Aging

Fertility

How To Rewind Your Biological Clock

The Super Fertility Summit

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<h6><b>Katherine Zagone, ND</b></h6>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Thank you so much, Dr. Cleopatra. It&#8217;s a pleasure and an honor.</span></p>
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<h6><b>Cleopatra Kamperveen, PhD</b></h6>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">For me too. There&#8217;s so much that we want to talk about. We share a love and obsession with biological age and how to reduce our reproductive, epigenetic, biological, or fertility age. That&#8217;s our zone of genius for the Primemester protocol. I love your Clockwize tool so much because it helps people document their processes.  It helps them to see how old they are from a fertility perspective when they come into the Primemester at baseline and then after the Primemester, so that they can see the effect of all of the amazing work and love that they&#8217;ve poured into their fertility and pregnancy systems. I cannot wait for you to share about biological age and also share about this amazing tool and algorithm that you are working on. I always love to start from the beginning, and so I would love to ask you, What&#8217;s the one thing that you want a woman, man, or human of any gender who&#8217;s listening to our interview today to be able to take away from this interview?</span></p>
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<h6><b>Katherine Zagone, ND</b></h6>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">It is possible to rewind your biological clock, and that will improve your fertility. There&#8217;s so much hope. Whatever situation you&#8217;re in now, whether you&#8217;re planning for ten years ahead or you&#8217;ve been trying for ten years already, change is possible. Hope is possible. We&#8217;re all rooting for you as far as when you get to have your super baby.</span></p>
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<h6><b>Cleopatra Kamperveen, PhD</b></h6>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">That&#8217;s so true. We are rooting so big and so hard in the best way possible for you. Thank you so much for that. I love that for people who aren&#8217;t exactly clear about what we&#8217;re referring to when we talk about biological age, can you tell us what&#8217;s the difference between chronological age and biological age, and why is that good news for fertility? If you&#8217;re quote-unquote older when you want to have your super baby, Maybe 30 plus 35 plus 40 plus 45 plus.</span></p>
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<h6><b>Katherine Zagone, ND</b></h6>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Chronological age is the age that we say we are based on our birthday, how many revolutions around the sun, and all that sort of fun stuff. Biological age is the age of our cells. This is different from chronological age in almost every case. That biological age, that age of our cells, can be older, younger, or the same. That biological age is changeable in either direction. Typically, we want to go, we want to rewind, and we want to go backward. Chronological age, you cannot change unless you&#8217;re going to, like, get a fake driver&#8217;s license or forge some papers or whatever, but biological age, the age of our cells, and the health of our cells are provable. that translates into better fertility outcomes. I like to give some numbers so that you can kind of understand what that means.</span></p>
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<h6><b>Cleopatra Kamperveen, PhD</b></h6>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Thank you.</span></p>
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<h6><b>Katherine Zagone, ND</b></h6>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">In our research, IVF is a very easy thing to track outcomes with. There&#8217;s a lot of outcome data on IVF. For example, when we look at chronological-age women who are over 42, we have about a 3% chance of success in any given round of IVF. The 41-to-42 age group is just under 10%. The 38–40 age group is about 20%. 35 to 37. It goes on and goes on with this. That&#8217;s chronological age. What we found in the research is that biological age is more important than chronological age when it comes to fertility. Let&#8217;s look at these numbers. If you have somebody who&#8217;s 42, let&#8217;s say they have a 2.9% chance of success with a given round of IVF. If we can reduce their biological age by even two years and get them in that 38 to 40 group, their chance of success goes up to 20% in a given round. That&#8217;s almost a tenfold improvement in the chance of success. If we take somebody from that 38 to 40 group and get like three years off the clock into that 35 age range, they&#8217;ve got a 44 plus percent chance of success. more than double their chance of success. Even just taking off two to three years of that biological clock, which I&#8217;ve seen many women and myself do within eight to 12 weeks, is doable. It&#8217;s worth waiting those three to four months if you can double, triple, quadruple, or even ten times your chances of success with that one round and maybe not even need it after that. That&#8217;s what we&#8217;re all going for. We don&#8217;t tell the IVF clinics this, but the natural conception piece improves as well. We just don&#8217;t have as much published data on what that exactly looks like, number-wise. But I&#8217;ve seen it in practice. You&#8217;ve seen it a thousand times over. That&#8217;s hope right there.</span></p>
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<h6><b>Cleopatra Kamperveen, PhD</b></h6>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">That is hope right there. I love this so much for so many reasons. First, I want to say that when we talk about the likelihood of or odds of success in any one given IVF cycle or any one given menstrual cycle, if you&#8217;re looking at natural conception, we also have to remember that it&#8217;s not cumulative across cycles, and in fact, it&#8217;s easy to misconstrue or draw the conclusion that it will be. If it&#8217;s a 2% chance in one cycle, then after four cycles, it&#8217;s a 4% chance. That&#8217;s why it&#8217;s not true. What we see both in natural conception and IVF is that the more cycles needed, the lower the odds of success become. When it comes to natural conception, if you&#8217;ve been actively trying for three months and you reach the fourth month and you&#8217;re not pregnant yet, we know that the odds of success get lower and lower, such that the likelihood of getting pregnant between month four and month 12 is only less than one out of four. Similar to IVF, after six cycles or six rounds of IVF, a woman who is 42 or older still only has, I believe, a 4% chance of taking home a baby, according to scientific data. That&#8217;s an important thing to underscore and to just reiterate how important it is to be able to slow and reverse the checking of your biological clock. You said something important. Doctors are going to say you said it&#8217;s worth taking those three to four months of Primemester 120 days. As we think of it, even when you feel like, No, I&#8217;m 42, I don&#8217;t have time to take this time to work on my biological age. But you do because by taking the time to Primemester, you&#8217;re buying yourself more time on your biological clock. That&#8217;s what you&#8217;re looking for. It also increases the likelihood that you will get to have your super baby. You&#8217;re as healthy as possible, baby. In addition to getting pregnant in the first place and staying pregnant,  I just wanted to underscore those things because they&#8217;re hugely, hugely important. We&#8217;re talking about pretty complex concepts, and sometimes it&#8217;s not immediately obvious or easy to understand how the dots are connected. I want to make sure that we&#8217;re connecting the dots for everybody. Tell us, Dr. Zagone, you have been involved in releasing a tool that allows us to measure our biological age so that we can see what we look like before we start primemestering and what we look like after we&#8217;ve primemestered. Tell us about that tool.</span></p>
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<h6><b>Katherine Zagone, ND</b></h6>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">We have the fertility-wise test, and we use three big markers. The first is the biological age. We measure it using what&#8217;s called DNA methylation. This is how epigenetics works.  Anyone who&#8217;s followed is all about epigenetics. and it&#8217;s the only biological age test that&#8217;s directly linked to fertility outcomes in the research. There are other biological age tests, algorithms, and things. There are cheek swabs,  where they take other blood markers and calculate them together. Those have not been connected to fertility outcomes in the data. It is important to know that this particular method of DNA methylation using blood is what is predictive of those fertility outcomes. that we&#8217;ve got that biological age marker, we&#8217;ve got the pace of aging. That&#8217;s like the speedometer. That&#8217;s how fast your cells are aging at this moment. What&#8217;s so cool is that that&#8217;s the fastest marker to change. your biological age, we can take yours off the clock. but about 30% of that age is genetic. Another percentage of that is your history. If you had a traumatic childhood, if you had serious toxin exposures, if you had Hashimoto&#8217;s for ten years, some of that we can&#8217;t reverse. We can but I&#8217;ve seen lots of women and men able to take years off the clock. but that aging speedometer is going to tell us what you&#8217;re doing at this moment is working for you. then, as you make changes, that&#8217;s going to change more rapidly. Like, you can go for the number 1.0 in that range, which goes from 0.6 to 1.4, 1.0 means you&#8217;re aging at the same rate as time, which is fine, but you&#8217;re getting older. Then if we reverse that and slow down that clock, slow down the ticking of the biological clock, let&#8217;s say you come back at .8, .9, .6. That means that if there&#8217;s a rate at which those years are going to fall off that biological age, you&#8217;re aging backward at that point. You&#8217;re slowing the rate of aging. Every year that you have another birthday, you&#8217;re only aging for less than half a year, or you&#8217;re rewinding the clock even more. I rewound my biological clock. I went from four years older to almost four years younger. about a seven-year difference in just about one calendar year possible. We&#8217;ve got the biological age; we&#8217;ve got the aging speedometer. The last section of our test is our clock talk panel, or testing for fertility toxins for a couple of reasons. One, these do accelerate that biological clock and that rate of aging. But they&#8217;re also their risk factor for fertility outcomes. We look at parabens, phthalates, BPA, and BPF. There are studies on them individually and some studies on them combined. But what we see across the board is this toxin section, and there&#8217;s a lot of other things out there too, but this is what we can test with that DNA methylation. All of this is done with a couple of drops of blood. A finger prick at home is super easy, super simple, and doable. But those toxins impact natural conception over time. There&#8217;s about a 30% increase in the time to conception when these toxins are present; they impact the health of the pregnancy. Some of these toxins increase the risk of preterm birth, both in mom and dad. What&#8217;s even crazier, but not crazy to you, because we know about epigenetics, is that even when dad is exposed before conception, there&#8217;s an increased risk of these toxins and an increased risk of preterm birth. Then, in that generational epigenetics piece, some of these toxins are linked to cognitive issues in children at seven years old, such as obesity, eczema, and behavioral issues. some for moms, some for dads, and when with mom, there&#8217;s also typically some perinatal exposure. But the crazy part is with Dad. What dads are exposed to during pregnancy is not impacting that baby&#8217;s epigenetics anymore. This is a preconception thing: the sperm was exposed to a toxin, and it&#8217;s having an effect when that child is seven, ten, or 11 years old.</span></p>
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<h6><b>Cleopatra Kamperveen, PhD</b></h6>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">I have goosebumps listening to you. We know now that the sperm are genetically programmed into the house and the function of the placenta, which is one of the primary pathways through which this occurs can account for a certain up to 19% greater risk of miscarriage or stillbirth and can also contribute to preterm birth because the placenta is very much involved in the maintenance of the pregnancy and the health of the pregnancy. I&#8217;m so glad you brought this up because it just reminds us, and I don&#8217;t think we need reminding anymore because we get it now, but it reminds us how time mastering and ensuring that we have healthy fertility, healthy pregnancies, and our super babies isn&#8217;t just the work of mamas during pregnancy. It starts in the first month, at least in the 120 days leading up to conception. It&#8217;s not just her work; it&#8217;s the person providing sperm&#8217;s work as well. if that&#8217;s the dad, our sperm donor. Thank you so much for reiterating that. We also know that phthalates are linked to and some of these other toxins are associated with programs in fertility or fertility challenges in the next generation. Exposures perinatally and leading up to conception affect the fertility of male and female children. This is not a small thing. We want to feel empowered to understand our status the way that we can through this testing and also to be able to make changes, which we guide you through in the most incredible amount of detail in the semester protocol. That and a thousand other things that are relevant to programming You&#8217;re fertile, and you&#8217;re the health of your super babies. Thank you so much for saying this. Is there something else that you want to add about what we are just talking about? </span></p>
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<h6><b>Katherine Zagone, ND</b></h6>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">I do. I want to add while we&#8217;re on this toxins topic. We&#8217;ve so many generations down the line that it impacts the fertility of our babies. If that lineage will even continue, and if we back it up even further, today a lot of women are waiting longer to conceive. It is what it is. These toxins are also, on the other end of the spectrum, associated with premature ovarian insufficiency, premature ovarian failure, early menopause, decreased egg quality, decreased egg count, and so addressing these ten years before you even think you want to conceive, or for every woman whether or not you want to be a mom, Yet if you even want that as an option, this needs to be a conversation among women, as a group of these toxins are, maybe leading cause, maybe just a cause, but a contributing factor to this ovarian decline. in rapid ovarian aging, that is, resulting in fertility struggles resulting in infertility. There&#8217;s so much prevention that can happen, but these things are so ubiquitous that we need to have them like that. We&#8217;re seeing it on social media. There&#8217;s a lot more talk about toxins. I&#8217;ve even seen reproductive endocrinologists talk about toxins. I&#8217;m like.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">There&#8217;s the prevention aspect of maintaining our fertility for decades before we want to conceive, all the way through how this can impact our lineage.</span></p>
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<h6><b>Cleopatra Kamperveen, PhD</b></h6>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">That&#8217;s so beautiful and so important. Dr. Zagone. This has been incredible. I have 100 more questions that I want to ask you. This conversation is to be continued. You and I are going to be doing a lot of work together, which we&#8217;re very excited about. Those of you listening, stay tuned. But before we go, tell us, Dr. Zagone, what&#8217;s the one thing that you want to encourage people to do to take care of their fertility and the health of their super babies, their future super babies? If there were just one thing that you had to focus on, what would that one thing be?</span></p>
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<h6><b>Katherine Zagone, ND</b></h6>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">I would say get into alignment. What that means to me is to get your thoughts, your emotions, and your actions all on the same page for your goal. With those thoughts and those emotions, figure out what you need to do. Those things are fertility-promoting meaning, managing stress, taking time for yourself, feeling love, and feeling joy. The mind-body component I see is what we see both when we&#8217;re testing and also just in the fertility couples that I worked with. That mind-body component far outweighs any of the other components that I&#8217;ve seen. And so that&#8217;s the place where I would start: getting into alignment with mind, body, heart, and soul—all of that—so that you&#8217;re on track for your vision.</span></p>
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<h6><b>Cleopatra Kamperveen, PhD</b></h6>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">I love that so much, getting into alignment so that all of these things are fertility-promoting instead of hindering you. beautiful. The last question, it&#8217;s one of my favorite questions. What does super-fertility mean to you? What feelings does it evoke? What embodies super fertility for you?</span></p>
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<h6><b>Katherine Zagone, ND</b></h6>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Super fertility for me is vitality. It is a life force. It is juiciness, it is pleasure, it is joy, and it is trust.</span></p>
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<h6><b>Cleopatra Kamperveen, PhD</b></h6>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Pleasure, joy, and trust. Life force. Vitality. good.   I always say, treat your fertility. Treat pleasure as if your fertility and your life depend on it because they do so. Thank you so much for that. It is juicy. It is a pleasure. It is joy. It is a life force. Thank you so much, Dr. Zagone. I cannot wait to continue this conversation very soon. Thank you to all of you who are here at this very moment for taking the time to listen to, engage with, and learn from us and allowing us to learn from you as well. I&#8217;ll see you back here for our next Super Fertility Summit interview. Thank you so much.</span></p>


<h6><b>Cleopatra Kamperveen, PhD</b></h6>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Welcome back to the Super Fertility Summit. I have an incredible guest with me today, Dr. Katherine Zagone. She&#8217;s the founder of Clockwize, and she has been supporting women and couples to conceive their healthiest babies for almost a decade. She bridges cutting-edge science with tried-and-true methods for exceptional results. After having succeeded in rewinding her biological clock, she&#8217;s now on a mission to support women everywhere and have healthy babies on their timeline. She&#8217;s excited to bring effective science, a warm heart, and an industry-changing approach to the world through Clockwize, which I cannot wait for you to learn about today. Welcome, Dr. Katherine Zagone; we&#8217;re so happy to have you here.</span></p>


https://d1tnc8rqovg0h0.cloudfront.net/2024+Summits/Super+Fertility+Summit/Transcripts/2024_Fertility_Katherine+Zagone%2C+ND+Transcript+File.pdf

<p>Katherine Zagone, ND, Chief Medical Officer and co-founder Clockwize, has been supporting women and couples easily conceive their healthiest babies for almost a decade. After having her own success rewinding her biological clock, she is now on a mission to support women everywhere in having healthy babies on their timeline. She’s excited to bring effective science, a warm heart, and an industry-changing approach to the world through Clockwize, Inc.</p>


Katherine Zagone

Katherine Zagone, ND

<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Cleopatra is The Fertility Strategist and Executive Director of The Fertility &amp; Pregnancy Institute. She is a scientist and university professor who pioneered the field of fertility biohacking and creating superbabies. To date, Dr. Cleopatra has scientifically studied tens of thousands of women and families and has helped women in 18 countries on 6 continents have their superbabies. She has received nearly $3 million in grant funding from multiple arms of the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the National Institute on Standards Technology, and private foundations, including the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. </span></p>


How To Rewind Your Biological Clock

Cleopatra Kamperveen, PhD

Katherine Zagone, ND

Summary

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Cleopatra Kamperveen, PhD

Guest Experts

Katherine Zagone, ND