Your Best 88 Days Pre-Conception
Did you know that It takes approximately 88 days for an oocyte (egg) to fully mature for ovulation?
Women are born with between one and two million oocytes and will not produce any more. This means that you are born with all the eggs you will have for your entire life already inside of you. This leads to a beautiful and astounding side fact that the egg which led to the creation of YOU was inside of your grandmother when she gave birth to your mother. Isn’t that incredible!
Now back to business… each oocyte is contained inside a follicle which is located in the ovaries. The growth of these follicles is halted at the earliest stage of development, kind of like hibernation.
Somewhere between the onset of puberty and menopause each follicle will ‘wake up’ from this hibernation state. It will then spend three months growing and developing before it experiences apoptosis – programmed cell death – and will be reabsorbed by the body. This process accounts for the loss of around 15 to 20 follicles each menstrual cycle.
However, each month one follicle which is near the peak of its three-month lifespan will be selected to be ‘saved’ and the oocyte it contains will go on to mature into an ovum to be released at ovulation.
Our ova or eggs are simply cells. And the great news is that we CAN influence the quality of our cells through positively impacting the environment they mature in. Nutrition, lifestyle, exercise, supplements, exposure to harmful chemicals and pollutants are all contributing factors. We are nothing if not an interaction with our environment, right down to our cellular level.
So even if you’re not actively trying to conceive but think you will be soon – it can’t hurt to start considering the health and quality of our cells. Healthy Cells = Healthy Eggs!
And don’t forget the male contribution to the conception process. They have a similar 3 month window of sperm development and maturation so it’s important to get them onboard with any and all healthy lifestyle adjustments you might be making.
