How Can I Improve My Egg Quality? What We Actually Know

If you're trying to conceive, you've probably come across the phrase “egg quality.”

Maybe you've been trying for a while. Maybe you have a lower AMH. Maybe you're over 35. Maybe you've experienced an unsuccessful IVF cycle.

And somewhere along the way, the conversation becomes:

Maybe it's your egg quality.

Which naturally leads to the question:

How can I improve my egg quality?

But before we answer that question, I think we need to ask another one:

How do you know you have poor egg quality in the first place?

For most women, you don't know definitively.

There isn't currently a blood test that comes back and says, “Your egg quality is 42%.”

AMH does not directly measure egg quality.

Your antral follicle count does not directly measure egg quality.

These tests can give your fertility team useful information about ovarian reserve and, particularly during fertility treatment, how your ovaries may respond to stimulation.

But that's different from directly measuring the quality of the eggs themselves.

And that distinction matters.

Because somewhere along the way, “egg quality” has become a phrase that gets used in fertility conversations almost as though it's a concrete diagnosis.

And once you believe poor egg quality is the problem, the next question becomes:

How do I fix it?

That's when you can become incredibly vulnerable to an entire industry waiting to answer that question.

You search “how to improve egg quality,” and suddenly there are supplement companies everywhere.

CoQ10. Antioxidants. Powders. Prenatals. Supplement protocols someone on Instagram swears will change everything.

Before you know it, you can have hundreds of dollars of supplements sitting in your cart—all intended to improve something you can't directly measure.

So I want to slow this conversation down.

What does “egg quality” actually mean?

When fertility practitioners talk about egg quality, they're generally talking about an egg's ability to successfully fertilize, develop into a healthy embryo, and ultimately contribute to a healthy pregnancy.

One important piece of this is chromosomal competence.

We know that age is associated with changes in the likelihood of chromosomal abnormalities in eggs and embryos.

But there is an important distinction here:

Age gives us information about groups of women. It doesn't inspect the individual eggs sitting inside your ovaries.

If you're 38, like me, your birthday doesn't suddenly tell us that the particular eggs inside your body are “bad” or “expired.”

Age gives us information about probability.

Statistics and research give us useful information to work from, and those probabilities absolutely have a place in fertility care.

But probability is not the same as knowing exactly what is happening inside your body at this particular point in time.

That's a distinction worth understanding throughout fertility care.

Can doctors tell anything about egg quality during IVF?

Sometimes we learn more as the fertility process unfolds.

During IVF, for example, your clinic gets an opportunity to observe what happens after your eggs are retrieved.

How many eggs were mature?

How many fertilized?

How did the embryos develop?

Did they reach the blastocyst stage?

What did the embryologist observe?

And in some IVF situations, embryos may undergo chromosomal testing.

All of these things can give your medical team additional pieces of information.

But fertility is complicated.

There isn't necessarily one single moment when someone can point to an egg and explain everything about why that egg, embryo, or fertility cycle did or didn't work.

So if someone tells you that you have poor egg quality, one of the most useful questions you can ask is:

“What information are we basing that conclusion on?”

Not because your doctor is wrong.

Not because you shouldn't trust your fertility clinic.

But because you deserve to understand the difference between:

What we know.
What we suspect.
And what we're using probability to estimate.

Those are three different things.

So, can you improve egg quality?

Here's the answer that may be less exciting than the one you'll find on the internet:

There is no protocol I can give you that guarantees you're going to “fix” your eggs.

I don't think that's a bad thing to say.

I think it's an honest thing to say.

There are absolutely things you can do to support your overall health while trying to conceive.

Nutrition matters. Eating enough matters. Nutrient-dense foods matter. Movement and sleep matter. Avoiding smoking matters. Addressing your individual health needs matters.

And there may be supplements that your reproductive endocrinologist or another qualified healthcare practitioner recommends based on your medical history, labs, treatment plan, and individual circumstances.

Those are reasonable conversations to have as part of fertility care.

But that's very different from promising:

“Do these seven things and you'll have better eggs in three months.”

I want us to be careful with that promise.

Because infertility already gives women so many opportunities to believe that if they could just do everything perfectly, they could control the outcome.

Egg quality doesn't need to become another version of that.

What about supplements for egg quality?

I am not anti-supplement.

There may be a supplement your reproductive endocrinologist or another qualified practitioner recommends specifically for you.

What I question is the leap from:

Egg quality matters.

to:

Therefore, every woman experiencing infertility needs a giant egg-quality supplement protocol.

Those aren't the same statement.

So before you spend hundreds of dollars every month on supplements intended to improve egg quality, ask:

Why am I taking this?

What evidence supports this supplement for someone in my circumstances?

What outcome are we hoping it changes?

Are there risks or interactions I should know about?

How will we know whether I should continue taking it?

Because “it might help your egg quality” can become an incredibly expensive idea when nobody stops to evaluate what that actually means for you.

Before you try to “fix” your eggs, ask this

If you've been told you have poor egg quality—or you've simply started believing that you do—I want you to get curious about where that conclusion came from.

What do we actually know?

What are we estimating?

What are we assuming?

And what information do we still not have?

Then, instead of making your next goal:

“I have to fix my eggs,”

you can ask:

“What are the evidence-informed things I can responsibly do to support myself and my fertility right now?”

Maybe nutritional changes make sense for you.

Maybe your physician recommends a particular supplement.

Maybe there's a medical issue that deserves further investigation.

Or maybe there isn't another thing you need to add right now.

Women deserve permission for that to be a possibility, too.

Because you could take every supplement.

You could eat every fertility food.

You could try to remove every toxin from your life.

You could follow the perfect morning routine.

And fertility would still contain uncertainty.

Human reproduction is incredibly complex.

And part of navigating infertility without losing yourself is learning to separate what you can support, what medicine can measure, what science can reasonably estimate, and what none of us can control.

So if you're asking:

“How can I improve my egg quality?”

I want you to ask one more question:

“Do I actually have evidence that egg quality is a problem for me—and if my practitioner believes it is, what are they basing that on?”

Because that allows you to make your next decision from information rather than fear.

And it might give you permission to take a step back before hitting checkout on that $400 supplement order.

Not because supplements are inherently bad.

But because they might not be what you need.

Want to hear the full conversation?

Listen to this episode of the Her Fertility Podcast: How Can I Improve My Egg Quality?

And if this brought up another fertility question for you, submit it anonymously through the Dear Jess question box. I read every question—and if you're wondering about it, there's a good chance another woman is wondering about it too.