Dr. Laurie Terzo, Natural Fertility Specialist

Dr. Laurie Terzo, Natural Fertility Specialist Empowering women and couples for over 25 years to naturally optimize their fertility and take control of their journey.

07/30/2026

Part 2. Egg quality is two things. Only one of them is getting talked about.

The “glue” protein everyone is discussing (the study I shared last time) controls whether your egg ends up with the right number of chromosomes, and it runs low as eggs age. That’s the piece making headlines.

Here’s what’s not covered: energy. Pulling chromosomes apart cleanly takes a massive supply of energy from an egg’s mitochondria, hundreds of thousands of them, more than any other cell in your body. When those mitochondria are under oxidative stress, that same separation machinery doesn’t hold up as well.

My read on this: support the mitochondria. That’s what you actually have some control over.

Here’s how I think about supporting those mitochondria. Protect them: a blood sugar spike floods them with more fuel than they can cleanly burn, and that overflow is what generates the free radicals that damage this machinery. Feed them: CoQ10 is the most studied nutrient for oocyte energy production. Build more of them: regular movement signals your cells to grow new mitochondria.

Comment GLUE for my egg quality playbook.

07/28/2026

Older eggs get written off as “poor quality.”

Here is one real reason underneath that label: an older egg is more likely to end up with the wrong number of chromosomes.

Doctors call the right number euploid and the wrong number aneuploid. An aneuploid egg is a big part of what is behind trouble getting pregnant in the first place, early miscarriage, and failed transfers.

New research from Germany found a protein called Shugoshin. It works like glue, holding chromosome pairs together. It runs low with age.

Restoring it in the lab cut those errors by about half! This is still early lab work, but exciting.

What it changes is the story of what an “old egg” even is.

Follow for part 2: how it connects to the new-egg research, and what it means for you.

07/25/2026

Here is something hopeful about fertility that almost no one tells you.

Two people can do the very same treatment and get completely different results. Same protocol, same clinic, different outcome.

And yes, no two people start in the same place. Different histories, different labs, different partners. But the thing that keeps shifting the outcome is the one thing you can influence: how the body was prepared before the treatment ever started.

This is part 3 of the series that Scientific American article on the egg supply question kicked off.

Every fertility treatment is an amplifier. IUI gets the s***m right where it needs to be. IVF pulls more eggs and gives you more tries in a single cycle. Medications push your ovaries to do more. Each one turns up the volume on what your body is already doing.

But more is not the same as better. IVF can give you more eggs and more chances. What it does not do is improve the quality of those eggs, the s***m, or how receptive the uterine lining is when it matters most. That part is set before the cycle ever begins.

Your terrain is that quieter signal underneath. Blood sugar. Thyroid. Hormones. Iron. Gut. Mitochondria. Inflammation. Your nervous system. Egg and s***m are both built from it. Whether you are doing a treatment or trying naturally, that is what all of it stands on.

So preparation is not the warm-up before the real thing. It is the real thing.

Prepare the terrain, and everything you do next has something real to work with.

07/23/2026

New research suggests women might be able to make new eggs. Fascinating.

But as a functional fertility doctor, the part of this that got me most excited has nothing to do with the new eggs.

I broke down the Scientific American article in my last reel. Here is the piece I could not stop thinking about.

Jonathan Tilly, the lead researcher, described the o***y as a house. The cells that could form new eggs are the inhabitants. With age, the house falls into disrepair. The tissue becomes fibrotic, the signals get disrupted, and the cells might still be there while the environment can no longer support them.

A lot of people fixate on one question: can the ovaries actually make new eggs? But the bigger insight was sitting right next to it. Your ovarian environment decides whether any egg in there can do its job.

Nutrition. Blood flow. Inflammation. Blood sugar. Thyroid. Nervous system.

The part everyone skipped, the environment the egg matures in, is exactly what I have been working on all along as a functional medicine doctor.

Part 2 of 3. Want the main things I look at to actually improve your egg quality? Comment QUALITY and I will send you my Egg Quality Essentials guide.

07/21/2026

You have heard it your whole life. You are born with all the eggs you will ever have, and you can never make more.

Well, not so fast.

A new Scientific American piece lays out research challenging that 70-year-old rule, and as a fertility doctor, I find it fascinating.

Here is where the idea even started. In the 1950s, a scientist named Solly Zuckerman counted eggs in animals, saw no new ones forming. He then concluded the o***y simply cannot make them. That held for over 70 years.

Then in 2004, biologist Jonathan Tilly ran the numbers and said it does not add up. Since then his lab and others have found cells in adult ovaries, in mice, pigs, primates, and human tissue, that under the right conditions can form new immature eggs. In mice, they made those new eggs glow green and traced them to live, healthy pups.

Is it settled? No. Some scientists are convinced, others are skeptical. Everyone agrees we are years from using the research to support restoring hormone function, softening menopause, and extending how long the o***y stays healthy. Tilly is already growing ovarian tissue in a lab from a woman’s own cells.

This might be the biggest rethink of the o***y in 70 years. What do you think?

Part 1 of 3. Comment ARTICLE and I will send you the article.

07/17/2026

IVF is brilliant at bypassing barriers. It cannot improve the quality of an egg or s***m it was not given the chance to prepare. Before you start a cycle, these are the things I want checked first, for both of you. Most clinics check about half. Comment CHECK and I’ll send you the full list of 10 (plus 5 more). This was never only about a positive test. It is about a healthy pregnancy, a healthy baby, and healthy parents.

07/17/2026

One of the first things I bring up with almost every person I work with is sleep. Not as a wellness cliché. Because we have the research now, and it’s one of the most underrated fertility levers I know.

Here’s what’s actually happening while you sleep.

In deep sleep, your glymphatic system switches on. Think of it as your brain’s overnight cleaning crew, clearing out the metabolic waste that builds up all day. You get enough of it in roughly the 7 to 8.5 hour range, and almost none when you cut your nights short.

And here’s why I care about it as a fertility doctor. That same deep sleep is when your hypothalamus resets, the part of your brain that fires the GnRH pulses that tell your ovaries when to ripen and release an egg. Short yourself on sleep, and those signals don’t work as well, which shows up as more irregular cycles in short sleepers and shift workers.

So before we talk about one more supplement for your fertility, I want to know about your sleep. Aim for 7 to 8.5 hours and protect the dark.

Save this as your reminder.

07/15/2026

You did everything right. Tracked, timed, tried, tested. And the folder still says “unexplained,” which is the most maddening word in this whole process because it sounds like an answer and isn’t one.

So let me hand you a door most workups never open: your vaginal microbiome.

There’s a whole community of bacteria living there, and in a fertile setup one gentle family runs the show, Lactobacillus. It keeps the environment acidic, stable, and quiet. When that balance tips and less friendly bacteria move in, they raise a low-grade inflammation right at the threshold s***m and an embryo have to cross. Research links that imbalance to lower implantation and early-loss rates, and a standard fertility panel almost never checks it.

This isn’t one more thing wrong with you. It’s one more thing nobody looked at. And unlike your age or your history, it’s something we can actually test and shift.

Save this for your next appointment, and if “unexplained” is the only answer you’ve been handed, reply and tell me. I read them.

07/10/2026

You were told to relax. As if calm was the one thing you forgot to try.

I want to take that off you, because “just relax” skips the actual biology, and the biology is on your side.

Your cycle does not run on your ovaries alone. It runs on a conversation between your brain and your ovaries. The starter switch is a small cluster in your hypothalamus, the GnRH pulse generator, and it fires in a steady rhythm that tells your body to mature and release an egg.

That same part of your brain also runs your stress response. Under sustained pressure, cortisol stays high and your system leans into fight-or-flight, and that steady survival signal slows the rhythm. The brain reads “not the season,” so ovulation comes later, quieter, or skips. It rarely shows on a standard workup, so you get handed “relax” instead of a reason.

This is not about erasing stress. No one gets to do that while trying to conceive. It is real rest-and-digest time, most days, so the signal can ease: slow exhales longer than the inhale, a few minutes of cool water on your face (this one tugs the vagus nerve, and it works for both of you), a genuine wind-down before sleep.

His stress counts too. The same crosstalk pulls down testosterone and the support behind healthy s***m. Give it about 90 days, the window calmer signaling needs to reach the next eggs and s***m.

Save this for the next time someone tells you to relax.

07/09/2026

You have been taking iron for months. Maybe your hair is still thinning, you are still wiped by mid-afternoon, and your ferritin will not come up. That is not you doing it wrong. That is a clue.

First, why it even matters. Ferritin is your stored iron, and it quietly runs your fertility. Your thyroid needs it to make thyroid hormone and keep ovulation on time. Your egg burns through it during the roughly 90 days it spends maturing. Your lining needs it to rebuild every cycle.

So when it will not come up, I do not say take more. I look at three things.

Inflammation. When the body is inflamed, it makes a hormone called hepcidin that locks iron in storage and blocks absorption. It can also make ferritin read falsely normal while your usable iron is low.

Absorption. Low stomach acid, H. pylori, gluten-driven gut inflammation, years on an acid blocker. If the gut is not working, the iron never gets in.

Losses and cofactors. Heavy periods drain it monthly, and iron needs B12, folate, copper, and vitamin C to actually get used.

More iron is rarely the answer. Finding which of these is yours, that is the work.

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