but at the same time there cannot and should never be a world where we need to think about these things to some extent if we want to consider having children and we in a world where we're forced to think about those things because of how much it affects everything else even though it shouldn't we have to have availability we have to have access to that type of information it's it can absolutely be every single person's individual decision not to want to know something absolutely but you cannot use that as essentially an excuse to mean that no one else can find anything else out because we literally don't have the data because it's terrifying and of course it's terrifying everyone thinks about well I know I for sure think about fertility and like it scares me like I have this underlying fear that might find something out and just know that I need to either you know can't have children or would need to have one tomorrow or you know whatever it might be and it is a pretty Universal Universal fear it's so strange that people told us that it would only be older women or women who are you know in their 30s or women who were actively trying to conceive who would do this test but 25% of a very big datab base are between the ages of 18 and 25 really we have this innate biological desire to know not just about fertility but about our reproductive health and it's not because it's this strange elusive feeling that we all wonder about it's because we get a monthly menstrual cycle right we have symptoms associated so we have a monthly reminder and when things aren't going right when your period doesn't come when it comes too soon those are all building this whether you acknowledge it and face it or whether you suppress it and ignore it still this feeling of wonder about what is normal am I normal what is going to what is going to be my path you know it's weird how it's become almost unfashionable to talk about fertility unless in the extreme right we talk about contraception whatever you do don't get pregnant right that's the narrative from like the age of 18 before yeah literally from the age of 13 they sit you down and innocent childhood um yes exactly from such a young age don't get pregnant don't get pregnant don't get pregnant and then that that is suppressed in you or this fear and and controlled through contraception and whether we think that's a Liberation or not actually what it's led to is a real suppression of that internal signal and those innate biological cues that really should be serving us to say whether something's wrong to say whether we're not well our menstrual cycles are you know the sixth Vital sign and they've just been added as the sixth Vital sign along with your temperature your PO your pulse your breath your menstrual cycle is an amazing indicator of your overall health and when we suppress or ignore that or control it we really lose out on that on that pulse of our our own reproductive health no I think it's so I mean it's literally the whole Barbie speech isn't it the fact that we literally told at from 13 onwards like do not get pregnant do not even think about it and then you're told at a point that you have to get pregnant otherwise you're not worthy as a woman and you're also told that if you do get pregnant then you're probably not going to be able to do the same in all of these areas of work but if you choose to stay at home then you're bad if you choose to still work then you're not doing it right all of these different things and then at the same time throwing in there the fact that you can't find out something because we don't have the data we don't have the access um if you do talk about something then it's fear-mongering but if you don't talk about something then you're ignoring it and we're not helping Women's Health like it's just this is this is my life like the amount of you who are like this is just fear mongering and I'm they're saying I wish you heard the countless stories that I hear every single day of women saying why did nobody tell me where was this information they feel so cheated and even even me working in women's health for so many years and thinking I'm probably fine I'm I'm probably fine and and then not having access to just find out and it annoyed me right I I dedicated my life and career to biology and it was betraying Me by being like well you are just a woman and the biological clock will take and it and it annoyed me so badly because I thought didn't matter my dedication my hard work how career focused and driven I was the world will still look at you as being on qualified as a woman until you've reached that metric of success which is settle down have children and that's so unfair and it shouldn't be the case we should have a choice and there are many women now who do not want to have children and that is incredible to know that and to understand but there are many more women who do want to have children and have had that choice taken from them right right that's really interesting for people who do want to know when should we start thinking about our fertility I mean I think that we should invest the same level of interest in our fertility as we do contraception and conception right um from a young age from as you said 13 um for me I think 18 um you should be aware of your menstrual cycles um you should be we always say track your track your ovaries over your calories um because your ovaries are going to serve you a lot more than the the day-to-day things you put in your body but I think that it's about screening it's about knowing your risk every individual woman is very different the risks that you have versus the risks that I have are very different the family histories that we have are very different the exposures that we go through are very different and so being able to understand whether it's annually like we need an annual checkin if it is a legal requirement to have anot on a car it should be a legal requirement to have anot on our bodies that we are not going towards this cataclysmic unending abyss of misdiagnosis and misinformation and lack of understanding we can really Drive our own destiny when it comes to our health by just investing interest in it yeah and what types of well what is the most important metric we should be looking at when it comes to f I don't think there is just one important metric and that's why we never there are a lot of people and places that measure just amh some clinics will just measure your amh which is an antim malarian hormone it's essentially a hormone that is produced by each of the eggs in the ovaries and so it gives an amazing kind of it's an amazing surrogate marker for your relative fertility but in the absence of knowing your medical history your cycle history your previous infections if you've had chyia or gonorrhea your fallopian tubes could be brought BL locked so it doesn't matter how within range your antim malarian hormone is if that egg can't get past you're not going to be fertile so I don't think there's any one metric that is the most important I think we are and this is probably the the Trap that medicine falls into even when it comes to reproduction and reproductive health and women's health is that we isolate it to below the waist and when you spoke about mental health in the beginning we negate the fact that our mental health has the most profound impact on our menstrual Health but when we when we don't tie the knot and say that these are intrinsically linked then we do a disservice to our overall health and our overall ability to interpret our health and so for someone who might have started understanding more about their fertility and they are doing so because they are aiming to have children are there lifestyle changes that we should make in preparation for wanting to get pregnant before you even start trying to conceive yes definitely um the I think the the main things are so obvious right you know nobody wants to be told um stop smoking stop drinking don't do drugs um but I've seen from our data set that actually many people don't stop any of those things while trying to conceive in fact a shocking proportion of women don't stop those things while trying to conceive and then are themselves quite confused when they aren't getting pregnant um so there's the basic kind of red flags around our vices that it it makes sense to to stop it's about knowing as well I guess the mechanics right this this three-month life cycle that we we have in terms of sperm production the men need to get their themselves sorted uh they get their [ __ ] together but they need to get their [ __ ] together men need to get themselves sorted they have a three Monon sperm life cycle and they can radically improve the health of the sperm in three months um and with women this it's kind of a longer life cycle of of ovulation and egg production but if you think that our all these eggs are in our ovaries waiting there to give them the best possible chance of being healthy we need to put into our bodies the most healthy uh things and that sounds so obvious and you would be amazed how few people just think okay I need to prepare my body nutritionally physically better sleep with cutting out some of the things that I'm exposing it to for the next while so that I give myself the best possible chance there's an amazing study and it looks at alcohol consumption and depending on the time of your menstrual cycle that you drink it impacts your ability to conceive and it makes sense right if your egg if your ovaries are maturing all of these wonderful follicles in the hopes that one of those follicles will mature and that egg will be released what you put into your body you know we always think of alcohol as affecting our liver or our kidneys and not the rest of our organs which of course it's a systemic effect and so that impacts your ability to conceive the following months month depending on when in your menstrual cycle you drank so so cutting it out is a really really cute thing but to go even deeper into that when is it wor to consume alcohol within your cycle if you do want to get pregnant so when throughout our menstrual cycle there's key phases that are very important there's the follicular phase I call the fun phase and that's really when all these follicles are starting to develop and mature um and that's from essentially as soon as your period starts you're you're in that follicular phase right menstrual H menstrual cycle happens and you're in that follicular phase so from day one of your period really on to day 14 roughly and that is really when your body is preparing for this Monumental occasion which is ovulation and that point then is when that egg is released and that has such a profound endocrinological effect on your body to ensure that an egg is released and we think of that again as being a separate entity it's a reproductive event that is happening and that the rest of our body isn't affected but we are s you know there is so much estrogen in our body IES that is preparing for that release it impacts and estrogen is very powerful it impacts our skin it impacts collagen in our skin um it is impacting our cardiovascular health our neurocognitive health it when we are devoid of estrogen we mentally suffer we physically suffer our bones suffer and yeah our menstruation is impacted but there are so many more things Beyond menstruation that are impacted by estrogen and when you think about our menstrual cycles having this huge flow of our reproductive hormones and being ignorant of that really we're missing out because at that point of ulation you are at your best you will be more aidite less clumsy you'll be far more focused you will be um your skin is brighter more radiant um Mother Nature wants you to procreate she she is doing I you to attract someone right now yeah she's like bring it in she's doing you every favor possible at that time time and then following that we do see this big shift in our menstrual cycle hormones and this kind of drop in estrogen and then we all feel that right in the weeks leading up to our period and especially in that luteal phase which is like a low teal phase right before your period you're going to witness the the impact of low estrogen people are report being more clumsy you are more forgetful your um mood and energy is low and that to me is is like okay we're on a roller coaster here you need to know when to hold on and when you can throw your hands in the air and in the absence of that knowledge I think we miss out on some of the key signals that we need to know when it comes to just harnessing our health and harnessing our hormones so pregnancy is the most powerful and incredible thing that we can do as human beings is to create life and to grow and nurture a human being and then bring it into this world and sustain it and nurture it from our own bodies and when you think about all of the things that your body has to do in order to do that right we have to reallocate space within our abdomen to make room for a very expanding uterus that is going to have a life that grows to you know baby size so all of your organs move they have to make room your blood flow changes we we have to literally double the amount of blood that is being pumped around our bodies the metabolic turnover that pregnant women are doing during pregnancy every single day is the equivalent to that of running a marathon so when I say it's like we should prepare as if we're preparing for a marathon a marathon is over in a day or a few hours whereas pregnancy is this nine month Journey that your body is really taking from you and there are good things and there are bad things and there are things that we notice um you get great hair you get your teeth can suffer your skin can glow in the second triester it can make you puke every single day that is a very big physiological change that your body is going to encounter and so ensuring that you are at Peak Health whether it's mental or physical is actually really important because there is a lot of your body that is going to be really growing this human being one of those things that we expect now especially we just expect ourselves to keep going keep working pretend like nothing's happening hide it and and actually we should be really embracing it saying wow this is this is pretty incredible what I'm doing and then in that postnatal phase um creating milk like this whole hormonal shift that needs to happen in order for your breasts to produce milk to feed and nurture a child and I read this incredible book um by cat Bohanan um called Eve and it's about the evolution of uh women and in it one of the one of the factors is about um how we can't store enough omegas in our we cannot get enough omegas so from our teenage years we start to store some of those Oma fats on our um hips and bum and that you can actually determine when somebody is going to have their period as a teenager based so they were able to predict when someone would get their period whether we earlier or later based on that amount of fat on their thighs and buttocks and those who had less fat would um have menar later more fat would have it earlier and all I could think was I can't believe I spent years trying to get rid of my omegas my body was my body was storing those for pregnancy and it does it stes them so that it can use them up during pregnancy and the first year after for breastfeeding and a fascinating story that s or study that looked at the body's use of those omegas whether you were taking supplements or not and they compared whether the omegas in your milk came from the supplements or from your ASAT it comes from your ASAT surprise the milk prefers it to come from there so it's just it made me actually quite embrace my ass fat so positive can't believe this I I was denying my future child by by not saying actually this is like mother nature's first bit of ammo to say I'm getting ready I'm going to get you ready and this is going to be a powerful thing that you can use for the future health of your child I find that so interesting because I think so much of when so you've spoken about being in Peak Health in order to be able to uh get pregnant or to prep your yourself as best as possible for getting not just going into a blind right for sure but then we also as women our association with Peak health is so often around dieting and I think that I find I find that so interesting looking at those two together in the way that actually you know as you were saying you were sacrificing your body's Amigas by trying to lose weight around that area there's a reason we say childbearing hips yeah no for sure but also then by Peak health I very much assume that you mean so should we not be dieting in any way when coming up to trying to get pregnant I think that's very dependent on someone's physiological weight um and health if a weight is if someone's weight is at the level that it is going to actually impact them and and actually being above a certain weight can impact your ability to conceive because it can suppress ovulation there are increased risk factors and maternal complications neonatal comp complications um that can be higher when our weight isn't healthy so I definitely would say that everyone needs to be within a healthy weight or at least to try and in the absence of being able to do that to to better understand your risks um when you embark on pregnancy for preclampsia or any of these other um gestational risk factors that you might have so again investing in understanding what your own personal risk is is important so you talk about that risk factor you curve when it comes to fertility could you explain a little bit more about that so um what that essentially refers to is the fact that our eggs which we're born with all of the eggs we'll ever have um our eggs are laid down while we are in utero um in our in our so that shows you again even the impact that pregnancy has like you are determining the health of your future child and potentially their future off Offspring and an ability to conceive during that time which is wild unfortunately there is no single test for egg health I'm actually doing a study at the moment uh which is going to look at the The Cloud of cells surrounding an egg so if anyone wants to participate in this Pinnacle Trav morning to look at um what are the things that would determine the health of an egg um and we're comparing PCOS and non-pcos patient but that egg has the ability to either fertilize in a healthy way or fertilize in unhealthy way and what the key the main determinant of that is the correct number of chromosomes and as we get older our ability for an egg to properly divide and allocate the correct number of chromosomes in each cell gets worse as we get older but when I started in saying it was a u curve it's it's actually not great when we're really young either so that you have a higher risk of chromosomal CH chromosomally abnormal eggs when you're younger it then goes down when you're in your 20s 30s and as you start getting older in your 30s it goes up again so with that in mind what would be the optimal time yeah age to have ideally 25 to 30 which is very inconvenient it is inconvenient and without the things in place in the rest of the world in order for us to be able to have children whilst also doing all the other things we need to do but you have to remember that that is a textbook right I am not within that age category and I am pregnant and I uh I I do think that each person is very different right yes we can attribute you know biological findings and say there are risks at certain younger ages and it's interesting but at the end of the day every single person is different and there are some people who will be fertile at 40 there are equally some people who will be infertile at 25 yeah so it's not about relying on what is the key age it's what is the key age for you and that is very much dependent on your own goals your own Ambitions and where you are in your life and I'm really interested do men have a biological clock yes they do men are far more fertile than women as you can imagine um they're fertile 24/7 um we are only fertile once a month and for a certain amount of time up to you know per menopause and menopause um men are fertile up until they're their 80s um 90s which is depressing but what we have to remember is that male fertility rates are falling at an astronomical rate and I think a lot of this has to do with the environmental exposures that we have and also male sperm is deteriorating in quality as men get older so over 35 um the number of mutations that a sperm has in it is far higher than when he's younger so the mutation rate doubles every 16 years in men so they're acing mutations throughout their life and so yes they can get you pregnant but it may not be as healthy so I think this emphasis on fertility being a female issue is so wrong you could be as fertile as you wanted but if your partner is infertile you're both going to go through an infertility journey and vice versa so it really does take two individuals and that is the most important fertility fact I want everyone to know is that fertility is only ever 50% of the equation unless you count for the sperm of the egg and what are the most common causes of infertility right in women age age is the most predominant cause of infertility is that we are just waiting too late to have babies um and that's a really easy one for us to avoid right to an extent it well to understand at least right to understand understand I always say that if you were given information about something you might change your plans right of course yeah if you knew and we all do it right and this is the most important thing is I think it's important to equate our fertility to our finances we spend our money according to what is in our bank the more money you have the more money you will spend when it comes to our fertility we don't use that same metric we should plan according to our ovarian reserve if you don't have that much time then maybe you need to shift your plans forward a little if that's what you want to do and that's where I guess egg freezing can be helpful to to some extent have a savings account um but knowing first how much time you have is a very important metric and no different to how knowing how much time you can spend or money you can spend what is the most common fertility myth that you'd like to bust it's probably that just one person's fertility matters or that it's a female problem it is really important to remember that fer fertility requires two individuals to create life not just one and so the onus shouldn't be just on one individual no absolutely and it's very much seen as a women's issue as well it's seen as women's issue to fix it's seen as women's issue to think about and it's seen as women's issue to deal with once they have a baby to prevent to create you know make sure we don't get we have to be ensure that we don't get pregnant despite the fact men can get a hundred women pregnant in a day if they wanted to and a woman can only get pregnant once a year but it's on us to make sure that they don't shoot that gun I want to talk for a second about endocrine disrupting chemicals what are they and how well how do they impact our fertility but also how can we generally avoid them when we use the term endocrine disrupting chemicals we almost distance oursel from it just by saying that term but when you break it down our endocrine system is our hormonal system everything that controls our hormones they control how we look how we feel how we metabolize how we sleep how we menstruate our hormones control every aspect of our life and that's your endocrine system so if you have a chemical that is going to disrupt your endocrine system it's a very powerful manipulator of your overall health so when we talk about endocrine disrupting chemicals these are literally chemicals that are found in everyday compounds Cosmetics shampoos in Plastics in upholstry in our clothing in almost every aspect of our life we are being somewhat polluted by endocrine disrupting chemicals and to me I think that we cannot shout loud enough about the impact that endocrine disrupting chemicals are having on us and we cannot be more motivated to try and eliminate some of them from our lives and from a governmental level so many of these compounds should be banned but they're not so what they do is for many of them they quite literally mimic estrogen they're they're called xenoestrogens and when you have a compound that you're exposed to that is mimicking estrogen in your body then the endogenous estrogen that you're producing may not have or The receptors won't have anything to bind into and so that can really cause major problems when it comes to that beautiful balance of all of our hormones being secreted and responding um to other hormones within the body that they're receptors of and so what types of products or like where would we find these endocrine disrupting chemicals and in order to be able to avoid them so people always say that women have far higher levels of endocrine disrupting chemicals in their system than men um and they said the children have far higher levels than men and the reason they say is that women wear makeup and babies chew plastic toys and actually if you look beyond that it's much more than just all of the countless compounds and chemicals and cosmetics we put on our skin but um the fact that our menstrual products and nappies are made from probably the worst Plastics in the world and we expose our literally expose our genitals to those Plastics that have been derived from really cheap poor plastic that contains all of these endocrine disruptors so I would look at the products we use not just on our skin um but menstrual products nappies some foods even have been uh contaminated with endocrine disrupting chemicals to be honest the more you look the more depressing it gets um and it can be a little bit isolating but it also can be quite liberating to make small little changes like looking at the ingredients of something that you're going to put on your skin and saying actually maybe I don't need that what typee of ingredients would you be looking out for the easiest way I would say is if you can't pronounce the ingredient don't put it on your skin your skin is an organ it's constantly ingesting like if we know that our skin absorbs things it's going into our system so um and it's quite obvious it's pretty much all every single mainstream product shampoo conditioner there is it's going to have some of these compounds and chemicals in them um I can give you a full list afterwards things to avoid it's like let's scroll through this list of chemical compounds perfumes even um yeah and then little little other minor changes like never heating plastic never ever ever heat plastic people put microwave meals in uh people use Tupperware and Heat their lunches in when you heat plastic it releases some of these chemicals so just use glass topper Weare I'm terrified you know I'm terrified you I'm going to go r evaluate my microwave lunch every day yeah please no but that's so incredibly interesting and I feel like so much of this is just not discussed it's not touched on it's not discussed it's not like we need to as women we're told to think about our fertility all the time but also never to think about it because we need to concentrate on all of these other things and we need to not get pregnant and all of these things and I just find it so fascinating the fact that we you know no matter how well vered you are and anything you know pretty much nothing when it comes to yeah all of this when it comes to fertility when it comes to Women's Health as a whole and that is depressing yes but I think the tides are turning and that we can stand with both feet on the ground and say enough my body my choice my investigation and actually I really feel like we can either perpetuate and continue with this oh we're so beat down and nobody invests in us they don't um and nobody cares about us they don't but if we we can care about ourselves and invest in each other then we can go a lot further well I think that's a great place to end thank you so much thank you you've been incredible there have been knowledge bombs dropped everywhere and I feel I feel empowered to take my fertility into my own hands thank you so much and thank you for the work you're doing thank [Music] you

Channel: Grace Beverley

Views: 53,992

Keywords: gracefituk, flexible dieting, bbg, new makeup, must haves, intermittent fasting, vegan, weight loss, how to, grace fit uk, what i eat in a day, full day of eating, oxford university, entrepreneur, sophia cinzia, flossie, olivia neill, fertility, hertility, womens health

Id: m4bLiJkFN7o

Length: 60min 26sec (3626 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 01 2024