IVF and menopause

Fertility Specialist Kari Sproul, MD, explains how and why fertility treatments do not deplete your egg supply more rapidly and shorten your time to menopause
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IVF and menopause

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I think a common question that patients have for me if I'm telling them I'm going to recommend a fertility treatment to get them to ovulate more eggs is, well, if you're going to ovulate more of my eggs, won't that deplete my supply more rapidly and then shorten my time to menopause and that's actually not the case and this is why. We're born, actually in our mom's uterus with the most eggs we're ever going to have, which is about five to six million. By the time we're born that number is already down to two to three million. When we hit puberty it's a 200 to 300,000. When we're around age 37 to 38, that number is only 25,000 and by the time we get to menopause, the average age in the US is 51, we really only have about 1,000 eggs left. Each month we have a group of eggs in our ovary and one of those eggs is chosen to ovluate. So you'd think, well, if only one is chosen to ovulate I should only lose about 400 to 500 in my lifetime; so why do a lose so many more? But what happens is one is chosen to ovulate from that group that is there each month and all of those other ones die off. So when we do fertifility treatments, we're just growing those eggs and trying to make use of those eggs that would normally die off on their own. So we are absolutely not depleting our supply more rapidly, we're just using what would die off on its own.

Fertility Specialist Kari Sproul, MD, explains how and why fertility treatments do not deplete your egg supply more rapidly and shorten your time to menopause

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Kari Sproul, MD

Fertility Specialist

Kari Sproul is a Reproductive Endocrinologist and Infertility (REI) doctor in Los Angeles. She sees patients who have irregular menstrual cycles, as well as patients who are trying to conceive.  She is married and has a 20-month-old son.  In her spare time, she enjoys all outdoor activities.  She also loves to run and recently completed her first triathlon. 

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