Can We Really Wait Longer to Have Kids?

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Sanjay Gupta (0:56)

Let's say a young woman is listening who says, I want to freeze my eggs. How do they know that they're freezing good quality eggs?

Lucky Sekhon (1:03)

They don't.

Sanjay Gupta (1:11)

Hey there, welcome to Chasing Life. Big question we're asking today. Have we outsmarted the biological clock? I don't know, Ben Tinker, longtime producer of mine. We talk about this topic all the time, and we have stories to tell. But I think the idea of asking the question, have we outsmarted the biological clock?

Seems like an audacious question.

Ben Tinker (1:33)

Well, here's the thing. I think we think we've outsmarted the biological clock, but we probably haven't, which is worse than, I think, not outsmarting in the first place. We're in this weird spot where we have gone so far that it might be too far, more than biology supports for our bodies, at least at this point in our million-year evolution.

Sanjay Gupta (1:56)

I'm always going to bet on biology.

Maybe it's because I studied it. Yeah, but it's complicated. More people than ever are talking about this. I mean, does it feel like this, Steve, fertility is like having this moment.

Ben Tinker (2:08)

Yeah, for sure. I think every time I open up social media, someone is posting about this in some way, shape or form, and that's probably in part my algorithm. But it's also a lot of these celebrities sharing their journeys, and I think in some regard that normalizes it. There are a lot of people, and it makes it seem like it's happening all the time. We just need to stop and remember, for every time that we see this is happening, there are countless other times where it's not happening at all. Right.

Sanjay Gupta (2:32)

That's absolutely right. You hear about Anne Hathaway, age 43, Natalie Portman, age 45, AOC.

She talked about her journey of egg freezing, and that got a lot of attention. But to your point, I think people think this is now the norm.

Ben Tinker (2:48)

It's really interesting to think about, I think this is just all part of people taking control to the greatest extent that they can, trying to outsmart to the greatest extent they can, what they want to do with their lives. Right. And there's a lot of people who are deciding they don't want to have kids for whatever reason, or they do want to do it, but later, and I think most of what we're going to talk about in this episode is doing it when you want to do it, the way you want to do it, and that's really what's changed here.

Sanjay Gupta (3:12)

You have two kids.

Ben Tinker (3:13)

I do.

Sanjay Gupta (3:13)

I have three kids. We obviously are parents and we wanted to bring kids into this world. I realize that the technology is changing, people's attitudes are changing, the timing is changing completely as a result of the technology, which is interesting and I hope you're comfortable talking about some of your own story today.

Ben Tinker (3:31)

Sure. Yeah, I'm sure we will dive into it and learn a lot along the way.

Sanjay Gupta (3:35)

So we're joined today by reproductive endocrinologist and infertility specialist, Dr. Lucky Sekhon. She's an assistant clinical professor at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, also author of this book called The Lucky Egg. Understanding Your Fertility and How to Get Pregnant Now.

Thanks so much for joining us on the podcast. It's really great to talk to you.

Lucky Sekhon (3:54)

It's great to see you again.

Sanjay Gupta (3:56)

So you were just listening to Ben and I chit chat about what's going on with fertility. It's having this moment. Do you think it's hard to get good information around fertility? I mean, I feel like with medicine in general or on topics like longevity, there's so much information out there and some of it's great, but some of it's terrible and the user sometimes has a really hard time distinguishing between the two. Is that the same with fertility?