January: aviating, fornicating, fertilitating …

Here’s a true fact: there are more UK birthdays in September than any other month. This means (count back) we’re sort of in mating season. But before tiptoeing into fornication and fertilisation here be perspiration and commercialisation …

Early Jan, Baz and Tamara chunneled through to Lille to meet with Decathlon, the multinational French retailer with 1,700 stores in 60 countries, and impressive R&D labs dotted all around the world. Including on mountains.

Decathlon’s aim to democratise sport chimes with ours. While half of its customers are women those women don’t tend to buy for themselves and that’s an open goal provided sport can broaden and retailers can innovate. Challenge accepted.

A few clicks east, Dr Emma is right now in Geneva to address 150 UEFA employees on the importance of menstrual health in sports education. From there she’ll present ongoing Breaking Barriers Academy insights to an audience of adidas partner organisations from all over Europe.

It’s a huge opportunity, and seriously cool that she’s delivering talks in the same auditorium where they stage and film UEFA cup draws. See pic – yep, that one.

Meanwhile there’s lots going on back in London. We’re itching to tell you of several coming soon partnerships that represent major strides forward in sport, culture and commerce. Omens lookin’ good for 2025. Stay tuned.

Given our newsletter theme, maybe your next Netflix and chill sesh could be Joy, the film adaptation of how IVF came to be.

It’s a damn good film (professional review below) and easy to see the parallels of progress. What it took to push change into the status quo in the 1970s is scarily familiar: uphill battles, setbacks, failures, public pressure, resistance …

Also interesting, the motivation behind IVF wasn’t commercial but doing the right thing and giving parents who couldn’t / can’t the chance to raise a family. With that, some of the story’s MVPs were citizens who saw the good and supported from the sidelines a mission which has now made possible many thousands of lives.

We all have a part to play. Oh and in a final punchline we learned that the female of the trio wasn’t acknowledged for decades after the fact. Classic. Anyway, Just for Joy we thought we’d pen a capsule review in our best snooty / spoofy critic voice:

Joy is a tour de force in acting as delectable cinematopogramography meets a story richer than créme brûlée posing as chutney pie served with vending machine soap. Nine stars out of seven – give it a shot.

The BBC recently covered Olympian Laura Kenny — her miscarriage and ectopic pregnancy — in a demure and responsible article entitled ‘Can elite sport damage women’s fertility?’

As headlines go it’s grabby, clickbaity … and misleady. The suggestion is that elite sport (through its stressors, pressures and physicality) drives down athletes’ ovarian reserves (AMH) and this equals fertility problems.

It’s a leap. See AMH (which stands for Anti-Müllerian Hormone) is a narrow measure of fertility which doesn’t predict a person’s ability to conceive. Fertility is much more complex a topic than how many eggs are in the basket.

The study cited in the BBC article omits critical factors such as hormonal patterns, general health and lifestyle profiles. It also leaves out energy availability, which may influence overall fertility in athletes more than any other single factor.

No decent evidence supports the idea that participation in sport harms fertility, pregnancy or birth outcomes. Robust evidence usually suggests the opposite.

Is it black and white – no, but what is? Distilling a complex, nuanced, individual and multifactorial topic into Big, bad, evil, horrible sport … it’s a bit irresponsible innit. If the goal is more (not fewer) women in sport then, well, This. Does. Not. Help.

Dr Bella says: Unlikely. Online and self-service fertility tests are out there now and I’m not sure how much they’re really helping.

Testing fertility is much more than a woman measuring her ovarian reserves and panicking if she doesn’t like the number. Really, the best way to understand your fertility is to actually try to get pregnant – that’s when truths and realities of fertility come into focus. Before that it’s all a bit theoretical and vague.

If we’re talking about natural conception then regular sex will lead to pregnancy within one year for 80% of people, and within two years for 90% of people. If conception is proving difficult then we don’t leap straight to ‘sorry you’re infertile‘ we explore both parties’ health, habits, histories and lifestyles.

If I’m the GP I’ll monitor the mum-to-be’s hormonal activity at two key points in her menstrual cycle, and broaden scope to check for infections and irregularities which could be lying dormant or undetected. But of course it’s not just about the mother.

Getting pregnant is a 50/50 thing. So often the emphasis is on mum but dad’s health and lifestyle are equally vital. Mum could be super fertile but if dad smokes and / or drinks it could inhibit conception and cause problems in pregnancy itself.

Bottom line: fertility is multifactorial for both parties. Fertility isn’t like a Covid test where you either are or aren’t – and AMH is only one measure of many that matter.