NutraWomen Wednesday: Ayla Barmmer, founder & CEO of FullWell
“Infertility and fertility issues in general are commonly viewed as a women's issue. And that's a real disservice that we're doing to couples because we have really solid research and statistics that show that it's a shared issue. It's equally both men and women contributing to infertility issues, but even if we set aside infertility and struggling to conceive, men's health preconception is exceptionally important for health, not only conceiving because that's where we typically think it stops, but actually it's men's health preconception that influences the health of the pregnancy and baby’s long-term health,” said Barmmer.
The nutritionist-turned-entrepreneur said R&D lasted a full five years before any product came to fruition.
“I really want control over the formula itself and making sure that it was evidence-based and research-backed to really know if it was going to be effective for my patients. But I also wanted to get behind the curtain and really understand what the manufacturing of supplements looked like and have full control over the quality control.”
Barmmer explained that a lot of the nutrients that are important for women are also quite important for men, such as B vitamins, folate, antioxidants, lycopene, selenium and zinc.
"We have good research around the type of nutrients that are really important to help men's fertility parameters. So in that largely is sperm parameters, so the health of sperm, motility, morphology, count and overall volume. So really the health and quality of sperm is what ultimately helps with not just conception, but helping via epigenetics the health of the pregnancy and babies long-term health," Barmmer said.
