The Biologic Clock is a phrase that is familiar to many women. But do you really know what it means?
Basically, the Biologic Clock refers to the aging of human eggs. Unlike men, who produce sperm throughout thier lifetime and are fertile nearly all of their lives, women are only fertile for about 30 years.
Why is this? Plain and simple answer: eggs age. Women make all of their eggs before birth and cannot make more. This seems unfair, but is necessary to preserve full length chromosomes in the future generations (see blog about telomers). The human body produces a huge amount of toxins every day as the cells go about the normal work of living. These toxins damage and eventually kill many eggs. Thus as a woman ages, there are fewer eggs in the ovaries and only a SMALL PERCENTAGE are actually healthy.
The ovaries are not able to distinguish a healthy egg from an unhealthy one. Thus eggs are RANDOMLY released by the ovaries. In other words, if only 1 out of 4 eggs is healthy (like in a 40 year old woman), that woman will only release a healthy egg on average 1 out of every 4 months! This means an average 40 year old woman may only release 3 healthy eggs in a full year!
3 chances in 1 year, isn’t many! If there are any other problems (tubes, sperm, uterus) this can make it even MORE difficult to conceive after 40.
What can be done? Simple: make sure all other systems are working well, then GET MORE EGGS. If you are drawing lottery tickets from a black bag (say with 20 tickets and 5 are winners) you will win more often if you draw more tickets. This is easily and safely accomplished with injections of FSH.
At AFAMG, we are experts at treating women over 40. We do everything we can to maximize the chance of release/retrieval of a healthy egg and thus get a large percentage of women over 40 pregnant each year. The key is to see us as soon as possible – you are losing healthy eggs every day!
