In this video we’re going through chapter 10 of my best-selling book, “Yes, You Can Get Pregnant: Fertility Now and Into Your Forties”

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SEE BELOW FOR THE FULL TRANSCRIPT OR CLICK ON THE IMAGE ABOVE FOR THE FULL VIDEO:

Hello. How is everyone? Hi. Hi, hi, hi. I am Aimee of aimeeraupp.com. And as always, super duper excited to get to come to you live. I get to do this every week and talk to you about really important health topics. And health, as I always say, is mental, emotional, physical, and nutritional, so to keep all of that in mind. And yeah, I'm here to inspire you to live your best life. And also, I am known as a fertility detective in most circles, and that is my main job, is I help women figure out why they're not getting pregnant, and then I help them get and stay pregnant. And I do that through my online coaching, my virtual programs, my books. If you want to learn more about all those things I do, head to my website, aimeeraupp.com.

But one important thing that comes up all the time when dealing with fertility especially is age. Everyone asks, “Am I too old? The doctor says I'm too old. Am I too old? The doctor says I need donor eggs. Am I too old? Can I do this in my own body at my age?” And unfortunately, that age, no matter what age a woman is, she's typically concerned about her age and her fertility because there's so much information out there that's not well founded. It's not well researched.

But it's telling us that around the age of 35, we basically fall off a fertile cliff, and good luck getting pregnant using your own eggs. And if you're not pregnant in six months, nine months, chances are you never will get pregnant and you need to use donor eggs, or you need to give up your dreams of growing your family. And I've discussed that research in my book, especially my book, Yes, You Can Get Pregnant. But a lot of the age related research is based on French birth records from the 1800s when people really didn't live that long and it's not based on current data or current research.

The truth is we do decline with age. We know that. That's obvious. And it can get harder to get pregnant as we get older. But if you're ovulating and menstruating, and even in some women, if you're not ovulating and menstruating, but we can restore ovulation and menstruation, there's an opportunity to get pregnant, even in your mid to late 40s. And right now in my practice, we've had a lot of pregnancies this year between my online practice and my in person clinic practice. And we've had a lot of women 44 to 48 doing it with their own eggs, a lot of them naturally, some of them with IVF. And they're doing it with their own eggs.

And I do believe that's because the work I do enhances what is called their biological age. So what am I talking about? What the hell does that mean? I have notes, so if you don't mind. But to understand what everything is based on from a general perspective is chronological age, which means: How many birthdays have you had? Right? So how old are you, chronological age? How old are you? How many years old are you? Biological age, well, that's a different story. Right? So on your birthday, everybody's going to say, “Happy chronological age. How old are you this year?” But your cells in your body don't live on the same paradigm. They don't celebrate your birthdays, if you will.

Your tissues, your organs, your cells age. Of course they do, time does march on, on every aspect of our body. But we can age more slowly or more quickly, depending on how we live our life. There is a complete science dedicated to this called the science of epigenetics, which is we used to think our genes were set in stone. We were born with our genetics. Oh, mom had heart disease, I'm going to get heart disease because it runs in my family. High cholesterol runs in my family. What that actually, what we now know is a predisposition to high cholesterol and heart disease runs in your family. But based on your choices, it may or may not show up in you, so that's epigenetics.

And epigenetics also tells us that the way we live our life, so what we eat, how we move, how we sleep, and our stress levels age us inappropriately, or appropriately, or more slowly. You can age slower. I've done a few biological age tests, and that's what I'm going to come here and talk to you about, interesting results. But I just did the Thorne biological age test. You guys can look at it. It's aimeeraupp.com/bioage if you want to see that test. But I just did that one, and it actually does give me my rate of aging. And I'm aging, only 20% of people are aging slower than me. So I'm aging slower than 80% of people. And it is very much a suggestion the support of my lifestyle.

And on average, depending on the test, I'm between seven and 11 years younger than I am chronologically, based on my bio age. So what is a bio age? It's basically the cumulative effect of your aging. And it's measured by bio markers in your body, things that maybe don't really make sense, but your glucose levels, your albumin, your creatine, your C reactive protein, your lymphocytes, mean cell volume, red cell width, alkaline phosphatase, white blood cells. All of those come into, so there's one bio age paradigm called the Horvath biological age scale. 

And this is a guy at Harvard I believe, and he discovered … I'll tell you right now. Yes, sorry, he's at UCLA. He has a DNA methylation age calculator. And in that, it's based on how your cells are aging. You take information from blood work. It measures your bio markers and puts it through this algorithm and spits out what your actual biological age is. So basically, how old are the cells in your body? How old are the organs in your body? And I think it's quite fascinating. 

So I'm taking this information from Elysium. There's a lot of biological age tests out there now, and there's a lot of different opinions about which one is the best. I'm doing the basic ones. I like the Thorne one because it's under 100 bucks. It's pretty straightforward. It's pretty easy. Makes it easy to repeat it. Some of them are a couple hundred, $400, $500, which is expensive. But knowing your biological age is a big step in understanding the entirety of your health profile. But even more important is tracking how you're aging. So biological age can shift. Right? Seeing changes over time is vital to understanding what's good and bad for your health.

So I also think I took my test at two different times. I took one about six months again, and then I took one very recently. And within the last two months, I got very sick with a bad virus and had a really high fever and was pretty unwell for seven or so days. And what's interesting is my age is lower on the most recent test and it's because my white blood cells, which are my immune markers, were still a little elevated from this said virus. And so to me, I'm going to repeat that test. I bet you I'll be younger in another three months because I'm still really recovering and doing all my things.

But so there's no single factor and no guarantee that healthy living will improve your biological age or change the rate at which your biological age will change. Nonetheless, there are a number of things you can do to improve overall health and thereby increase the likelihood of slowing biological aging, diet, cultivating healthy relationships, managing stress, sleep, and exercise. So seeing a steady decline in biological age as you chronologically age is the goal. And as you age, variance increases. At 16, your biological age is likely to be close to your chronological. But at 60, there's a wider spread. 

So that's what I'm seeing. I'm actually kind of staying the same age as I get older chronologically. And I think that's absolutely fascinating. Right? So another thing I wanted to … Sorry. Then in 2019, there was a research study published in the Journal of Nature showing that biological age can be reversed. And now there's a lot of information out there. There's one of my favorite articles by Fitzgerald, Dr. Fitzgerald, these a naturopathic doctor, functional medicine doctor up here in Connecticut. And she was published in the Journal of Aging. And she put men in her practice on a protocol, I think it was for 30 days. Very similar protocol to what I have laid out in my books, particularly in The Egg Quality Diet, coupled with all the lifestyle recommendations.

And these men took three years off their biological age in a one month protocol, which is about fascinating. And so then there was another study that started in 2019, small study in California suggested for the first time that it might be possible to reverse the body's epigenetic clock, which measures a person's biological age. For one year, nine healthy … So this is a very small study. These guys took medicine, so they took diabetes, a metformin medication, and probably some DHEA supplementation. They took two and a half years off of their biological age. 

But and then since then, now there's a ton of new research showing that these bio age, these markers are actually where it's at. And we can then see what the body is doing. So I want to walk you through the results from my Thorne bio age test. So when I did the Horvath one, like I said, I was 11 years genetically younger, which I'm biologically younger than my chronological age. And Thorne, I was seven ish, seven and a half. And what's cool about Thorne is they break it down into the overall age, so good news, your biological age is lower than your chronological age. Your body's performing seven and a half, 7.3 years younger than your real age.

And so it says, the first one is the biological age results, excellent, your calculated biological age is younger than your chronological age. The more negative the number, the better. Congrats. Age is positively associated with adverse age related health conditions, which when we're talking about fertility would be egg quality, guys. 

So to think about that, what these tests are measuring is the health of the cells in your body. And as I always say, that includes the cells in your ovaries. So you may be 39, 42, 47 chronologically, but you actually may be functioning at a much younger rate, and that's very encouraging when it comes to egg quality. And egg quality's all about cellular health. We all know that. There is really cool research showing we can improve egg quality. I discuss that research in my books and in other … There's tons of videos on my site about it.

Biological age is a metric based on wellness, which can measure health and improvement and focus on building and demonstrating resilience to maintaining good health. Having a healthy BMI is helping you maintain blood levels appropriate for your sex and your age. So my BMI is in a healthy range. I think it's about a 20 or a 19. So my age rate, I am slowing, you're aging slower than time. I'm aging at .9 biological years per calendar year, so I'm a third, I'm aging only two thirds instead of a full one year every year. So slowly I'll get younger, or I'll stay the same and I'll get older. Right? Pretty cool.

Your rate of aging is slower than other individuals, which is good. In fact, your age rate is in the 80th percentile, which means that only 20% of people are aging slower than you. The higher the percentile, the better. An ideal aging rate is less than one, which I'm at, which would indicate you're aging less than one year each calendar year. So organs and systems, so my blood age was a little older than my chronological age, and it was saying my DHEA is really healthy, so that was keeping my blood age young. And my red blood cells were super healthy.

But as I said, my platelet count and my lymphocytes were on the higher side, still within normal range, but higher than they want to see it for this bio age test. And so that increased my age by about 1.7 years. But like I said, I'm going to retest that because I think it had everything to do with this infection I had. But still, good work, your blood age is younger than your chronological. So every single system in me was younger than my current age, younger than your chronological age reflects blood health of a younger person. Blood health includes your ability to maintain healthy red and white blood cells and in optimal quality.

So why this is important, red blood cells help maintain DNA production, deliver nutrients to organs and tissues, maintain oxygen levels, produce energy, maintain systemic signaling throughout your body. So with aging, red blood cells can lose structure and function. So that's again cellular health, guys, ultimately changing how they store water and bind to iron. ATP, which is all about mitochondrial function, you want to improve egg quality, guess what you're doing, you're actually improving mitochondrial function in the body. So if your red blood cells look healthy, that's a great sign that your eggs are getting what they need, just to keep that in mind. 

Blood health is dependent on kidney health. The kidneys produce hormones, so I'm not going to get into that. White blood cells play an equally important role dictating your body's immune function. Pathogens you come in daily contact with can influence your immune response and alter the number and ratio of white blood cells in your body. The key to immune health is maintaining proper amounts and types of white blood cells. So again, if you guys want to check out this test, which I really love and recommend because I think it's cheap, I think it's really thorough, and I think it's something you could do again to see. It's amyraupp.com/bioage.

So then my lipid age, my lipid age was even younger than the chronological age. It was eight years, which is interesting. And that's interesting because if you want to talk about how much cholesterol I eat, and it just came up in one of my groups, this diet's really high in cholesterol. My mother's concerned. And I was like, “First of all, we only absorb about 20% of dietary cholesterol.” Cholesterol really comes from inflammation in the body and omega sixes, your level of inflammation. So my lipid levels were eight years younger. And DHEA contributed to that. My cholesterol is low. It's a 178. My triglycerides are great. They're a 78. HGL was great. And so it says, “Your lipid age is younger than your chronological age.” 

It is estimated using biomarkers that contribute to cholesterol metabolism. Okay, as a female who has not yet entered menopause, biologically your body has been prone to having better total cholesterol and higher HGL. And then estrogen is a hormone that helps maintain HGL cholesterol levels. So just so you know, my hormones look amazing. My liver age looks great too. It was about the same exact as my biological age. Again, my DHEA led to that, my alkaline phosphatase, albumin, globulin. Good news, your liver is younger. I love it. Liver is an essential organ responsible for crucial daily function.

So again, these markers are looking at how all the systems are working. How are you taking things in? How are your cells absorbing the nutrition? And then spitting out, based on algorithms and kind of based on how they think we should be aging, and gives you what your biological age is, which for a lot of women, including myself, it's very confidence boosting because it's telling me that what I'm doing is working. What I'm doing is supporting my body, and that even if I ever get in my head about my age and the ability to have another child, I think about this. I think about, well, but chronologically, yeah, sure, I'm that age. But biologically, I'm this age. And my hormones, all the things show that I'm still pretty young and juicy. I think for sure I can do this.

And so for me, it's also a confidence booster. 100 bucks for a confidence booster, amazing. And it also told me that, so I drink one or less, so that was the lowest you could, drinking one or less alcoholic beverages a day. This habit is likely helping you maintain lower liver age compared to individuals who drink more. And then my kidney age, which I thought was interesting, was a little high. And it was because my urea nitrogen was a little high, which I think had something to do perhaps with being over hydrated for the test, I'm not sure. Or just my kidney might need a little more loving and I can work on that. And so but again, my kidney age looks good. Everything is still younger. 

My metabolic age was younger, which is amazing. My hemoglobin A1C at a 4.8 took two years off of my life. My glucose was great, so that lowered my age. And so yeah, nutrient storage capability, so all of these things. So overall, then they gave you a list of recommendations, which I thought was cool. So follow the same diet it says, whatever you're doing, it's working is basically what it says. Activity, it told me I can increase my exercise, so I exercise right now about four, maybe five times a week, 30 to 45 minutes per. It's telling me to aim to exercise at moderate intensity for 150 minutes a week, or vigorous at 75, which I'm already actually doing, so I think I'm fine there.

And then it also tells me balance routine with exercise, all of that.  And then it also did make some recommendations for my … So let's see, my white blood cell count was good in range, red blood cell, hemoglobin was good. Hematocrit was good. All my red blood cells looked super duper healthy. But I love because it's basically almost like a physical. It's taking the numbers, the basic numbers from a physical. My electrolytes looked great. Like I said, kidney health, there was one thing that was a little off, which I'm going to work on. I've research it. It basically says I could've been over hydrated for the test, so the fasting test, and that could've thrown off my numbers. So technically, I may be even younger than I'm supposed to be.

And then it just made some recommendations. For me, it didn't make many recommendations. A good basic multi, and then reserve a cell, which is actually something I'm already on because that's the MMN. So anyway, I think it's super interesting for you guys. If you guys want to check it out, go to aimeeraupp.com/bioage. I think like I said, it's a confidence booster. I think also you want to keep it in mind of I think it's a good way to just base whether or not the choices you're making are working for you.

I don't know that there's specific goals, but what I'm seeing in my clients that are doing this, or I'm running them through my Horvath spreadsheet, is that on average they're four to seven years younger biologically than their chronological age after the program I put them on. So after my diet, lifestyle recommendations, they're coming out much younger, where they started at their age, some started even older honestly. And then we've brought their age down. So the good news is you can reverse your biological age. You can continue to get older chronologically and get younger cellularly and healthier, or at the very leas stay. For me, I'm going to stay at 39. I'm all for that. I love it, love it. I kind of just play around with my head. 

And so you can do your own information research on this, but they're called biological age tests. And Horvath, Steven Horvath was the first one to develop this. It was a Horvath clock and statistical method. It's kind of really complicated. But then I have found this cool spreadsheet where I can plug numbers in and actually then give readouts to patients of mine based on their labs. But for those of you that don't work with me or work with me closely like that, I recommend buying this test. And that's kind of where I'm moving with all of my patients is buying this test.

If you work with me in the clinic and you want to send me your lab numbers, I can pretty much plug it in. But I think it's easier and it's such a beautiful report to get from Thorne with the recommendations. It's easier just to spend the hundred bucks and do it that way. So aimeeraupp.com/bioage. And then I know someone commented on the Instagram post last night. There was two comments. One asked if they could do it with me at my clinic, so I don't have the physical tests in hand. You can't. You just pay for the test online. They send you a lab requisition. You go to Quest. You get the blood draw. You get the results within a day or two. So I don't have those physically, so you would have to do it the way everyone else does it. Aimeeraupp.com/bioage.

And then someone else said, because I said something about aging and fertility, and she was like, “Sorry, it's resiliency and finances, 200 grand in and however many years.” I really do agree, resiliency is really important here. Finances help. But you can't … I was going to say money doesn't buy love in a sense of you still have to take care of yourself in the process, like we now know and the science really supports the fact that we can shift our aging process. We can support our bodies and how we age. We can improve our egg quality. We know that. And I want you guys to have the tools to empower yourself. I want you to get the data and the research and collect it, and kind of make this fun. It's a fun discovery process.

Oh, okay, like for me. Oh, okay, so my kidney function could be better. Okay, so I'll work on that. My immune system, okay, so I'm going to work on that and throw some mushrooms into the mix, going to work on that. I'm taking my Chinese herbs. I'm doing my things. I'm going to retest and I'm going to see. And I bet you, and I'll report back, I'm going to retest in a month or two. I bet you I'll be younger on the next one. So you guys go test, I want to hear all about it. I want to get feedback. I want to learn more, especially those of you that are doing egg quality diet, I would love to know what your biological age is when you do the test because it really helps me start to collect data.

Like I said, on average I'm seeing four to seven years younger after doing the diet. So I'd love to see what you guys are up to and what's working for you. Okay, have a beautiful day. Thanks so much for listening and I will see you all very, very soon. 

END TRANSCRIPT.

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