B9 - Hit and Sunk

You sunk my battleship is the only thing I can think of when I hear B9 or any of the other B vitamins. Sometimes, infertility can feel like a cruel game - trying to “hit it” at the right time and missing the mark monthly.  One of many things infertility taught me was I am good at strategy, but also flexibility: if one thing didn’t work, I tried another way.  My blog is about all the things I tried and everything I did helped me.  (The list is at the bottom if you’d like to know.)

Back to the topic of B9...Folic acid (folate or B9) is in all prenatal vitamins.  Therefore, it must be important and it truly is.  However, if you're not metabolizing folate properly, it leads to infertility.

Folate Improves:

Egg quality

IVF success rate

Folate lowers the risk of:

Neural tube defects in embryos

Ovulatory infertility

If you have a history of infertility or recurrent miscarriage, there may be a possibility you have a genetic variation that reduces your ability to metabolize folate. The MTHFR (which I regularly read this word as an abbreviation of a curse word - sorry can’t help it)  “A 2016 study by researchers at Oxford University found that women with certain variants in the folate  metabolism gene, MTHFR, were more likely to have chromosomally abnormal embryos and implantation failure and were much less likely to become pregnant following IVF.” (It Starts With The Egg, Rebecca Fett, 2019)

Men should take folic acid for the improvement of:

Sperm count

Sperm quality

Sperm function

My list (in alphabetical order):

acupuncture, 

breath work, 

cranial-sacral therapy, chiropractic, chinese herbs, 

detox - NAET method,

diet,  

epsom salt baths, 

feng shui, 

gut cleanse,

healthy eating,

meditation,

partner therapy 

reduced toxins and phthalate exposure, reiki, 

support group

teas,

vitamins, 

yoga for fertility.

Be Well! Carry On, Goddesses!