Postpartum University® Podcast

Postpartum Autoimmune Disorders: From Symptoms to Root Cause Healing EP 210

• Maranda Bower, Postpartum Nutrition Specialist

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Here’s the truth: 1 in 3 women will develop an autoimmune condition after giving birth, and hardly anyone in modern medicine is talking about it.

What if the “normal” symptoms of postpartum—fatigue, hair loss, mood swings, brain fog—are actually the earliest signs of autoimmune disease and red flags that your client’s body is waving, begging for help? 

Today we’re busting the myths around postpartum recovery and diving into the root causes of autoimmune disorders in new mothers. If you're a provider still telling clients “this is just postpartum,” it’s time for a reality check. We talk about nutrient depletion, leaky gut, inflammation, unresolved trauma, and why functional postpartum care is the only path forward if we want to stop the rise of chronic illness in mothers. If you’re still telling clients “this is just postpartum,” it’s time to listen in—because this conversation will change how you practice.

Click HERE to check out this episode on the blog. 

Key Time Stamps: 

00:00 – Introduction to the silent postpartum autoimmune crisis
 01:00 – Normalized symptoms vs. early signs of disease
 04:20 – What’s normal postpartum and what’s not
 06:18 – Miranda’s personal experience with ulcerative colitis
 09:21 – Root causes of postpartum autoimmune disorders
 10:34 – Nutrient depletion and immune dysregulation
 11:38 – Trauma, nervous system imbalance, and gut health
 13:50 – Environmental toxins and stress
 15:39 – Genetic myths and epigenetics
 16:30 – Reversing autoimmune disease: What’s possible?
 18:12 – Why most providers miss the signs
 20:12 – Why this matters for the future of postpartum care
 21:03 – Get on the Postpartum Provider Press Newsletter

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Speaker 1:

The postpartum care system is failing, leaving countless mothers struggling with depression, anxiety and autoimmune conditions. I'm Miranda Bauer and I've helped thousands of providers use holistic care practices to heal their clients at the root. Subscribe now and join us in addressing what modern medicine overlooks, so that you can give your clients real, lasting solutions for lifelong well-being. Hey, hey, welcome to the podcast. I want to talk today about this silent crisis happening in postpartum care, and hardly anyone is talking about it. And no, I am not talking about perinatal mental health. I'm talking about postpartum autoimmune disorders. Autoimmune diseases are skyrocketing in postpartum women. In fact, research shows that 20 to 30% of women develop an autoimmune disease within the first year after giving birth. This is insane. So the real question is are women experiencing symptoms that are defined as normal and postpartum, but are actually the earliest warning signs of disease? And if that's the case, then what can we do about it? What factors are truly at play here? Are these conditions reversible? Are we telling mothers that they just have to kind of accept this for the rest of their lives? So today we're going to get into the unspoken realities of postpartum autoimmune disorders how to spot them, why they happen and, most importantly, how do we heal? How do we overcome this and is that even possible? Because most providers will tell you it's not. So I want to start with some of the hard facts. Women are three times more likely than men to develop an autoimmune disorder. The first year, postpartum, is one of the most high risk windows for autoimmune activation and disease, and some of the most common autoimmune diseases that arise in postpartum is Hashimoto's thyroiditis, which is often one of the most misdiagnosed things in postpartum. Oftentimes it's misdiagnosed as postpartum depression or just fatigue like normal motherhood fatigue, and that's absolutely not the case. We also have rheumatoid arthritis. We have lupus, multiple sclerosis, ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease, psoriasis and eczema. And here's the kicker most of these women were never told that autoimmune disease was even a risk factor after having a baby, which is not really shocking, because most people are never even told how to heal their bodies after having a baby in the first place, and many times we're just told that fatigue and hair loss and joint pain and bloating and brain fog are just normal parts of motherhood. But they're not normal. They're a sign that something deeper is happening. They're not normal. They're a sign that something deeper is happening and one of the biggest problems in postpartum care is this normalization of symptoms that are actually warning signs Crippling exhaustion beyond normal, sleep deprivation, hair falling out in clumps months after birth, joint pain, muscle weakness, full body aches, gut issues like bloating, constipation, diarrhea, food sensitivities, skin changes like rashes and eczema and psoriasis, flare-ups, brain fog, dizziness, memory problems, heart palpitations, anxiety and mood swings that are often labeled it's just your hormones. So, yes, postpartum recovery is a process. You're healing from birth, you're adjusting to a new normal, but these symptoms are not just simply parts of motherhood. They are really, truly signs that the body is struggling. This is not okay. We should not be feeling this way in motherhood, and the first step is stopping the rise of postpartum autoimmune disorders and reframing this and really understanding what is normal and that starts right here, and understanding that this is not normal.

Speaker 1:

Is there going to be shifts and changes that are going to occur? Yeah, absolutely. Are you going to feel sleep deprived? Yep, that's, that is absolutely going to be the case. Are you going to lose some hair? Maybe a little bit. Are you going to be sore after having a baby a week to two weeks?

Speaker 1:

Absolutely, especially if you have a cesarean, like it's sometimes, it feels in the, especially in those first few days, like you just got hit by a bus right, and, yeah, your skin changes a little bit, sometimes your hair gets a little oily, sometimes you have a little bit of rash and that's oftentimes the body detoxing itself from all of the hormones and the things that have accumulated in the body after pregnancy. And, yeah, we're gonna have a little bit of brain fog. That's normal, as your body is literally changing. Your brain is changing on a biological level and, yeah, sometimes we're going to cry a little bit and we're going to feel frustrated and we're going to maybe even mourn the life that we had before baby. Maybe we didn't realize it was so hard. Maybe we're frustrated that we're not getting the support that we need, and that in itself leads to a lot of frustration and emotion. That's all normal.

Speaker 1:

But it's when these things get taken to the next level, when we're really not feeling well, when it's crippling, when it's taking over our thoughts and our emotions, when our hair's falling out in clumps and we start freaking out. That's because it's not okay. When our brain frog is becoming dizziness and having memory problems and we're really wondering what in the world is going on and getting freaked out about it. If we're having heart palpitations, right, and those things are not okay. Those things go beyond what is considered normal. And let me tell you, I learned all of this firsthand because I lived it.

Speaker 1:

After my second kid, I developed ulcerative colitis and at first I had no idea. I just thought I had some serious food allergies and sensitivities and some gut trouble and I thought that if I just figured it out, if I just, you know, eliminated some foods and whatever the case may be, I would figure it out. But it became debilitating. I could not leave the house before noon because I was guaranteed to be on the toilet for hours. The pain was so intense that I had to set up a play area for my toddler and a nursing diaper station in the bathroom because I would need to be in there to watch them and make sure they were safe while I was on the toilet, suffering and then able to be passed out on the floor for a few minutes, even up to 20 minutes, and know that my babies were going to be okay because I had set up a very safe place for them.

Speaker 1:

And I have an extremely pain tolerance, extremely high pain tolerance, and and it happened gradually over time and sometimes, when things gradually happen over time, especially with people who have higher pain tolerances or have been exposed to very traumatic situations, then those things can often feel like no big deal, right, like yeah, of course I, you know, especially for women who've just given birth right Like the level of pain that they've gone through. They're like, yep, I've done that, I had that under my belt, and almost like a normal right, and that in itself is also a very big indicator that something is wrong and we need to make sure that those women who are deeply supported and recognize that this is not okay, because this was exactly what happened to me. Again, it didn't happen overnight, it was gradual, it was subtle, it was more than bloating and discomfort and a fatigue and then it continued on until it was constant diarrhea and joint pain and my hair was falling out in clumps and I was incredibly dizzy and I had massive heart palpitations and anxiety and postpartum rage and it was intense. And I want you to hear me when I say this I didn't just get sick, my body didn't randomly break. This was a slow progression that could have been prevented, and for some moms a lot of moms that slow progression starts in pregnancy, and sometimes it happened before pregnancy even began, and maybe they noticed symptoms, maybe they had symptoms emerging. Maybe that was you. You experienced some sort of symptoms that were occurring and then all of a sudden, you got pregnant and all of those symptoms left right Because your immune system doesn't function at the level it used to, and so oftentimes women who have autoimmune disease feel better in pregnancy than they do after pregnancy.

Speaker 1:

None of this I knew. No one told me this at the time. I had to figure that out for myself, and that's why we're having this conversation today, because I do not want you or your clients to end up in the same place that I was. Autoimmune disease is not random.

Speaker 1:

It happens when the body is pushed past its breaking point, and in postpartum there are key factors that set that stage. One is nutrient depletion. Pregnancy and birth drain the body's stores of minerals, essential fats, proteins, key vitamins like B12 and D and magnesium, and without repletion, the immune system becomes dysregulated. The entire body becomes dysregulated. Our liver can't detox like it once was if it's not getting the nutrients it needs in order to make the detox happen. Our immune system can't function at the level it would because it doesn't have the nutrients that make the immune system function right. Same with the brain Everything relies on nutrients. Your body is made of nutrients and if you're not getting what it needs, there's no way your body is functioning in the way it should and dysregulation occurs.

Speaker 1:

We also have gut imbalances. Postpartum women often experience leaky gut and bacterial imbalances and food sensitivities and they blame it on hormonal changes, and none of that is true whatsoever. It is not due to hormonal changes. I'm gonna repeat that a million times over throughout this entire podcast episode and podcast in general. It is not a hormonal imbalance. Your body goes through a biologically normal change in postpartum. But when those changes are not supported and we add in stress and we add in nutrient depletion and we don't get practical support so that we can rest, all of that causes inflammation, it triggers the autoimmune reactions and it becomes a state of imbalance. And that's what happens in our gut that inflammation becomes triggered and now we have leaky gut, now we have bacterial imbalances and food sensitivities, unresolved trauma and nervous system. Dysregulation is massive here.

Speaker 1:

The body remembers birth. If there was trauma or stress or unresolved emotions, they're going to show up in the immune system, especially when it comes to anger and feeling like we weren't supported, that maybe we were neglected, feeling like we were not safe, and pregnancy and birth and even and past life experiences If we were raised a particular way by our parents and then that, you know, comes up again because we've become a parent. That's going to play a role here and whatever was not resolved, whatever is still lingering in the body. This is going to be the key, opportune time to understand it. I always say that this is a period where we remember a lot of things that should not have ever happened to us. Right. As women, we are victims of sexual violence and violence far more than our male counterparts, and it is fairly typical that these things come up. We remember these things and more during the postpartum period. Why? Because our body has just kind of been shaken up. Right, it was kind of like the glass of a wine bottle or whatever. Let's just shake it and pop off that top and it's going to spew out everywhere and it's not going to be pretty and really this is an invitation to heal. We need to heal from this. And so when this remembering is allowing us to be like, oh yeah, this has got to be dealt with. Yep, I got to deal with that. Just put that down on the list and hopefully you get some support. Hopefully there's some counselor or therapist or community leader that you can speak to to have these conversations, to work through a lot of these things and support your body and nervous system. Regulation and beyond that, breathing techniques TRE therapy is something that I talk about a lot in my book, reclaiming Postpartum Wellness All of these things are going to help you remove the stress and trauma from the cells of your body.

Speaker 1:

We also have environmental toxins and stressors. Right, the postpartum period is filled with lack of sleep and high stress and the toxic loads of our living space, our environment, the plastics, the chemicals, the inflammatory foods and all of that pushed the system into overdrive. They build up in pregnancy because, again, remember, the postpartum body is a time when there's, like this, opening of the immune system and a flush of all of the toxins that were built up during pregnancy, because that baby needed to maintain a safe environment and we didn't wanna have too big of an immune system that would just kick baby out. We wanted that to stay. We wanted our babies to be in womb and so our nervous system had to work with that, and so postpartum, that means our immune system comes on overdrive and then we have a recipe for detoxing. But if our body's detoxification processes are not supported, guess what? That? Those toxins, those plastics and those chemicals that we're exposed to on an everyday level all the time just by living in space. No matter how you know detox do you feel you are, how you know clean your makeup products are and household cleaners are, whatever we're always exposed.

Speaker 1:

Okay, here's the other one that I think is a key factor that needs to be addressed. We've got nutrient depletion, gut imbalances, unresolved trauma and nervous system dysregulation. We've got environmental toxins and stressors, and now genetics, and this is not what you think. So many say. Well, autoimmune disease runs in my family, but let me tell you, genetics are only a small part of the story. I will repeat this over and over and over again. I will repeat this over and over and over again.

Speaker 1:

As a biological scientist, this is a massive part of my study. Genetics is convoluted, it's difficult. Epigenetics play a role and guess what? Your lifestyle, food choices, stress levels and environment determine whether or not those genes are going to be triggered or if they're going to be turned on, and oftentimes your lifestyle, your food choices, your stress levels, the way you cope with stress, the environments that you prefer those things are passed down via the family, and so those things are the things that are often what triggers autoimmune disease to run in the family. So keep that in mind. You are never doomed by your genes. You are empowered by your choices and so are your clients.

Speaker 1:

So that was a ton, and if you are dealing with postpartum autoimmune disease or you are supporting people who are, as a provider, nutrition as medicine is the foundational piece making sure that we are helping moms detox their systems, that we are supporting biologically safe sleep and normal sleep regulation and practicing support and getting practical support and community, because postpartum autoimmune disease should never be a life sentence. It should never be a thing in the first place. And if we catch the early signs, if we shift the way we view postpartum symptoms, if we actually support the body instead of ignoring it, healing is possible. I reversed my autoimmune disease and I have so many. This is a very controversial thing. I have so many providers tell me that that is not possible, and I've also had so many providers that I've worked with who have seen their clients heal because they are using this, and I know it feels like oftentimes this oversimplification, and it's not in the least bit. It's very nuanced. It's very challenging to see all of these components as they interweave into each other. This is not an attempt to simplify something that is incredibly challenging and complex, but it is bringing up. These are the roots of them, and when we address the root causes of these autoimmune diseases and disease in general and inflammation in general, then we have a recipe for healing.

Speaker 1:

I have never been on any sort of medications whatsoever. I actually I tried medications when I was first diagnosed and it caused a massive infection that left me bedridden for a very long time, and so I never, ever did it again. And I was prescribed another medication that was derived from pig, and at the time I was severely allergic to pig on top of everything else, right and so it was just like this big awful thing and after looking up the medication that they had prescribed me that I ended up with a massive infection from there was only trials up to six weeks, and after six weeks, continual use of that medication actually increased your risk of cancer. And if you don't know that, those with ulcerative colitis often see, and I believe the statistic is 80% will receive a cancer diagnosis within five years of diet of their ulcerative colitis diagnosis. And so that was almost 12 years ago for me, and I, knock on wood, have been cancer-free and I have never been on any medication outside of that first original try, and it was a long, long period of healing for me, a long period of healing for me, and I've never had a flare-up since and I truly believe that we can heal our bodies, that healing is possible.

Speaker 1:

And now when providers look at me and they're like, oh, I had no idea that was a thing for you. And it's like, yeah, it's not. But then you have those providers that say, well, that just can't be true. Then you have those providers that say, well, that just can't be true, you're just in remission, it's so interesting. Anyway, all of that, I just want you to know that this is not a new normal. It doesn't have to be a new normal. We can do something about it.

Speaker 1:

And there are providers who are seeing clients who are doing this hard work and they are healing and the body is speaking directly to you and when we give it what it needs, it responds right. This is why I created Postpartum University so that we can change the way we see and treat postpartum health. As a matter of fact, if you are a provider who wants to be on the cutting edge of postpartum autoimmune recovery and more, there's so much more that I wanna share with you, and there is a postpartum provider press newsletter that we send out every single Wednesday. There's over 10,000 providers who are already on that list, and we give you all sorts of information the latest research, upcoming trends, support tools, all of the things. So if you are not on that list, I want you to get on that list ASAP.

Speaker 1:

It's postpartumu, the letter ucom slash newsletter and, of course, that's in the show notes, because this is the future of postpartum care and we all need to be a part of it. Thanks so much for being a part of this crucial conversation. I know you're dedicated to advancing postpartum care and if you're ready to dig deeper, come join us on our newsletter, where I share exclusive insights, resources and the latest tools to help you make a lasting impact on postpartum health. Sign up at postpartumu the letter ucom, which is in the show notes, and if you found today's episode valuable, please leave a review to help us reach more providers like you. Together, we're building a future where mothers are fully supported and thriving.

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Maranda Bower

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