Dr. Lucky Sekhon

That is a massive blind spot.

So many people come in and they're like, my doctor told me that I have the eggs of a 25-year-old and I'm 42.

And I'm like, they must have been talking about you having a higher than expected egg count for your age.

Exactly.

But quality...

is what I was referring to earlier, the ability to make an embryo from your eggs that has all of the DNA it's supposed to have, right, chromosomes, packages of DNA.

And think about it like this.

You have these proteins, they're called cohesins, and they bind the chromosomes together, and they keep everything organized.

When an egg and sperm come together, it goes through this process of genetic recombination.

And when those proteins are breaking down because of normal aging,

there's more disorganization and you can end up with embryos that have too much of those chromosomes or too few and those are not compatible with life.

So either it won't implant or it will implant for a little bit and then miscarry.

No.

Ovulation is about understanding when you're in the game.

When you ovulate, an egg only lasts for 12 to 24 hours.

It's very fleeting.

And when you have sex within minutes or when you have an insemination, right, if you're using donor sperm, sperm will get into the reproductive tract very quickly and it will sit there and wait and linger for up to three to five days.

So the ideal timing and why people are using ovulation predictor kits or why they're using a calendar to track their cycle and why they're coming to me from the get-go if they don't get a period or if their periods are really irregular and they have no idea when they're ovulating is that you ideally should know when to anticipate ovulation so you can aim to have sex in the two to three days leading up to that.

That's really the most high yield time.

Obviously, there can be outliers and the converse is using the rhythm method to try to avoid pregnancy.