Top Research-Driven Supplements For Fertility

Carrie Jones, ND, FABNE, MPH

Dr. Carrie.

Aumatma Simmons, ND, FABNE, MS

Dr. Aumatma. We have an incredible lineup of speakers for you. 

Carrie Jones, ND, FABNE, MPH

In addition, Dr. Aumatma and I have created a mini crash course for you. 

Aumatma Simmons, ND, FABNE, MS

Every day, you can expect a mini-lecture from us covering foundational content, helping you gain context and insight before deep diving into the day’s interviews. 

Carrie Jones, ND, FABNE, MPH

We hope that this will serve as a helpful context to get a deeper understanding through the day’s interviews. 

Aumatma Simmons, ND, FABNE, MS

Hello, and welcome back to the Beyond Infertility Summit. It’s day seven. It’s the last day of the summit. I hope that you have enjoyed all of the content so far, but it’s not over yet. We have amazing content for the rest of the day today. I’m your host, Dr. Aumatma. 

Today in our mini-course series, we are covering the top supplements for fertility, male and female. What I want you to know before we dive into the nitty-gritty of the supplements is that you do not need to take every one of these supplements. Please. Don’t take every one of these supplements. You need to focus on the ones that are important to you. As I’m going through supplements, this is not just a long list of things. I’m going to point out who this is good for, who this is not good for, and the dosages of each of the supplements. 

If you decide to dive deeper and want to take it further with the Masterclass series, then we will cover more about the nitty-gritty of what you should know about every supplement. Because the reality is that not all supplements are made equal, not all quality is made equal. Not all forms of supplements meaning magnesium, for example, citrate versus meleate versus carbonate, are going to be absorbed very differently in the body and are going to do very different things. Just take this as the starting point. It’s not the end all be all, but in the next 10 minutes, I’m going to try to cover every, like The Top Ten, essential supplements that I use again and again in my practice. They’ve helped so many people, and it does need to be customized for you. 

Melatonin is probably my first and favorite. Melatonin supports egg quality. Studies have shown that IVF outcomes improve with melatonin, specifically if they are combined with Myo-inositol and folate. That’s a good tidbit to note. It’s going to help increase the number of mature oocytes. This means that if you went into an IVF cycle and maybe all of the eggs that they were hoping to retrieve were not mature enough, they were immature. Then think about this supplement. Also, note that not everyone needs to supplement this if they can. The priority would be to optimize your cortisol and melatonin pathways. That means, on a basic level, getting good quality sleep, making sure you do the blackout curtains, getting rid of the blue light, etc., right angle and all that, so that you can support the production of natural melatonin. That’s optimal. But if you have immature oocytes, then it may be worth it to combine or add in some melatonin. Men should not take melatonin. Some very small-scale studies have shown that melatonin supplementation in men reduces sperm count and quality. Don’t expose your man to this. Ideally, you don’t. You just want to optimize sleep, cortisol, and melatonin pathways. 

Number two: Rhodiola. Rhodiola is my absolute favorite. I love it. There are so many uses for it. It’s been used for men who have erectile dysfunction or premature ejaculation, and in women, it has restored normal menstrual cycles. It has restored menses to women who had dysmenorrhea, or a lack of menstrual cycle. Most of all, it’s an adaptogen. It helps your adrenals function better, which in this day and age, I’m not sure who doesn’t need that. Rhodiola is one of my favorites. I usually like about 200 milligrams in the morning. It can be found in various forms, but the liquid extracts are going to be more potent. That’s a great one. It does support, and because, sorry, going back to the Rhodiola, it does support egg quality and the maturation of eggs. Egg quality is important, as you guys know. Because Rhodiola supports the function of the mitochondria, you’re going to get amazing bang for your buck. It’s one of those lesser-known supplements or herbs, and it works magic. I love that one. If there’s anything that you could just add in, that would be the one. 

Okay, white peony and licorice—this is a formula that is specific to supporting the improvement of the LH to FSH ratio. This is for ideally most of the time women with PCOS, but for women that have that high. LH, but a low FSH or a lower normal FSH, and that’s it. That’s the only person that it’s going to support. If this is not you, don’t take white peony and licorice together. 

Next, I think we’re on number four. Let’s go to vitamin D. Vitamin D is expressed, meaning there are receptors in the ovaries, the endometrium, and the placenta. It’s pretty important for hormones, the quality of eggs, the lining of the uterus, and the health of the future baby. It’s extremely important, but it’s ideal to have vitamin D in an optimal range. This is not one of those supplements to take willy-nilly. You want to measure; you want to know how much vitamin D you need before supplementing, and then you want to dose correctly as your levels go up. It’s not something that, again, you don’t need to be on this forever. There are a couple of studies that found an increase in IVF success rates with increasing vitamin D levels. There have been some recent studies that have shown improvement with vitamin D supplementation on sperm health as well. Helpful for both. But you need to get to that optimal level to be supportive. 

The next one we’re going to is Ashwagandha. You may or may not have heard about this one, but I consider it kind of a superfood, and the way that we dosed it is a food, not a supplement. I like the ancient ways of using herbs, as they were meant to be used in the cultures that they came from. Ashwagandha is an Indian Ayurvedic herb. It’s considered an aphrodisiac for men. For male sexual dysfunction, erectile dysfunction, and infertility, it also enhances. It enhances spermatogenesis, meaning the production of sperm. It’s going to help support increasing sperm count in one study; it was a relatively small study. It showed a 167% increase in sperm counts. Pretty amazing for men. For women, it’s also beneficial for sexual function and enhancing libido. That’s a great way to or that’s a great use of this, or the side effect or the side benefit, we should say, is that Ashwagandha is going to support the HPA-Axis. That’s the hypothalamus pituitary adrenal axis, which essentially helps your body reduce serum cortisol levels, which means fewer stress hormones floating around in your bloodstream is going to be a good thing.

It also helps lower anxiety. For people who experience frequent anxiety, they are stressed out. This is a great way to integrate a superfood into your diet. The way that I use it myself and how our clients use it is about a tablespoon of warm nut milk at bedtime. That’s the ideal way. That’s how it was traditionally used; it’s in dairy, but dairy is not so great for fertility. We put it in nut milk, ideally homemade nut milk or nut milk that doesn’t have a lot of other stuff in it. I found a nut milk at Trader Joe’s that was super clean—just nuts and water. I was very impressed. Look for the nut milks that are just nuts and water, or make it yourself. If you’re going to use nut milk, you can also put it in water with a little bit of sweetener. Stevia, a little even a little honey at a time is also okay unless you have blood sugar issues. You get to go on that. 

Next, we’re going to talk about essential fatty acids. They improved sperm concentration, motility, and morphology in men, especially in men with high inflammatory markers. If they have low omega-3 levels, lower cholesterol, or high LDL, the low-density lipoprotein, or the bad cholesterol. If that’s high, then essential fatty acids are a good way to support lowering LDL, increasing cholesterol overall, etc. 

In women, it was also shown to increase or decrease inflammation, and it helped the women who had lower fecundability. That’s a fancy term for the outcomes of pregnancy, meaning they were carried to term. It helped to lower fecundability, which leads to the fact to the fact that essential fatty acids helped increase the number of women that carried to term. 

Essential fatty acids in women also lowered inflammation. Of course, women reported better ovulation with essential fatty acids. For women who had the lowest fecundability. Fecundability is the ability to carry to term. Women who had lowered canned ability also had lowered essential fatty acids. It doesn’t necessarily translate, but essential fatty acids are shown to support healthier pregnancy outcomes. 

Next, we go to CoQ10. That’s probably one of the most popular supplements for fertility. Here’s the research on it. CoQ10 improves FSH and LH in men. There’s no effect on serum testosterone, which could be a very good thing for guys who have high levels of testosterone. But they are not effectively making sperm. It also helps mitochondrial function. It increases ATP production. Overall, it has a benefit on sperm count, motility, and morphology. The dose that was found to be most helpful is 200 milligrams of ubiquinol. For women. It gets a little bit trickier. 

For women, what they found was that CoQ10 lowered gonadotropin requirements and higher peak estrogen levels, meaning that women were able to have higher fertilization rates when they were undergoing IVF. CoQ10 is great if you need higher fertilization rates or if you have a poor IVF outcome. 

The other women that it helped were those that specifically had age-related declines in oocyte quality or quantity. It was also helpful for women with premature ovarian failure. We’re looking at the three specific peak times that I think about using CoQ10 for women over 40. When women have a poor ovarian reserve or are undergoing IVF, those are the best-studied uses of ubiquinol or CoQ10. The dosages for most of them were around 600 milligrams. Believe it or not, that’s a high dose of ubiquinol. While it’s relatively expensive, but you need that high dose if you’re going to be effective. That’s what you got for CoQ10. 

Lastly, we have a few more to cover. Black cumin seed oil is great for sperm health, and we generally use it as food. Organic, cold-pressed black cumin seed oil. About a tablespoon, twice a day with food helps to improve motility and morphology and has a slight increase in semen volume. For women. It can be. There aren’t that many studies on fertility specifically, but it does affect thyroid markers. It would help decrease BMI or body weight. It would help decrease TSH and could potentially help women who have anti-TPO antibodies. It’s a specific use, but those are some uses that are helpful to very specific women. The thing that we need to be careful about here is that too much Black cumin seed oil could potentially cause an elevation of estrogen. If we’re thinking about someone who may have high estrogen levels, we want to make sure that we’re monitoring this a little bit more closely. 

Next, selenium. We’re almost there, you guys. Selenium in men increases testosterone. For men who have low testosterone or maybe have low LH and FSH and need to improve their sperm concentration, motility, or morphology, it’s great to have some selenium in there. 200 micrograms are the daily dose that’s recommended in these studies. You don’t want to go too high on selenium. It could be toxic, so make sure not to give it to anyone. Take this if you have high testosterone levels. If the testosterone levels are high, it’s kind of contraindicated because it will cause the testosterone to go up pretty significantly. 

In women is selenium potentially helpful. It’s shown to have a link with good fetal development. That means it aids the baby’s development. It’s also shown to decrease the chances of hypotensive episodes later in pregnancy. This is hypertension or preeclampsia. It might be important to put in selenium as a preventative. It has also been shown to improve thyroid function. But again, there’s no direct benefit to fertility. If you’re deficient in selenium, definitely take it. But if you’re not deficient, then a microdose of selenium like 100 micrograms per day is just a maintenance dose. Great. Then your prenatal should have about 200 micrograms. to have a good, healthy baby’s development as well as prevent hypertension later in pregnancy. 

Last but not least, we’re there. Glutathione. Glutathione is one of my favorites. If you stuck around this long, here it is. Glutathione is a reduced form of Glutathione. Ideally, you want this in a liposomal form of iron because that’s where you’re going to absorb it the best. We have, I’m not affiliated with the company; we just have a bunch of this Glutathione. We have these liquid bottles of Glutathione that are absorbable through the buccal membrane. In the mouth, love it. I’m loving it. I see a difference when I take it. It’s a much lower dose, believe it or not, but you’re absorbing a much higher percentage. If you’re going to take it by mouth, that’s the way to do it. A lot of the studies are done on IV Glutathione, which is a whole different beast. You need a prescription, you need a doctor, etc. 

If you’re taking oral Glutathione, ideally the studies are on 100 to 200 milligrams of reduced Glutathione, which means it’s some pill of some form or 100 milligrams of liposomal Glutathione, or 30 milligrams of oral buccal Glutathione, which is amazing. It tastes so much better than the liposomal form. Many people complain about that. That’s my go-to to improve sperm motility and morphology in men. For women; it plays a pivotal role in oocyte activation. That’s sort of waking up those eggs to develop and protect against reactive oxidative species. 

If you heard one of my talks earlier, there are 1000 mitochondria in the ovaries. That’s a lot of mitochondria. Protecting against oxidative damage is important because the more oxidative stress you have, the lower the quality of those eggs. 

Oxidative stress is associated with follicular growth, corpus luteum formation, and embryonic growth, which are Glutathione, has been shown to have a positive effect on lowering oxidative stress within the ovaries and on the endometrial lining. It also increases Treg cells. It may be super helpful for women who have autoimmune infertility or recurrent pregnancy loss. 

There you have it. That’s all of my favorite supplements and herbs for fertility. I hope you get so much out of this. We’re going to do a deeper dive into all of this because it was so fast and there is more to be covered on what not to take as far as supplements go and what to watch out for. Other antioxidants and supplements for fertility. There’s a lot more to cover. It will be covered in my Master Class coming up soon. Look out for that, and I’ll talk to you soon. I hope you enjoyed the amazing talks on our last day together officially for the Fertility Summit. I’ll see you soon. Bye.