The topic of postpartum rage and other symptoms of postpartum hormonal imbalance are (pun intended) all the rage these days.
But so many blogs and articles that are covering this topic of symptoms of postpartum hormonal imbalance are failing to get to the root cause of this serious issue.
In this episode we're sharing:
We dive deeply into this topic within the Postpartum Nutrition Certification which is now open for enrollment but only for a few more days. We'd love to have you!
Feeling inspired and ready to learn more about how you can actively revolutionize postpartum care?
The topic of postpartum rage and other symptoms of postpartum hormonal imbalance are (pun intended) all the rage these days.
But so many blogs and articles that are covering this topic of symptoms of postpartum hormonal imbalance are failing to get to the root cause of this serious issue.
In this episode we're sharing:
We dive deeply into this topic within the Postpartum Nutrition Certification which is now open for enrollment but only for a few more days. We'd love to have you!
Feeling inspired and ready to learn more about how you can actively revolutionize postpartum care?
Read the transcript of this episode:
Depression, anxiety, and autoimmune symptoms after birth is not how it's supposed to be. There is a much better way, and I'm here to show you how to do just that. Hey, my friend, I'm Maranda Bower, a mother to four kids and a biology student turned scientist obsessed with changing the world through postpartum care. Join us as we talk to mothers and the providers who serve them and getting evidence-based information that actually supports the mind, body, and soul in the years after birth.
Hey, hey, everyone, welcome to the podcast.
We are in part two of a four-part series on depletion in postpartum, and today we're going to be talking about hormone balance. And before we get to that point, I want to tell you why in the world we are doing this series.
There is so much misinformation and fear around what is normal and what is expected in postpartum.
What we're seeing right now is this huge shift in the postpartum market.
I'm going to tell you a little bit why I've been calling it that. If you've heard me talk about this postpartum market, it's not something that I really like to define postpartum as in terms of being a market, but this is why I'm doing it, because we are finally understanding that there is so much left to be desired in pregnancy, birth and postpartum that us, as women, are not getting what we need.
We are recognizing that we deserve so much more and we're starting to ask for more. We're saying this is not working.
The way I'm experiencing motherhood, the way I'm experiencing the weeks after postpartum and beyond, the way I'm getting care, is no longer acceptable.
And this is such a beautiful thing, but what has transpired is that now some companies and people are coming on the scene, corporate markets, who are understanding that, hey, they need something better and so I'm going to produce something better.
I'm going to give them a supplement, I'm going to give them a new pill, I'm going to give them a new gadget.
I was just reading about a new gadget that you wear it's like a watch around your wrist and you wear it in postpartum and then it's able to pick up depression symptoms weeks before it happens.
Because you need a gadget, you need a watch to be able to tell whether or not you're getting depression.
And this is mind-boggling to me, because we are getting further and further away from what is normal, what is healthy, what we should be experiencing and what we're doing by creating these gadgets, by creating the well by these markets blooming, because we're saying this is not okay and we deserve more.
We need to get back to the basics rather than saying that these things are true and therefore we're going to have to buy these things to feel better, when really, the more we get rid of the craziness and the stress and the need for all of these gadgets and supplements and pills, the better we're going to feel.
And today I really want to have this conversation because hormone imbalance is one of the most important pieces to postpartum, really just the hormonal shifts that are taking place, and I want to share that. Yes, this is biologically normal.
These hormones, they're in a state of fluctuation in postpartum, but we are blaming that on why we are feeling awful.
We blame this and we say it's a reason for postpartum depression and anxiety or massive mood swings or rage or generally feeling unwell or off.
Your hormones are off, you're unbalanced and we have a society that supports that, and all of the not-so-great things that we might be feeling in postpartum are normalized in this.
We have doctors, we have our mothers, we have our friends. They're all telling us, of course, you don't feel well, you just had a baby. It's your hormones, right? Oh, it's just your hormones.
Eventually, it'll figure it out and you'll be fine and you won't have these hormone fluctuations, you won't have these angry outbursts, you won't feel like a train wreck.
We've normalized postpartum as this big, crappy feeling time and it's all hormones' fault and that's what is to be expected.
I really want to ask you does that sound right to you?
Do you think that this is the way God or nature intended, or that this is the way women's bodies have been designed to give birth and then experience major hormone fluxes that leave us feeling like train wrecks and major mental health problems?
As a biological scientist and researcher, I am telling you that this is not an evolutionary advantage in the least bit, and if you've experienced this, you know for a fact that this is not normal.
This is not how it's supposed to be. Your body is not designed this way.
So I'm going to bust some myths for you and I'm just going to share with you a little bit about what does happen, and then I'm going to tell you why and what we need to do about it.
So obviously, we have this big hormonal fluctuation. It's actually one of the biggest hormone fluctuations in humankind, and of course, we only experience it in this pregnancy postpartum phase, and so we need to address that. That's a huge deal and we need a lot of support during this time.
We have estrogen and progesterone during pregnancy, and these two hormones support the growth and development of the baby, maintaining the uterine lining and even preparing our breast for milk production and lactation, and then in childbirth there's this rapid decline in estrogen and progesterone which leads to what oftentimes is reviewed as these emotional and physical changes in moms. But there's so much more to that story.
We also have oxytocin, which is referred to as the love hormone or the bonding hormone, and it plays a critical role in supporting uterine contractions and labor and also the release of breast milk during breastfeeding and then, beyond that, it is also responsible for fostering this maternal-infant bonding and enhancing feelings of trust and intimacy between partners.
Oxytocin isn't something that just happens in pregnancy and birth. It's something that we experience on the day-to-day with our loving partner or someone that you know, a friend who we give a hug to, and that in itself releases oxytocin.
It's a feel-good hormone, but we have so much of it in the postpartum period if we had a normal physiological birth experience and oftentimes that's not the case so many women experience.
I believe the stat is now 45% of women say that their birth experience is traumatic.
They label their birth experience as traumatic. 45% of women in the United States that's nearly half of women.
And when we have a traumatic event that shuts down a lot of that oxytocin production, we also have very high medical intervention rates.
Pytocin is a prime example. Pytocin is the not natural form, so to speak, of oxytocin that is injected into our body to make those uterine contractions stronger, to bring a baby faster. And what that does is it actually signals to the body to turn off our own natural oxytocin levels.
When our body no longer receives that Pitocin, when we stop receiving that medication, our body is left with nothing. It has no oxytocin whatsoever.
It is literally on empty. And this is one of the reasons why pitocin one of the symptoms of, or contradictions or you know not so great things about pitocin is that it often leads to postpartum depression because that oxytocin is not available, you know, it's not being produced in the body anymore because the body said, oh, it's being given to me. I don't have to work that hard. I've got to work hard on other things, like giving birth, and it shuts down production.
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Now we also have many other hormones that are happening within the body. We have prolactin, which helps maintain lactation, and we have many other hormones that support pregnancy and labor and birth and postpartum, and so all of these are in such a massive shift. But here's the thing.
All of those things that I shared with you are normal. They are a biological normal, they are a physiological underpinning, they are the thing that helps define what postpartum is, and they are complex. It's not easy to understand all of the interplays between hormones and what they're doing within our body and all of these things.
We have to acknowledge that, yes, there is a huge shift that's happening, but also this is a normal shift.
What is not normal is that when these hormones and their biological shift are not supported, that's when the imbalance occurs. So this biological shift is not imalance. It is not the thing that's making you feel unwell, the fluctuation, that normal fluctuation, is not the imbalance. That's the biological normal.
The imbalance is when those hormones are not supported, then the body cannot regulate itself, it cannot find its rhythm, which is something that feels good.
A rhythm, a hormonal rhythm, particularly feels good for the body, especially the female body, especially during this time.
But when they're not supported, what we have is a recipe for dysregulation.
The dysregulation is what makes the symptoms of imbalance come up, the dysregulation of hormones during the shift.
So think about what are some of the things that are so essential for hormone balance.
Okay, well, one is stress, and stress can come from a multitude of things. It can come from not getting the support that we need in our home when it comes to having a baby. It could be being forced back into the workplace too soon and it could be having a traumatic birth. That is stress in itself.
Any sort of trauma, maybe you had your baby taken away the not-so-great things or maybe there's a NICU stay, maybe you had twins, and that situation is highly stressful and it requires a lot of mental, physical, and emotional support.
When we're not getting that support, we have high levels of stress. When there are high levels of stress, you have more hormones entering into the bloodstream, like cortisol, that impact the other hormones.
When you have things like cortisol enter into the bloodstream and throw off your estrogen and progesterone and your oxytocin levels, actually masking those things, it can be really difficult and that is one of the very things that causes the imbalance.
So stress, not getting the support that we need in our day-to-day lives is the root cause of hormone imbalance.
It's not that motherhood is going to give us hormone imbalance. It is stress. Now here's another component to this what makes your hormones?
Nutrition, nourishment, vitamins, minerals? Your body cannot produce hormones. It cannot regulate hormones.
So even if you're living this very stress-free life, if you're not getting the nutrients that you need, your body actually has a different level of stress.
It has a physiological stress that's being put on the body.
Actually, we see so many women who experience the inability to lose weight after having a baby. Then a lot of times it has to do with significant nutrient deficiencies because we're not eating well, we're not getting the nutrients that we need.
I often see many people holding back calories or eating foods that maybe are not really great for them because they don't have the support system that they need. They're finishing off their child's leftover chicken nuggets and calling that a meal, or whatever the case may be, or grabbing a handful of potato chips in the pantry because that's all they have time to do.
Their body becomes in a state of a different kind of stress where it says oh my word, I have to hold on to every nutrient thing, every fat, every protein that comes into my body. I have to hold on to it because I'm in a state of starvation. I'm in a state of significant depletion. I have to hold on to everything that comes my way.
Oftentimes I see so many moms I've served so many moms who are like I can't lose weight. I'm actually gaining weight. I don't understand what's going on. I'm limiting calories, all of these things, or I'm eating foods that are really great, like salads and smoothies, but they're not supporting me and it's not helping me with my body image. It's not helping me reach my goals.
That's because they're not being absorbed, they're not being digested.
No matter what you do, you're having significant stress on the body, which again plays a massive role in how you are feeling, and that overall hormone balance or imbalance and dysregulation those two things alone account for so much information in the body.
When it comes to dysregulation, they're constantly feeding that dysregulation.
Again, it's not the hormonal fluctuation that's biologically normal.
It's when that is not being supported with the right tools, when there's stress, when we are not getting the support we need, when we're constantly trying to figure out what we're going to do for the day or how we're going to get support, or how am I going to get the laundry done or I have to go back to work and financial struggles and all of those things, they add up and they're releasing that cortisol which is throwing off all of those other hormones.
And then, when you don't get the nutrients that you need, you're putting your body in a different stress cycle that is only contributing even more. And yes, there is that cortisol release too.
When our body is in a state of needing more and a state of starvation, when it's deprived and lacking key nutrients, I can guarantee you you're not going to have a good time.
And this, right here, is why so many people are experiencing hormone imbalance and postpartum.
Actually, it's proven over and over and over again in science there's a multitude of scientific journals and articles and information that's come out that specifically depression and anxiety are not chemical imbalances in the brain.
Most depression and anxiety are not chemical imbalances in the brain.
They don't even start in the brain. It is not a brain issue. Again, we found countless studies over and over and over again that prove this.
We have SSRIs which claim that it's a serotonin deficiency within the brain. That is not true. That is not supportive of this whatsoever.
The cause is not a hormone imbalance. The cause is the inflammatory factors.
If you get to the root what causes inflammation?
Stress and lack of nutrients and lack of the things that our bodies definitely need in order to survive not just thrive, but to survive.
We know in postpartum, so many of us are entering the postpartum period very depleted of key nutrients.
Then, when our digestive tract changes, we're not supporting those biological normal fluctuations and changes. Our gut changes on a physiological level, meaning the way it digests foods is different.
We need meals that are very easy to digest because our body just doesn't have the energy to give to digestion.
We don't want all the extra energy that we do have to go to digestion anyway.
We want to use that to bond with our baby, to figure out breastfeeding, to be able to spend time with our other children if we have more than one, those kinds of things.
That's where the energy goes, not to digesting our food.
When we understand all of these components and we are able to put them in place, then it is helpful and supportive of hormone regulation.
We have so much control over our own hormones, not just in the postpartum period but well beyond the postpartum period.
We have very little understanding and very little knowledge. This is not something that our society teaches us.
It's not something that doctors are very familiar with either. They don't take classes in female hormones.
That's often why we have the birth control pill, which is just like oh, I don't know what's happening, but here's this birth control pill that will help regulate and get rid of your symptoms, which we know has long-lasting health implications.
It literally changes our brain patterns, it depletes us of key nutrients and it can wreak havoc on our body.
We have the ability to change that. We have control over our hormones.
Next week, I'm going to get into another really hot topic with you, especially when it comes to this topic of depletion and postpartum and how it leads to so many different things.
Last week, we got to cover some important conversations.
This week, we're going to dive into some of the most important postpartum nutrients and our bodies, as well as some dos and don'ts. That is where so much of the work is going to go. I encourage you to join us there.
Stay tuned, because we're busting myths and getting the truth out to people who can make a difference, which is you. You can start with yourself.
Make a difference in your life, realize that you have control over your hormones, and that's a beautiful, beautiful gift.
I am so grateful you turned into the Postpartum University podcast. We hope you enjoyed this episode enough to leave us a quick review and, more importantly, I hope more than ever that you take what you've learned here, apply it to your own life, and consider joining us in the Postpartum University membership. It's a private space where mothers and providers learn the real truth and the real tools needed to heal in the years to come and the real tools needed to heal in the years Postpartum. You can learn more at www.postpartumu. That's the letter U.com. We'll see you next week.