outdated women's health myths

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The Myth: Your fertility plummets after age 35
The facts: Women have been led to believe that our eggs are stamped with an expiration date: midnight on our 35th birthday. But a recent study headed by Anne Steiner, MD, an assistant professor in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, found that among 38- and 39-year-olds who had been pregnant before, 80 percent got pregnant naturally within six months. This doesn't mean that the quality and quantity of eggs doesn't decline with age (experts still maintain that by age 40, a woman's chance of getting pregnant is less than 5 percent per cycle). But the decline happens at such variable rates that many healthy women will still have a stockpile of viable eggs late into their 30s. So investigate (by talking to your gynecologist), before dismissing your chances.