Am I Already Too Late? A Fertility Expert Answers The Question Millions Of Women Are Asking But Nobody Is Answering

What the Health

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Wednesday, 1 July 2026 - 55 minutes

This week on What The Health?!, host Claira Hermet is joined by Dr James Hopkisson — one of the UK's leading fertility specialists, UK Medical Director at TFP Fertility, and a doctor who has been working in IVF and reproductive medicine since 1993. If you have ever Googled your fertility at midnight, wondered whether you have left it too late, or just wanted someone to give you straight answers without the sugar coating, this is the episode you have been waiting for.Millions of Brits worry they may already be too late to have children, yet three quarters have never once checked their fertility. Dr Hopkisson tells us how often the people who come to him convinced it is already over are actually wrong, what age fertility really starts to decline, and whether the biological clock is as dramatic and urgent as we have been led to believe or whether we are creating unnecessary panic in an entire generation of women.We get into the questions that everybody is searching but nobody is saying out loud. Does a regular period actually mean your fertility is fine? Does being physically fit and healthy protect you or can you be the picture of health and still struggle to conceive? What are the early warning signs that something might be worth looking into, for both women and men? And how often is fertility actually a male issue, and why are we still not talking about that enough?One in five people now see egg freezing as a financial milestone comparable to university or buying a home, and nearly half of women say the cost is the only thing stopping them. Dr Hopkisson breaks down who egg freezing is actually for, who it is not right for, what the real success rates look like versus what people assume, and the age at which it genuinely makes a difference versus the age at which it may no longer be worth pursuing.For anyone in their twenties or thirties who is thinking about having children in the next few years, Dr Hopkisson gives clear, practical guidance on what you should actually be doing right now. We talk about what a fertility MOT is, whether everyone should be getting one, and what it can and cannot tell you. And for anyone who has been trying to conceive and it is not happening, he tells us exactly when to stop waiting and go and speak to someone, and what that first conversation actually looks like.

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