There is a lot of noise out there surrounding which supplements you should be taking if you are consciously trying to conceive. Yet where does the truth lie? There is no way we can all take the hundreds of things that are supposed to be good for our fertility. But how do we cut through the noise? Let us help you!
Before we dive too far, we believe it to be our duty to share with you honestly that you cannot supplement your way out of the basics. Addressing stress, foods that cause inflammation, proper gut health and the true core of our health must be addressed to optimize our chances of pregnancy success and often to help our supplements fully serve us. Check out the ultimate guide to getting pregnant this year with low AMH/High FSH to gain more knowledge about what fertility diet is best for you as well as other lifestyle changes that could be the missing piece to your puzzle.
Quality over Quantity
We cannot talk about supplements without first sending out a massive PSA letting you know there are a lot of imposters out there selling you junk. It’s heartbreaking and frustrating but it is the truth and we believe you deserve to know.
Let’s first address Amazon. Just about anyone can sell on Amazon and there are a lot of fakes who are offering supplements with the same label, similar pricing, similar bottle but the pill, the thing you are consuming and feeding your body is not the same. These are unauthorized sellers that cannot be trusted. The ingredients can be highly inflammatory and quite honestly make things worse than they were before you started taking them.
What about the other supplements that seem more affordable? Watch out for dyes, fillers and the top allergens. Also, it is important that your supplements are therapeutic grade so you are getting enough of the ingredients and not just the daily dose which likely is not serving your body enough .
It is important to purchase your supplements from someone you trust that is authorized to sell therapeutic grade supplements.
Common Generalized Recommendations
Ok, now to tackle the 100s of recommendations that the internet is telling you is the missing piece. Article after article you are finding is telling you that as soon as you start taking maca, chaste tree, royal jelly, bee pollen, etc then that is when you will get pregnant.
Absolutely some of these can be really helpful, but here is the catch. First, it might not be what YOUR chemistry needs and could hurt you depending on what is going on in your body. Second, these are not as helpful as the foundations. It is crucial to get the foundations into your body before exploring what to add to support you further.
Our Foundational Recommendations
What are the foundation recommendations? These are the supplements we recommend everyone to start with. Yep, you heard that right, EVERYONE, both men and women! Why? Because if these are not present in your body, your basic body functions may not be operating fully. These are:
- Prenatal for women / Multi-vitamin for men
- Omega-3
- Vitamin D3K2
- Magnesium
- CoQ10
- Probiotics
You can find our recommendations in the Fab For Life Natural Fertility Collection Let us dive deeper into each:
Prenatal/Multivitamin: It is crucial that your prenatal and multivitamin contains methylfolate over folic acid. Folic acid is lower quality and not everyone can process folic acid into methylfolate because it is not bioavailable. A quick way to evaluate the quality of such a supplement is if it has methylfolate or not. We encourage you to learn more about the MTHFR gene that impacts absorption and the importance of avoiding folic acid in this podcast. Also note you want a prenatal and multivitamin that has a substantial therapeutic amount of each component.
Omega-3: Most of us have more Omega 6 in our bodies because we are exposed to more in our environments. This is important to note because in order for our body to function properly, it needs the correct ratio. So outside of being incredible for reducing inflammation, taking Omega-3 helps to reinstate that optimal ration and empower your body to produce the proper amount of hormones, crucial for conception.
Vitamin D3K2: Did you know it is very common to be chronically deficient in Vitamin D? We see this often with our Fab Fertile couples when they first start working with us. Vitamin D is involved in many of our body's functions and it really struggles to function when our levels are low. But just taking Vitamin D doesn’t do the trick. Vitamin K2 is critical for us to absorb D3 and we want D3 over D2 because D2 is the synthetic, not bioavailable version. Not to mention, Vitamin D3 helps our bodies manage our calcium levels and calcium doesn't know where to go in the body unless there is enough D3 and K2 to direct it. Not enough can result in many issues including kidney stones. Dive deeper into the importance of Vitamin D for your fertility in this podcast episode.
Magnesium: A true master mineral that we need a lot of, magnesium supports between 600-800 chemical processes in our bodies and 85% of people are deficient. When deficiency occurs, which is often, all of the hundreds of processes suffer, including our fertility. Other symptoms include leg cramps and difficulty sleeping. Dig deeper into why you should be taking magnesium here.
Probiotics: It is pretty common knowledge these days that probiotics do incredible things to our gut health and that our gut health is crucial for our body to function optimally. But did you know, all are not created equally? A high quality probiotic should have over 30 billion cultures! You read that right! This will help keep your bowel movements on track, support your immune system and create a balanced bacterial environment in both your GI tract and your vagina. Not everyone realized the vagina also has a bacteria ecosystem that can easily be negatively impacted by sugar, antibiotics, stress, spermicides and birth control. A balanced gut and vaginal microbiome will not only make it much easier to conceive, it will also support your child’s health from the very beginning!
CoQ10: If you have been trying to conceive for any length of time, likely you have been told that CoQ10 helps with both sperm and egg health. We agree! But unlike the first 5 supplements, it is one that you will discontinue once pregnant.
Now this is a lot to digest so we invite you to learn more about our foundational recommendation Fab For Life Naturals Fertility Collection.
What Next?
You may be asking, what happens after I am on the foundational supplements? Great question!
Once you’ve got the foundations down, we highly recommend you address diet, sleep, exercise and stress while also considering partnering with someone who offers functional testing to support your unique chemistry during this chapter of your life. If you’d like to learn more about what we do here at Fab Fertile, check this out.
