The Total Fertility Podcast

“Poor metabolic health is the driver for almost all modern diseases and when I say modern diseases I'm meaning conditions which if you went back 100 years would have been rare but are now common, and these are conditions such as type 2 diabetes and pre-diabetes, fatty liver, dementia, strokes, some cancers and including some fertility problems.” - Dr Campbell Murdoch

Dr Campbell Murdoch is a GP with a special interest in metabolic health. He is the Medical Director of the Preventative Healthcare Group, an organisation focused on preventing and reversing modern diseases. He is also a clinical director for primary care in the NHS and works with Combe Grove in Bath providing metabolic health retreats. Campbell's focus is on delivering services that enable people to measure and understand their metabolic health, allowing them to make informed choices to achieve rapid health improvement. Benefits include reversal of conditions of such …

“Most women with Endometriosis will not have any problems getting pregnant, it's just that there is an increase in fertility difficulties in women with Endometriosis” - Mr Oli O’Donovan

Mr Oli O’Donovan is consultant gynaecologist experienced managing all benign (non-cancerous) gynaecological conditions, with specialist expertise in laparoscopic and hysteroscopic surgery, gynaecological ultrasound, endometriosis and pelvic pain, fertility, fibroids and heavy periods. Oli holds an NHS consultant post at University Hospitals Bristol, where he leads the St Michael's Endometriosis Centre (accredited by the British Society for Gynaecological Endoscopy). He is also a consultant fertility specialist at The Bristol Centre for Reproductive Medicine. His private practice is conducted at The Spire Hospital in Bristol. After qualifying from Imperial College School of Medicine he completed most of his junior training in obstetrics and gynaecolo…

“It starts very early and for those girls and young women who do receive really good information and education about what they can do to help themselves, there is ample evidence that shows they are much healthier” - Professor Dame Lesley Regan

In this podcast episode we look at the big picture view of what is really required to optimise women’s health for all. Professor Dame Lesley Regan is a Professor of Obstetrics & Gynaecology at Imperial College London and Consultant at St Mary’s Hospital in London. She is also Honorary Secretary of FIGO, a member of the NHS Assembly and Chair of the Charity Wellbeing of Women. She was the 30th President of Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) (2016-2019) and only the second woman to be elected to this position and the first in 64 years. During her tenure as PRCOG she co-chaired the National Women’s Health Task Force with Jackie Doyle…

“Add-ons are any additional extra alongside an IVF treatment cycle that you can have with the aim of improving the success rate of that cycle.” - Sarah Armstrong

Anyone looking at fertility treatment cannot fail to have to make difficult decisions about whether to use IVF 'add-ons' in their treatment. In this episode we look at IVF add-ons, explain what they are and why they are such a controversial area of IVF treatment. Dr Sarah Armstrong is the current Subspecialty trainee in Reproductive Medicine in Oxford, spending time training at both the John Radcliffe Hospital and Oxford Fertility. Sarah is an experienced researcher in the field of IVF, with expertise in systematic reviewing and randomised controlled trials. She is an editor and author for Cochrane Gynaecology and Fertility, and is currently undertaking an MD with the University of Sheffield focusing on the quantitative and qualitative evidence behind IVF add-ons.   …

"Having an understanding of the huge number of hormones that affect performance of fertility and menstruation was just something I wasn't aware of." - Ellie Kormis

  In this two-part episode on Sports and Exercise and female fertility and pregnancy, we speak to Great Britain Pole Vaulter Ellie Kormis who spent over a decade training at the elite level and competing at major championships Then, after an 11 year career as an athlete which saw her become British Champion, and represent Great Britain numerous times, she transferred to the world of Coaching & Teaching in 2008. Since then, Ellie has coached multiple athletes from a wide age range to championship winning performances at national level, and onto international teams including the GB U18 Team, and GB Junior Team. Ellie always knew that she wanted to have children and start her own family after nurturing the athletic careers of some many athletes. Ellie reflects o…

"Being a proud male, and having no kids at the time being told I had testicular cancer was quite scary. One thing I didn’t consider was my fertility. I was desperate to have family and wanted to have kids. These things need some planning. We plan all sorts of stuff in life; buying a house, buying a car, what clothes to wear. We probably don’t give as much thought to planning our families" - Steve Parry - Olympic swimmer & founder of Total Swimming “The difference between boys and girls is that boys are sperm factories, we have all the ingredients in our bodies to make sperm every day of the week. Some days we are good at it and some days we are bad at it. It takes about six weeks to make a sperm and as we get much older the quality does go down. Women are different they are egg warehouses. All the eggs are stored in the ovaries and made ready to go. A woman can’t get more eggs and she ovulates them each month until the supply runs out, so her eggs age with her.” …

"Give yourself the time to make this decision through careful research. Ask about different countries, look into different clinics and find the clinic that suits you best." - Mr George Christopoulos Mr George Christopoulos is the Medical Director of Ark IVF in Athens, which offers individualised, one-to-one, Consultant-led care to international fertility patients. George is accredited as a Sub-specialist in Reproductive Medicine by the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, London. During his 15-year-long career in the UK, he has worked as a Consultant in Reproductive Medicine at University College London Hospital and he is currently an Honorary Senior Lecturer at Imperial College London. In this episode we will find out everything you need to consider when exploring having your fertility treatment abroad. We speak to an expert in the field with many year’s experience caring for patients choosing to have fertility treatment outside of the UK. …

"IVF stands for in vitro fertilisation and what that means is in vitro is something that happens in a test tube or in a petri dish in a laboratory and fertilisation is when a sperm and an egg meet and fuse and hopefully create a baby." - Dr Ally Richardson Thousands of people every year embark on IVF treatment. It can be a challenge, as there is a lot of new terminology to get to grips with in a short space of time. In this episode we look at all the different stages of IVF, and make it easy to understand how general IVF treatment works. To understand more about the IVF process listen to Ally Richardson (@drallyr), who is our guest and a Consultant Gynaecologist and Subspecialist in Reproductive Medicine and Surgery in the East Midlands.  She has nearly 10 years' experience in the field of fertility including time spent completing research for her PhD.  Ally is therefore well published and has given numerous presentations at both national and international conference…