Taking fertility supplements, eating a healthy diet, incorporating yoga into your daily routine, and managing your stress levels will improve all of the bodily processes that support fertility and quality egg development. Don't fret if you're 40 and are just starting to think about having children!
Fish Oil (Omega 3s): Omega 3s is a practical way to delay ovarian aging and can help to preserve fertility and encourage the production of higher quality eggs, especially for women over 40.
Unfortunately, IVF success at 40 with own eggs is limited – it is estimated at lower than 10%. Finding an IVF clinic with high success rates or the best IVF clinic for over 45 can be challenging to say the least.
Follicles Needed for an IVF Cycle
During IVF treatment, your doctor wants to stimulate your ovaries to mature several follicles. Anywhere between 8 and 15 follicles is considered an acceptable amount.
Levels of CoQ10 decrease as you age. Taking CoQ10 supplements can increase blood and tissue CoQ10 levels. CoQ10 supplementation has been shown to improve egg quality, sperm quality, and pregnancy rates.
There is no established set dose for CoQ10. Recommended doses range from 100 to 600 mg per day for fertility. Taking smaller 100-200 mg doses throughout the day rather than one large dose is recommended for the best absorption.
Fertility After Age 40 – IVF in the 40s. At age 40 and above women have reduced fertility potential as compared to that seen in younger women. They also have substantially lower success rates with fertility treatments including in vitro fertilization (IVF).
However, pregnancy success rates using your own eggs drops considerably for women over 40. In the U.S., the likelihood of achieving a live birth from one egg retrieval in women between ages 41-42 is less than 20% (http://sart.org); in women above age 42, the rate is less than 5%.
IVF can however help improve chances of successfully conceiving a healthy baby, even after 40 years. the procedures of egg retrieval and screening of embryos can help improve pregnancy outcomes.
Irregular period cycle and difficulty conceiving
If you are facing issues conceiving and have not been able to conceive for a while now, it could be one of the signs of bad egg quality.
How many eggs does a woman have at 40? By the time a woman reaches 40, she'll be down to about 18,000 (3% of her pre-birth egg supply). Although the chances of conception are lower, this does not mean it is impossible to conceive at this age.
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!
However, it's important to understand that results can take some time: the window for improving egg quality is two to four months before ovulation. This is the time when the follicle cells are developing and the cell is getting ready to divide to form the egg cell that will end up being ovulated.
Look at your lifestyle choices. While there are currently no clinically proven ways to improve egg quality once it has begun to decline, researchers have been exploring how lifestyle choices may have a significant impact on reproductive health in general.
While there are couples who come in, are diagnosed, and get pregnant via IVF in the first round – they are an anomaly. Most couples have to undergo that previously mentioned three IVF rounds or more.
Women under 35 have the highest success rates in all of the “egg number” groups. Women under 38 in our IVF program have acceptable live birth rates even with only 3 – 6 eggs, do better with more than 6 eggs, and do best with more than 10 eggs.
Most fertility clinics set an age limit, often between 42 and 45 years old, for a woman to use her own eggs. However, the ASRM committee opinion concludes that "limited treatment may be provided after a process of explicit education and examination of values."
There IS a pregnancy rate at 44 years old, albeit a low one.
So, you do have a chance, just know that multiple tries with your own eggs will cost a lot more than one try with donor eggs, and your chances of pregnancy are significantly lower, but not zero.
Clinics seem to vary on when to stop taking CoQ10. Some suggest taking CoQ10 until the retrieval, others say take it until a positive pregnancy test, and yet others recommend taking CoQ10 throughout pregnancy and until you have finished growing your family.
CoQ10: Fertility Effects In Women
One small randomized controlled trial (RCT) involving 76 women undergoing IVF (in vitro fertilization) treatment found that CoQ10 supplementation significantly increased the chance of getting pregnant compared to controls [22].
While many factors come into play with infertility, this lower energy production may contribute to a lower egg quality, as well as an increased risk of embryo loss. Thus, increased CoQ10 may improve egg quality and the ability to carry a pregnancy to full-term.
Eggs take 3 – 4 months to mature prior to ovulation, and the best results from taking CoQ10 start to show up after supplementing for 3 – 4 months.
If you are taking CoQ10 vitamins every day, research shows that the body will show the effects as early as two weeks into daily supplementation.