Fertility Realities: The Limits of Boosting Sperm and Egg Quality with Vitamins

Join us on 'Taco Bout Fertility Tuesday' as we delve into the intriguing world of fertility science in our latest episode, 'Fertility Realities: The Limits of Boosting Sperm and Egg Quality with Vitamins.' We unpack the latest research revealing the surprising truths about vitamin supplementation and its actual impact on male and female fertility. From the vast production of sperm to the aging of eggs, we explore why enhancing these elements with vitamins might not be as beneficial as once thought. Tune in for an insightful blend of expert analyses, real-life stories, and our signature touch of humor, as we shed light on the complex nature of fertility and the often-overlooked limitations of popular remedies.

Thanks for tuning in to another episode of 'Taco Bout Fertility Tuesday' with Dr. Mark Amols. If you found this episode insightful, please share it with friends and family who might benefit from our discussion. Remember, your feedback is invaluable to us – leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your preferred listening platform.

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Join us next Tuesday for more discussions on fertility, where we blend medical expertise with a touch of humor to make complex topics accessible and engaging. Until then, keep the conversation going and remember: understanding your fertility is a journey we're on together.

Transcript

>> Speaker A: 0:00

Today we talk about do vitamins supplements actually help with infertility? I'm, Dr. Mark Amos. And this is Taco about Fertility Tuesday. It I don't know if you've ever looked into a man's medicine cabinet, but one of the things you're going to notice is there's no medication. Most men don't have any vitamins. They rarely take vitamins and so you won't see them. But that man isn't trying to get pregnant with someone who's having trouble getting pregnant. Those men will have bottles and bottles of vitamins and supplements that they are told they're supposed to take and will take. And so today's episode is to talk about does it really benefit those men to take those supplements and those vitamins to help their sperm count? Now, I want to make it clear, I'm, not telling anyone they're doing anything wrong by making their partner take these supplements. No one is ever going to be hurt by vitamins or supplements. The question is, does it really benefit? When you think about it, of course they help. I mean, vitamins are good for you, supplements are good for you, so of course they help. And more than that, we want to be able to do something. One of the things when we do fertility treatments is we want to feel like we have some part in it, whether it's being healthy, whether it's taking vitamins or supplements, we want to feel like we're doing better. That's why when people aren't getting pregnant, they usually stop drinking or they'll stop doing certain things that they thought were unhealthy because they want to be taking part in it. And that's a good thing. There's nothing wrong with that. But the surprising thing that's going to come is that vitamins and supplements really do not help men when it comes to infertility. A study done and published by the NIH showed that antioxidant supplements and vitamins did not show an improvement in pregnancy or live birth rates and barely even in semen quality. But what's even more interesting is if we take a step back, let's assume it did benefit. You actually wouldn't see a difference in pregnancy rates or live birth rates, which seems pretty OD if I'm telling you, yes, it improved the sperm by 10%, why wouldn't it benefit you when trying to get pregnant? And the reason for this is because men make so much sperm. By making so much sperm, there are a lot of potential candidates to be able to meet with when it comes to the egg and the sperm. And so it can fertilize from any of those sperm. So let's give an example. If you have, let's say, 30 million sperm, and of the 30 million sperm, there's a million good sperm. Well, 10% increase would give you now 1.1 million good sperm to use. But you only have one egg. So how much would it benefit you in that situation? Really? Not at all. It would be like having a pickup basketball game. And someone said to you, hey, I'm going to bring LeBron James here and I'm going to clone him. and I'm going to give you 100 LeBron James. But you only have to pick five players. Well, after five LeBron James, you probably didn't have any better chance by giving more LeBron James because you already had five. That's all you needed. From the picture of reasons why you don't see increased pregnancy rates or live birth rates, that is a big portion of that. But, what was interesting, it really didn't show that much improvement in sperm quality as well. Now, this does not mean people shouldn't take these supplements. Don't stop them. But if you are spending $100 a month on them, stop them. It's a waste of your money. But there is nothing wrong taking vitamins and supplements. No one has really ever not got, pregnant by taking them. But there were some studies that actually showed there might even be a decrease in quality or actually increase in DNA fragmentation. Again, small amount when taking supplements. So the point is, it's not always good, even though it seems like it should be good. So the takeaway is, it's okay to take vitamins and supplements, but again, don't break the bank taking these because there really is no evidence that they really benefit. I tell people this, I'm, very transparent, but I tell them, listen, if you want to help and honestly, a lot of patients want their partners to be participating, I said, It's not going to hurt anything, just your pocketbook. Take these supplements and vitamins and it might have some benefit in you. Remember, no study represents everybody. It just happens to represent the participation. They hope that it can generalize to the general population. Now, the interesting thing is there is a little bit of a parallel to female fertility. Now, what I mean by that is, yes, supplements have been shown the benefit of female fertility. I do not want you to think it doesn't. If you were taking Coq ten, if you were taking DHEA antiinflammatories, there is proven benefit. So that's where the comparison is completely different. But where the comparison does have some parallels is when women get very mature, as we talked about in the situation with men, they make so much sperm that improving it a tiny bit doesn't really make a difference. I gave the analogy of LeBron James, but you could use lottery tickets. Whether you buy ten lottery tickets or buy 100, the actual chances do not go up much because you didn't need more than one ticket to win, and there's only one winner in that situation. So from an ODS ratio, you can say, well, listen, I have ten times better chances now I bought ten tickets. But from the absolute chances, you still have not improved much, because one over 200 million is not going to be much less than ten over 200 million. See, the issue when women get more mature is a higher percentage of the aches are going to be abnormal, which means what you're doing, although it's benefiting, the benefit is not going to be seen as much. And so, for example, this isn't just for vitamins supplements. Even growth hormone is not going to have as much benefit as you get more mature. See, when you're 35 years of age or under, 60% of the eggs are going to be statistically genetically normal. That means if you take a supplement that helps the egg quality, or growth hormone that helps the egg quality, you're going to see it in 60% of the eggs. But if you're 44 and 95% of the eggs are genetically abnormal, it doesn't matter if the egg quality gets a little bit better because the DNA will not be fixed. And so the problem is that when you get more mature, these supplements and growth hormone have diminishing returns. It would be similar to like if you bought a brand new car and it's maybe a year or two old, but you wanted to get it look a little nicer. You put some extra paint on it, you added a few more things, help the fuel injectors, and all of a sudden you have this super awesome car that looks really good. The return was worth it. But if you went and got my old Mazda Tribute that I got from like 2000 and you said, well, I'm going to put new paint on it, I'm going to add this to it, I'm going to put some, fuel injector, cleanser in here to help it out. That's all great. The problem is my engine doesn't work on that car. The car is not going to benefit from it. And the results are diminishing reserve the same thing we see in women when they get more mature. This does not mean you shouldn't use supplements. It does not mean you shouldn't even use vitamins. They're always good for you and they always improve it. The point is understanding about the diminishing returns, because I can't tell you how many times I've had patients who are, let's say 42, and they go through an IVF cycle and it doesn't go very well, and then they go through another time and now we make these changes and it's only slightly better. And they're frustrated because they're like, I just did all this stuff, why isn't it way better? And I explain them well, only 15% of the eggs could have even benefited. So if you only start with, let's say, seven eggs, only one egg is going to have a better cycle than the rest of them because only one would be genetically normal. It doesn't matter if you made the other eggs healthier, the DNA is bad, it's going to do bad. So you could only help one out of seven eggs. If you're older, it's even worse. And so it's important when you're going through these things, these cycles you make, these changes, you have to ask yourself what percentage of the eggs I have are at least statistically going to be genetically normal. That could even benefit from the changes I made. I've seen women lose weight and they go into another cycle and it doesn't go as well. And I said, but you're 44. It's great that you lost a weight and I'm happy you did that. But you can't expect much change because at 44, only 5% of the eggs can be normal. For every 20 eggs you get, you're only going to see the benefit in one egg. And that's because the DNA of an egg does not change based off how healthy you are, that is, based off of age. So you can see there's some parallelism here, or I guess you could say even perpendicularism if there was such a word, because in men, they make so many sperm that the small benefits they even come from really show no benefit. And there's even studies show it has no benefit even at the level of the sperm. But in women, there is a benefit. But because most of the eggs are bad to begin with, it doesn't really benefit them. So women who I would honestly say are above 42, just keep in mind when you're doing these things, look at it as the return you're getting. So if you have to spend, let's say I'm making a completely crazy number up here, $5,000 in supplements, or you can do another IVF for$5,000. Don't do the supplements. Focus more on IVF. And that's something when it comes to growth hormone, no question, it could help things, but it may not help you much, especially if you get fewer eggs, because you'll have less return on your investment, because you're already starting with very few eggs that could even benefit from the treatment you're paying for. Now, as I mentioned at the beginning of this, there is nothing I am saying today that says you shouldn't use supplements. Supplements are great, vitamins are great, growth hormone is great. They're all useful. The purpose of this podcast was to make sure you understand why you may not see much of a benefit and what the data currently says about supplements and vitamins in certain situations. So, in summary, when it comes to men, it can't hurt to take them. You're probably going to be healthy and you'll be super strong and feel very healthy, but in the end, it's not going to improve your pregnancy rate or live birth rate. When it comes to women, there is an absolute benefit from supplements and vitamins and growth hormone, but there will be diminishing returns on that benefit as you get more mature. And so, again, when we look at those numbers at 35, 60% of the eggs are going to benefit from it. At 38, it's going to be as low as 40% of the eggs will benefit by age 40 maybe, like, 30% of the eggs are going to benefit from it. And by 42, you could be down to 15% that are benefiting, from it. And then that 44 as low as 5%. So the point is that you can do it. And again, if it's free, go for it. But for some of us, it's not free. And so I want you to be able to utilize this information to make those decisions on, what's best for you. Hopefully, this episode was useful for someone. Or maybe you have a friend going through this or know that your friend is spending, like, hundreds of dollars every month on supplements and you heard this and go, hey, save your money or give it to me because I can use it for something else. This episode will be useful for you or them. As always, I greatly appreciate everyone who listens to this podcast. I hope it's been helpful for everyone. And as always, you love us. Tell your friends about us. Give us a five star review on your favorite podcast medium, and if you have ideas, please send them to me. For those of you who have sent topics, I just want you to know I got them. I'm doing the research in them so I can then do those podcast episodes. As always, I look forward to you, and talking to you every week on Taco Belt Fertility Tuesday.