Stop taking pills for nothing

Every time I see a post with a list of supplements to take, without anyone talking about, it doesn’t sit right with me. Every single body is unique. We all have different wake and sleep habits. We eat different foods. We have different DNA, different epigenetics, different backgrounds, levels of stress and hormone balance. And yet, we all (myself included in the past), grab a supplement shopping list from random Facebook post and rack up a huge bill on iHerb or Amazon sooner than you can stop yourself. The body works on the rule of balance, not “more is better”.

I think there are four key things that impact what and how well a supplement regime will actually work for you:

The OPTIMAL levels of a vitamin and mineral
Your PERSONAL levels right now, and again when you test yourself within the ideal timeframe to have balanced the imbalance
The way in which supplements interact with one another
How bioavailable the supplement is to your system based on your gut health and liver function

Optimal levels, what are they?

Remember that what your fertility specialist does, is they follow the guidelines set for pathology as laid out in your country. But pathology is pathology, not optimal fertility.

People get very caught up in all the fertility drugs but forget there are a whole swathe of baseline health markers that may not directly affect fertility, but can be the pathway to the production of steroidal hormones, helping you correct those downstream hormonal imbalances.

Personal levels

The ideal is to check ALL bloods every 6-12 months, and then just recheck the ones that were out of balance specifically 3 months after you start supplementation. Iron is a tough one, everyone is so unique with this. If this doesn’t respond within a month of taking iron on its own with a cup of orange juice, then you should consider an iron infusion. There are risks of course which you can consider at the time.

You should set up a table that tracks by:

Date checked
The amount
Your trend (is it going up or down)
Do this for both yourself and your IVF partner

How supplements interact with each other, and with the food you eat

So a quick personal story here, despite knowing this stuff and taking supplement for ages, everyone is prone to forgetting stuff around which supplements shouldn’t be taken together. So I took zinc picolinate daily for 1.5 years. I checked it a month or so ago and lo and behold…it still low. Like, what?? What a waste of my money. Turns out that my diet (vegan except eggs and honey) was likely impacting. Plus because I was so time poor I knew I should have separated it out but I just took it with all my morning tabs.

How bioavailable is the supplement

So I learned some interesting things in discussion with AI recently as I was building my own, personalised supplement timing and structure regime based on my bloods. And one thing I realised was that I could further aid absorption by timing specific supplements with digestive aids, and in some cases, timing the supplement to lunch or dinner with the build up of further stomach acid.

An example

So for my latest bloods:

TSH was lower than optimal
Selenium was higher than optimal
Iron and ferritin were lower than optimal
Zinc was lower than optimal
Copper was higher than optimal
SHGB was higher than optimal
DHEAS was lower than optimal
Prolactin was higher than optimal
Cortisol was lower than optimal
A variety of blood cell types were lower than optimal (neutrophils, lymphocites…etc)
Chloride was higher than optimal
Bicarbonate, creatinine, ALK, protein, albumin were all lower than optimal
Urine iodine was lower than optimal
Homocysteine was higher than optimal

Only a few of these were clinical level (as in called out on the pathology report, vs against my own optimal levels reference). Some of this made sense, likely related to my recovery from my appendectomy in some cases. But this was another wakeup call to do better. I don’t mean that I don’ eat very healthily already, but basic stuff like…am I getting enough protein a day? Am I sleeping enough? Am I drinking enough water? Am I getting the right nutrients from food?

How to do this:

Firstly, I work with a naturopath. I’m not suggesting you do this alone, and usually to get the bloods in the first place you need to go via a professional. BUT…because I’m me, I always go deeper—I can’t help it. So after my naturopath appointment, I fed my bloods to ChatGPT and spent a number of hours building a supplement structure that would maximise bioavailability and absorption. We also have to remember naturopaths can’t do everything. Usually they cannot do iron infusions, but a general practitioner/family doctor can (but not all can!) You also need to double chat GPT’s work because it is not always accurate.

a) Start by speaking with a naturopath so you can get a professional opinion across all of this

b) Then give ChatGPT your bloods and ask it to determine what the reasoning behind some of the issues may be (after you give it a bit of a history).

c) Then get it to connect the dots for you in terms of how each item relates to fertility outcomes (this is critical to you getting mentally onboard with the fact that this kind of supplementation is a bit of a pain in the ass to do, but if you can truly see the reason for it, its easier to motivate yourself).

d) Make sure for certain things that are higher risk such as taking molybdenum and manganese to lower copper, that you are very clear about the dates for when to retest all your key out of balance bloods. Here’s an example of my blood retest schedule. Because the first bloods cost me $800 so I don’t want to spend that on stuff I don’t need to retest!

Now I cannot really say for sure how much of this is the new supplement regime vs my body getting a second natural cycle post biopsy cycle and appendectomy, but my Mira tracking this month has been absolutely spot on this month in terms of hormones at least. I’m very curious to see what my updated bloods will be when we get to early May. 😬

I really hope this is helpful to you all in truly seeing your body as unique and having a very clear way to actually optimise your own health in a balanced way. PS, you can also do a lot of this with food, you don’t have to go straight to supplements for some of these things. Food is medicine too!