EP 323 From Nike to Nutrition: A Fertility Journey | Ronit Menashe & Vida Delrahim

The Wholesome Fertility Podcast

On today’s episode of The Wholesome Fertility Podcast, Vida Delrahim and Ronit Menashe share their personal journeys from corporate careers to founding WeNatal, a company focused on improving fertility through better prenatal supplements. They discuss the importance of addressing both male and female health in the preconception phase, the science behind their product formulations, and the need for education and resources for couples trying to conceive. Their mission is to empower individuals with knowledge and high-quality supplements to enhance fertility outcomes. Takeaways

• Ronit and Vida met at Nike and became best friends.
• Ronit's experience in functional medicine changed their trajectory.
• Miscarriages led them to explore fertility solutions more deeply.
• Men contribute to 50% of miscarriages due to sperm quality.
• WeNatal was created to support both partners in fertility.
• Their prenatal supplements are designed for bioavailability and effectiveness.
• They focus on simplifying the supplement process for women.
• Education is key in supporting couples on their fertility journey.
• Their blog offers valuable resources for those trying to conceive.
• They emphasize the importance of quality ingredients in supplements.

Guest Bio: Ronit Menashe and Vida Delrahim are the founders of WeNatal, a prenatal supplement company that is transforming the fertility space with the first prenatal supplement optimized for her AND him. WeNatal’s mission to change the narrative surrounding fertility and reproductive health is personal; after suffering miscarriages a week apart, Ronit and Vida were given little direction on what to do differently. More importantly, the health of Ronit and Vida’s partners(including the health of their sperm) was completely missing from their fertility dialogue with their doctors… something had to change. That is why WeNatal was born, to shift the fertility journey from "me" to "we.” WeNatal is revolutionizing the prenatal space and backed by industry leading Functional Medicine doctors, nutritionists, and fertility experts, including Dr. Mark Hyman and Kelly LeVeque. With 24 key clean, bioavailable nutrients, WeNatal steps up where other supplements fall short for all things preconception to postpartum for both parents and baby. Websites/Links: Free Preconception Guide: WeNatal.com/guide https://www.instagram.com/we_natal/?hl=en For more information about Michelle, visit: www.michelleoravitz.com Check out Michelle’s Latest Book: The Way of Fertility! https://www.michelleoravitz.com/thewayoffertility The Wholesome FertilityFacebook group is where you can find free resources and support: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2149554308396504/ Instagram: @thewholesomelotusfertility Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thewholesomelotus/ Transcript: Michelle (00:00) Welcome to the podcast for Neat and Vita. Vida Delrahim (00:02) Thanks for having us. We're so excited to be here. Ronit Menashe (00:04) So happy to be here. Michelle (00:06) Yes, so happy to have you guys. And I know that you guys have such an interesting story, first of all, on how you met and also the experience you guys went through together. So without giving anything away, I would love for you guys to share your stories, your personal stories and how that eventually led you to doing your passion project. Vida Delrahim (00:26) Yeah, I'd love to. So it's fun story because we never envisioned to be in the supplement space. And in fact, Ronit and I met in our corporate careers at Nike close to 18 years ago and became best friends and really just kind of embarked in life together. Ronit went on to work in the functional medicine space and we should all thank our lucky stars that she did because it kind of completely changed our trajectory. So. I had a miscarriage right when she was having her first daughter. And of course the answers we were given were very dismissive. They were typically like very common, keep trying, you're lucky you even got pregnant, could be the stress, could be a slew of things. They just kind of shove you along as part of the process. And I didn't know any better, of course, having my first and Ronit was actually in the functional med space, immersed and kind of taught me things like, have you checked your thyroid? Have you done this? Have you done that? Lo and behold, I had Hashimoto's, I didn't even know about it. Just that simple act of fixing my thyroid with medication and visiting an endocrinologist allowed me to have a healthy baby girl. And then fast forward to 2020, I had another miscarriage. And a week after, Ronit had one. And I think this was, it happened a week apart. This was a little bit shocking because... Like I kind of just accepted that this stuff happens, but Ronit working alongside Dr. Mark Hyman, who's very amazing functional practitioner, she was all about the root cause. She was all about the answers and the questions and the answers she was given was very similar, but she wasn't willing to accept that. Like, you know, there's nothing you can do as an answer. Michelle (02:02) Mm-hmm. Ronit Menashe (02:03) And I think for me, Michelle, the reason why it was so shocking was because I was a huge fan of functional medicine for so many years and I already was doing all of the things, or at least I thought I was. I had already cleaned out my house from plastics. I had already, you know, was eating organic food. I was focusing on movement. I was taking pretty good supplements. or at least what I thought was good supplements. And I was shocked. And when I started to dive into the root of what was happening, because it didn't make sense to me that my doctor said, there is nothing you could do to improve your fertility, literally. It is just common, just keep trying. I thought that makes zero sense. And I'm gonna learn about how to improve my egg quality. I thought. Michelle (02:48) Mm hmm. Ronit Menashe (03:01) It was a net quality issue. was 41 at the time. That's what made sense to me. And my biggest aha was when I learned that 50 % of miscarriages happen because of sperm quality. And that was when I called Vida and I said, Vida, did you know that men contribute to 50 % of miscarriages and that 50 that that sperm quality is easily improved using antioxidants like CoQ10 and AC. In fact, studies after studies show that when men take an antioxidant blend in high dose bioavailable forms, they can quadruple their chances of their partner getting pregnant and having a live birth. So, That was our big light bulb moment when we thought like, my God, we need to create a prenatal for men. And we need to scream this from the rooftops that men have a huge role, huge role in improving fertility outcomes and pregnancy outcomes for their families. And that was where we started our journey. Michelle (04:13) It is so important. can't even like tell you. It's so crazy because I have people that go to their doctors and so many times they don't even check the men. And also the DNA fragmentation, which is a whole other thing. Cause like, yeah, you can have perfect sperm numbers and motility and morphology. But if the DNA is off and that can get really impacted by the antioxidants, then that can make a big difference on so many things on IVF, is so expensive too. So I love that you guys bring this up. It's so important. Vida Delrahim (04:50) It's so important and how is it that we're so far in like medicine and women's rights, but like yet the burden of fertility still solely is falling so Ronit and I knew that was like the beginning of our mission that one, women and men deserve better products because we can talk about how once we uncover the fertility and the supplement space, we learn so much, but also that they both need to be leveling up their health. They both need to be part of the conversation. And WeNatal was really born to really level up both partners and bring them together during this journey and give them the best tools and the best nutrition to level up their health in this crucial timeframe, which is preconception. Michelle (05:32) For sure, and we're neat. So you had a different background and you changed your career like me. Ronit Menashe (05:38) Well, my background was in marketing. That's where Vida and I met at Nike. And I fell in love with functional medicine when I got into CrossFit and I learned about the Paleo diet. And then I learned about functional medicine. And then I started to do, you know, become, I became a functional medicine patient myself. And this was a year before, you know, we need years before we natal. And I just fell in love with this idea of medicine of the root cause. And once you learn it, you can't unlearn it. Like that's how you think about everything. It's like, even when, you know, your child has a tantrum nowadays, you're like, okay, like it's not them. Is it there? Is it that they're tired? Is it that they're hungry? Is it that they had sugar? You know, you, you Michelle (06:27) you Bye. Ronit Menashe (06:35) learn about root cause medicine, you realize it, you know, that just everything is connected. And so for me, that was, you know, a big change in my career because I was focused more on marketing. And then I wanted to get into the functional medicine space. I took Chris Kresser's adapt course and, know, kind of started to learn about becoming a practitioner, but it ended up serving me very well when I met Dr. Mark Hyman and I worked on his private practice and worked on his private practice more from like operations. And then I worked with him on his book launches. So still kind of like in the business side of things, marketing side of things, but more focused on this space that I love so much, which is functional integrative medicine. Michelle (07:26) That's amazing. so I'm sure with that background, and also realizing that there is a need for this. It really inspired you to do, to have this supplement company. Ronit Menashe (07:38) 100%. We spoke to Dr. Hyman when we first came up with the idea and he said, I always treat the man when a woman comes to me with infertility. And so what we wanted to do with WeNatal is be able to give everybody access to this kind of functional medicine approach, which essentially means optimizing male fertility and female fertility before trying to conceive. what it looks like is nourishing your body and kind of, creating that optimal soil for conception. And, know, we always say when you improve your health, you're improving your fertility. And when you're improving your fertility, you're improving your health. And we hear from so many customers that, you know, let's say men, for instance, they're taking we natal for him. And all of a sudden they have a libido all of a sudden. They have energy, they focus, their hair is growing. So that's kind of the side effects and the byproduct of working on improving your sperm and egg quality is you actually also feel good when you're nourished. You feel good when you're depleted from nutrients. Of course, you're going to be tired. And so many people just accept this notion of like, I'm getting older so I should be tired or I'm getting older I should be losing my hair or I'm postpartum I should be Michelle (09:06) Like it's normal, normal versus common. Vida Delrahim (09:08) Exactly. Exactly. Ronit Menashe (09:09) Exactly. Exactly. So yes, these things are common, but they're not normal. And Vida and I just, you know, had this like life circumstance where we realized like it's our mission now to educate people on the importance of preconception, that there is so much you could do as a couple. He needs to be part of the equation. And when we started WeNatal, we didn't know if the men would be into it, but we're happy to say Our we-natal men are amazing. We have so many incredible couples that are doing this together from day one. And we're always saying like, they're gonna be the best dads. If they are participating in fertility so early, they are amazing parents already. Michelle (09:56) So yeah, for sure. And talk about like the different ingredients or the and what they do when it comes to both egg and sperm quality. And you can take your time on this Ronit Menashe (10:08) for sure. Well, you know, here's the thing. We didn't think that the world needed another prenatal for women because there are so many prenatals out there, thousands. know, and. But when we started to dive into it and particularly for us, we were taking these packets made out of plastic that had seven pills in them. And we just thought women deserve better. Why do they need to take seven pills? Why do they need to throw out plastic every day? Like we care about creating these healthy little humans. What about the environment? there was that. Then when we looked at the lower level prenatals, we noticed that a lot of the ingredients were not bioavailable. So what does that mean? not everybody could utilize the nutrients that are part of those prenatals. So let's use folic acid as an example. When a prenatal has folic acid, that is the synthetic form of folate, which a lot of prenatals on the market, like if you go to a CVS or a Target, they have folic acid. And if somebody has the MTHFR genetic mutation, They cannot utilize that folic acid. And so that nutrient is actually harmful to them. So for we natal, all of our nutrients are bioavailable. They're all in the methylated B form. like methyl folate or 5MTHF. So first of all, we have bioavailability. Second of all, comprehensiveness. A lot of the prenatals on the market have 12-ish ingredients. We have 24 nutrients and we wouldn't leave one nutrient out. And it's very important because each and every one of our nutrients that are in our prenatal serves a very specific purpose for mom and baby and health of the pregnancy. And then you have... dosages because even if something has 24 key ingredients like we natal the Dosages make a big difference. So using choline as an example choline We natal has 400 milligrams choline is crucial for baby brain development and the research shows that a pregnant woman needs 450 milligrams and a lactating woman needs 550 milligrams the average Choline intake in the American diet, which you get choline from egg yolks is around 180. So we natal has 400 to be able to support that postpartum mom and obviously the pregnant mom, but there are prenatals on the market that have 50 milligrams. Now this is crucial for cognition of baby, brain mass, baby brain development. Michelle (13:15) Mm-hmm. Ronit Menashe (13:22) And so we were like, we have to create a prenatal for us because what we were doing is we were taking that base prenatal. We were adding choline. We were adding vitamin D. We were adding folate. We were adding iron. And most women are not going to do that. Most women are not going to, you know, take 10 plus pills a day and spend all that money on all of these nutrients. We were doing it because we were immersed in the research and we saw how important these nutrients were. But we wanted to create a product that made it simple and easy for women and men to take their prenatal. Our packaging is beautiful and the reason is, well, first of all, we love nice things, but also, Michelle (14:15) Thank Ronit Menashe (14:16) We wanted it to be part of people's home, people's life. So they're not hiding their prenatals in their, you know, cabinets that they can take it every day because consistency, like everything in health and wellness, consistency is what's going to make the biggest difference. And so that's kind of from a high level. And then, you know, you asked me what's in the prenatal and we can geek out a little bit more on the nutrients and what they do. But what's not in the prenatal is also a big, big key because a lot of supplements on the market have a ton of additional ingredients and those ingredients are harmful for fertility and just overall health. And so it's important. We always say it's important to look at the nutrition facts. but also look underneath the nutrition facts like what else is in there that shouldn't be in there and we natal doesn't have any additional fillers. And we do that because we manufacture in smaller dosages. We're not manufacturing in mass. Our shelf life is only two years where it's not like some prenatals that their shelf life is forever. which, you know, for us, we're fine. We're doing things in smaller batches. And, you know, from a business perspective, it complicates things, definitely complicates Vida's life because she's on the operation side of things, but we're doing the right thing for the consumer. And that's what matters to us the most. Michelle (15:43) . So I know that like for my patients, for example, I'll give them certain supplements, preparing, including a prenatal, but then I'll also add more supplements that I don't necessarily have them continue taking after they're pregnant. So some that are more like to beef up the quality of the eggs. Do you guys have different ones or is it like certain? Yeah. Vida Delrahim (16:13) Mm-hmm. Ronit Menashe (16:16) Yes. Yes. So we have our foundation support, which is the prenatal for him and for her. That is the multivitamin for men slash sperm support. And for women, it's the prenatal that has key nutrients for before, during, and after. But for those who want to beef up their egg quality, and we could talk about the scenarios in which you would need this product or not. Michelle (16:35) Mm-hmm. Ronit Menashe (16:44) We have a product that we launched this year called Egg Quality Plus, and it's five nutrients in one. So it's the five nutrients that we were taking after our miscarriage, CoQ10, NAC, PQQ, alpha lipoic acid, and L-carnitine. And what these nutrients do is they help improve egg quality. How do they do it? Michelle (16:49) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Ronit Menashe (17:12) These nutrients are very specific nutrients that help improve mitochondria. We know that the three months before you ovulate, the egg that you ovulate with is going through all these processes that are very complex that require very strong mitochondria. So your mitochondria is like the battery of the cell. And if the battery is low, that process is not gonna go well and you're gonna end up with chromosomal abnormalities. So it's important to quote unquote charge the battery before you start trying so that when that process does take place, it happens with no or limited errors, if that makes sense. So we recommend for women who are either older or maybe had recurrent miscarriages or Michelle (18:00) Yeah. Ronit Menashe (18:09) Just wanna know that they did everything possible in the preconception timeframe to take Egg Quality Plus with our prenatal, which the prenatal also includes nutrients that help improve egg quality like folate, vitamin D. By the way, 4,000 I use a vitamin D. I don't think any prenatals on the market have that. And then, you you talked about in the postpartum phase, like for us, what was very important to include in our prenatal is iron because in the postpartum phase and in third trimester, a lot of women are very depleted from nutrients because you require more iron in that timeframe and just to help with postpartum recovery and all of those things. So our prenatal has iron in it as well. So what we wanted to do with the prenatal is be able to simplify people's lives and give them a tool that they can use before, during, and after. Then if somebody wants that extra boost, they could get that Egg Quality Plus B4. And that's kind of the philosophy. We wanna make it simple and easy. And the other thing that I didn't mention is our prenatal dosage is three pills a day. And so... Michelle (19:13) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm Ronit Menashe (19:31) We just don't think it's realistic to ask women to take eight pills plus per day for their prenatal, especially in their first trimester when they're nauseous and they're throwing up and they can barely stomach any food. Michelle (19:41) Yep. yeah, for sure. And then as far as the iron, I know there's many different forms of iron and some can cause constipation. So I just wanted to ask about that. Ronit Menashe (19:53) Yeah, so the forms, we didn't get into the like real geekiness of our forms, but every single one of our forms are the best form that we can find. And we use a patented iron that doesn't constipate called ferrochell. And we do the same with some of our other ingredients, like our choline is microencapsulated. Every, our selenium is this like super special selenium. Every single one of our nutrients is sourced from the best of the best because we feel like women deserve the best. This is such an important time in people's lives and the nutrients really make a big difference and can make or break your journey. Michelle (20:43) I love that. I love that you're really putting attention to detail because it does make such a difference. And the thing is the thing, the reason why I'm asking also is just from my perspective as a practitioner, I'm always looking for supplements that can address so many issues. And what I find myself doing is getting a bunch of different things and then having to give so many different supplements and so many different bottles. So I love the fact that you guys have this really like thought out. It's really nice. Vida Delrahim (21:16) Well, that's essentially what Ronit was doing with me when we were on this journey together. She was AKA my doctor. And she's like, look at all the research shows that you need add iron you add this and so it ended up being I don't know Roni at some point I swear it was like 1215 maybe capsules because of all the additions some of it was drops. I could not keep up Ronit was a champion at taking supplements she could like down 10 at a time. I was nursing a couple meal Michelle (21:41) Yeah. Vida Delrahim (21:43) And of course I wouldn't even comply. And so that was when also the idea of we need to like the ease and simplicity is so important. We're all busy, but we want to know that we're giving our body the best nutrients. I had guilt about not taking enough because I literally just couldn't down pills as quickly as some people can. And so the fact that we're able to get these 24 quality bioavailable ingredients into three capsules took us years. And we're so proud of that because it is the nutrient density of six to eight capsules in three. And so that's what we were doing. We realized it wasn't feasible for everybody. Not everyone is at a road who can just chug them along. We realized this world had to be reinvented. Michelle (22:23) yeah, for sure. Well, this is great. mean, lots of great information. I'm looking at your website right now, actually. Yeah, you guys definitely, it looks like you guys did a lot of research and you also have a blog, which is great. Cause I think it's so important to educate people that are on this journey. Ronit Menashe (22:44) Well, that is exactly what we didn't have. It's so hard to reliable information that you can trust. And so we have an amazing blog and we put out so much great content on literally any topic under the sun from what to do if you just got diagnosed with gestational diabetes to, okay, how do you create a clean nursery to you know how to you know the fertility crisis you know we span everything on the blog and we share about it in our newsletter and we have an amazing guide with nine preconception tips if your listeners want to go to we natal.com slash guide they get our free couples guide and it's a really great starting point and a lot of the things that couples could do to support their fertility is free it doesn't have to be like complicated or fancy. It's a lot of like free things. And so that guide is a really great resource. Michelle (23:50) Awesome. Well, this is great information and you guys, this isn't a sponsored episode. It really is me wanting to find out more because there are amazing new things out there. And I think that it's important to hear all the different perspectives and really get it from the founders. So thank you guys so much for coming on and for people who are looking to learn more, how can they find you guys? Ronit Menashe (24:19) They on we natal.com our website on social. We're very active and that's where we also share a lot of the new research at we underscore natal. And also we're happy to hear from your listeners. Anybody has questions or needs help or needs us to point them in the direction of some something or some article they can DM us at our, on our Instagram where we're most active. Michelle (24:49) Awesome. Well, I loved this conversation and I loved all the details and the nerdy aspects of it because for me, I really liked the breakdown. think one thing that I find is that you want to find the smartest audience. It's usually a fertility audience. They're so smart because they do so much research on their own health and they really look into much more than the doctors give them. so, So I know that they like to find out really detailed information. So thank you for that. And thank you so much for coming on today. Vida Delrahim (25:26) Thanks for having us. We're excited to support you and your community. Michelle (25:31) Awesome. Ronit Menashe (25:31) Thanks, Michelle.