Welcome to the Postpartum University podcast, where we support you and your provider in understanding the science, the art, and the sacredness of healing after birth. I'm Miranda Bauer, your host, your Postpartum Nutrition Specialist, and homesteading mom with four wild kids. It's time to get you the holistic, whole body healing that works.
Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Postpartum University podcast. And I have a pretty serious topic that I wanna share with you today. Very recently, I had a popular post deleted in a fairly large maternal mental health group on Facebook, because my post on Postpartum Nutrition felt like it was anti-western medicine, and that's in quotations. I was then schooled on being inclusive and western practices, and how most people who are licensed in mental health cannot possibly provide information on the value of nutrition for fear of risking their license.
I wanna just take a second to highlight the problem in this. And it's mind-boggling to me that we actually don't even see the problem in this. If we are a provider and we are supporting clients with this information, at least sharing the significance of nutrient repletion and therefore emotional and mental support, then we are doing our jobs and supporting the whole body healing. But if we are not supporting our clients in that way, our clients are missing out considerably. And I stand by that statement. And of course, I'm not suggesting in the least bit that we operate outside of our scope of practice by diagnosing or by telling someone that they need XYZ for healing or to develop a treatment plan. That's not what this is about. Simply providing information and resources and a referral base is usually all you need to give that client what they need to truly heal their body.
And I will say that PSI, Postpartum Support International, it's one of the massive organizations around postpartum healing and support systems in general. They kind of run the world when it comes to postpartum right now. And they even mentioned this, even so briefly mentioned this in their trainings, that women have very high rates of deficiency after birth that can contribute to both depression and anxiety.
And so I want to share a couple of statistics with you here, 17.4% of women in postpartum are deficient in iron, 12% in zinc, 51% efficient in vitamin D, 80 to 90% of women deficient in magnesium, 25 to 47% are deficient in B vitamins, up to 50% are deficient in iodine. And the percentage of women who are deficient in copper or selenium or omega 3s is lesser known. In every single one of those nutrients that I'm mentioning here have been strongly linked to postpartum depression and anxiety. Not slightly linked, not occasionally linked, strongly linked to postpartum depression and anxiety. So much so that if I were to see a woman who had experienced a hemorrhage after birth, they very clearly have the nutritional testing done to test their iron and ferritin levels. And it's clear that they are deficient and anemic and they receive iron as a support system almost within two to three weeks, their depression and anxiety symptoms, if they have them are disappearing, if not already gone. It's absolutely amazing to me how much when we truly focus on the root cause of the issue at hand, how quickly it can disappear when we apply the right root cause care. And I can't tell you how many women I have supported by simply giving them handouts or information regarding food or referring them to speak to a provider who can assess their nutrient levels. And then they feel almost immediately relieved from their mental health symptoms after applying the support that they get from that.
It's quite mind-boggling to me that we don't assess nutrient levels for mamas before giving them a diagnosis of depression and anxiety. We need to have these conversations and open the gate to a more wider view of healthcare and whole body healing. This doesn't in any way mean that a provider is not good enough or not valuable enough for the work they do without nutrition attached. That is hogwash. We need counselors. We need trained mental health providers. We need physical therapists. We need the gamut of healthcare providers, whether you're a doula, a midwife, a doctor, a nurse, whomever you are in this field, we are all necessary components to ending this rate of depression and anxiety or at least lowering it significantly. 'Cause right now it's only rising. But in order to do that, we have to have a multitude of conversations. And we have to talk about the root cause care.
And if we as providers are truly going to prevent and assess and treat PMAAS, we must include nutrition, even if it's a few handouts and a referral. Really, the more we know, the better we can do. So we have to stop avoiding the truth because it's triggering. Because if we don't, we are simply facilitating humanitarian work that is actually not humanitarian at all.
Supporting women is supporting humanity. And if we are choosing sides and failing to talk about whole body support, we are failing immensely. And right now, I will tell you, we are failing immensely. We haven't made any progress. We are still stuck in awareness mode, right? Let's share the world that postpartum depression and anxiety exists. You know what, that's important in some places, but it's time to move on. It is time to move on and start teaching, start educating, start developing programs that go well beyond. To start combining clinical practice with actual hands on in your face in the community work. And that is not going to happen if we are not talking about the whole story.
In the perfect world, we would be blending both Eastern and Western medicine, we would be taking the best of all worlds and bringing them together in a collaborative effort to truly heal postpartum and create a better motherhood experience. We would be taking care of our mothers, our babies, our children, our families, the unit as a whole at a completely different level.
I encourage you if you are listening to this and you are seeing this divide, that you do not jump into the divide, that you do not pick sides, that you state the facts as they are, that we are all important and we all have to come together to make this work. To share this, it is not one side versus the other, it is a healthy supportive blend of all, and if we are not doing that and we are only contributing to the divide, we are greatly losing out, not just for ourselves but for the women that we are supporting, for mothers and the way we see the world, for our children and the way in which they grow. And it's time to start having these conversations and implementing evidence-based care and women's stories and traditional healing practices that have worked for thousands of years. It's time that we start putting all of this together into a holistic blend that's going to support whole body healing for all.
If you are in this space and you are supporting women and whole body healing, I implore you, join me, speak up, let's start having this conversation and shedding light on bringing these worlds together in a way that's going to benefit all that's involved. It's time. Love this episode, let us know by leaving an amazing review, your support is everything. Want more? Head over to postpartumU.com, that's postpartum the letter U .com, and explore how we support moms like you in holistic whole body healing that's specific for the unique needs of mamas in the years postpartum. See you there.
