Is Age the Only Thing Affecting Your Fertility? AMH, Egg Quality & the Missing Cellular Health Conversation

The fertility industry has a lot of women believing their eggs are locked inside a magical ovary that can only decline with age.

Birthday candles equal doom.

That dramatic blue graph. The sharp drop after thirty five. The urgency. Freeze your eggs. Hurry up.

Age matters. Biology matters. But the narrative often stops there.

READ THE SCIENCE HERE: The Fertility Cliff: Why “It’s Your Age” Is the Most Convenient Scapegoat in Modern Medicine

I was listening to a panel of highly educated doctors discussing how grossly understudied women’s health has been. Then moments later the fertility expert came on holding up the familiar graph of decline as if it were immovable truth.

If women’s health has been historically under researched then how did we become so certain about the exact shape of the fertility cliff.

Curiosity led me down a rabbit hole.

Much of the original modeling that shaped modern fertility decline charts traces back to historical birth records from France between the 1600s and 1800s and a limited number of ovaries studied in the mid twentieth century. In the 1980s researchers combined earlier data into a mathematical model. In 2010 that model was consolidated and published in a way that became widely referenced.

It is still cited by clinics media and doctors today.

And yet even by the medical community’s own admission women’s health research has lagged behind.

That does not mean age is irrelevant. It means the story may not be as simple as we were taught.

Number of Eggs Versus Quality of Cells

There is a difference between egg quantity and cellular health.

The official fertility model focuses heavily on numbers. How many eggs remain. How ovarian reserve changes over time. AMH levels. Response to stimulation during IVF.

But your entire body is made of cells. Inside those cells are mitochondria. Your energy producers. Your repair systems. Your resilience.

If mitochondria function is compromised through oxidative stress chronic inflammation poor gut health toxin exposure sleep deprivation or relentless stress your body prioritizes survival.

Fertility is not essential for survival.

When the body is under strain it will conserve energy. Reproduction can be dialed down.

That is not mystical. It is biology.

What I struggled to find in mainstream fertility conversations was meaningful discussion about mitochondrial health inside the egg. About cellular repair. About the dynamic nature of internal environment.

AMH became the headline number in the early 2000s as IVF clinics refined their protocols. It is a useful marker for predicting how ovaries respond to stimulation.

But AMH fluctuates.

It can shift month to month. It reflects cellular signaling. It is not carved in stone.

If cellular health improves AMH can rise. If stress spikes and inflammation increases it can fall.

Yet many women are handed a single AMH number as a fixed verdict.

Low AMH. Low egg quality. Diminished reserve. Move quickly.

The problem is not that markers exist. We need markers. The problem is when markers are treated as destiny instead of information.

The IVF Data Bias

IVF has been around for decades. It has helped millions of families. I have an IVF baby. This is not an attack on treatment.

But much of the data around ovarian reserve and response comes from women already in clinics. Women who often present with endometriosis PCOS autoimmune patterns unexplained infertility or underlying cellular health issues.

In other words the data pool is not always representative of a completely healthy population.

If most research participants are already dealing with inflammation hormonal imbalance or oxidative stress then the conclusions about age and egg quality can blur with the impact of environment.

This is where the conversation becomes uncomfortable.

Because it asks whether we have fully separated age from lifestyle cellular health and cumulative stress load.

And whether we have invested enough research into repairing the internal environment instead of simply measuring decline.

The Healing Capacity of the Body

The body is a self repairing system.

It clears damaged cells. It adapts. It recalibrates.

Yes we are born with a finite number of eggs. Yes numbers decrease over time. That is not disputed.

But numbers alone do not tell the story of quality.

If mitochondrial health can be supported. If oxidative stress can be lowered. If gut health can be stabilized. If sleep stress nutrition and toxin load can be addressed then the environment in which those eggs exist changes.

There was a small study recently suggesting mitochondrial function in eggs may not decline as dramatically as once assumed. It is early research. It is not definitive.

But it opens a door.

A door that says perhaps the focus should not be exclusively on counting eggs but also on strengthening the cellular environment.

Your power lies there.

Not in denying age. Not in pretending biology does not matter. But in recognizing that cellular health is dynamic.

The Real Fertility Cliff

There is a harsh truth in all of this.

There is a point where damage accumulates beyond easy repair. Where years of unchecked inflammation oxidative stress and depletion take their toll.

That is a real cliff.

But it is not defined solely by your thirty fifth birthday.

It is defined by cumulative wear and tear.

By how long the body has been compensating.

By how much repair capacity remains.

And that is different for every woman.

Some women at forty are metabolically resilient with stable hormones balanced immune function and low inflammation.

Some women at twenty eight are exhausted inflamed nutrient depleted and living in survival mode.

Chronological age is one variable.

Biological age is another.

Six to Twelve Months of Recalibration

If you have been told your AMH is low and IVF is your only option and you cannot afford another round there is a quiet truth here.

Time is going to pass anyway.

There is no harm in taking six to twelve months to deeply investigate your cellular health. To repair gut integrity. To stabilize blood sugar. To reduce inflammatory triggers. To regulate stress. To support mitochondrial function.

Not from panic. From strategy.

On a physical level. On a mental level. On an energetic level.

Mindset matters because chronic stress chemistry affects mitochondria. Subconscious beliefs matter because they shape daily behaviors that influence sleep diet and nervous system tone.

This is not magical thinking.

It is integrated physiology.

You can improve your chances whether you choose natural conception or IVF.

And you can do that at many ages.

But you must also be honest.

Am I at a point where repair is realistic or am I ignoring years of damage.

That discernment is personal.

Beyond the Narrative

The fertility cliff narrative is powerful because it is simple.

Age equals decline.

But the human body is rarely simple.

It is adaptive. Responsive. Context dependent.

If women’s health has been under researched then humility should exist alongside certainty.

Ask better questions.

Look at cellular health not just egg count.

View AMH as information not fate.

And remember that fertility is part of a larger ecosystem inside you.

Your ovaries do not exist in isolation from your gut your immune system your stress load or your mitochondria.

Age matters.

Environment matters too.

The real question is not whether decline happens.

It is how much influence you still have over the terrain.

Let's Do This Together 💚

Monica 

Listen up, lovelies: Everything I share about health, diet, or fertility magic is my opinion. Yep, it’s all based on years of trial and error, study, reading, listening, and side-eyeing the nonsense out there. What worked for me might be a jackpot for you—or it might be a total flop. Bodies are weird like that. 🤷‍♀️

Let’s get one thing straight: I’m not a doctor, nutritionist, dietitian, or any other kind of licensed health wizard. If you need medical advice, run—don’t walk—to an actual qualified professional. Don’t come back here saying Monique told you to eat kale for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, okay?

As for the products I mention, they’re either what I used during my own infertility rollercoaster or what I wish I’d known about back then. No guarantees, no promises, and absolutely no refunds on your hope budget if it doesn’t work out.

Now that we’ve cleared that up, proceed with curiosity and, above all, discernment. You’ve got this. 💪✨

🌺 Book Your Fertility Breakthrough Session Today 

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Full Transcript:

00:00
The dollar infertility industry has a lot of y'all thinking that your eggs are locked inside this magical ovary. It can only be affected by your past and the number of birthday candles on your cake. Now they might believe if you do certain things that you can improve your fertility.

00:23
but they're really hard pressed on this whole narrative of age and the fertility cliff. I was watching this podcast and the first like 20 minutes were these highly educated women doctors who just state in the facts that women's health just has been grossly under researched and studied. And then the fertility expert came on and she just, you she's so articulate and...

00:48
She's just saying the science and holding this blue graph of this line that dramatically drops and like, you know, we have to freeze our eggs. It's just so important. I'm like, how do they know that? If we've been so understudied, how do they know that? So I got curious. And to my best ability with the resources that I have on the internet, this is what I piece together. So most of us have heard about the psychologist.

01:16
Dr. Jean, wrote a book, she has an article talking about how 1979, a scientist...

01:23
put together a paper, Patterns of Fertility at Later Ages of Reproduction. Well, a lot of his information came from birth records from France, some kind of church from 1670 to 1830. I think there was kind of some correlation to what was being studied during that time as well, because in my research, I found that between 1950 and the late 70s, early 80s,

01:53
around 325 ovaries were collected. Now these ovaries were collected from either women who were deceased, fetuses that were deceased, and women who needed hysterectomies. So in the 1980s, researchers put that together and that's where this like dramatic fertility cliff came from, right? 325 ovaries, know we have no background, we don't know their lifestyle, we don't know their genetics, we don't know any of that, okay? But that...

02:23
I know if we need that for science, right? I'm not sure. It wasn't until 2010 that some other researchers, scientists took all those other studies and put them into a single mathematical model and they published it, the human reproduction. So that paper from 2010 with all the science that was collected from 1915 to the 1980s, remember women's health has not been

02:53
research, but remember we have proof that age dramatically is the number one factor in your fertility. Okay, so let's just keep all those in mind. But that's the official fertility model. It's still referenced by doctors, clinics, the media. If you have any other information that would be supportive to uh this fertility cliff narrative, please send it my way. I'm here for the truth, not for a narrative. But this is the best that I could come up with. So let's just say that that is

03:23
just hard hard science it can't change and you know we go from like a million eggs to 10,000 around the age of 35. Now I understand the body is a healing machine it cleanses itself out so if we're starting with a million cells and an ovary this big I can understand why there's such a dramatic like let's clean this shit up okay

03:49
get it? Common sense. But let's just safely say I couldn't find any studies that um they were looking at cellular health, the mitochondria of the egg. Now how many were in the ovaries? The quality inside the ovaries. As of right now, 2010,

04:10
There's safe safe to say there's no studies. Okay, so IVF is invented 40 so years ago So let's say we'll give them grace 50 years that they've been in this study And so they're gonna come up with markers We need markers to you know, really make this ethical to get women on the right treatment Right drug regimes and see where they're at. So yeah, we need markers. I understand that AMH gets discovered in the

04:40
In the early 2000s IVF clinics were really using this marker. See how ovarian responds during IVF.

04:51
So most of the research, MHClif2, Most of that is done from IVF clinics. So before I say this, I did IVF. I have an IVF baby. I have nothing against IVF. But here's the harsh reality. Exclude the women who have physical issues, genetic issues, and the men too, right? But most of us are walking in there with low AMHs, low AID quality, a diagnosis, uh unexplained, endo, PCOS, cellular health issues.

05:21
issues, okay? Because if we really bring science back to the basics of what it is, your whole body is comprised of cells. Inside those cells is your mitochondria, your powerhouse. If you have low mitochondria health, lots of oxidative stress, your functions are off.

05:38
Your body doesn't need fertility to survive. It will switch it off. It's the first thing it will get rid of to keep the rest of you actually functioning and alive. Okay, so AMH 2010. It is like the headlining number. Obviously they use other numbers, but AMH is a bit of a funny one.

05:58
because what the doctors might have not told you because maybe they don't know, they don't care, or they stick their heads in the sand, I don't care which one, your AMH fluctuates. It can literally fluctuate the same month. It's a representation of cellular health.

06:14
So if you boost your cellular health, your AMH will go up. If you keep continuing to be stressed out, have a crappy diet, yourself to toxins, all the things, you're gonna lower that cellular health. Therefore your numbers that are not set in stone, that are dynamic and will fluctuate month to month, they can rise. Also when you're doing that, you can improve your egg quality.

06:39
And just that's where their narrative gets sticky. And this is where we need to bring in a little bit more common sense and just understand that there's been one study that happened this year, very small study, but proving that the mitochondria in the cell doesn't dramatically decline. We have to remember their research isn't about the mitochondria. It's not about the cellular health. It's about the number of cells inside the ovaries, two different things.

07:09
power lies, if you repair your cellular environment you can dramatically increase your chances of success whether that be naturally or using IVF. Now if you didn't know this information before you did IVF on their recommendation and now you cannot afford another round of IVF, look the time is gonna pass anyways.

07:32
There's no harm of taking six months to twelve months to really look in and investigate What do I need to do to change the situation and boost my cellular health on a physical mental and energetic level? Your mindset your subconscious beliefs your energy your your cells your physical body It's doable at any age But yes, there is

07:57
a subsection of people who are gonna leave it too late. That's the real fertility cliff. When you just keep going, keep going, keep going, keep There is a part where your body cannot repair the damage. So you have to know, am I there or am I not?