Lively Women Q&A: What Happens to Your Eggs When You Don’t Ovulate?
This article has a correction posted May 15, 2008.
In response to yesterday’s post about the new FDA-approved, no-period birth control pill Lybrel, Alicia asked this question in the comment trail:
What exactly happens to your egg(s) when birth control pills prevent ovulation?
That’s a great question. First of all, let’s be clear on two important facts about the female body:
- You’re born with all of the eggs you’ll ever need–millions of them, just chilling in your ovaries until menarche.
- Ovulation refers to the actual release of the egg from the ovary into the fallopian tube, not the production of the egg.
Second, let’s be clear on what happens to eggs that aren’t fertilized and gestated when you’re not taking birth control.
- At ovulation, the egg is released and travels down the fallopian tube to the uterus.
- If it’s not fertilized, it simply disintegrates and is absorbed by the lining of the uterus.*
Logically, then, if birth control prevents ovulation from releasing the egg into the fallopian tube, it would eventually just break down and be asorbed back into the body in the uterus. But does that play out scientifically?
From Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania:
Your eggs are just hanging out in your ovaries until they are called upon. Not ovulating doesn’t do any damage to your body, including your eggs.
They don’t all “expire” at the same time, but your eggs have been dying since you were in your mother’s womb.
Girl fetuses have eggs, in fact we have the most eggs (5-7 million) ever when we are still inside our mom developing. A lot of those eggs die before we are even born and they continue to die throughout our life. By the time most of us reach puberty we have about 400,000 eggs left. Which is more than enough!
Some of those eggs get used, some die and some even survive menopause. Really, menopause is sort of an expiration date for the eggs that have made it that far. There may be a few still holding out, but we won’t use them after menopause.
The medical term for this process is atresia, which Stedman’s Medical Dictionary defines as “The degeneration and resorption of one or more ovarian follicles before maturation.”
So, the short answer (after that long one!) is that if the egg isn’t fertilized or if it isn’t even released, the same thing happens: it just gets absorbed back into the body. Amazing, huh?
Tags: absorption, atresia, Birth control, contraceptive, egg, fallopian-tube, FDA, fertilized, lybrel, menarche, Menopause, menstrual-cycle, menstruation, oral, ovulate, ovulating, ovulation, period, pill, Planned-Parenthood, Pregnancy, reabsorb, seasonale, US-Food-and-Drug-Administration, uterus, woman, women, Womens-HealthRelated Stories
POSTED IN: Aging, Birth control, Body, Hormones, Menopause, Pregnancy, Women's Issues
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7 opinions for Lively Women Q&A: What Happens to Your Eggs When You Don’t Ovulate?
Deb
May 25, 2007 at 8:09 pm
Planned Parenthood is not the best sole source of complete information when they have a vested interest in what women believe to be the facts about their bodies.
Ova do not just sit around chilling in the ovaries waiting for menarche to call them to function. Anyone who has takes basic human A+P in college should be learning that the ova are doing behind the scenes environment setting that makes girls girls long before the menses begin. And even once they become established and the ova start maturing several are stimulated to maturing process, which seems to have a role in the hormonal environment, but once one leaves its sack the others usually don’t progress to the leave stage and degrade to serve other purposes.
The problem with no periods is not the flow or lack there of or the availability of a mature ovum but rather what happens to the female physiology and often emotional-psychology which has set its rhythms based on this cyclical hormone-bathed environment. Do we not remember the women who died in the early years of estrogen popping to control female symptoms including pregnancy?
Kristen King
May 25, 2007 at 8:47 pm
While it’s true that PP has a, shall we say, defined viewpoint on certain women’s health issues, I’ve found absolutely nothing that in any way indicates that the information they provided on this topic is inaccurate. The context in which the info is provided may present an agenda, but the fact that unreleased, immature eggs and mature, unfertilized eggs are reabsorbed into the body and that it in and of itself is not particularly detrimental in specific ways is not going to change.
That being said, any time you induce a bodily function that’s not naturally occurring, there is certainly some element of risk, however nebulous. But look at it this way: Women who are professional athletes often don’t ovulate for years, and sometimes they never do depending on their percentage body fat. Their lack of ovulation is not chemically induced, but it has the same physiological result of eggs deteriorating when they reach the end of their shelf life and being reabsorbed into the body. What the other, more widespread results may be, I can’t say, but the fate of the eggs is the same.
kk
alicia
May 26, 2007 at 5:07 pm
Thanks so much for the research, Kristen! Honestly, I’m resting a bit easier now that I know all those years I took the Pill I wasn’t just “incarcerating” my eggs for another time, lol.
While PP may have their motives, I doubt they’re going to present innacurate information about our bodies. That’s just dangerous. I wonder if there is any kind of power-that-be that…not regulates, but makes sure such organizations present accurate health information?
In any event, thanks again!
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Jun 16, 2007 at 3:35 am
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Jul 25, 2007 at 3:32 pm
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Sarah
May 14, 2008 at 6:02 pm
I have a question - I was confused by the statement:
“Logically, then, if birth control prevents ovulation from releasing the egg into the fallopian tube, it would eventually just break down and be asorbed back into the body in the uterus.”
because the egg must travel down the fallopian tube in order to reach the uterus. So how does it get “logically … asorbed back into the body in the uterus” if it was never released into the fallopian tube?
CORRECTION — Women’s Health Q&A: What Happens to Your Eggs When You Don’t Ovulate
May 15, 2008 at 9:48 pm
[…] May, I wrote a post answering the question, What happens to your eggs when you don’t ovulate? Something I said didn’t make sense to one reader, and she was right about that! No clue what […]
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