Can I Train for a Marathon and Freeze My Eggs?

Mariana

A big fear of mine and something that made me just keep postponing egg freezing was that I'm a 38 year old woman and I feel like I'm finally hitting my stride in my career. I'm in the fitness industry. What I had heard before is that you need to take three months off. I was marathon training then. I was thinking, do I want to put my life on hold a certain amount? Yes, because I have to prioritize this, but I was still concerned about being able to regulate my schedule a little more as well as work with the demands on my body.

Dr. Kofinas

This is common. Everyone has travel plans. They have to travel for work. They have a busy life. I hear this all the time. Luckily, the process is quite streamlined. People say, “I thought this was going to take two months and it took 12 days.” I think the perception of the reality of the process needs to change a little bit. That will allow people to consider it more closely. When patients come in to do a consultation and they hear it's only going to take 12 days, everyone's always so pleasantly surprised. So I want to get the message out there that it's a process that doesn't have to take two months or three months. I think it will be something people look at more seriously.

Mariana

I have this full schedule. I teach yoga, and I run, so just knowing that even though we had already started the process, it wouldn't take forever really helped. I remember I got my long run in when I had started birth control to start my cycle before injections. When I started injections, I took some time off.

Dr. Kofinas

Universally, it's helpful to know that once you start the injections, most people will start to see an increase in the size of their ovaries within 3 to 4 days. So at that point, it's a good time to avoid things like yoga and significant exercise. You can walk and do a light arm workout with dumbbell curls. But beyond that, you don't want to twist or contort your body in any way, because the risk is that the ovary twists. Typically, I tell my patients that 3 to 4 days into injections they can't do any exercise until they get their period because that's when the ovaries normalize in size.

Mariana

So there is a timeline, but it’s different from start to finish with regards to where that lands and where it’s important to back off. It was much more reassuring on my end- I thought I had to take two whole months off from exercising.

Dr. Kofinas

And when you're in an industry where you are required to be in constant motion, I can see why you were worried about that.