This content was created by Erica Hoke. This content was uploaded by Erica Hoke. This is a YouTube video titled "Why it takes more than vitamins to improve egg quality" (created 2023-02-09). The excerpt is a single-speaker health/fertility talk in English about improving egg quality through diet and high-quality, food-grade supplements. The presenter warns against synthetic B vitamins (recommends methylcobalamin over cyanocobalamin), emphasizes antioxidants from foods (leafy greens, berries, dark red fruits) to reduce free radicals (uses a Pac-Man analogy), and cites ACOG-referenced supplement guidance and suggested dosages: CoQ10 100 mg/day, vitamin C 100 mg three times/day, DHEA 25 mg three times/day, vitamin E (caution; ~800 IU/day and avoid double-dosing), and melatonin 3 mg at bedtime. The speaker stresses supplement quality and absorption and offers a transcript link for viewers.
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Hey, hey. Today we're going to be talking about why it takes more than supplements, vitamins, whatever you want to call them, to improve egg quality. There's a lot of talk in the infertility world and the fertility world about certain books that tout supplements for improved egg quality. And the one thing that I always take issue with any of these books is that they don't talk about the quality of the supplements. That I know of because I haven't actually read them. But from what I hear, there's no information about vetting the quality of the supplements so that you can optimize what you're actually spending money on and optimize your absorption. That is the key. I am very much against synthetic vitamins for a lot of different reasons. Some of the vitamins that are very commonly synthetic are B vitamins, which B vitamins that are not what's called methylated, so a food-grade source vitamin, contain cyanide. So that's literally small doses of cyanide that you're taking every day. And if overall health is your goal and pregnancy is your outcome, then that is not going to help you achieve that goal. So when you're looking at your supplements, speaking about this B vitamin, you need to look for methylated B vitamin, and that's going to show up as methylcobalamin and not cyano, C-Y-N-O, cyano cobalamin. Okay, so that's just one example of why supplements and poor quality supplements can actually be detrimental to your health and not helpful. Okay, so the other thing is, is that you can take all the supplements in the world, but you need good quality supplements. You need also antioxidants in your diet to improve your egg quality. So that— and taking antioxidants are going to get you in the form of food far, far greater progress. Man, I'm having a hard time today. Far greater progress on your journey than just taking supplements alone. So what are some things that you can get, um, get that are antioxidants? Well, your green leafy vegetables are going to contain high antioxidants. Things like also berries and dark red fruits, so your dark red cherries, strawberries, blueberries, pomegranate, any of those dark rich colored fruits and vegetables contain high levels of antioxidants. And again, the reason that is important is because what we're trying to do is we're trying to eliminate and reduce free radicals. So if you have ever seen the video game Pac-Man, right, Pac-Man goes along eating what? The dots, right? So free radicals in your body, you may have heard this term and not really understood what a free radical is or how it works. So free radicals in your body are kind of like, kind of like Pac-Man. So they go along and what they're hungry for I don't know what to do with this hand. Let's do this. They go along, uh, looking for an electron to eat because free radicals, um, are broken cells that are in need of an electron. So they bump into another cell, they break that one, they get that free radical, and they keep that chain reaction going. So what interrupts that is antioxidants interrupt free radicals. It's what causes aging, it's what causes skin wrinkles, and what— it's what causes inflammation in your body. So you want to reduce your free radicals. Okay, I'm going to provide a transcript to this video afterwards, so if you want to, um, click the link below, you'll be able to get the transcript to this. But I'm just going to read off, um, some amounts of supplements that would be good for you to incorporate. Again, you want good quality food-grade supplements that are food source. So CoQ10, um, is 100 milligrams a day, and this is off of the ACOG website, American American College of Gynecology and Obstetrics. Easy for me to say. Um, vitamin C, 100 milligrams, 3 times a day. And DHEA, the recommended dose according to ACOG is 25 milligrams, 3 times a day. Um, and vitamin E. Now you have to be careful with vitamin E for a few different reasons. One, you want especially good sourcing for this one, and vitamin E can be toxic in higher levels, so you want to make sure that you're not double dosing on a prenatal or another multivitamin with your vitamin E because it is not water-soluble, it's fat-soluble, so it stays in your body and you can get too much of it, right? So 100— or I'm sorry, 800 IU a day. And also they recommend 3 milligrams of melatonin at bedtime has been shown to increase good reproductive health or contribute to good reproductive health. So for all those reasons, you want to make sure that you're sourcing good quality supplements and that you're eating a diet in addition to that high in antioxidants. Catch you next time. Health and blessings.
