The 5 best IVF clinics in the USA in 2017 based on the most recent 2014 data. How the clinics were ranked. How you can naturally boost male fertility with nutrients
What you will learn
The website fertilitysuccessrates.com has released IVF success rankings based on live birth rate per transfer for Fresh Embryos (rather than frozen) with 20 or more transfers per segment as reported in the most recent CDC Preliminary IVF Success Rate Report using 2014 data.
The numbers represent the percentage of implanted embryos, which have successfully resulted in a live birth, i.e. a baby.
How we have ranked
We have compiled these results and determined the 5 best IVF clinics in the USA, which score well across all age groups.
Scores were calculated based on the following method:
- Only the top ten clinics in each of the four age brackets were compared.
- Points were allocated to fertility clinics based on their position in each of the four age brackets (under 35, 35-37, 38-40 and 40+), i.e. the top clinic in that category scored 1 point, the 3rd best clinic scored 3 points.
- If a clinic did not appear in the top 10 of any one age bracket group, 11 points were allocated.
- The clinic with the lowest points wins.
By federal law, all certified IVF laboratories are required to submit IVF success rate data on an annual basis to the Center for Disease Control. If you are considering treatment at a fertility clinic that does not publish their results to the CDC, you should definitely ask why they do not follow this regulatory obligation. The law exists because some clinics have inflated their success numbers to attract patients. The current system isn’t perfect. There are still ways to manipulate IVF success rate data. While it is tempting assume that those clinics with the highest success rates will provide increased chances of successful pregnancy and live birth, it is very difficult to compare the clinics directly. High success rates may be due to the fact that a clinic treats fewer patients with specific and challenging fertility problems, or that their treatment policies and practices differ greatly from the average. Probabilities vary according to the women’s age and the chosen treatment option as well as her own and her partners base fertility levels. Note how the success rate of live birth drops and the the number of embryos increases with increasing age of the mother.
How good is the data?
Managing expectations
Overall USA IVF success data
The 5 best IVF clinics in the USA
Improve your fertility with micronutrients
Several micronutrients such as vitamins, vitaminoids, amino acids and trace elements have proven themselves effective in improving sperm quantity, mobility and shape. This directly translates into better overall sperm quality and therefore a higher chance of pregnancy.
A natural food supplementation therapy for men is
- relatively inexpensive
- effective after three to six months
- able to increase sperm motility by up to 23%, ejaculate volume by up to 33% and sperm count by up to 215%1
- without side effects
For those reasons, male fertility food supplements are most definitely recommended as the first step in the treatment of oligospermia and asthenospermia.
Also men who have not yet taken a semen analysis test will benefit from supplementing micronutrients to ensure they are able to deliver high-quality semen.
There are no contraindications or side effects to this form of natural ‘sperm boosting’.
An excellent and detailed overview of many studies can be found in Steven Sinclair’s Male Infertility: Nutritional and Environmental Considerations.
A considerable range of male fertility supplements available on the UK market.
However, the products differ widely in price and composition. Menfertility.org has compared 10 of them in terms of value for money and the nutrients they provide.
The most effective male fertility nutrients
A multitude of studies has shown that highly dosed nutrients have potentially significant impact on overall sperm quality.
The amino acid L-arginine has been proven to increase sperm count and motility 2 3.
Another amino acid L-carnitine has been found to significantly improve sperm concentration (count) and motility over a relatively short period of only 8 weeks4 5.
Vitamin D has been shown to improve sperm count, motility and morphology6.
Vitamin B9, better known as folic acid has been shown to increase count, motility and morphology7.
Zinc improves the immune system and significantly improves sperm count in combination with folic acid8.
Selenium in combination with vitamin E has been found to improve motility9 10 11.
NUTRIENTS MUST BE SUPPLIED PERMANENTLY
Sperm cells take 11 weeks to mature in the testicles. Only then they are ready for ejaculation.
If you adjust your diet today it will thus take three months for the better sperm to be ready for fertilisation.
You must therefore keep the diet or supplement on an ongoing basis – ideally until your partner is pregnant or you decide for a different treatment.
All of the male fertility supplements in our great test include several of these nutrients at once, albeit at a lower dose. This is a cost-effective and convenient way making this type of fertility therapy affordable and requiring taking only one all-in-one supplement instead of many.
To find out more about the effects of the individual nutrients and how the various supplements compare, please read menfertility.org’s male fertility supplement review.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
- “Imhof, Martin et al., “Improvement of sperm quality after micronutritient supplementation”, e-SPEN, the European e-Journal of Clinical Nutrition and Metabolism, Epub published ahead of print.” ↩
- “http://www.altmedrev.com/publications/5/1/28.pdf” ↩
- “http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7701414” ↩
- “http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12568837” ↩
- “http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8085668” ↩
- “http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21427118” ↩
- “http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20978181” ↩
- “http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11872201” ↩
- “http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21403799” ↩
- “http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12623744” ↩
- “http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8862739” ↩