Maintaining egg quality with increasing age is challenging due to the biological clock after 35 years of age decline it naturally. In 1975, only 5% of females got pregnant after 30 years of their age and currently, more than 26% of pregnancy occurs after 30 years of her age. The quality of the egg is one of the primary factors responsible for the reproductive outcome. The genetic and epigenetic programming of an egg is effective to measure conceiving a child and deliver a healthy baby. Mitochondrial functionality and cytoskeleton integrity in the egg is essential for spindle formation and modulation of chromosomal segregation along with maintaining the stability of the genome during cell division. Spindle formation is an important step in cell division made up of microtubule bundles, which divide chromosomal material equally to form two daughter cells from the parent cell. Diminishing egg quality with increasing age is related to disorganization and shrinkage of the spindle and resultant of this leads to maturation arrest. In addition, impaired functioning of mitochondria also restricts the oocyte activation by disrupting calcium-mediated intracellular signaling and restricting the transition from metaphase I to anaphase I.
Lifestyle factors, including the age when starting a family, nutrition, weight management, exercise, psychological stress, cigarette smoking, recreational and prescription drug use, alcohol and caffeine consumption, environmental and occupational exposures, preventative care, and other behaviors are modifiable and may impact egg quality.
- The evidence suggests that age may play a large role in determining egg quality. Attempting pregnancy before the age of 30 for women may provide the highest chances of success because of high egg quality.
- Proper nutrition, weight, and exercise may impact egg quality. Experts suggest choosing proper nutrition, in the form of supplements or food groups can improve egg quality before and during attempts to conceive.
- Ovulation is the physiological process of a woman's reproductive system. Matured egg/s is released from ovaries during ovulation. Proper diet plan with certain food inclusion in daily diet during trying to get pregnant through natural conception or IVF process evidentially improve egg quality. Even the enlisted food also helpful for an egg donor. It is necessary to mention that a balanced diet by selecting wholesome and 'rainbow' colored natural food items including multicolor fruits and vegetables to get adequate fiber along with other essential nutrients for smooth conceiving.
- Melatonin and Myo-inositol supplementation can improve egg quality. Melatonin has a protective effect and prevents egg damage. Myo-inositol supplementation improves egg quality and the morphology of the developing embryo is also good.
- Organic food recommendation is one of the solutions to avoid such chemical exposure. These organic foods are expensive than non-organic products. Surrogacy is a complex as well as an expensive process. Therefore, the addition of organic food items does not markedly increase the budget, but safer options for surrogates as these reduce the chemical load in the fetus.
- It is also recommended that fruits and vegetables should thoroughly wash in running water and soak them in warm for a few minutes to dissolve all the dirt, artificial color, wax, and pesticides.
- Obese as well as under-weight women have negative side effects, in terms of hormonal misbalance and cause insufficient egg release or poor quality eggs. Maintaining an ideal weight and controlling weight gain may help to release good quality sufficient eggs. However, vigorous exercises can ovarian damage. Thus, balance physical activity is essential.
- Psychological stress, alcohol consumption, and smoking can negatively affect egg release and its quality. Experts always suggest trying relaxing and reducing exposure to stressors to increase fertility.
- Recreational and prescription substances can cause detrimental effects on egg quality by decreasing ovarian reserve. The exact negative effect difficult to analyze because of ethical issue prevents to perform research for discovering a definitive relationship.
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