What is the best male fertility supplement?
Answer from: Valentina Denisova, MD PhD Obstetrician Gynaecologist
Next Generation Clinic
The Question about men is probably for my colleagues, andrologist because I’m a gynecologist and my patients are women but of course every patient asks what my husband should take? First, husbands should take folic acid, each partner should take folic acid when they try to conceive and sometimes, I know that my colleagues andrologist prescribe some vitamin complexes rich in l-carnitine, vitamin C, selen and something like that. So we have a lot of supplements for male.
Answer from: Xanthi Maragkoudaki, MSc, ANutr, PhD
There are specific supplements that are aiming for male fertility and you can read descriptions and recommendations on them and see and discuss with your healthcare provider which ones are more appropriate to you.
Answer from: Sheena Lewis, Professor of Reproductive Medicine
In terms of taking antioxidants and over-the-counter supplements, yes, they can be beneficial if you haven’t got a good diet but my advice would be to concentrate on your diets: eat plenty of fruits, plenty of veg, plenty of protein, try and cut out a lot of high fat products and then there’s not be so much need to take additional supplements. You can take too many supplements – there’s no doubt about that and you can actually put your sperm into a worse position than they were before. So before people take supplements, they need to check the sperm out with special tests to see if the sperm are stressed. As we were talking about earlier, if the sperm are exhibiting oxidative stress which can be found through DNA damage and it can be found through other tests, then antioxidants could be the way forward but for every couple antioxidants is certainly not the ultimate panacea and people should be very careful about what they take.
Answer from: Ro Huntriss, Fertility Dietician
I wouldn’t say that there is one best one, but there are several good ones. Research looks at different sperm parameters and it might be that certain supplements and certain nutrients target certain parameters over other ones. But as a general overview, supplements or nutrients that have good results when it comes to male fertility are vitamin C, vitamin E,lycopene and coenzyme Q10 to name a few.
Answer from: Renata Finelli
I cannot recommend any specific anti oxidants just because the studies for antioxidant treatments are very heterogeneous. So there are some indications that antioxidants in general, zinc and selenium as well can improve semen quality. But still we should remember that these studies are heterogeneous in terms of population analysis. It is different if you test either a healthy or infertile man. The length of treatment is also treatment so if you treat for one week or three months the effect is different. The dosage of these supplements is not really standardized and their use is mostly based on the experience of the practitioner so I would not personally recommend any treatment but of course antioxidants are an option that should be investigated more and more.
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