How to choose the best fertility supplement if you have PCOS

If you have PCOS and are trying to conceive (TTC), you want to make sure you choose a supplement which will support your fertility and which is backed by clinical evidence. We help you understand fertility supplements: what is important, what to look for and how to decide which brand to take.

What is PCOS, what are the symptoms and how does it affect my fertility?

Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) is one of the most common causes of female infertility and is thought to affect 1 in 10 women in the UK. With PCOS, your ovaries do not regularly release eggs, which tend to be immature when they are released, making difficult to get pregnant.

Women with PCOS can have:

• irregular periods, which means your ovaries do not regularly release eggs (you don’t regularly ovulate)
• high levels of ‘male’ hormones
• many fluid-filled sacs around the eggs in your ovaries (known as polycystic ovaries).

Symptoms can include:

• irregular or no periods
• excess hair, usually on the face, chest, back and buttocks
• weight gain
• hair loss or thinning hair
• acne.

What is the treatment for PCOS?

To understand the treatment, you need to know how PCOS causes infertility. 

If you have PCOS you may have insulin resistance, which means the body doesn’t react as it should to insulin. This can cause the body to produce more insulin to compensate. High insulin can affect the way your ovaries work. It can harm your body’s ability to produce eggs (ovulation) and can cause your ovaries to produce too much of the male hormone testosterone. 

To treat PCOS your doctor may suggest a diabetes medicine called Metformin, which improves your body’s sensitivity to insulin. Metformin can be effective, but can have unpleasant side effects including feeling or being sick, diarrhoea and stomach pain. 

From the early 2000s, inositols were introduced as an effective treatment, with far fewer side effects than Metformin. Inositols are types of naturally-occurring sugars that in certain forms help regulate hormones and insulin, which as we have seen is essential for fertility. We will learn more about this key ingredient in fertility supplements later in the article.

Can fertility supplements help me on my TTC journey?

Yes they can. A healthy, balanced diet is important when you are trying to conceive, but you may not be able to get all the vital vitamins and minerals you need to support your fertility from your diet – and this is where supplements come in.

When looking for the right supplement it can be hard to know where to start. So here we help by listing the vital ingredients to look for.

What key ingredients I should look for?

• Folic acid:
  • Folic acid is a form of folate, which is a type of B vitamin. Folic acid plays an important role in embryonic implant and to prevent miscarriage. 
  • Every new cell in the body needs folate, and it is especially important during early pregnancy because it supports the development of the neural tube, which becomes the brain and spine. Neural tube defects happen in the first few weeks of pregnancy, before you even know you are pregnant. Folic acid is the only form of folate that has been shown to prevent these defects. So getting folic acid before and during pregnancy is very important.
  • Folic acid needs to converted into an active form called 5-methyltetrahydrofolate (5-MTHFR) to be used by the body. However, more than a third of women in Europe cannot efficiently process folic acid into the active form, and therefore folic acid supplements don’t work well for them.
  • There is a way to get over this problem however. Quatrefolic® is folic acid which is already in the active form, and which is more easily absorbed into the body. 

• Antioxidants:
  • Antioxidants are molecules that fight free radicals – unstable molecules in the body that can harm cells.
  • Antioxidants are important to improve the quality of cells in the ovary, known as oocytes, which can mature into eggs.
  • Pomanox®, an extract of fresh pomegranate, is a compound of polyphenols and vitamin C. It has a powerful antioxidative effect.
  • Pomanox® can also improve problems with the metabolism common in PCOS, such as blood pressure and hyperinsulinemia.
  • Vitamin E protects oocytes from stress, supporting them to mature into eggs.
  • Coenzyme Q10 (CoQ10) is another commonly used antioxidants. 
• Vitamins and minerals:
  • Certain vitamins and minerals are vital for your baby’s healthy development and growth, for example for your baby’s nervous system, muscles and immune system. 
  • Vitamins that are essential for a healthy pregnancy are B1, B2, B3, B6, B12 and D3
  • Minerals that are essential for a healthy pregnancy are selenium, zinc and iodine
• Inositols:
  • There are 9 forms of these natural sugars – the two most common provided as supplements are Myo inositol and D chiro inositol
  • These inositols have been shown to improve how regularly women ovulate and improve egg quality
  • Recent scientific research has shown that the most successful ratio of these inositols is 3.6:1, shown to triple the pregnancy rate and quadruple the number of live births in a study of women with PCOS.
  • Read more about inositols

How do I choose a product with all the key ingredients?

You might be thinking this is a lot to bear in mind when choosing a fertility supplement. To help you, there is a supplement with all these key ingredients, Ovosicare® Fertility. 

Ovosicare® Fertility is an all-in-one supplement which contains all the key ingredients listed here that are vital to support conception, a healthy pregnancy and birth. 

• Ovosicare® is the only fertility supplement containing Pomanox®.
• It is the only supplement to use the ‘golden ratio’ 3.6:1 formula of Myo inositol to D chiro inositol. This ratio has been scientifically-proven to improve the chances of pregnancy and live births. 
• It also contains Quatrefolic®, the more easily absorbed, active form of folic acid.
• It includes all the key vitamins and minerals listed here.
• All its ingredients come from natural sources.

Where can I buy Ovosicare® Fertility?

Ovosicare® Fertility is available to buy on LivBio.co.uk

Since its launch in 2020, 170,000 women internationally have chosen Ovosicare® Fertility to boost their chances of pregnancy. It is made in Spain and is among the most widely-used fertility food supplements in France and Spain. 

Ovosicare® is now available in the UK through the official retailer LivBio Ovosicare® Fertility supplement.

To see full benefits, it’s recommended to use Ovosicare® Fertility for around three to six months.

To find out more and to buy this unique fertility supplement, visit Ovosicare | LivBio