Which vitamins can help you get pregnant?
While trying to get pregnant, most women take extra supplements of one kind or another: some in the hope that these will help them conceive and improve egg quality, others wishing to undertake every possible effort to maximize their body’s health.
Or maybe you’ve heard about recent research which proved that certain supplements can help to improve egg quality, even in women of advanced reproductive age or with a low ovarian reserve? (If you suspect a poor egg quality, you should know that there are some very good news coming from research in reproductive health and it is even possible to talk to me via Skype or email about it).
Let’s look again at what our biological and historical past has to say about supplements which may help women get pregnant:
Ever since our ancestors left Africa and ventured toward places where we live today, roughly 5000 generations have passed.
So, imagine giving your hand to your mom, and she to her mom and so on – until an interrupted line of about 5000 women creates a line of your descent. As different as the challenges these grandmothers were facing in life were, each one of them must have been healthy, attractive, smart, and fertile enough to attract at least one partner at the right moment in her life. With him, she had produced at least one child which itself survived until reproducing again and, finally, depositing all the genes into what you consider to be your personal mind and body.
Virtually each young woman is a last daughter in one such unbroken chain.
So how were these grandmothers?
What could we likely read today from their diaries, if they had left any?
Did they push their fertile boundaries into late years to establish a career first?
Did they take antioxidants to clean their bodies? Which prenatal vitamins worked best to help them get pregnant? Did they ever heard about eggs, let alone wonder how to improve their egg quality?
Quite certainly, our grandmothers were spending much more time outside and in direct touch with the environment, moving around providing food and other goods, either for themselves, their children or other community members.
In terms of body biochemistry, this translates into the following differences: higher food nutrient density, small proportion of sugars and grains in the diet, absence of man-made environmental toxins, significantly higher vitamin D levels in the blood, and intense exercise, be it through gathering activities, child carrying, or various social activities.
This can help you to conceive easier and become a healthy baby:
Prenatal vitamins and folic acid (best is to start 3-6 months before you try to get pregnant):
What is a balanced diet? Image courtesy of can_xedos4 at FreeDitigalPhotos.net
Why do we need vitamins to improve egg quality if our ancestors did not use them?
Our bodies are creations that are so beautiful that it takes, in my opinion, rather more poetic than scientific writing skills to describe their robustness, mixed with their fragile perfection. They are products shaped by forces of the environment, genes, and pure luck, over time just too long for any of us to even closely imagine.
In my understanding as a Ph.D. biochemist who has dealt with vitamins for over a decade, the random introduction of extra amounts of any substance in a system perfected by nature for so long is more likely to do harm than good, whether it is a vitamin, a phytohormone, or a synthetic drug.
Scientific research, as well as carefully controlled clinical studies, almost invariably confirm: vitamin supplementation is of benefit only to those who are deficient in something.
But please don’t stop reading here.
Now, after having invested over a decade of my career in researching this matter, I often wonder: who is in a privileged position nowadays to not be deficient of vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients?
With our meat coming from animals raised under conditions closer to death than life, with our fruits and vegetables disconnected from real soil and sunshine, who can still hope to eat a balanced diet?
Who is satisfied with the fact that hundreds of species of animals and plants that our ancestors could hunt or dig up with a stick got reduced to just a few kinds of foods, mostly genetically manipulated ones?
That most plants we believe would provide us with a balanced diet have never existed in nature, before being bred by humans some hundred years ago or less?
In societies living in places with diminishing natural soils, disconnected from hunting or growing their own food, who has any data on the real nutritional density of any kind of food we were historically and metabolically adapted to?
Finally, who feels authorized to put up the dietary recommendations and based on which benchmarks?
This can help you to conceive easier:
Prenatal vitamins and folic acid (best is to start 3-6 months before you try to get pregnant):
To find out when you ovulate:
(I prefer simple LH-strips but some women prefer digital measuring):
Lubricant (swimmer-friendly and not sticky) and early-response pregnancy tests:
Useful books about fertility and improving egg quality:
References:
- Candito M, Rivet R, Herbeth B, Boisson C, Rudigoz RC, Luton D, Journel H, Oury JF, Roux F, Saura R, Vernhet I, Gaucherand P, Muller F, Guidicelli B, Heckenroth H, Poulain P, Blayau M, Francannet C, Roszyk L, Brustié C, Staccini P, Gérard P, Fillion-Emery N, Guéant-Rodriguez RM, Van Obberghen E, Guéant JL. Nutritional and genetic determinants of vitamin B and homocysteine metabolisms in neural tube defects: a multicenter case-control study.Am J Med Genet A. 2008 May 1;146A(9):1128-33.
- Dominguez-Salas P, Cox SE, Prentice AM, Hennig BJ, Moore SE. Maternal nutritional status, C(1) metabolism and offspring DNA methylation: a review of current evidence in human subjects.Proc Nutr Soc. 2012 Feb;71(1):154-65.
- Forster DA, Wills G, Denning A, Bolger M. The use of folic acid and other vitamins before and during pregnancy in a group of women in Melbourne, Australia.Midwifery. 2009 Apr;25(2):134-46.
- Hammiche F, Laven JS, van Mil N, de Cock M, de Vries JH, Lindemans J, Steegers EA, Steegers-Theunissen RP. Tailored preconceptional dietary and lifestyle counselling in a tertiary outpatient clinic in The Netherlands.Hum Reprod. 2011 Sep;26(9):2432-41.
- Monteagudo C, Mariscal-Arcas M, Palacin A, Lopez M, Lorenzo ML, Olea-Serrano F. Estimation of dietary folic acid intake in three generations of females in Southern Spain. Appetite. 2013 Aug;67:114-8.
- Nehra D, Le HD, Fallon EM, Carlson SJ, Woods D, White YA, Pan AH, Guo L, Rodig SJ, Tilly JL, Rueda BR, Puder M. Prolonging the female reproductive lifespan and improving egg quality with dietary omega-3 fatty acids. Aging Cell. 2012 Dec;11(6):1046-54.
- Steegers-Theunissen RP. Preconception folic acid treatment affects the microenvironment of the maturing oocyte in humans. Fertil Steril. 2008 Jun;89(6):1766-70.