The Fertility Podcast
The Early Years: What More Can We Learn About Fertility Education
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Episode notes
We are delighted to welcome Professor Joyce Harper to this week's podcast. Joyce is a Professor of Reproductive Science at the Institute of Women’s Health at University College London and Director of the Centre for Human Reproduction. Joyce has an incredible amount of knowlege when it comes to women’s health.
With over 30 years experience working in the field of fertility awareness education, she is so passionate.
Finally Joyce has had the time to finish a book, she started writing 4 years ago Joyce covering the whole of a woman’s lifespan from menarche to menopause.
You can imagine how fascinating it is going to be. It comes out next year and is described as
"The only guide you'll ever need to understand how your body works, from the menstrual cycle to the menopause: no myths, no misinformation, no scare stories - just scientific evidence that shines a light on the facts you need to know. "
Finally, the book we all wish we'd read earlier.
Joyce hopes that her book and all the information it contains will help men and women have a greater understanding of their fertility so that they may avoid needing assisted conception.
A power house when it comes to research, Joyce has recently completed a study on fertility Apps, and found that the majority, used a calendar method using just cycle lengths which gives us very little information and using natural fertility indicators such as BBT, cervical mucus, cervix, and OPK’s (note not always reliable for women with PCOS).
She tells us about a new method that used carbon dioxide to measure fertility - fascinating eh.
We talk about how useful, but equally how misleading, social media can be when it comes to fertility information and perpetuating myths. The book looks at the scientific information and gives women the bottom line and the evidence they need. She is concerned that women can be very vulnerable when they trying to conceive and can be sucked in by bold claims on for example alternative therapies.
Joyce has been recently auditing the IVF clinic website and the IVF Add ons they offer. She found that many clinics in the UK are charging thousands of pounds for unproven treatments and that bold claims are made for many IVF Add ons, such as PGT-A, assisted hatching, and time-lapse imaging. Worryingly, it seems that the clinics are telling patients to ignore the evidence. Joyce has found it hard standing up to her colleagues on this contentious issue but is determined to get this information out to patients through her book.
Joyce talks about the Fertility Education Initiative that aims to get fertility education out to all. This initiative has now become international and all of their campaignings have, at last, got the word ‘fertility’ on the school curriculum. More work needs to be done to reach a younger community on the platforms they use.
Are we seeing a shift in Fertility education? Whilst there is so much great work being done, Joyce thinks we’re still in a bubble and hardly scratching the surface.
Please share this episode with as many people you think may benefit from it. Let’s use our ‘bubble’ to reach other ‘bubbles’ and get talking about fertility awareness.
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