Your Guide To Prenatal Supplements For Fertility

Doreen Bloch

Thank you so much for having me here today. You’ve seen the journey from the beginning. Just to give a bit of background about myself, I started my career as an entrepreneur in the data and analytics space. I’m a numbers nerd who also loves all things health and wellness. my journey with Ellement, which I have in my box right here. I started after my first pregnancy, so I am almost six years old, and I experienced something that so many people have resonated with when I went to my OB and said, I’m thinking about getting pregnant, is there anything I should do differently, anything I should be thinking about? My OB said, “Yes, you should start taking a prenatal supplement.” I was like, “That sounds good. Which one should I take?” They were like, They’re all the same. It doesn’t matter. I went to my local store, and just like everyone else, I started looking at what felt like a hundred different bottles of different options. I started looking at the ingredient labels. My doctor told me they were all the same. Yet I’m looking at the back of the bottle, and I’m seeing different dosages and different form factors. How do I know which version of iron I should be taking, or should I have iodine or not? What form of vitamin, etc.?

All of these questions came to mind.  of course, we all, as consumers, make whatever informed choice we can at the moment. But after my pregnancy, I had this epiphany: Wait, why can’t we create a prenatal for each person, a truly personalized prenatal since every pregnancy is different, everybody is different, and every fertility journey is different? Coming from that data background, that founder background, I just figured if no one else was going to do it, I had to go out and do it. I got to connect with amazing practitioners like you, like Dr. Nathan Fox in New York, who’s a maternal-fetal medicine specialist. Dr. Shannon Clarke has been part of the journey at various stages early on in terms of helping with identifying this idea of a more modular design for a prenatal. It’s been incredible to have a community of experts around this, and then being able to take it from concept through having a physical product and an amazing customer base and getting to share this option out there with the world has been incredibly rewarding, and it just fills me with a lot of pride every day when we get to work and support all of you. 

Aumatma Simmons, ND, FABNE, MS

You have such a unique take. I remember when we first talked and you were like, but I don’t understand, like, why if our nutritional needs are changing our prenatal, is it like, what’s up with that? It doesn’t make sense. There is just so much knowledge and uniqueness that you have approached this company with and the care that it takes in cultivating the product. I’m very excited because it’s a new take on prenatal care. Prenatal care is something everyone knows is great, but not all of it is equal. As you discovered quickly, most people don’t ask that question. Most people are not turning the label around and being like, Should I have this ingredient? Is this the right one? What’s happening here? It’s often just like, whatever the OB says, whatever the cheapest thing is on the market, or whatever the one is that’s being marketed to us the most often, instead of looking for the unique needs that our bodies have. Let’s dive into prenatal and at what point in the journey of motherhood should we start taking a prenatal?

Doreen Bloch

It’s such a great question, and what you’ll hear now that more practitioners lean into traditional OB-GYNs is to say that you should start taking a prenatal at least three months before you are trying to conceive. Now that there’s increasing evidence, and with the different practitioners that I speak with, it depends on your context, maybe on your journey as well, and on different pharmaceutical products that you might have used in the past. There are some people for whom they probably should be starting six months or a year in advance. But the current, I would say, base case is to say you should start at least three months in advance. The reason for that is because of folic acid. 

Now we could probably have an entire session about folic acid, synthetic folic acid, and methyl folate. The approach that Ellement has taken is to say, yes, there are many different kinds of folate out there. There are probably over a dozen different forms of folate. There’s methyl folate, and there’s the synthetic. There’s all different things that you’ll see. The most common, though, is synthetic folic acid. That’s the one that the CDC and ACOG recommend. Then there’s also methyl folate, which is more bioavailable but has not been clinically studied to reduce the risk of neural tube defects. For Ellement, when we were making product development decisions, we just said, why can’t we include both or let people choose if they want to opt out of one or the other? We can take a very personalized approach. But just so that people have context, the primary reason that you might be recommended to start a prenatal early is because of folic acid.

That said, there’s a myriad of other helpful ingredients, and there’s been increasing clinical evidence for this, including helpful for fertility Inositol, and CoQ10. These we also include because they don’t get enough attention oftentimes, and certainly they don’t get a lot of attention in a classic off-the-shelf prenatal because it is then more expensive. to provide more of those ingredients. But that’s something that we highly recommend for our customers who are in the pre-conception stage.

Aumatma Simmons, ND, FABNE, MS

That folic acid gets very interesting. The controversy over it is just so big, so let’s get a little more granular. What is the solution like? How are people opting into folic acid and methyltetrahydrofolate? How do they even have a choice?

Doreen Bloch

The way that Ellement is designed, and let me just add a little product to it here because it might be helpful that each of these boxes is packed for our customers every month. Once you subscribe to Ellement, you get an onboarding form that defines your first month of experience. From there, every three weeks, we send you an automated email through our system to say, we’d love your feedback. How was the last month? Have you had any bloodwork done that might indicate that you have some nutritional deficiencies? Have you had some experience that might necessitate a change to your box? Inside there are these 28 packets, and we can also get more into the AM/PM design. There are, as you said, a lot of very intentional product decisions that make Ellements truly a superstar product compared to anything else on the market. Just to share with the audience as well, this is truly a labor of love. It has been such a journey to get this to market. I told myself, I was not in this because I just wanted to have a prenatal supplement brand.

I could do with myself in my time and life. But this is a product that truly needs to exist for a multitude of reasons. We’ll go into some of the other reasons that people come to us for customization, but this very intentional perforated design, as you can see here, is also biodegradable, so there’s a low environmental impact and all of that. But these are designed for me, then for each of our customers, and customized every single month. Back to your question about folic acid in the onboarding form, that is where our customers are designating us. Do they want the standard design of the capsule that we have for B vitamins, which includes both folic acid and methyl folate? Or do they want only methyl folate or only folic acid, for which we provide all of those options? Because inside here, these capsules are custom-kitted for each of the customers. We can easily determine if someone’s getting formula versions A, B, or C for their B vitamins.

Aumatma Simmons, ND, FABNE, MS

In terms of ingredients, what do we look for on product labels? Let’s talk a little bit about how an average woman, who hopefully isn’t pregnant yet but is likely to be pregnant in a few months, goes to the store, and she’s like, How do I figure this out? What should she be looking for?

Doreen Bloch

The first thing that doesn’t get enough attention is: What should you be looking for? Immediately you should put the product back on the shelf. To me, there are two ingredients in particular that, knowing what they are now, I would avoid because there’s some evidence that they can be harmful. The first one is titanium dioxide. It’s at various stages, been banned in the EU, as it’s pretty general knowledge that, in the United States, we’re not as regulated when it comes to ingredients. The entire supplement category is not even regulated. They can put whatever they want in there. That is a huge problem when you’re seeing essentially gibberish on these labels, like titanium dioxide. What is that? I didn’t know what that was five years ago. Titanium dioxide is essentially a colorant. So it doesn’t serve any functional purpose.

Aumatma Simmons, ND, FABNE, MS

It just makes your pills more pretty.  Much more white, which is not necessarily always prettier anyway, but whatever.

Doreen Bloch

When people are aware of that, they’re like,  of course, why would I want this superfluous ingredient that is doing nothing for my health? and it might be Genotoxic. That’s the first one that I would run away from. The second is silica and boron. I would put those to use to get to that next level. If you can avoid it, it would be great. Both of those are ingredients that are very easy to get into the diet. There’s no reason that one would need to supplement ft. Again, there’s some evidence, especially with silica, I would say, compared to the two of those, that it just doesn’t help, let’s just say. That’s the first thing that I would look for knowing what I know now. What are the things that I should not have in my prenatal? The next set of decisions is: What should you have now? What’s interesting, is that you could always cobble together your supplement routine.

We have a lot of customers who come to us saying, I just discovered Ellement. I’ve been dealing with having ten of these bottles because I am taking CoQ10 and I am taking Inositol, but it’s in a different set of capsules than my standard baseline prenatal. That’s why we try to make it all simple. We just put it all in these packets for you to get exactly what you need. We include anywhere from 25 to 30 different ingredients, everything from Iron for people who need it, and not everyone does. That’s a common problem with the preconception stage: so many prenatal include iron at 27 milligrams, and then it causes digestive problems, constipation, hemorrhoids, and nausea. People are wondering why they hate taking their prenatal as well. If it has iron in it, that might be the reason why. We’re able to customize that at a granular level. Iron is one of those things, if you are anemic, then yes, there’s a reason to include that, but otherwise, it might not be something that you need. The B vitamins, as we talked about, are important. I would look for some of those that are above and beyond nice to have. There’s increasingly more clinical evidence that shows that they’re very positive for pre-conception but also trimester ones, things like vitamin K2. having both K1 and K2, many prenatal, we’ll just have one or the other. But it’d be great if you could find a prenatal that has both. Ellement has both. Choline has historically been a more expensive ingredient to include. so most standard prenatal doesn’t include choline.

Aumatma Simmons, ND, FABNE, MS

Things like 50 milligrams of cocaine, which isn’t going to do that much.

Doreen Bloch

We’re at 300, and that’s our baseline. We have some customers who, by their third trimester, are taking 900 milligrams a day of choline. and then it fills up with these, like, 300 milligram increments. But there was a fantastic new clinical study. This is a much later stage than preconception, but in a new clinical study, it was in 2021. All of this, by the way, is linked to our website. It showed that they followed a seven-year study for cognitive development in kids and found that in utero when moms were taking up to 900 milligrams of choline, there were much better outcomes for these babies. We’re always adapting to the latest, but it’s just great that we can be adaptive, and you don’t need those 900 milligrams in your first trimester. But how great is it that, by your third, we can make those adjustments for you? There are lots of ingredients to dive into, but the main takeaways are to avoid titanium dioxide and look for great boosters like K2, choline, and omega-3s. That’s another one that is not often included. And again, lots of resources are available on our website and, of course, through this amazing program. You can reach out to our support team. They’re more than happy to help with more individual cases in terms of various best practices.

Aumatma Simmons, ND, FABNE, MS

I feel like you covered it a bit. We talked about the ingredients to avoid: titanium dioxide, silica, and boron, and then things to look for or that would be nice to have around: K1, K2, and choline. If you’re in the pre-conception phase, CoQ10 and Inositol are helpful ingredients to have. Is there anything else that would be nice to have?

Doreen Bloch

Another one is that we see a lot of customization around calcium and magnesium. To dive into those a bit more important nutrients, ones that, depending on people’s diets, they may not get enough of. That is also something that starts to become very individualized. The challenge with calcium and magnesium from a production perspective is that they’re very dense ingredients. It’s a much bigger capsule, typically, or you get a prenatal that technically has calcium and magnesium, but it’s at such a low dosage that it’s not doing anything for you. That’s another place where we see a lot of customization or incremental action. We might start someone at lne capsule off of cal-mag and then it’ll go up to like three capsules by the time they’re in their third trimester. that when it just, again, depends. But that’s something that we certainly recommend looking for. Another one that you and I have had a lot of conversations about is iodine. I guess just to cover that one, I mentioned earlier that there are some ingredients where people come to us because they have a very hard time finding a product off the shelf that works for them. Iodine is a big driver of this. There is a very large proportion of the population that has thyroid challenges. It can be a factor, and of course, I know way more about this than I do, but the thyroid can be a big factor in fertility. It’s, I guess, my more layman’s way of saying it.

It can be a game of whacking a mole around. Like, do you supplement, or do you not? It depends on the diet. That’s where it’s great to work with practitioners like you who can run the tests and do the analysis around what is best. But then, when it comes to taking a prenatal, the CDC recommends that every prenatal needs to have 150 micrograms of iodine. All of these prenatal brands are just off the shelf, including this 150. But what if you have hypothyroidism or autism and your practitioner doesn’t want you taking iodine in that way? There are so many different cases. we have separated the capsule. It becomes very easy for people if they’re trying to troubleshoot something with their thyroid or if they’re working with a practitioner who has told them to avoid iodine. We make it very easy to customize around that in a way that’s historically been quite difficult. That’s another ingredient that I would highlight.

Aumatma Simmons, ND, FABNE, MS

That one is good because it’s very challenging to find iodine-free prenatal products, and some people think it would be nice for you to have iodine-free products. Yes, they always come back. They’re like, Do you have a prenatal? We can’t find that. 

Doreen Bloch

We can make it iodine-free for you. 

Aumatma Simmons, ND, FABNE, MS

How about the men? Should men be taking anything during fertility or pregnancy, even though they’re not physically pregnant? How does that go?

Doreen Bloch

That’s such a good question. We hear this a lot from people who are trying to conceive. Of course, it takes two. It’s always great to try to do what you can to optimize in every realm. The thing is that what we see for men is that, at least from a clinical evidence perspective, there’s a smaller list, in our view, of particularly helpful ingredients. The first two are in the B vitamin category. Folate and B12. B12 in particular can improve sperm count, and generally, all the B vitamins are you can consider the B vitamins like you’re energizer. That’s just a good category to make sure that you’re covered in. Second are calcium and magnesium, and third are the omega threes: DHEA and EPA. Following that, we recommend CoQ10 as well. Then we consider bonus points for vitamin E and K2. I’m sure that there are additional ones, but if you had to pick a short list, I would say B vitamins, cal-mag, omega-3s, and CoQ10. We can skip those as well. We do have some men who are using our product in tandem with their partners. But I would say that most of the time we’re focused on the person who’s going to be carrying. But there’s great clinical evidence around this. We see some men continuing to use their supplements even after conception because it also just needs to be said. Of course, you want to get your nutrients from food, but the classic American diet, anyway, is going to be deficient in a lot of ways for most people. that’s where supplements come in. That’s what it’s there for—just to give you that extra boost. Yes, there’s great evidence for men to be using at least part of that ingredient list.

Aumatma Simmons, ND, FABNE, MS

We’ve talked about this. I agree that men should be paid attention to, especially during that pre-conception period. But honestly, like what we see in our practice, the number of men that come back and are like, Thank you so much, you just changed my life. It’s because, most of the time, I feel like by the time they’re in their thirties or forties, they’re not feeling well. But until there’s a significant illness or disease, no one’s talking to them about it. They’re like, I have this fatigue. I don’t have a sex drive. I don’t feel so great, but I’m just pushing through life, and no one is supporting that, like, period of men when there’s just that. It’s not an overt issue, but it’s also not a great life.

Doreen Bloch

And this is something—this idea of like a low-sex drive or just a general loss of vitality. In the tips, all medical constructs are that it’s almost taboo, and it’s not necessarily viewed as a symptom of anything, but it can be. we should empower the guys in our lives to take control of that. If they’re not feeling optimal, let’s get them some support, whether that’s in the form of supplements or otherwise. 

Aumatma Simmons, ND, FABNE, MS

Thank you so much for being here. How can people find Ellement? Where should they go?

Doreen Bloch

They should go there. helloellement.com. The spelling is ELLEMENT. It’s like an Ellement-like periodic table of elements with an extra l in there for the female. helloellement.com. As I mentioned, we have an amazing support team. It’s just [email protected]. If you have any questions about how this might work for you or what your packets would look like, we do. Again, coming from a data background, we do a lot of data analysis for our customers. We can even look at a comparison of what you’re taking today versus what it would look like with elements and where you’re getting them, and hopefully, in 99% of cases, a more optimal dosage or set of form factors. You can also look at our capsule guide to see what this looks like on a capsule-by-capsule basis. But we’re here for everyone, and we’re just wishing everyone the best on their journey.

Aumatma Simmons, ND, FABNE, MS

Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for supporting this Fertility Summit. It’s just been such a pleasure to watch this journey and watch Ellements grow and develop. But it started with you being the visionary and creating this product for women who needed support but didn’t have it. Thank you.  Kudos to you!

Doreen Bloch

This and seeing it then in a bigger way than I did and just brainstorming with me in those early years. Thank you very much.