Can You Actually Improve Egg Quality?

First... what do we actually mean by “egg quality”?

When doctors talk about egg quality, they are usually talking about whether an egg is capable of maturing properly, being fertilised and ultimately contributing to an embryo that can continue developing.

A lot has to go right for that to happen.

The egg needs to divide its chromosomes correctly, its mitochondria need to provide enough energy, the machinery inside the cell needs to work properly... and even then, there is no simple test that can take one of your eggs and give it a neat little score saying "excellent quality"

That is one of the first things I think gets lost online... egg quality is not something we can currently measure with one blood test.

And no... AMH does not tell you your egg quality

I see AMH being interpreted this way all the time.

Although AMH is useful, it mainly gives us information about ovarian reserve, meaning roughly how many follicles are available and how the ovaries might respond to stimulation during fertility treatment.

It does not tell us whether the eggs inside those follicles have normal chromosomes. Someone can have a relatively high AMH and still have age-related changes in egg quality. And someone with a lower AMH can still produce an egg capable of resulting in a healthy pregnancy.

And yes although quantity and quality are related to reproductive ageing, they are not the same thing.

The uncomfortable part is that age really does matter

There is no particularly nice way of dressing this up.

As eggs age, the chance of errors when chromosomes divide increases. And that means the chance of an egg having an abnormal number of chromosomes also rises.

This is one of the major reasons fertility declines with age and miscarriage becomes more common. It is also the part that no supplement, smoothie or expensive fertility powder has been shown to reverse.

You cannot take an egg from an older ovary and reliably turn it biologically into an egg from a much younger one.

I think this is important to say because the internet can make women feel as though declining egg quality is somehow another health problem they simply have not worked hard enough to fix.

It is not.

So... does that mean nothing you do matters?

Not at all. There is a difference between reversing the age of an egg and creating the healthiest possible environment for the eggs you already have.

Smoking is probably one of the clearest examples.

We have good evidence that smoking is associated with poorer fertility and worse outcomes from fertility treatment, and cigarette smoke can expose the ovarian follicle itself to harmful compounds.

So stopping smoking is genuinely relevant reproductive-health advice. Your wider health matters too.

Conditions that affect metabolism, ovulation and the hormonal environment can affect fertility, and looking after things like nutrition, movement, sleep and existing medical conditions makes sense when you are trying to conceive.

But I would be very careful with the sentence: "Do this and you will improve your egg quality."

Because that usually goes much further than the evidence does.

And then there are the supplements...

CoQ10 is probably the supplement you will see mentioned most often. Researchers are particularly interested in it because CoQ10 plays a role in mitochondrial energy production, and mitochondria are especially important in the egg, where they help provide the energy needed for maturation, fertilisation and early embryo development.

Some studies of women taking CoQ10 during IVF, particularly women with diminished ovarian reserve, have reported improvements in outcomes such as the number of eggs retrieved, certain embryo measures and clinical pregnancy rates.

So I would not say there is absolutely nothing there. But I also would not translate that into: "CoQ10 improves egg quality." As those are not the same statement.

The studies are mostly in specific groups of women receiving fertility treatment, the research is still relatively limited, and many of the outcomes studied are not the same thing as proving that a supplement increases the chance of taking home a healthy baby. That is a much higher bar.

What about the famous “90 days”?

You have probably seen this one too.

"Your eggs take around 90 days to mature, so change your lifestyle for three months and you can transform their quality"

There is a small piece of biology underneath this idea.

The follicles that contain eggs go through important stages of development before ovulation, and the environment around them during that time matters.

But the way this gets presented online is incredibly misleading.

You are not producing a brand-new set of eggs every three months. The eggs in your ovaries have been there since before you were born.

So three months of supplements cannot reset their age or erase age-related chromosome changes.

So what is actually worth doing?

Probably the least exciting things...

Do not smoke. Try to eat well rather than chase a perfect "fertility diet". Exercise in a way that is sustainable for you. Manage medical conditions properly. Correct genuine nutritional deficiencies if you have them. Take folic acid when trying to conceive because that has a completely different and well-established purpose: reducing the risk of neural tube defects.

And if you are thinking about fertility supplements, especially if you are already undergoing IVF or have been told you have diminished ovarian reserve, talk through them with your fertility team rather than assuming that more supplements must mean better eggs.

So... can you improve egg quality?

I think the most accurate answer is: not in the way the internet usually means it. You cannot reverse the age of an egg. You cannot guarantee normal chromosomes. And there is currently no supplement proven to simply turn "poor-quality eggs" into "good-quality eggs".

But you can look after the environment in which your eggs are developing and remove factors we know can harm reproductive health.