Now parents to two daughters, Belinda and Chris Adams underwent six rounds of IVF and experienced the devastation of not being able to conceive for several years before discovering the importance of nutrition and realizing how this aspect of health is often ignored in medical settings.
“I was working as a medical doctor at the time that we started trying to conceive,” Belinda Adams told NI. “When we started to have trouble, I left the practice as people kept saying ‘you need to relax’ and working long shifts and nights wasn’t conducive to that!”
After starting work as a freelance medical writer, she developed a skill for assessing clinical research and deciphering marketing claims from scientific evidence.
“I had taken the view, which I think a lot of doctors take, that supplements are likely to be a waste of money if you have a healthy diet, and there are much more important factors at play, such as age.”
She noted that because women are born with all their eggs, it can be easy to assume nothing can be done about egg quality.
“I believed that age and previous lifestyle were the only things that mattered. But actually, eggs go through their most critical changes in the 90 days before ovulation, and sperm take approximately three months to develop from scratch,” she said, “research shows that this is the window where nutritional support can have an impact.”
Factors like mitochondrial function, antioxidant levels and inflammation are all potentially modifiable through nutrition and supplements, she added.
A curated one-stop shop
After three rounds of IVF and losing faith in local clinics, the couple temporarily moved to the US to undergo IVF at a clinic with a better success rate.
“One thing that struck me about their approach was that, unlike in the UK, they gave you a list of supplements to take for three months before starting IVF,” she noted.
Adams researched the clinical backing for each ingredient that she was recommended and curated a selection of supplements which provided efficacious doses and weren’t filled with synthetic fillers.
The couple eventually had two children through IVF treatment and became advocates for fertility supportive supplements and nutrition.
“I was on maternity leave with my second daughter when I was speaking to friends who were going through IVF and recommending all the supplements I had been taking when I thought I could provide these to people in a one stop shop,” she said.
The couple co-founded Fertility Hero in January 2026 with four supplements: Female and male focus multivitamins named Fundamental Woman and Fundamental Man, and two CoQ10 products offering 200mg and 400mg per dose.
Adams said their CoQ10 products offer a significantly higher dose than others in the market, especially all-in-one blends which can offer as little as 2mg.
“We all make CoQ10 in our cells. It’s an antioxidant which helps our mitochondria generate energy. Eggs are energy hungry cells, but our levels decline as we age. The theory is that by supplementing CoQ10 helps restore ROS imbalances and prevents cellular DNA damage.”
She noted that there is often a lot of focus on what women can do to prepare for pregnancy, with little focus put on what men can do to increase chances of conception.
“Sperm is a contributing factor in around half of all fertility cases, and because sperm only take just under three months to develop, there is a huge opportunity to improve sperm quality in that timeframe so providing supplements for both is essential,” she said.
The couple has since launched a high dose omega-3, and an ultra-pure myo-inositol and magnesium bisglycinate.
All the products come in glass packaging or compostable pouches, ticking sustainability and health boxes.
“I know that when you are really struggling to conceive you will even avoid eating foods that have been in contact with plastic packaging so we have eradicated that concern,” Adams explained.
Creating the formulations was a time consuming endeavor but Adams said a major challenge and learning curve in her entrepreneurial journey was discovering how little can be said in marketing.
“There’s very little I can actually say and I can’t discuss that I’m a doctor when I’m promoting the supplements as that restricts what I am allowed to say even further, which is really tricky when my back story is an important part of the brand.”
Adams has several additional SKUs planned for launch next year, including an efficaciously dosed L-carnitine, probiotics, and an antioxidant blend.
