How a Woman’s Age Affects Her Fertility

The effects of a woman’s age on her fertility range from decreased blood flow to the ovaries to decreased egg production. Here’s what’s happening to your fertility levels as you get older…

“It can be frightening, this yearning for a child – it’s hard to fathom the desperate urgency.” – Wendy Wasserstein, first-time mother at age 46.

This info about how a woman’s age affects her fertility is from The Infertility Cure: The Ancient Chinese Wellness Program for Getting Pregnant and Having Healthy Babies by Randine Lewis. She is a licensed acupuncturist with a Master of Science in Oriental medicine – click on the book cover for more info about her infertility and acupuncture book, and read on to learn how a woman’s age affects her fertility.

How a Woman’s Age Affects Her Fertility

1. Eggs are less receptive. As a woman ages, her fertility levels are affected by dwindling hormone levels. Women may produce fewer eggs as they age, and the outer capsule of the eggs that are produced are tougher – which diminishes their potential for fertilization. Lewis stresses that it’s not just the quality of the eggs that diminishes with age, it’s other factors such as…

2. The blood flow to the ovaries decreases. “As we approach menopause, the ovarian blood flow is around five times less than when we were in our reproductive primes,” writes Lewis. The better your blood circulation to any organ is, the better that organ will function. “Acupuncture and acupressure are the only known methods to improve the blood flow to the ovaries.”

3. Hormone levels fluctuate. “The lack of communication between the brain, the pituitary gland, and the ovaries makes the follicles resistant, and they quit paying attention to FSH,” writes Lewis. Undernourished follicles have a hard time developing new eggs – which is another way a woman’s age negatively affects her fertility.

A natural way to increase fertility levels for both women and men is to encourage a woman’s body to return to more youthful levels of hormone balance – which would encourage her ovaries to produce and release eggs the same way they did when she was younger.

Getting pregnant after age 40. “If women want to become pregnant in their forties, they need to provide more hormonal fuel and blood flow to their remaining thousands of eggs,” writes Lewis. She states that Chinese medicine – including acupuncture and acupressure – is an effective way to improve a woman’s fertility levels, despite advancing age.

If you have any questions or thoughts about how a woman’s age affects fertility — or getting pregnant after age 40 — please comment below…

For a little help getting pregnant, check out Early Pregnancy Tests.com — they have a wide variety of fertility supplements, herbs, and prenatal vitamins.