Postpartum University® Podcast

EP 154 Postpartum Depletion Series: Depression & Nutrition

• Maranda Bower, Postpartum Nutrition Specialist • Episode 154

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Postpartum depression and nutrition is a topic that many providers and organizations avoid. Even those who advocate for better maternal mental health outcomes, fail to recognize the tie between nutrient depletion and mental health. 

It's time to change that and take back our power. 


In this episode, we're sharing: 

How I came to discover the deep connection between nutrient depletion and postpartum depression symptoms and my own experience with full, holistic healing. 

Who truly benefits from continuing to label depression as a "chemical imbalance" or attributing it to a lack of support. 

What women can start doing right now to set themselves up for healing and wellbeing that gets to the root cause of depression symptoms. 


If you're still struggling or you know someone who is, even after consistent therapy sessions and trial and error with different medications, THIS is the episode that's going to change everything. 

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Maranda Bower:

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 Miranda Bauer, 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, everyone Welcome.

Maranda Bower:

I am so ready to dive into this conversation on postpartum nutrition and how it's so deeply related to postpartum depression, and I feel like this is often left unsaid. Nobody wants to talk about it. It's actually really scary, and when I talk to groups of people they're like no way Is this really true. There's so much misinformation and misguidance on this, and so I'm going to blow you away and really unravel some of the complexities and challenge the norms of postpartum depression, especially as it relates to nutrition. In our modern world, postpartum depression remains one of the most underdiagnosed and misunderstood obstetric complications, and it's estimated over one out of seven women experience postpartum depression, and that prevalence is likely even higher due to cultural stigma, limited research and actually believe that number is quite outdated. Suicidebrinks, for example, is the leading cause of maternal death in the first year after having a baby. Really, we are completely underscoring the urgency of addressing this issue and, despite its widespread impact, postpartum depression and anxiety often go unrecognized and under-treated or not treated at all, and oftentimes we treat it with medications which never really addressed the root. Stay tuned for that episode on hormone balance which is coming up next and what that really means. But also it's often treated with therapy, which is amazing but doesn't always get to healing. Let's be honest, many of us can be in therapy for years and never get anywhere. So the root cause of postpartum depression extend far beyond hormonal fluctuations and societal pressures and really dive into the depths of nutrition. Yet conventional medicine approaches often overlook these critical components and a lot of times that means a mother is suffering in silence. And also I want to say that a lot of postpartum depression is rooted in nutrition depletion. People often freak out when I say this. It's sometimes again people tell me I'm flat out wrong and I can understand that. It's not talked about for one. Nutrition for moms has always been about weight loss and breast milk production. It's definitely not health and healing Providers are not trained in this. Major organizations like Postpartum Support International they refuse to talk about this. We're told it's all about the lack of community support, which is a huge component, don't get me wrong. But what about those who have support?

Maranda Bower:

I want to tell you a little bit about my experience when I first started doing this work as a doula. Oftentimes I was hired by upper, middle class, upper class people who had a multitude of support systems already in place. They had house cleaning services. They had somebody coming to their house to walk their dogs. They had the privilege of staying at home and getting all of the support that they needed. They were able to see all of the different providers. They had a masseuse, they were getting chiropractic care. They had me as their doula coming in to support them. A lot of them even had whatever it was that they needed they had the privilege of having. They didn't have to stress about money. They had a solid home and they had people in their sphere and their community who also had babies that they were connecting with, and they got to go to mom groups and they didn't have to go to work All of these components but they were still suffering from postpartum depression and even anxiety and even autoimmune issues.

Maranda Bower:

I kept thinking to myself what am I doing wrong? Because here I am as a doula whose role is to provide them everything that they need in hopes that they don't experience this to make their life better, to help their entry into motherhood so that it feels beautiful and connected and healthy. This was not happening for so many of my clients. Oftentimes and this is what happened to me too I remember so many people saying, hey, are you okay? Are you feeling good? I'd be like, oh yeah, and deep inside I'm like, no, I'm not okay. Even for those people that I was serving and doing really good work with, I'm doing great. You hear that and you're like, oh, wait a second, are they really doing great? Are they really doing great? The answer was no.

Maranda Bower:

When I started investigating further not only for my own healing after the birth of my son, I had extreme postpartum depression, debilitating postpartum depression. I could not understand what was happening. The clients that I was serving again were experiencing this. When I started doing all the research and looking at cultural analysis and looking at anthropological studies from around the world, what I was noticing was that they put so much emphasis in the food. It wasn't just about here's our cultural practice and you're going to eat this food because this is what we've done for thousands of years. It was the thing that brought community. It was the thing that nourished deeply Many cultures around the world. Nutrition is the thing that is the connection between God and our bodies. There was this profound like huh, wait a second, what do you mean? Nutrition is such a deep reverence connection and maybe there's this new depletion kind of thing that's happening within our bodies. I started playing with it and I did feel better after a little bit of time.

Maranda Bower:

It was probably a matter of a couple of weeks when I started introducing herbs and drinks and things like that. It was like such a huge difference. I remember the first herbal concoction I made for myself and I recommend that this is a part of my entire postpartum nutrient plan. It's all laid out in there of the herbs to use along with your nourishment, but they're so nutrient dense and they don't require any necessary energy to absorb in the body. It's just readily available, or what we call bio available. I had that drink for the first time and it was, I was like flying off the hand. I was like I can, I'm going to go to the store. I was able to get groceries. I came home, I cleaned up my house. I was like whoa, this is a whole new person that's happening here.

Maranda Bower:

I started implementing that work with my clients and they were like whoa, this is amazing. I feel the difference and I think that was such a revelation for me and for so many people. And actually that is how postpartum university came about and why I train professionals now, because when I was working with my clients, I would have their providers call me and say, okay, this person is no longer on medication and they say it's your fault, or this person is no longer needing XYZ therapy because you were able to support them in getting out of a really deep depression. How did you do that and what? I wasn't operating in that way? I will tell you. I'm not a medical provider, so it was only nutrition education.

Maranda Bower:

It was like here's how the physiological body shifts and postpartum and here's all the great nutrient dense foods that you could eat and honestly, I am not a person who loves to spend time in the kitchen. So in the very beginning, I was serving these nutritious meals, especially as a doula. You would come in and cook these meals for moms and families. And then I really kind of wanted to get away from that. It's not my ideal kind of thing, and I know a lot of people feel the same. If it is perfect, awesome. But I really just wanted to provide that education. Here's how your body's changing. Here's how to listen to it a little bit more and support it nutritionally. Here's some really amazing recipes that you can use that are nutrient dense and help your hormones and help with absorption and really that nutrient repletion that we all need so deeply. And then that is when things really exploded in. My phone and my emails were off the hook, with providers saying please tell me what you're doing. I need to know what you're doing. Hey, I'm going to be 100% straight with you.

Maranda Bower:

The postpartum world is changing right now and I know you feel it. It's in the politics, our community spaces. There is an urgent need to implement a different approach to postpartum health. If you're an alternative provider or postpartum advocate, you need to be with us in the postpartum university membership. Take the method, the tools, the houndouts, the advanced trainings and so much more to not only help your clients and your business grow, but to help you grow too. Marketwatch says that the after birth services and nutrition and support is set for extraordinary growth by 2030. Don't miss your opportunity to help women and families who desperately need your holistic support. Go to wwwpostpartumu. The letter ucom slash membership. We're accepting registrations right now and we can't wait to see you there.

Maranda Bower:

Really, take this in for a second, because if the key to unlocking healing and eliminating postpartum depression lies not in a pill but in nourishing our bodies from within, we're taking away the pharmaceutical and the corporate needs, the financial liabilities. We are taking back our power. I'm going to tell you that's not where a lot of people want you to be. The healthcare industry relies on you and your clients consistently going back, consistently not feeling good, not getting your needs addressed, so that you always become a client. When we insert herbalism, when we insert nutrition, what we have is we have our power back. We can help our own bodies, we can tune in, we can listen, we can grow our own foods. We can go to the grocery store. For heaven's sake, there it is everything that we need and nothing more.

Maranda Bower:

Again, I want to acknowledge that, although I know with 110 percent certainty how deeply nutrition impacts mood disorders, I also recognize there are far more components to this story. I actually address many of those core components in episode 125. Head over there, go listen to that. But what we need to recognize is that one we have a major problem when it comes to postpartum depression. It is at epidemic levels. Two very clearly, no matter how much medications or therapy we're getting, there's still an issue For many moms. It also goes beyond getting all the support or having all of the support, for heaven's sakes. We have stars, people, celebrities, who are coming back and saying no, I had depression, I had anxiety and I had everything. I had nanny care, I had all of it, I had financial stability, I had support out the wazoo and yet I still experienced it, because there are some major psychological changes that are occurring that we need support with. There's a lot of unknowns that we're going to experience. Two so many of us are taught that. One either nutrition doesn't matter or two it matters enough that you should consider it for breastfeeding and for weight loss and your nutrition needs to come from salads and smoothies, and really those are some of the worst foods that you can take, because the physiological changes that take place in our bodies greatly impact this.

Maranda Bower:

I had the privilege of speaking this week in the MicroBirth Conference. The 2024 MicroBirth Conference was over 3,500 providers that were present. It was on fire y'all. It was absolutely amazing. I learned so much about the microbiome. I was taking notes on so many different people that I want to have here on this podcast. There are just such a wealth of information. The amount of work that's being studied here is just incredible.

Maranda Bower:

I got to speak, I got to share what's changing within our bodies and why this is such an important component. I'll tell you a little bit about these biological changes. We already know that they occur. Everybody who's ever been postpartum knows that our bodies are changing. Many of us don't know that a lot of those changes are happening to our nervous system, although there's this normal physiological birth process and it allows for the release of oxytocin, and oxytocin supports the parasympathetic nervous system. It provides the pain relief, the feelings of calm. We know that that's generally not the case for most modern births, because over 30% of women are rating their birth as traumatic. I believe the new statistic of that is up to 45%. That I just recently saw, but I didn't get to read the whole article. I don't feel comfortable just throwing that out Between 30% to 45%. Medications during birth, including epidurals and pitocin, really hinder oxytocin levels. We know that babies that are not skin to skin right after birth impact oxytocin levels.

Maranda Bower:

The central nervous system is being greatly influenced in a way that puts us into a fight or flight state. When we have fight or flight or the sympathetic nervous system activated, it deeply changes digestion. So many of us are living in a state of high stress and that prolonged sympathetic nervous system even more. The ability to digest foods becomes a challenge. Those digestive juices, the gastric acids, the enzymes they become a deficiency. In my postpartum nutrition certification program we call this a digestive deficiency. It remains from birth on until the stress is reduced. Oftentimes that's not what happens. We live in a state of continued stress.

Maranda Bower:

Then we have inflammation that is occurring within our bodies. We know that when there's inflammation present and it sticks around and becomes chronic inflammation, which is often what happens in postpartum, we're in acute inflammatory state. The process of giving birth puts us in that. That is a normal thing and it's super helpful for healing our body. It sends all of the right messages to our body that says hey, we need support here. Tissue repair, hormone support all the things we love, that we want, that acute inflammation Not when we're high stress that acute inflammation becomes chronic inflammation. It doesn't leave, it takes us longer to heal, it eats up all of our energy, it creates havoc on our nervous system as well as our digestive system.

Maranda Bower:

We know without a shadow of a doubt, connected dots have been connected in science and research over and over and over again. Depression is not a serotonin deficiency. What it is is an inflammatory process that's occurring within the brain, oftentimes related to the gut. If there's inflammation within the gut, we know without a shadow of a doubt that that is a precursor to depression and anxiety, meaning that if you have inflammation in your gut, then we can predict that you're going to have depression or anxiety, for both. It's so interconnected, it's so related. Yet we don't talk about it. When I mention it, people are like what in the world? Are you serious? This can't be your fear mongering. No, I'm speaking the truth. I'm speaking the biological, normal truth of what is occurring here.

Maranda Bower:

I tell you those in the micro birth conference, those providers are applauding. There was a huge applause for everything that I share here, because I stayed after and I was talking with so many and they're like oh my gosh, that was so concise. I cannot believe we haven't put those pieces together, that we are not addressing postpartum care in this way. There are so many thank yous. I know that so many of them have taken the information that I provided and was going to incorporate that, or are incorporating that into the work that they are doing, because they understand that deep connection. Now, really, there is a deep connection between postpartum nutrition and postpartum depression. These are the interconnected pieces. Boom, that is it. That is it. That is the connection here.

Maranda Bower:

So I hope you have enjoyed this conversation. If you loved it and you stayed till the end, thank you so much for listening in. Please leave us a review. It means the world to us and it really helps us know what amazing content to create for you Until next time. I am so grateful you turned into the Postpartum University podcast. We've hoped 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, applied 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 postpartum. You can learn more at wwwpostpartumu. That's the letter ucom. We'll see you next week.

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