FERTILITY: CHOOSING YOUR SUPPLEMENTS
You should first find a multivitamin and mineral supplement designed for pregnancy. There are plenty on the market – good makes that I would recommend are BioCare, Solgar and Foresight and also Fertility Plus.
A special pregnancy supplement like these will include the 400mcg of folic acid you need each day as well as a safe level of vitamin A so you should not need to add these in separately.
Then see what else is in the supplement. You should find that most of the other recommendations are included and the label will give you the amounts. If the amounts are less than those I have recommended (see below) then you should take a separate supplement to ‘top up’ those nutrients.
So, for example, if the multivitamin and mineral contains 50mcg of selenium you will need to supplement with an extra 50mcg to reach your total of l00 mcg.
Your partner should also find a good multivitamin and mineral supplement, such as Fertility Plus for Men – and then top up with the extras in the same way.
The benefits of many more nutrients in relation to fertility have yet to be discovered.
This is why it is so important to have a varied diet – in order to ensure that you get many different nutrients. The table below shows which foods are particularly rich in these essential vitamins and minerals. But in these days of refined foods, I believe it is important to take supplements to make up any shortfalls in your diet. None the less, as their name implies, food supplements are supplementary to your diet; they are not a substitute for good food. So, don’t assume that you can eat junk foods and take supplements and still be in the best of health.
There is a tendency for certain vitamins and minerals to be hyped in the press. So often, a certain nutrient or vitamin suddenly becomes the fashionable answer to virtually every problem on the planet. This is nonsense. In nature all nutrients work together and many are dependent on each other to function properly. So it is important when thinking about supplements – whatever your situation – to take a good multivitamin and mineral supplement as the basic foundation and then add in other individual nutrients on top.
Case History
Sarah was 34 when she came to see me for preconception care. She had been born with spina bifida and had been told that she had a one in seven chance of having a baby with it too. In this situation I needed to make sure she was taking 5mg of folic acid before conception rather than the standard 400 mcg. I sent her for an infection test which showed that she had a number of infections including Group  hemolytic streptococcus. She was treated for these and then given an intensive course of acidophilus to recolonise her gut. Her mineral levels showed deficiencies in selenium and zinc with high levels of lead. Her partner had extremely low levels of zinc and was also deficient in calcium and selenium. He was showing high levels of both aluminum and lead. They followed the Four-Month Plan in order to correct these deficiencies and I gave them both extra antioxidants to bring down the lead and aluminum over the four months. They now have a healthy baby girl.
Convincing Your Partner
Your partner may wonder if it is worth going to all this trouble of changing lifestyle habits, eliminating alcohol and taking supplements. But there is a real bonus for him because his general health will almost certainly improve. Many men report that they have more energy, fewer headaches, better digestion and feel more relaxed, and that other health problems that may have dogged them have cleared up. For instance, one man who consulted me with his wife when they had problems conceiving found that the changes I recommended to improve his fertility also cleared up a very upsetting skin complaint he suffered from called psoriasis. He said he had been to the best dermatologists and psoriasis experts and no-one had managed to achieve these results. It cleared up because the actual foundation of his health was improved by these simple and yet effective lifestyle and dietary changes.
Case History
Deirdre and her partner were both 31 when they came to see me because Deirdre’s irregular cycles, some as long as 41 days, were making it hard to conceive. Her Body Mass Index was also only 17 so I explained the link between being underweight and fertility and asked her to put on weight. She was also low in zinc and selenium. Deirdre’s partner had only a third of the required level of zinc and also low levels of selenium and magnesium. His first semen analysis showed a count of 25 million but 84 per cent of the sperm were abnormal, 75 per cent were not moving at all, and only 5 per cent were moving normally.
But within three months of going on the Preconception Plan, his sperm count had risen to 106 million and the quality of the sperm had improved dramatically, with 50 per cent of them moving normally. The couple then went on a maintenance programme of supplements and kept up the changes in diet and lifestyle and they conceived a month later and now have a healthy baby boy.
*53/73/5*
