The Pregnancy Doctor: Pregnancy Halves Every Year After 32! If You Want 2+ Children, You Need To Know This! If You Experience This Pain, Go See A Doctor!

Dr. Natalie Crawford (0:00)

People are waiting longer to get pregnant, but if we imagine that there is a vault of your eggs, by the time you're born, you have one to two million. In your reproductive years, 300,000. This means if you and your partner wait till 35, your chances of getting pregnant are going to be approximately...

Steven Bartlett (0:16)

I feel like I better get a move on.

Dr. Natalie Crawford (0:17)

But there are things that we can do to improve your reproduction, and this is information that nobody talks about.

Steven Bartlett (0:23)

So let's get into it.

Dr. Natalie Crawford (0:24)

Let's do it.

SPEAKER_3 (0:25)

Dr. Natalie Crawford is a double-certified practicing fertility doctor, helping people to optimize their lifestyle to improve fertility.

Dr. Natalie Crawford (0:33)

Rates of infertility are increasing. One out of every eight women would have infertility, and now it's one out of every five. And there's multiple factors that are contributing, including irregular or lack of having a period. There's more autoimmune disease, obesity, chronic stress. People are waiting. But at 40, your chance of miscarriage is 50 percent, and suddenly you're left behind. And I know that because I had four pregnancy losses, and I'm going to cry now.

Steven Bartlett (1:02)

Lots of people will be struggling with a variety of the things that you've talked about. What would you tell them?

Dr. Natalie Crawford (1:06)

You can't control everything, but you should be able to control the factors you can.

Steven Bartlett (1:10)

So what would my daily habits look like?

Dr. Natalie Crawford (1:12)

I love that question. So...

Steven Bartlett (1:13)

What about our misconceptions around how to increase our odds of getting pregnant?

Dr. Natalie Crawford (1:17)

Yes. There's so many myths.

Steven Bartlett (1:18)

If the female orgasms, does that increase the chance of fertility?

Dr. Natalie Crawford (1:22)

This is super interesting.

Steven Bartlett (1:23)

And then what is the number one thing that people don't do that impacts their reproductive system?

Dr. Natalie Crawford (1:29)

It seems so straightforward. It's not a pill that you take or a major change of behavior. It is simply...

Steven Bartlett (1:41)

Who are you, and what is the mission that you're on?

Dr. Natalie Crawford (1:45)

Hi, Steven. I am a fertility doctor, which means that I help people grow their family or plan for their family, no matter what that looks like. But my mission started because early in my career, I realized I was seeing people when they were already behind the game. They didn't have the basic knowledge about how their body worked, their hormones, their reproductive system, and I had to bring them up to speed. And every time somebody said, I wish I'd known this earlier. I can't believe I wasn't taught this. Why isn't this the stuff that we're taught? Because I might have made different decisions earlier in my life. And that was a pivotal moment for me about eight years ago, when I started wondering if I could reach people earlier in their journey, before they had infertility, before they were in my office, if maybe that could change the trajectory of their course, if they could be more empowered with that education to make the decisions that are right for them, versus just letting time pass, which ultimately makes some decisions for people.

Steven Bartlett (2:48)

And when we talk about getting started earlier and thinking about this earlier, when we hear the topic of fertility, I think most of us think it's something that people over the age of 35 need to start worrying about. Or once we get up until close to our 40s, then we need to start thinking about our fertility more consciously. But what you're saying is that fertility or infertility starts much earlier in the decisions we make.

Dr. Natalie Crawford (3:12)

100%. If we view fertility as the ability to get pregnant, and infertility is a disease, in the World Health Organization, the CDC, everybody defines infertility as a disease, the inability to get pregnant. So then we can view fertility as more of the health, the wellness state. And just like we're trying to prevent disease and other aspects when it comes to cancer, Alzheimer's, many other diseases, we need to be approaching our fertility as a preventative action. Taking steps to make sure that if having kids is one of your life goals, you're not making choices that is going to make that impossible or extremely difficult when you get to that stage.

Steven Bartlett (3:52)

And what is the sort of macro social cultural backdrop to this? Because the conversation around fertility and infertility, to me, and this might just be a sort of perspective bias, seems to have suddenly increased over the last couple of years. And I don't know whether that's because I'm in that age range now where my friends are having the conversations or that I think socially we're starting to think more about it because there is some pretty alarming data that's emerged around people struggling more than ever to conceive children because there's like social factors at play.