eli5: Why do women only have their period/ are fertile for approximately 50 years if they’re born with millions of eggs?

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I’m an uneducated man on this subject. Please don’t judge. I thought women release a single egg every cycle normally and that would add up to about 600 eggs in a lifetime, if that were the case. Thanks for the knowledge!

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Anonymous 0 Comments

During every cycle, the best egg at the time is released that has the highest chance of fertilization. This means there’s competition every month which increases reproductive chances. If there were only 600 eggs then there wouldn’t be competition and if a bunch of eggs were damaged for any reason then this would decrease reproductive chances and introduce unintended mutations.

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