Have you thought about freezing your eggs?

Many women are looking into this as a way to extend their fertility. It's not right for everyone but if you've made the decision to pursue this then you want to get your body ready so that you have your best and juiciest eggs going on ice. This won't be easy but I'm here to talk you through it and help you find the resources you need.​

In this video, I'll talk you through exactly what to do to prep for egg freezing and you'll leave with some tips you can start implementing right away FROM HOME.

Order YOUR copy of The Egg Quality Diet here: aimeeraupp.com/egg-quality-diet-book

Disclaimer: Please keep in mind that I am not a medical doctor. I have been a practitioner of Traditional Chinese Medicine for over 17 years and I will be speaking from my clinical experience helping thousands of women conceive. The office of Aimee E. Raupp, M.S., L.Ac and Aimee Raupp Wellness & Fertility Centers and all personnel associated with the practice do not use social media to convey medical advice. This video will be posted to Aimee’s channels to educate and inspire others on the fertility journey.

See the full transcript below.

Hello, hello, hello. How is everyone today? Let me just adjust this guy. Okay. I want you to be able to see my pretty flowers over here, Instagram. Facebook, I know you can see it. How is everyone? So good to see you. It is that time of the week. It is Thursday again, and it is time for my weekly live where I get to come to you live and share tips and inspiration and information with you on how you can lead your best life. For those of you that are new to me, welcome. We're getting literally hundreds and hundreds of new followers a week right now. We are excited about that, we are on fire, and I really appreciate all of your support. I am Aimee Raupp. I am the best-selling author of a few of those books up there behind me. Most recently, The Egg Quality Diet, which is going to be a topic of conversation today. We are going to talk about freezing your eggs and the best way to prepare for that.

So this doesn't totally apply to my typical demographic, which is mainly women trying to get pregnant. But I do think it's a very important conversation to have with women who are on the path to motherhood or know they want to be mothers at some point, and what is the best plan to follow when freezing your eggs. If any of you read the magazine, the online magazine Byrdie, I was interviewed by one of their journalists. I actually worked with her for a couple months leading up to her own egg freezing. She followed The Egg Quality Diet, and even though she had a low AMH and a decent FSH for her age, it was a bit high for her age, and her doctors told her she was not going to have good results. She got very good results from following the protocol that I put her on. So we can share that link with you guys if you want. Facebook we'll share it here for that article, the Byrdie article, which I think was so great and really captures the work that I do and the extent that I can help women on any path.

Whether you're planning your future and you don't have a partner yet or you don't want to have children yet, but you definitely want to freeze your eggs, I put her on a whole protocol. So again, the article was in Byrdie, B-Y-R-D-I-E, and really goes into detail how Chinese medicine, acupuncture, Chinese herbs, diet, supplements helped her get the best results for that egg freezing process. And, again, her doctors told her she would have to do multiple rounds, she probably wasn't going to get anything, her numbers were poor, and she actually got quite a few eggs to freeze, which was exciting. So I want to just take this look down. That one might fall. That's what's been happening. So this is The Egg Quality Diet, and I wrote this book for a number of reasons, but the main one being that it seems every woman, no matter what her age, no matter where she is on her path to motherhood is now concerned about her egg quality.

And that has a lot to do with I believe the media and I believe our doctors telling us that by the age of 35, we fall off this fertile cliff and we're never going to come back from it and we're screwed. “Age 36, AMH 0.12, can I also freeze my eggs?” You absolutely can. I would highly recommend, so just listen to the rest of this recording and take away the information that I share with you today. So anyway, about six months ago, I did a Google, you can do these search engine SEO things to see, what are women most commonly searching for when it comes to the topic of fertility or getting pregnant? And the most searched phrase is “can I improve the quality of my eggs?” Or, “how to improve egg quality.” And so it really got me thinking that, yes, I wrote, Yes, You Can Get Pregnant and I do think I convey in there that it's about quality, not quantity, and I don't really care what your FSH or AMH is that. There's a lot we can do to optimize your fertility, fertility is an extension of health.

But maybe I wasn't using the exact right language, so I literally wrote a book called The Egg Quality Diet, and for that reason, because I wanted you to see, yes. And even more that this isn't manufactured made up hocus pocus bullshit. There's research, there's science, there's data, we can improve the quality of our eggs, even as we get older. Even if our AMH is low and our FSH is high. Guess what? They do not reflect what the quality of your eggs are. But one thing you have to remember is, okay, the two things you have to remember, yes. If we just go on living our lives the way we're living our lives and as we get older, guess what? We will age and our egg quality will diminish. It will decline. It will get worse as we get older, especially if we don't take the best care of ourselves. It's just like a pipe. After time, it gets more and more clogged. More and more clogged, there's more and more residue, there's more and more toxins.

They get into your bloodstream. They get into cells. The cells become crappier and crappier, and you're not going to make healthy babies with those eggs. That's just how it works. But there is also research that shows we can turn that process around. We can rejuvenate ourselves from the inside out. We can restore, improve mitochondrial function. We can reduce inflammation. We can heal the gut lining and we can improve the quality of our egg, even as we get older. Just like we can reverse heart disease, just like we can heal from type two diabetes, just like we can heal from cancer, we can improve the quality of every single cell in our body, that includes the quality of the cells in our ovaries. So if you are thinking about freezing your eggs, you want to prepare for it. Don't just jump in because you're 35 and you're stressed out and you think you need to do it tomorrow.

Consider making a plan just like you would save for the ideal wedding dress. You would plan a wedding. You would save for a house. You would plan a trip. Plan for this. If your company covers this, amazing. Plan for it. If you're paying out of pocket, you better fucking plan for it because it's not cheap. And some girls have to do more than one round. So following a plan like this I think pretty much, I can't promise, can help you get the most bang for your buck out of one round. Maybe two rounds. Instead of I've seen girls do four rounds just to get the amount of eggs, because they talk about attrition and thawing and you're not going to get all the eggs that you freeze, which is also, I don't know, so fear-based because I just see women, they get a lot out of their lots. And so just remember that when they finally do thaw them.

I also haven't seen a lot of women actually use the exit they freeze, but it does create a nice insurance policy. It does make them feel like they're doing something to preserve their dreams of a family. And I really support that. And so I've had many girls in my practice over the years freeze their eggs because they're getting older, they definitely want to have families, they don't want to have the pressure of worrying about their egg quality. I never chose to freeze my eggs, even though I was 39 when I met my husband only because, I don't know, I just felt like I didn't need to. And not that you don't believe in your body if you're going to go freeze your eggs. I just felt like I was getting better with age and I did just recently do a genetic test to check my genetic age versus my chronological age. And I'm actually 11 years younger physiologically than I am chronologically, and I think that has everything to do with following the stuff that I preach. And I've been doing that a long time.

But with that, if you're planning to freeze your eggs or even prepping for it an IVF, same thing, make a plan. This diet is 100 days long for a reason. My hope is that you continue it after the 100 days, but it's not a diet at that point, because about day 50, you start reintroducing foods and you really figure out the diet that works best for you. And then hopefully you stay on that and you don't deviate and eat the foods that were causing inflammation in your body. But following a plan like this and following the plan laid out in Yes, You Can Get Pregnant with the lifestyle and the supplements, The Egg Quality Diet comes with an incredible resources page that is volumes and volumes of information on all the other things besides diet that you can do to optimize egg quality. But following a plan for at least 100 days before you go and freeze your eggs or make embryos is critical.

It takes the process of folliculogenesis, which is the process of the egg that you are about to ovulate or say the eggs that you're going to freeze, they started getting recruited in your body 100 days before they get to the maturation stage, the stage where they can then mature them with medication and retrieve them and freeze them. And so those 100 days, as they are developing and growing up in your body, they are influenced by all the food you eat, by all the thoughts you think, by all the stress you're exposed to, by all the chemicals you're exposed to, by all the vitamins you take. So you really want to take advantage of those 100 days. You want to think, what can I do to best support my body so I can get the most bang for my buck? Egg freezing is not cheap. It does take a physical and emotional toll on every single woman I've ever seen go through it. It is physically and emotionally draining. You really want to be prepared for this process.

And you also want to feel like you're giving yourself the best possible chance because just because you're younger doesn't mean all your eggs are great. Just because you're younger doesn't mean all your eggs are great. If there is a lot of inflammation in your body, if your health is not where it should be, you are not going to create the best quality eggs, even if you're under the age of 35. Is that clear? Your fertility is an extension of your health. Your fertility is an extension of your health. If you want to make the best damn quality eggs and have the best attrition rate that you can possibly have, plan, prepare, eat nutrient dense foods, follow the macronutrients I have outlined in the book. Do the elimination diet. Get the inflammation under control in your body. Your overall health will thrive. And guess what? You'll also have an easier time with all the medications that are going to be pumped into your body for this cycle.

These medications do a number on the liver and if the liver isn't already supported by eating a clean diet by certain supplementation, it's going to have a hard time processing out those hormones and you will have side effects. I've seen women have months and months and months of side effects and erratic menstrual cycles from freezing their eggs if they didn't properly prepare. And acupuncture is amazing to help regulate. These are the things that you should do in preparation for egg freezing. Acupuncture weekly for at least one to two months prior, if not three months. Follow this diet for the three months as outlined in the book. Take a good prenatal supplement. I have all my listed recommended supplements on my website. Make sure you're on a prenatal with methyl folate. Make sure you're on a very good quality fish oil, about two to three grams of fish oil a day. Make sure you're on a good, healthy vitamin D get your vitamin D levels checked.

They should be between a 50 and a 70. If they are not, you should be taking a couple 1,000 IUs of vitamin D every day. Take the liver pills as described in all of my books and on my website. A good probiotic. Eat lots of bone broth. Basically, follow this diet. You could take some antioxidants. Up the anti, if you will. I love NAD Plus. I take the Elysium Health one. You can take a Co Q-10. You can take some kind of mitochondrial support. There are many that are out there. I have the ones that I love and approve of listed on my website. So acupuncture, supplements, diet, movement. Exercise is critically important to your health, to your fertility, to your hormones. Move for 30 minutes five days a week. Do whatever you want to do. Don't overexercise. Don't under exercise. Don't try to lose weight for egg retrieval. Estrogen is stored in fat cells. You need some weight on you to get the best results.

If you are too skinny, if your BMI is too low, you are not going to have a good procedure. You want to be right in the middle of that BMI range. That is the healthiest place you can be for your fertility and for your hormones. Sleep seven to eight hours every single night. If you can get in a mindfulness practice, one to two times a day, all of these things that regulate your cortisol levels, which believe it or not, cortisol has a very strong impact on egg quality because it impacts the androgens like testosterone and DHA in your body and that impacts basically ovarian development. The outer shell of the egg is very impacted by androgens. So following a diet like this, following the supplements I recommend, acupuncture regularly. If your acupuncturist is an herbalist, which I am and I highly recommend seeing a certified herbalist who is trained and certified in Chinese herbs, taking herbs, supremely important. Sleep, meditation, or a mindfulness practice, healthy BMI. What else?

Managing your alcohol intake three to five drinks a week is I think a very healthy space for women. Managing your stress levels as best that you can. And remembering that this is an insurance policy, not putting too much pressure on yourself. You could always repeat this if you need to, but also not letting your doctor dictate your fears or your feelings based on what your hormone levels are. That's something that's really, really important. In the Byrdie article, How To Prepare To Freeze Your Eggs, like I said, the woman who wrote the article was really scared by her doctor that she wasn't going to have good results, that she was maybe never going to have children because of her numbers. And we did a lot of belief work around that. So really tuning into your mindset, going into this, this isn't just like, “Oh, I'm going to freeze my eggs next week and I'll go take the meds and all that.”

There are girls who do it that way. I do think that ultimately they pay the price that the eggs aren't the best quality, they have a hard time recovering from the process, the procedure, and they have to do it again. And so, to really consider and think about all of these things when you're going in that this requires a preparation just like anything else. “Is 45 too old for IVF?” No, it's not if you have the right doctor. “After freezing eggs, can we still give birth naturally, especially for a woman who has extremely low AMH?” I've seen many women freeze their eggs as an insurance policy and they still go on to have children when they meet their partner. So, absolutely, but the eggs are still there and they're an insurance policy, which is nice. I have seen women of all AMHs and all FSHs get pregnant naturally. It should not determine your fertility. It determines how well you respond to fertility medications, but AMH and FSH basically change every single month, so do not let those numbers determine your mood.

I see a lot of questions rolling in so I'm only going to address the ones as they pertain to egg freezing, because that is the topic today. So let's see. Okay, I answered that one already. “This is not what the gynecologists tell us in Turkey. They traumatize women once they are 35 as if the game is over and we cannot get pregnant anymore.” I know, and that is the information out here in the U.S. as well and it's horrible because. If you read any of the current data especially on aging and reproductive biology, there's a lot we can do to influence our hormones and our genetic age and our egg quality. And I see it time and time again, clinically. I see women as they get older, they get healthier and they get more fertile. I see it all the time. Meaning when they start working with me and implementing all of the diet and lifestyle recommendations that I make in my books.

And so the other thing I wanted to talk about too that I forgot in the prep for egg freezing is detoxing bath and beauty products, which, again, on my website where I have my recommended supplements, I have [inaudible 00:17:16] approved lists of the best non-toxic bath and beauty products that you can use. I also talk about it in detail in Yes, You Can Get Pregnant, but those chemicals in those bath and beauty products have endocrine-disrupting chemicals, they will screw up your hormones, they will screw up your liver, and you will not process the hormones that you are given for your egg retrieval properly and things can go awry. “Is the diet vegan-friendly?” It is not. I mean, there are things that you can do, but I have just not seen clinically 20 years of clinical experience. I respect your choice to be a vegan. I have not seen it be fruitful for fertility.

It is very complicated to get all the fat and the complete protein that you need from a vegan diet for fertility. So if you are willing to do bone broth and eat eggs and fish, I think you can do the diet. You don't have to eat meat if you don't want to, but there's fish broth. There's things like that you can do. “Is this diet you're suggesting okay for type two diabetics? A lot of confusing messages about lowering saturated fat for diabetics.” Yeah, I've seen it be very successful for type two diabetes. It's a very similar diet that I would put people on. I might play around a little bit more with carbohydrates, the macros for the carbs, depending on what your blood sugars are doing. So I would have you do a continuous glucose monitor and we would monitor what your sugars were doing after each meal, and then tweak the diet more, which you could do on your own. But decreasing grains is supremely important, increasing fat supremely important, and getting enough protein, supremely important, and then the right kind of vegetables.

I have a handful of type two diabetics who work with me for fertility and this diet totally worked for them, but we do really have to monitor their sugars. “Is this book available in PDF for customers abroad?” It is. It's an ebook version. It's available abroad. It's only available in English though at this point. “Is caffeine damaging to eggs?” I think that's up for debate. I think how you consume the caffeine is more important to ask. So if you consume caffeine on an empty stomach and you consume caffeine in excess, absolutely, it can be damaging to everything in your body, not just your eggs. If you consume caffeine and just one cup, less than 100 milligrams of caffeine a day, around 80 milligrams I think is best, with some protein and some fat, okay. It's okay. But if you consume more than one cup a day, and if it's not organic and you don't consume it with protein and fat, it's bad for your blood sugar, which is bad for your hormones.

“About freezing eggs, can we still…?” I answered that one. “What do you suggest if one tube is blocked?” Many women get pregnant with just one tube. I've seen it multiple times clinically. So I don't think you have to rush to IVF. Dozens of women that have gotten pregnant with just one too. I still think you want to do everything you can to optimize your chances, and so following the diet and lifestyle that I've mapped out in my books is the best way to do that in reducing inflammation, especially. Because, why was that tube blocked, that kind of thing, is it endometriosis? Is it an inflammatory disorder that caused that blockage? “How can I improve AFC, antral follicle count, so more eggs can be retrieved in the freezing process in a few months?” Look into ovarian PRP. It's called platelet rich plasma. That is one of the best ways to improve antral follicle count and increase AMH.

Ovarian PRP Dr. Zaher Merhi does it here on the East Coast, in the tri-state area. His clinic is called Rejuvenating Fertility Center, but there are people that do it in other parts of the U.S. as well and other parts of the world. But ovarian PRP I think is a great way to improve antral follicle count. I also think acupuncture. I did a Gua Sha, an abdominal Gua Sha video the other day. That's another great way. You want to improve microcirculation to the ovaries and the uterus. That will improve the antral follicle count. Taking DHEA in very small doses, not 75 milligrams a day like the book It Starts With The Egg says or CHR says. I think that's way too aggressive for a lot of women. I think 10 to 20 milligrams of DHEA a day can be very helpful in recruiting more follicles. “I did two rounds. My one embryo failed. Do you have a recommendation in the California Bay Area? My doctor said not to move forward with IVF anymore.”

Yeah, I would look at Dr. Amy, I forget her last name. She's The Egg Whisperer. She might be a good choice for you or she might have good doctors for you to work with. I just would look at a mini-IVF clinic and I would look into the ovarian PRP as well. “Egg freezing sounds like we are limiting our eggs for next time. It sounds like we were going to lose eggs after the operation.” No, you do. But also remember, you have thousands of eggs in there, thousands. Even when you're in menopause, you still have over 1000 egg left in your ovaries. So you're going to lose the eggs no matter what. You lose a couple of 100 eggs almost, or maybe less, it depends on who you ask, but almost every month when you ovulate. You just drop eggs. That's what your body does. So you might as well try to capture some of them. For some women, it's just because, when we're younger, potentially we have more, potentially we have better quality so we freeze them. So it really just depends on your mindset.

You don't have to freeze them. I didn't freeze them and I got pregnant naturally and easily in my 40s and it was all good. “Can you do this program for the longterm even if you're not clear if pregnancy is in the near future?” 100%. That's how I did it. So I wrote, Yes, You Can Get Pregnant, this book right here, when I was 34 and I was coupled, but I wasn't married and I didn't marry the guy I was coupled with. And so we weren't actively trying to make babies. But I knew I wanted children. And so when I wrote, Yes, You Can Get Pregnant, that was my commitment to myself. From then on in, I was doing everything I told women to do. So I was totally prepared when the time came. I knew I was going to meet my partner and I did. And we met and I turned 40 soon after we met and we got pregnant right away when we started trying because I had been preparing. So I strongly recommend the preparation.

Whether or not you choose to freeze your eggs, preparing for your fertility, your future fertility should be your top priority if you want children and at some point in your life. “Is there an age that it becomes difficult to freeze eggs?” Some doctors won't freeze them over the age of 40, but it really just depends on the practitioner. There are many doctors who will still freeze eggs of women in their 40s. It really just depends on the doctor. “I'm on day 27. I've never felt better.” Congratulations, Michelle. Thank you. “[inaudible 00:23:56] to coffee.” I don't really know much about that so I can't really answer that. “I got four AMH tests done and two of those were 0.8 and two were 2.2.” Yeah, it's the inaccuracy. It changes all the time. That's why I don't want you to rest your hopes and your desires on these fricking numbers. They change all the goddamn time.

I've had my AMH tested a bunch of times in the last year and it literally changes. It's a point difference at times. A whole point, not 10th of a point. A whole point. It doesn't mean squat, guys. What matters is the antral follicle count. Okay, I'm not going to answer that. “Laser therapy to improve egg quality?” Yeah, laser works similar to PRP. I think PRP is the best because it goes right in. Laser gets deeper. PRP is literally in the ovaries. Okay. I have a video on exercise. So you watch that for the exercise question. So there we have it. Let me just make sure there's no questions on Facebook over here about freezing eggs. “Does menopause begin because of eggs running out or because of hormones changing for an older woman?” It really happens because of hormones changing and the reserve gets lower and so the body starts to think, “Okay, this isn't the time.”

But I'll tell you right now, I was reading a book last night. I'm obsessed with these anti-aging protocols, and they're seeing in laboratories that if you follow basically a diet and lifestyle with the supplements that I recommend, they're reversing menopause in animal models and so suspect that we can do the same in human models. And we've seen women change their diet and their lifestyle when they're in “menopause” or “perimenopause” and start to skip cycles around, and then hormones get restored and regulated and they start ovulating and menstruating again. We've seen that with PRP, we've seen that with laser, we've seen that with acupuncture, diet, lifestyle. There's so many things that you can still do. Yeah, I don't think it has to be permanent. And even, in menopause, you do not run out of eggs. You are not out of eggs even when you're in menopause. To pick your brain, you guys are cute.

“Would you ever suggest a lap if you have endo prior to egg freezing along with your diet and prep?” It depends on how severe the endo is, but yes, endo will definitely impact air quality. So if the lap seems feasible to you, 100%. Do it with the right doctor though. [Dr. Andrea Vitaly 00:26:34] is my recommendation in the tri-state area. Okay, guys, I'm going to go. I love you, guys. Have a wonderful day. This was a really informative, fun video to do today and I'll see you soon. Okay, bye, Instagram. And just so you know, “Can you reverse menopause on just diet alone?” Some studies are showing that diet, lifestyle. So supplements, really important too. But yeah, some studies are showing that we can really impact our hormones and menopause through how we live our lives. More to come on that. Talk to you guys later.

End transcript.

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