Saturn Returns with Caggie - 9.6 Fertility, motherhood, and the power of the female form with Dr Helen O'Neill

Episode Date: March 25, 2024

Dr Helen takes us on her mission to better understand the female form and women’s health. We discuss why there is such a huge misunderstanding when it comes to the female productive system and how she aims to make her knowledge accessible and translatable. Understanding menstrual cycles: We journey through the rhythmic and cyclical expressions of our hormones and how they can cause many intense psychological, anatomical and physical changes within our body. Dr Helen helps us to understand each phase of the menstrual cycle and what it means for us and our mood. The Male Hormonal System: We discover how profound the hormonal impact is on men by exploring their natural 24 hour cycle of hormones in comparison to a female lunar cycle. Dr Helen also draws parallels between other natural cycles and how, as humans, they all impact our capabilities to complete certain tasks. Fear of the Female Form: We unpick fears surrounding female anatomy and form. Dr Helen explains how we have mirrored feelings passed on through our parents and the impact this has on society's understanding of it.  Infertility: It’s a conversation that I feel so many people are having. I ask Dr Helen about the increasing rate of infertility and why those statistics have changed over the years. We look beyond the statistics by looking into our own health and genetics to get a more honest analysis of our reproductive health. We also dispel some myths surrounding fertility such as drinking, contraception and age. We also touch on freezing eggs and why she isn’t afraid to say she got pregnant by accident. The Choice: Often women can feel the need to make a choice between success and motherhood. We discuss the powerful and profound skillset that females naturally have and why we choose to ignore our maternal instincts. Dr Helen also gives a personal account of what motherhood means to her and how it transformed her perspective This Episode was made possible by our friends at Healf. You can find Organifi's range and the Red Juice energy-boost at healf.com - the UK's leading destination for healthy living, looking to create a world where prevention beats treatment through offering only the highest quality health products. healf.com - go check them out and discover the world's best health brands, and use the code CAGGIE for 15% off! --- Subscribe to "Saturn Returns" for future episodes, where we explore the transformative impact of Saturn's return with inspiring guests and thought-provoking discussions. Follow Caggie Dunlop on Instagram to stay updated on her personal journey and receive more empowering insights and you can find Saturn Returns on Instagram, YouTube and TikTok.  Order the Saturn Returns Book. Join our community newsletter here.  Find all things Saturn Returns, offerings and more here.

Hello everyone and welcome to Saturn Returns with me, Kagi Dunlop. This is a podcast that aims to bring clarity during transitional times where there can be confusion and doubt. To deny ourselves that knowledge and to have been denied, rather, for so long really shows just I think a fear of the female form, which there always has been this fear of just how powerful women truly are. Because when you don't understand something, you're afraid of it. And that's why there's negativity that is spread around menstruation. It's considered dirty.

It's considered, whereas there are many cultural societies that would view this as really amazing and beautiful and it's passed down. Today I sit down with the wonderful Dr. Helen O'Neill who is a lecturer in reproductive and molecular genetics and a leading expert in reproductive science. She is also the founder and CEO of Hertility. And in this conversation, we get into the big questions that I'm sure many of you have circling around your mind, if you're anything like me, around fertility and motherhood. Does fertility dive off a cliff at 35? Does the pill impact our chances of getting pregnant? How does that play into our getting pregnant? And what are some of the obstacles that we face as women in trying to juggle having our

careers and having all these amazing opportunities that we do today and also motherhood? Now, like I said, these are the things that I'm thinking about a lot at the moment. I'm about to turn 35. It's sort of back in the back of my mind constantly of thinking when, how, is there a perfect time? Will I ever feel completely ready? And so on a personal note, having this conversation with Dr. Helen has been incredible and I learned so much from it and I hope you guys too. So there's there's a lot that we unpack and it's very educational but in terms of getting advice from someone about this subject it doesn't get better than her. So enjoy this episode and if you find it useful please share it with a friend but I hope you gain something from it. Enjoy. Helen, welcome to Saturn Returns. Thanks. I am so excited to sit down with you. We've met a couple of times now, we were just kind of going over that but for the audience that doesn't know,

would you be able to introduce yourself and the work that you do? Sure so I am a geneticist and reproductive scientist and I have spent the last 15 years probably in reproductive science for the last nine years lecturing master's students and medical students about all things to do with the earliest formations of human life and then a few years ago started my own company Hurtility really out of somewhat exasperation that all of this knowledge that I had accrued wasn't translatable to help anybody and nor was it helping me find answers about myself so I've been doing both for a little bit of time now just trying to find ways that we can better understand the female form and women's health. Why is there such a lack of education and understanding about the female reproductive system hormones all of that stuff because I still

feel at the age of 34 like I don't really know very much and I'm a little bit apprehensive of having this conversation because I feel like I'm gonna get so much information and just think oh my goodness I didn't know any of this I ruin I ruin people's nights out I really do um why is there I don't think um it's it's strange when you look back to school textbooks, you expect there to be, you know, somebody who's contributed to this that really knows their subject matter. And the reality is once you become a subject matter expert, you realize there are very few experts at all. And that most information that we receive is being passed on and passed on and passed on. And that actually those who are giving that information really don't understand it themselves so i i particularly think this when i look to school biology yeah the rationale why is it that the rationale is to teach the things that

we do teach without questioning whether they're relevant or not it's probably true of yes or accurate um it's probably true of everything not just or accurate. It's probably true of everything, not just biology. Many of the different things we're taught now, we think, did I use any of that information? Why didn't anyone tell me about taxes? I know, I'm still wondering that myself. Still wondering. And so much that we did learn has not become useful at all.

Exactly. I don't know. I think a lot of it is the fact that it's poorly understood and poorly taught um when I teach about the menstrual cycle I usually put up that graph of hormones and I say this is the graph that you will not understand but bear with me I want to bring you on this journey because nobody looks at a graph I always say it nobody understands a graph unless you've made it yourself. Can you explain that graph? Yeah it essentially shows on this graph the hormones that are circulating in our body that are undergoing this rhythmic and cyclical expression where they have peaks and they have troughs and each of them has a role in either stimulating our ovaries preparing an egg releasing the egg

preparing our womb lining all for this miraculous event which our body naively assumes is going to happen every single month and that is this preparation for pregnancy which the majority of times doesn't happen and so you know our womb lining is shed and the process starts all over again but each time with the rise and fall of those hormones we are subject to so many intense feelings both psychological physiological anatomical all of these things that really do impact our day-to-day lives but unfortunately we're none the wiser as to where we are within that cycle and so for me it's like not knowing or being blind to a wave and when the wave is going to crash you're either gonna drown get water up your nose or you could actually surf and have a

beautiful time so it's about catching the right wave and really understanding that ebb and flow of your hormones and to go one step further I think you know I was definitely brought up in this way that you didn't say that you're on your period it was something that you should be ashamed about and the only I was thinking about it this morning the only time i can recall the term hormonal being used it's like oh she's on her period she's being hormonal she's being crazy and so not only do we not ride the wave we actually deny it all together and then we're also living in a society in a system that is catered for the male hormonal system am i correct i'm thinking that

well i would say this the male hormonal system is pretty pretty straight up but what's strange to me is using that narrative of hormonal as this weapon and yet for me i look at most men's behavior and i'm like someone's hormonal you know it's just a quicker cycle it's just it but it's it's just as profound the impact that hormones have on men except a lot more dangerous so how do they differ between the two in terms of time how they so men tend to have a 24-hour cycle um their testosterone is higher in the morning and lower in the evening we are we are subject to an entire month, a lunar cycle of just changing hormones. And I think when we start to draw parallels with, you know, that like even a diurnal, which is a change in the morning and the evening, a daily change in your hormones when we start to compare other cycles like night and day

then you really get on board with the fact that we are less capable as human beings of completing certain tasks in the middle of the night as opposed to in the middle of the day or in the morning when we've got all of that energy all of that um all of those hormones that are going to keep us going and when we think about certain times during our menstrual cycle where we are devoid of get up and go and yet there are other times in our menstrual cycle where we are absolutely full of energy ideas creativity but it's on so much more of a profound level um those are the things that we should capitalize on and just just better understand and to deny ourselves that knowledge and to have been denied rather for so long really shows just i i think um a fear of the female form which there always has been this fear of just how powerful women truly are why do you say a fear of

it because when you don't understand something you're afraid of it and that's why there's negativity that is spread around menstruation it's considered dirty it's considered whereas there are many cultural societies that would view this as really amazing and beautiful and it's it's all about it's all about branding um why are we also bad branding i don't know i think we we perpetuate it um based on what we've been taught based on the inherited fears that we've gotten based on the language that was used you know by our moms by our dads by our siblings passed down it's passed down and so you mirror that feeling and the majority of parents are afraid to explain what's happening to their teenage daughters so so it stems from sort of lack of understanding really yeah if I often think

about this and I know that this is something that you're actively doing with your company which I find amazing but structuring things what would it look like to structure the working week or company based on a woman's cycle oh it would look very different so you've got essentially the different phases of your menstrual cycle are that in in the first half of your cycle which is your follicular phase it's basically when all these follicles i call the fun phase so it's like when all of these would-be eggs are potentially maturing in your ovaries and that's when you get this real rise of estrogen in that first half and when is that when does your cycle technically technically begins really when you you're when your period begins day one of your period is the first day of your cycle and so in that first week obviously you're going to be menstruating but in that second week is

you'll move towards that ovulatory phase so that's when it's all part of the follicular phase so you're still as soon as your period starts the process starts all over again and so you're building up to that key moment everyone thinks like the time of the month is your period or when you menstruate but the time of the month the time is when you ovulate and that is when you are at your peak and that is really reflected in so many ways but we simplify estrogen as a hormone we like to think of estrogen as being something that might make us cry or that's typically feminine but actually oestrogen is a very powerful and potent chemical that regulates our cardiovascular health, regulates our bone health, regul minimize it and say that it's just a reproductive function but when you think about all of the other links and the uses of oestrogen it's not surprising that

when your oestrogen is at its peak and that you're ovulating that actually it's linked with your collagen it makes your skin more plump it's doing its best to make you look good so you procreate but it it gives you clarity you're you're far more energetic you're obviously going to have a higher sex drive and more magnetic to other people more magnetic I think we underestimate the power of our pheromones for sure but that I would say that's when you're really creative you're building up towards asking for the promotion getting shit done um and then unfortunately there's a bit of a a dip after that but again I still think that that should be you know downtime writing recovery um less active if you are in town having meetings if you're people mock me for saying in town in the city I still say in town I live in London I have my whole life

fine I'm like I'm going into town um if you're in town in your meetings um I mean it's what the hard thing is it's very hard in reality for us to structure our lives around our menstrual cycle but in a fantasy world we would absolutely do that and what's an amazing what's amazing from i guess an anthropological perspective is that there are some it's it depends on how you view things so there are some societies whereby when you're menstruating you are put away into a tent you're not nobody goes near you you're considered dirty but there are other ways that they would say the exact same scenario is a way it's actually sacred you're away from the stresses you're away from people you're there to protect yourself to be alone it's solitary time for you and I guess it's just how we

ourselves view it um and just taking some of that solitary time I do think is important so often we just it hits us why why do we let it hit us where we're like either either overly emotional and angry or emotional and teary and then we're like what the oh I get it I get it I guess we're not taught to surrender and ride the wave like you said yeah but you know it's it's interesting that talking about this we sort of have to catch ourselves and go oh no this is just fantasy you know this would never happen and yet I know the world that we do live in is catered to the male cycle right of 24 hours of of the work week of nine to five all of that but doesn't doesn't take into account family or children or their needs even down to the way now kind of postnatally instead of building this network this community this village that it takes to rear a child we isolate and abandon women

completely to the point where they're just on their own fighting to do something that was never intended to be done on your own so what are some of the consequences of that that you've noticed for particularly women that are trying to occupy a space that's not really natural to them whilst we're given a lot more opportunities and able to have these incredible careers is there a consequence in doing it in a way that perhaps isn't suited to our system none of it's suited to our system I think we've we've we strive and have have done so for a long time to get a seat at the table and actually in a weird way we're being fed poison um it's not for us to to a large extent and that sounds extreme but working the the modern working world doesn't suit anybody that constant go

nine to five was your best hours of your day and you're working uh nine to six longer i mean don't ask the hours i work but but at the same time when it comes to having a family I remember the greatest I remember thinking that the greatest gift from lockdown was that it forced not just a company not just a city not just a government but the entire world to say okay admittedly since we started working uh a lot of stuff is online now maybe we can get away with being as productive if not more from home where you're not sweating and and got somebody's armpit in your face on the tube racing to be at your at your desk just to show presence yeah um and all of those things that they said they you have you have to do actually you don't have to do them don't have to do any of them and we were able to get by and it forced everybody to just recognize that maybe things can

be different and unfortunately i think we're pushing women to the point of breaking um until we realize things can and should be done differently if you want to have children, if you want to have a family and if you want to be able to be there for them as a mom. But unfortunately, at the current time, we are absolutely just messed around. It's obviously quite hard to change

what's already in place at a big corporation, a big company that's been that way for a very very long time but as someone that is the founder of a company what are some of the things that you've done differently from the typical mold of starting a company that's what's funny is that people think that when I say I incorporated fertility when I was three months pregnant um they were like you are mental I was like yeah I think maybe I am but I also never had a greater fire in my belly to do something different to do something that provided for this being it gave me strength and conviction that I never knew I had and being able to build something for myself and for her gave me that strength to really and tenacity to keep going because I never had a greater purpose than at that moment and being able to build something that would I don't know provide

a better future for her really was the thing that kept me going. And so did I take a maternity leave? No. From one of my jobs, yes, but from, not from fertility because she was with me, you know, I feel like I incubated her. When did you conceptualize fertility? her and when did you conceptualize fertility um i think it had been growing for a long time actually because it's very difficult to get up and give a lecture in front of master students and medical students and say this is the rate of ovarian reserve decline in other words this is the rate of ovarian reserve decline. In other words, this is the point where your fertility really starts to fall. And this is when it flatlines.

And be standing there as a woman in my 30s thinking, oh, fuck. This is so annoying. I hate this. This is so unfair that I could be so dedicated to biology and that she would turn her back on me when I needed her which was you know never going to be the right time right it was never going to

be the right time to have to stop everything if you're the type person who is so busy climbing building achieving you know wanting to just get to the next it's I don of your career yes exactly um next ambition it seemed so unfair to say that no matter how many of your ambitions you'd achieved you would still be you know devoid of the ultimate achievement as a woman unless you had a baby and for me I think I think the idea of time running out really scared me and that's obviously because when you work in reproductive medicine it's all around you I mean I remember studying fetal medicine and seeing somebody's baby and just looking thinking wow it's normal like how did you do that because all I had you know I was witnessing just the worst of

the stats all around me and all the incidences of these genetic conditions and obstetric complications that it almost seems like and it is a miracle that we can have healthy babies well without sort of terrifying people too much myself included because we just touched on you know growing up when we're doing biology and everything the education or sort of sex education was like if you look at a penis you might get pregnant and then suddenly you're in your 30s whatever looking at a penis thinking why aren't you getting me pregnant and so many of my friends have struggled with getting pregnant and I don't know whether

it's the age that I'm at I'm just more aware of it people are more open about it or something's changed you'll know the answer to that but what are some of the statistics the sort of in the cold light of day that we can learn from you because there's so much mixed information out there yeah i think the main thing is that statistics don't help until you take yourself into account we use statistics when we have to generalize right so we say out of 100 people this percentage are likely to have this this percentage are likely to have that but that really means nothing to you if your circumstances are different so out of 100 people who who will you know we know that globally uh one in six individuals heterosexual couples are infertile one in six is a significant

amount is that gone up it used to be one in seven now it's one in six yeah so it's gone up in how in how long a space of time not that long not that long i think we're just um yeah we're we're we're waiting too long to have children number one so that that's something um and I think that's what people always say to me like my mum had me at this age or you know I have a very fertile family that's great that is your statistic take it into account when you're figuring out what your risk is sure family genetics is huge in that it is but only to a certain extent like your mom lived a very different life to you right there were no there wasn't access to the things that we have access to there wasn't like this generation of women have never have drank more than any other

generation of women probably it's become drank more alcohol yeah it's become normalized to have a glass of wine every night like moms were busy working moms with lots of kids there wasn't like the extended social life that we've all had so what are some of the the fundamental differences that you've noticed that play a part in fertility for instance I wouldn't have even I mean drinking I wouldn't have thought that this generation drinks more than the last I actually think that people are drinking a lot less yes now they're starting to but they've been drinking for a lot longer right and exposed to a lot more yeah for longer right you know um

I drank enough in my 20s to last a lifetime. Exactly. From quite a young age, I actually spoke with somebody and it was a real eye opener. Not really. It was just, you know, she said to me, I guess I started drinking when I was 14 or 15 and now I'm 35. So I've had, you know, 20 solid years of drinking and everything else. And she was like, OK, well, if I guess if I'd had my kids in my 20s I wouldn't have had that additional 10 to 15 years of just additional stress on my body on top of aging on top of stress on top of our lives um to me I think it's about looking at you as an individual as opposed to the general

statistics and saying like what are my risk factors if I'm honest with myself what are my risk factors if you go to the the website and you fill out the health assessment there are so many questions and within that health assessment are embedded algorithms that I have essentially looked at the risk factors for any one of 18 of the most prevalent conditions that affect our reproductive health because they are prevalent and if you are telling me you have irregular periods that you have pelvic pain that you have a history I need to know that to calculate your risk and I think so many of you say oh I'm just going to go to a fertility clinic and you

know do that female MOT but it's not going to take into account an in-depth medical history nor is it going to look at you as an individual and say here are the things that you could do to improve your fertility a fertility clinic is probably going to say great when do we get started and if your chances are lower they'll say we'll sell you a package of three okay you're going to have to unpack this a little more so fertility you essentially created off the back of recognizing that there's a massive gap yeah and a lack of information so if people listening like oh i've been thinking about this for a really long time but i've not done anything

and they want to go on to fertility they fill out the questionnaire yeah and that will then which is an online health assessment yeah Yeah. And that then, I spent probably two years building that health assessment, interviewing experts, their menstrual factors, their biometrics that could mean that they're at higher risk of polycystic ovaries, of endometriosis, fibroids, of hyperthyroidism. And all of these things are really quite common in the general population. So it's not like I was just trying to account for many rare things, although as a geneticist I was like what if somebody has congenital adrenal hyperplasia everyone's like Helen we gotta stick to the we gotta stick to the court but it was this it was this ongoing mission of like what if what if somebody had this we need to take it into account even down to you know what if somebody had

a previously a previous sexually transmitted infection if you've had chlamydia or gonorrhea you increase your chance of having blocked fallopian tubes so actually even though so that information was so important to us nobody tells you that and the number of times you've had those infections because it gives you a cumulative risk so that risk increases with the number of times you've had chlamydia or gonorrhea so in the absence of that knowledge you might have perfectly within range hormones and say I'm fine but why am I not getting pregnant well because the chances are you have blocked fallopian tubes and so that helps us to effectively triage you and say you're we need to bring you for a scan we need to do further

examination or we need to do x y or z and so that's my ultimate commitment is to bring you as an individual forward and say what are your risks and so people when people ask me when I about the general statistics and then people get annoyed about fear-mongering people get pissed off because they're like well not me I push it back and I say well then find out about you yeah I keep telling myself that I'm gonna check more and I just keep putting it off and I say well then find out about you yeah I keep telling myself that I'm gonna check more and I just keep putting it off and I can't explain why my mum you know she had me and my brother already by the time she was my age and she said that then they were thinking about having a third but she went to the doctor and they were like it's not looking that likely why are you

doing this she was 37 I hope she doesn't mind me sharing this and then you know they said we can give you something to help that you might have twins and she just was like actually i've got two i'm good but then here i am sort of feeling like i'm still 16 and it's that thing of there's no perfect time. But for so many women I speak to, and I know a lot of the people that listen to this podcast, and when I did a retreat, it was this prevailing theme, that women that are very successful, that are going so far in their careers,

feel this inevitable thing of having to choose. And whilst I know that's not always true, it does feel that way. Experiencing firsthand, I have not had to choose and whilst I know that's not always true it does feel that way. Experiencing first hand I have not had to choose I have like I said I incorporated the company when I was three months pregnant we launched it she's now four and of the two different careers that I've had one is you know as a scientist and a lecturer and an academic and the other is as a business you know an entrepreneur and a founder I haven't had to choose between either of those careers nor have I had to choose between the third job which is

all-encompassing and that's motherhood and I think that if I could give a message, it's that you, no different to the conformities that we abide to in our teachings and how we reflect those feelings. If you are taught you can't do it and told you can't do it and told that you can have to give something up, then you will feel the pressure to conform to those rules. Whereas if you say, this is another piece of my life, to those rules. Whereas if you say, this is another piece of my life, this is something that may complete me. I've never had any ambivalence as towards, you know, I've never had any ambivalence about, I don't know how important it is to me. Did I make a choice to do it at a time that was right for me? No, no. Did I accidentally get pregnant yes did I take the morning after pill yes and did it work no no and it's maybe you know people say you shouldn't share that

what if what if your daughter finds out and I say I will tell her that sometimes you can make every choice in your life and actively be the person who drives in the direction you're supposed to go but sometimes something will throw you off and it will be the greatest thing that was that ever happened to you and I've never been more clear on what my role is in being a mum it comes naturally to me everything in every other type of job or ambition you're working towards whereas this is something that we are born with a set of powers to be nurturing to feed to grow to mind and it's the most powerful and profound skill set that we have and yet we ignore it that's innate it's innate how has motherhood changed you what has it awakened in you everything everything everything i understand more i have more empathy towards women. I have more respect for women.

I think motherhood is the greatest gift that I could have not opened. You know, we look for, everyone looks for the perfect person, right? And we, you know, you have to find the love of your life. And for me, she is the love of my life and imagine looking for that in somebody else and not realizing that it could be growing in you

she is the love of my life I've never loved like I have with her that's beautiful yeah so in that experience of it being something that was unplanned, because I'm sure so many people... I learned a lot more from that. You learned more. Yeah. Yeah, because I went through this roller coaster of emotions that actually the majority of women throughout history did go through, which was, what's happening?

I didn't plan for this. Then fear, then anger, then denial, then then embracing it then being excited for it and yes there's this unknown but my god did I appreciate it more knowing that I could have not knowing that actually I chose to not right and that had it had it worked right had the morning after pill worked I would be devoid of this powerful entity in my life that has actually transformed who I am as a person I'm just a lot more grateful for the accident that's I thank you so much for sharing that because I think that that must be such a challenging thing to go through, especially when you have the career that you do. You're launching your own company.

I was made to talk the contraception module. They're like, Helen, you lecture in this and you accidentally got pregnant. I was like, well, you know what? This is irony, folks. It tells you that we're all human beings. We're all animals, right? We're all human beings underneath it all. Well, in terms of the contraception thing what how has that played a part for people because obviously it's

still relatively new is there a lot that we don't actually know about it and its implications i think the majority we do not know even even now we were we have um every wednesday morning i missed it for this we have lab meeting and so we surface all the reproductive science journals and the papers and anything any new publication that's of interest so that we can really be at the forefront and we're bringing new information not old information and there was a study and it looked at um it was one of the biggest studies that was done it looked at 16 000 women and their return of fecundability. In other words, their return of fertility after they stopped taking a form of contraception.

And it was amazing to see that, as you can expect, depending on the different types of contraception you're on, it takes you longer or less time for your fertility to return. And even within that paper which was amazing they had not separated out hormonal contraception between a combined hormonal which has estrogen progesterone and just progesterone and i was like this is this is what's wrong is that we don't don't know we

don't know um and why had they not why did they not because you assume that people are doing these research studies care about women or have thought intuitively about it because they are women i think that's one of our strengths as a company that's full of research scientists is that we are women who care deeply about a problem that we either have experienced ourselves or have witnessed in someone we love and so that gives you a lot more vested interest in finding something out like I can't imagine really being able to make myself care as much no matter how much you say you're interested in the scientific you know advances of like when it's directly applicable to you it's so much more interesting and gives you a thirst to know more.

Yeah. I mean, my mom was telling me, I'm going to butcher this, but in terms of the science and the studies around... I can only think of the most inappropriate way of saying it. I love it. I'll just function. I was going to say, people that can't get it off. Can way of saying it. I love it. Oh, dysfunctional.

I was going to say, people that can't get it up. Can't get it up. That's fine. Yeah. I would say it's a hard problem to solve. But in terms of that compared to any women's study. Anything else. It's just crazy.

The amount of money. I mean, that is like, there you go. There's a vested interest, right? I can't get it up. I'm going to figure, I'm going to raise the capital, firstly, to figure this out. Yeah. I always joke that it's like one of the, one things that will make men go to the doctor. Like everything else could be wrong.

But they can't get a boner and they are at the doctor's. The world needs to stop yeah so in terms of for women that have been on birth control for let's say 10 years plus is there a likelihood that that's going to impact their chances of conceiving again if you ask healthcare professionals they say there is no risk but here's where i bring it back to the individual and statistics and us just not knowing when the reason i mentioned that study of 16 000 individuals is that those are individual people each of them on a different form of contraception each of them have different lifestyle exposures we as individuals are the same when it comes to if you're if you are on a type of

contraception for 10 years and you struggle to conceive well there's 50 of the equation we still have to take into account which is your partner's sperm there's the fact that you know in order to to make a study appropriately powered you know and make sure that this is a relevant study you would need to have a hundred a thousand ten thousand other women who are on the exact same form of contraception for the exact same amount of time with similar lifestyle exposures and you still are only accounting for 50 of the equation because all of them will have different partners so it's actually very hard for us to truly quantify the effect of contraception on our fertility because we don't

compare like with like and we definitely haven't done the studies but what are the conclusions of the studies that have been done they haven't been done no no i mean time and time again we hear um it doesn't affect i'm like what doesn't affect progesterone only combined you know the depo like there's so many different versions of different contraception that saying does contraception affect my fertility we don't actually know and I have to ask about you know the famous saying of your fertility dives off a cliff after 35 if i the amount of times i've heard that yeah is this true people hate this unpack it for us because i'm about to be pushed you're looking you're looking down and it's very long way to go wow who knew it was so high up here um so you know i think it's a bit of an unfair one there are people who will get pregnant

straight away at 30 35 one of the things that people never mention is parity and that means whether you've had a child or not so one of the things that annoys me when they people talk about you know your fertility falls off a cliff at 35 but if you've had a previous child actually it really does prepare your body so we will often say oh my my mom had me at 42 and you say well she had other all of she started having children in her early 30s right um but your body's definitely this parity thing number of children you've had or whether you've had children already or whether this is your first time getting pregnant really does matter to that fertility cliff um it's it's a strange thing when we looked at our data um not to go all nerdy on

the machine learning but you can literally form like these clusters of data events and what was amazing for us to see is usually in such a large data set when looking for patterns you don't find patterns and we saw these distinct two patterns of groups of symptoms of menstrual factors of all of these other things and it was between women who had had children and women who had not had children whatever it is I mean it's something pretty big changes the signature of our bodies of our symptoms of our hormones so distinctly and so that really does impact whether or not you can have children so it's it's so unfair really to say that there's this age this one age we do know that your fertility starts to fall for for some it falls much sooner for others it just tapers off year by year um we all test ourselves every

single month we've got an internal clinical trial to see like what is the rate of decline in individuals whether it you know does it just drop and we've seen like someone sits a little bit up someone sits a little bit down someone's it's way down does it go up once it's gone down it does it does and that's something that's not within the textbooks we only ever i mean something we always started out saying it only goes down and what we see is that removing stress improving your diet reducing alcohol or removing it they can actually contribute within a small time to having better certainly better chances of conception but even in an IVF or egg freezing

cycle the number of eggs you have available so there are things that we can definitely do it's not all this rapid decline can we make more eggs no but can we give them a much better chance absolutely we can definitely give our bodies and you know the ovarian environment a bit of a better chance but i don't think there's a we we know it as well the number of eggs yes goes down but the quality of eggs is also affected so by our lifestyle or age just both both really but age is the biggest determinant and in terms of when we talk about going for the mot you know which a lot of people say i'm like what does that actually mean so to go super nerdy when you guys are testing this every month yeah what are the things that you're actually testing so we look at so when a lot of these a lot of these mot's i disagree with because they just

give you a blood test with a hormone result and nobody wants a result everything matters in context that's why for us one of the most powerful parts of the journey is that health assessment is taking into account all of your different risk factors all of the different things that could contribute to a significant piece of information that's going to help you on a fertility journey or just understanding your body or your your overall health or your hormone health um it's not just about figuring out if you're fertile or not irrespective of your desire to have children your hormones are governing everything in your life so you know understanding those is very important it's a paramount importance really um more than any of the other things we're told to

do like tracking our calories and tracking our steps and all our sleep and everyone's because they're worrying and they're saying well actually it's going to be a lot more impactful to your life to know what your hormones are doing whether your thyroid is functioning but 20 of women probably have a thyroid imbalance so they don't really understand it um well so how do our hormones in sort of really simple terms play a part in every aspect of our life? Because to go back to what I said at the beginning, for me, it was very much you're hormonal because you're on your period. That was about it. Yeah.

So never think about what my hormones are doing. Okay. That's why I think I wanted to create an MOT that took into account all of these factors in the health assessment and then gave you a blood test looking at all of your hormones and tailoring that blood test to what your potential symptoms were if you think about your hormones as individual musical instruments music is very profound and I the reason I compare the two is that you can hear a song and it will make you cry you can hear a song and it will make you dance around the room you can hear a song and it physically gives you goosebumps and that to me is not just one note it's a combination it's a collection of different notes and instruments playing that in a rhythmic way that can have an impact on how we feel and our mood and how we move and our hormones

are like that they're like chemical messengers in our body that are individually playing notes but all together they can determine how we move how we sleep how we feel how we metabolize how we look um and if one of them is playing a bum note the whole thing's off the whole thing is off the whole thing is off so it's this really complex you know orchestra it's a symphony it's exactly i would say the thyroid is the conductor of the endocrine orchestra and it's so it's so i'm sometimes i know i should go home and so the thyroid is that something that you see quite often yeah you see it really often and actually um the number one prescribed drug in the world is thyroxine for thyroid imbalance it's like we know this is a big problem we know globally that you are actually at risk of having you know

thyroid imbalance and it's quite prevalent and it's so easy to do something about without taking because the symptoms because you have often people i hear about people having an overactive overactive underactive thyroid exactly it often affects their weight but i don't know which one does what and i actually don't know what it means so would you be able to explain it it's essentially your the thyroid gland is in your throat it's like a butterfly shaped organ and it is really responsible for not just you know um thyroxine and tsh and all of the different thyroid hormones but it's responsible for really governing a trigger to all the other hormones too and so it's like i said it's like part of this conductor that really is in sync with all of your other hormones, that it's very important.

So when you have an underactive or overactive thyroid, the problem is that your symptoms can either be you can't lose weight or you can't gain weight. You have maybe hair loss. You have low energy. Those are things that we tend to typically blame ourselves for if we can't gain or lose weight if we're feeling tired we our default is to blame ourselves our default is to say i'm going to disqualify myself from needing help because i'm doing this to myself and i think that is one of the things biggest things we need to move away from is thinking, oh, it's probably fine. I'm probably fine. So often when we, like we did a big survey asking women, you know, what was it that got them to a diagnosis of PCOS?

And moreover, what was it that stopped them from getting to that diagnosis sooner? And we love to blame the medical profession um but actually in a lot of those cases and i'm more than willing to do it too but in a lot of those cases they would say i just didn't feel my symptoms warranted medical attention or i didn't know that these symptoms were related to this condition so again it's kind of a misunderstanding but when as part of that health assessment that we built one of the questions we ask is you know you know do you have any of the following symptoms and there's a long list of symptoms oh I mean oh like the main ones I guess um you know fatigue irritability um low mood depression anxiety the reason i mentioned the ones that

are mental health related is that they are our most common most common symptoms feeling cold often um cramping pelvic pain all of these different like both physical pains and mental pains um but there's one when we ask about you know have you ever had a diagnosis of any of the following and we've mentioned a lot of different conditions um there's a box that says no but i suspect something's up and anytime somebody ticks that box they are absolutely right there is always something up and it's reflected in their hormones and that shows you how profound our ability to know our own bodies of course we've been driving this vehicle for a long time but how it's often disregarded but how it's often

disregarded and we become just a passenger um and that to me is a real profound indication for how attuned we should be to our bodies and we already are and how we shouldn't dismiss or self-dismiss our symptoms because at the end of the day we know when something is up but it's very hard to quantify that you know how do you show up to a medical professional and say I just don't feel right something's off something's off it's just not not my not my best yeah and actually a lot we spend a long time just not being our best and not recognizing what our best is I know and I think especially in this context around fertility and everything I my mother was telling me that someone felt that she knew felt like something was off

went to the doctor was like I'm trying to conceive it's not really happening I feel like something's wrong and they just sort of dismissed and said, come back in a year. And there was something really wrong. And, you know, she ended up not being able to have children. So I think there's, I'm sure there's many takeaways from this conversation for people. But if you feel like something's off. Yeah, you're right. But I guess the other thing is, I don't know if people know what to do about it because it's not, we don't have the understanding to go, oh, I'm feeling these symptoms.

Therefore, it could be this. I'll go to this person and then they'll, I don't know, put me on something that helps me sort out my hormones. We don't even know the first bit. Well, that's what we're hoping to do. Like that's why we created heritility that's for me is what amazes me is the most highest rate of activity we have on our website the most number of people who are going through that health assessment and journey are between the hours of like 11 o'clock at night and three in the morning it's when women are finally

alone with their thoughts they're lying in bed their fears creep in and they're confronted with darkness and silence and there's no incoming calls there's no meetings there's no other people you finally have a moment to your thoughts and your true fears perhaps and you say I need help and that to me is is something that makes me actually quite quite proud to say I'm so glad we can be the light in the dark and to offer something that is tangible without having to book an appointment and explain and validate and justify and reason and rationale to an individual who is just an individual and possibly be sent home in the process and be sent home in the process and dismiss yourself or be dismissed or be told something that is a sort of diagnosis

that you don't understand of some kind of imbalance you're like but what does that mean and it's it's it's very hard to sit in front of a complete and utter stranger and to tell them about the most intimate aspects of your body reproductive health your how you bleed when you bleed if you if you bleed when you had sex if you're having sex there's so many layers to this conversation you know your intentions for your fertility what are you doing with your life are you with anybody it's like it's like unpacking a lifetime in front of a complete stranger many of us just don't feel comfortable doing and so being able to have an unbiased assessment of you as an individual taking into account real world statistics that aren't going

to judge you um and we do every one of us judges people based on how they look we had somebody who came to us and she said i I've been to so many doctors. And I said, tell me about your symptoms. And I went through the journey and I said, she has, she's a textbook perimenopause. She's going through menopause, but she was 27 and she was beautiful. And it shouldn't matter that she was beautiful,

but it did because she looked so healthy. She looks fertile and healthy. She looks healthy yeah you know exercising running and so you just don't fit that textbook image of somebody who's going through this which is a gray-haired lady being able to remove that you know implicit bias that we have when we look at an individual and it works both ways right so i sit in front of a doctor and i will judge based on how they're looking at me whether i will tell them certain details totally we all change our answers and comfortable like you're being listened

to or judged yes for on a personal note what would your advice be to me as a 34 year old woman who is obviously thinking about kids and all of that stuff i don't shout at me but i haven't haven't done any like you are not leaving today without doing that health assessment ordering your test i'm gonna give you it now so what what then happens so then the test will arrive at your house and on the third day of your period you will just do a finger prick make sure you're hot and hydrated do some jumping jacks okay in the morning that way the blood will flow it's just a small little while it's so easy it's so easy and that's it you just bring to the post office on your whatever post it and then what just post it and then within eight days you'll get all your results we've created a beautiful

virtual clinic which is welcome to your virtual clinic our one of our gynecologists will have written you a letter taking into account all of your different symptoms biometrics menstrual factors and then all of your hormone results too um we're building an app at the moment so that you can log your symptoms and how you feel, which I'm really excited for, because it's going to be the the only real source of single source of truth that will be out there about, you know, you as an individual and women's health and taking into account real world, real world statistics and and real research. But then you'll have for every hormone we'll explain it we say

what is it why did we test it what it means for you and then we spent an additional probably probably two years building out our actionable insights which are to say you know if you have um if you're preparing for a journey like four brazil nuts a day is your selenium intake to create a healthy egg or real literal bite-sized pieces of information that are, you know, tangible for you to actually do or ways that you can naturally increase your estrogen, just your diet or movement or lifestyle. Or if there's symptoms that you have that need medical attention, that we have a full team of experts there that you can book to have a teleconsultation with and speak to them them and what i what i again what i'm very proud

of is the fact that i i wanted this to be as easy as amazon is right we we order the most trivial of things they arrive at our house and sometimes this is the amazon person never come to your door and you're like oh god sorry i brought you out of your way for this if they only knew how ridiculous what I ordered was um that and yet we have logistics set up for that so my ultimate goal is to have logistics that support us about the things that actually matter which are our health that you can do a health assessment that you can get a blood test that you can speak to somebody and while you're on the call to them they can order you a prescription should you need it and it will arrive at your house that day or the following day depending on when you've had the call so that is like the the streamline

of service that we deserve yeah it shouldn't be like this it's amazing though you're what you're doing is revolutionary i think it's fantastic i feel like you're gonna get an influx of people off this podcast including myself good i want i think every woman should do it I really do I fundamentally believe we all need information about our bodies it will help us navigate the already difficult well it's it's still a mystery the fact that I do what I do and it's still such a mystery to me is quite shocking yeah so I'm gonna do something about that but the final thing that I wanted to ask you about because I can't let you go without asking this because it's something that is so in my circle I just it's it's everywhere at the moment because of the age that I'm at is egg freezing yeah I hear

great things I hear horror stories let's go there so I have gone on a journey as all people do if you educate yourself on things and I think it's important to be able to change your mind on certain things as well the more you know about them. When I was at that peak time of you know lecturing, wondering, fearing and feeling frustrated that there was nothing out there and I actually had like you know people around me working in fertility and infertility they were like Helen just freeze your eggs. Yeah. I thought yeah yeah that sounds like a sensible thing to do and for whatever reason I mean I'd literally cryo-preserved eggs in the lab like I had literally you could do it yourself sign me up up in the stairs no I had actually done it you know um for experiments on on mice not humans don't worry um just so we can better understand how an egg forms um so I had this real intimate relationship with you know all of this

the biology behind it too and so I should have been a bit more flippant about that decision and I wasn't and I couldn't bring myself to be as flippant but nor nor could I afford to be flippant financially but it felt like a big thing to undertake just to answer the question am I fertile and I just wanted to know am I okay do I have time can I wait will I meet somebody and that I think is again that what comes down to the individual so many people come to me they're like do they tell me their AMH and I'm like oh you're fine they're like oh so I can wait I'm like yeah yeah you're fine again I don't say that in the absence of knowing any of their other complications but it's it's that liberation it's that liberation of knowing like am i okay

can i afford to wait can i you know look at things more objectively there are many individuals who are you know creeping into their late 30s or their your ovarian reserve is a little bit lower there's nothing on the horizon for them then i'm like go do it embrace it it's two weeks of your life get it over with i want i want them to take it for like three months before. I want them to prepare their body before they freeze. So I'm like, three months prepare, then do it. But for them, I think that's a clear cut case. But for those who are doing it for the sake of doing it,

because they think and maybe, and everyone else seems to be doing it and they're under pressure, I say, no. Check, do a fertility test firstly, but like just check, see where you're at no and say okay with this information I think I'm better prepared to make that decision as to whether I'm going to freeze my eggs or whether I have time to wait yeah that makes a lot of sense because it's almost like because people don't know where to go no they get to the point where they actually

just want the question answered yeah and that's what that is in truth that's what I built hertility to do is to answer that question which was am I fertile do I have time can I wait and then for people that do go through the process can you shed a little light on how successful it is what you know because I think that what a lot of people don't know is that it's it's not a guarantee not to end on a sort of sad note so egg freezing is actually as a process highly successful um it's amazing how we can freeze something in time and that when you thaw it it has you know it has remained um the biggest thing to take into account, I think, is not about the process of egg freezing. It's about whether or not you're freezing good quality eggs.

And that's something you won't know until you go on that journey. It's still the biggest limitation that we have is we can tell you how many eggs you have, but we can't tell you whether any of them are of good quality I'm currently doing a research study now where we look at the cloud of cells around an egg to see if we can determine whether it was of good quality or not to again to answer that burning question that I'm like I feel frustrated at myself that I can't answer this one yet but I'm I'm on a journey to trying to figure out how we can better understand egg quality but success is very dependent on the individual their health and the health of their egg

perfect well everyone get on get online right now you're gonna watch over me as I fill out the I am going to I'm gonna I'm gonna show up at your house and prick your finger well thank you thank you so, so much for joining me today. I love this conversation. I learned so much and I'm very excited about the future for you and Hurtility. Thank you so much. Thank you for listening to this episode of Saturn Returns. I loved this conversation. I particularly enjoyed when Helen shared her personal story and opened up about her unexpected pregnancy and everything that that taught her and that really beautiful notion that we go through life seeking love, seeking this one person that's going to fulfill us and you know the love of our lives

and you know this idea that it it could be the child that you have in you or that you're going to have and I found that really inspiring so I hope that you guys gained something from this that it answered a lot of the questions that you might be asking yourselves and was a useful resource I am definitely going to be getting myself onto the fertility website and I hope you guys do too thank you again for listening and for making it possible to do this show it's such a joy for me to get to have these chats with these incredible inspiring people and that's all possible because of your support so a very big thank you from me and if you do enjoy listening to the show please don't forget to follow us because I guess it just helps us

get discovered by more like-minded people and also if you enjoyed it please feel free to share on social media I always love hearing your thoughts and your feedback. So thank you very much for listening. And as always, remember, you are not alone. Goodbye. This is a Saturn Returns production. The producer is Harriet Pullen. The executive producer is me, Keggy Dunlop