Erica Hoke, an infertility coach, breaks down what to look for in a prenatal vitamin: whole-food formulas over synthetic ones, capsules instead of gummies, and ingredients listed with percentages and real food sources. Avoid artificial dyes, inflammatory oils, and synthetic B12 listed as cyanocobalamin.
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Happy Monday to you. I am talking about— we're talking today about one of my number one questions that I get asked. We are talking about— hopefully you can hear me, I'm trying to be a little quieter in the library today. We're talking about today picking a prenatal vitamin, and I get asked all the time. We're going to do 3 easy tips to pick a good prenatal, and this is this is a great jumping off point for you. So the first thing that I would tell you is that you want to pick a prenatal that is non-synthetic. So the reason that you want to do that is because you want to remove all the obstacles in your path to getting pregnant, and synthetic vitamins are really, really taxing to your liver. So we want to make sure that it's a whole food vitamin, and the way that we can do that is some label reading. So, um, and by the way, in case this is already overwhelming to you, I totally get it. So I put a link in the bottom there. I've got a little mini guide that you can sign up for. It's not quite ready yet, but you can throw your name on there and, um, and get on the waitlist for that. So it's really overwhelming. People sometimes just like glaze over with the whole label reading thing, right? But there are some there are some clues that the labels give us that if you know, it's super simple to decipher or decode. So the first one is we want to at least look for things like we don't want vitamins that have any red, yellow, or blue dye in them, okay? So we don't want any fillers like oils. Sometimes you'll see supplements the first ingredient will be like a soybean oil, which is super inflammatory, or even a canola oil, which is weird. So we want it to be dye-free. And I'm just gonna talk to you about being a grownup and taking your vitamins like medicine, right? Sometimes good medicine tastes bad. And I know there are big fans out there of gummies and that sort of thing. But they're really not the best vehicle for getting good quality supplements into your body. So there are a few out there, but it's still just not as effective as most supplements are in a capsule form or something like that. So save your gummies for a special treat or something like that, but let's not put them in your vitamins. There's also all kinds of disgusting things associated with, um, gelatin, and that's a whole nother topic for another— that's a whole topic for another video. Okay, um, you want your ingredients to be listed individually with the percentage listed next to them. Um, so for instance, um, you know, the percentage of vitamin C, and then you would look at the label and you would say, well, where is that vitamin C coming from? Is it coming from cherries? Is it coming from citrus? Where is the vitamin C actually coming from? Um, the other thing that you want to, um, Another clue on your label reading for it being a synthetic is something very important. So I'm a big advocate for not taking synthetic B vitamin because it's listed on labels as cyano, C-Y-N-O, cyanocobalamin, okay? Cyanocobalamin is actually cyanide. And it's synthetic. B12 is actually has a cyanide component to it. Is it small? Yes. Is it not good for your body? It's not good for your body. It's not good for your liver. It's something to be avoided. So that's a good indication that some of the other vitamins might also be synthetic. Um, you can also have a mix. So some vitamins that are cheaper and easier to produce might be whole food vitamins, and the other ones could be synthetic. So you want to look for an indicator there that B vitamin is synthetic, then you— it throws up a red flag. Okay, so the last thing that you want to look at when you're talking about label reading and picking a prenatal is avoiding the ingredients that end in -ate, A-T-E, or -ide, I-D-E. So if you have a lot of ingredients listed on that prenatal that in, in 8 or 9, they're probably, they're going to be synthetic. That's the indication that they're synthetic and you want to avoid that. Okay. Um, I forgot to introduce myself. I'm Erica Hoke. I'm an infertility mentor and empowerment coach, and I'm here to help you remove all obstacles in your path to help you get pregnant. I will see you here every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Bye-bye.
