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hello and welcome to the true Hope cast podcast where we take a deep dive into mental Health's many physiological and

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psychological aspects this is the show for you if you're looking for information knowledge motivation and

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solutions and that's what we are all about here at true hope Canada and true hope Canada is a mind and body based supplement company dedicated first and

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foremost to promoting brain and body Health through non-invasive nutritional means for more information about us you can visit true hope canada.com today I

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welcome Dr Emily Wilson to the podcast now Dr Wilson is a naturopathic doctor acupuncturist author and new mother her

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clinical background is in women's cardiometabolic and Hormone Health after a traumatic childbirth in late 2022 she

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entered a very difficult postpartum time including struggles with postpartum depression and anxiety she knew that if

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she could struggle so much as a naturopathic doctor than too many other parents were suffering as well so she

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wrote a book to guide expecting parents to create their postpartum self-care plan in pregnancy to set them up for the

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best possible postpartum experience today we're going to be discussing Hormone Health and pregnancy as well as

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postpartum depression enjoy the show okay Dr Emily welcome to True Hope cast

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thank you so much for being with me with being us today how are you what is going well thank you so much for having me I

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am doing really well I'm so excited to be here because um I am a new mom as well as a

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doctor and an acupuncturist and it changed my life not only because I became a mom but also because it gave

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gave me a whole new sense of purpose and lit me up in a whole new way to help women and I am so so excited to be able

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to share that so thank you for again having me beautiful well we're going to

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be discussing Hormone Health in pregnancy and in postpartum today but before we do that can you maybe give us

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a little bit more of an intro of like who you are and what it is that you do yeah absolutely so again um I am my name

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is Dr Emily Wilson I'm a naturopathic doctor and an acupuncturist in

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Arizona um I had I've had so many Evolutions in my

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career and I started off uh studying and practicing in the mental health sphere

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and then I moved more into mental health for women and then that sort of became more broadly addressing Women's Health

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and women's hormones because women's hormones are so essential for us in our

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health and then also in our experience of mental health and who we are as people

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uh I also am a type a person and so in my journey of going

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through medical school and then starting a practice and you know living my life and

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having to work other jobs I ended up slowly but surely gaining a lot of weight and that culminated in a bit of a

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personal crisis where I had to ask myself you know what what is going on here where where I'm helping all of

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these women get better they hormones are regulating they're losing weight they're sleeping well they look great and I am

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suddenly I am for some reason going in the opposite direction and that question was one of

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the profound shifts in my career because it made me realize you know the reason they're doing this that they're doing so

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well is because they have already committed to themselves they have dedicated the time to come and see me

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they have dedicated the financial resources to come and see me they have dedicated their attention to following

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prescripted plan and it's working I on the other hand was making my job more

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important than my own health and so I was skipping the workouts I was staying up late I was overstressed and I was

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managing it with you know enjoying a glass of wine or two a lot of the time

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and I wasn't eating food that I probably shouldn't have been eating and so when I realized that I needed to prioritize my

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selfworth the way that my patients were everything started to change and so that was a profound eye opener for me as

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women we need to focus on our selfworth yeah I think what you just

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described there like I think that actually happens with quite a lot of good practitioners because when you are

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in the space with a client or a patient oneon-one you're there for them you're

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listening for them you're being present with them and all of your energy all of

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your focus is towards those individuals so yeah it could be from an outside perspective be like you know if you give

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this advice at five times a day why you're not taking it yourself but you're not really

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internalizing that information you're providing it you're giving it in like a very like you know external manner so I

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totally understand where you come from and then yeah I think for a lot of people you know inevitably at some point

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it's like yeah okay like this this this is I need to start listening to my own advice and taking that time yeah

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absolutely and it's interesting because I think as maybe as a man you know maybe

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more men relate to this than than I am aware of but I can say that for women a lot of us get used to the idea of of

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saying oh I'll I'll do that tomorrow you know what I knew I I committed to exercising today but tomorrow I'll do it

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for sure tomorrow I'll go you know grocery shopping I'll shop the perimeter

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you know tomorrow we do this and that becomes our daily montra and

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um that for me was my kind of my first big career wakeup call and then it

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stimulated my journey of losing 40 l pounds which got me into really kind of helping women do the same thing how do

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you reclaim your hormone and cardi metabolic health and um so that's where

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I was professionally when I got pregnant and had a beautiful pregnancy felt great

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the whole time but then I had this was in October of 2022 I gave birth to my daughter uh and

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had a experienced a very traumatic home birth and that sent me into a very

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difficult postpartum time and one of the things that saved my life during that

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time and I'm very open about that but one of the things that saved my life was starting to dive into the research

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on how can we what's going on postpartum and how can we help women have a better

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postpartum experience and the long and short of it is you know the sooner we can help women

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prepare for postpartum in pregnancy the more likely they are to set themselves up for a better

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postpartum interesting that's really cool yeah I think that um so I've got two kids they're three

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and five and the first one was quite traumatic the second one was horrifically traumatic and just as like

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the male is the is the kind of the caregiver I was you know just trying to be there for my wife but like for my

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wife especially with the second I think that you have I think as a partnership

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anyway you have this idea of what birth is going to be especially with your first kid when you you see child birth

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in Hollywood and it takes like three minutes and it's super easy and it's all good um you obviously create this idea

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in your head you read the books you talk to people and like you know a lot of people have like kind of seeming seemingly very easy births but probably

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a lot of people don't talk about like the really traumatic ones and how you are gearing yourself up for a long

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period perod of time like seven to nine months of this idea of how this this is

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going to go and then when something like traumatic happens within that you know where there's obviously so much going on

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it's wild whether you're at the hospital whether you're at home and something like massively changes that image that

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you've created for yourself over months and months and months and months it's a long period of time to create this like image in your mind and then you have

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this huge hormonal and emotional outburst Journey that you're not

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expecting and I think the aftermath of that especially for the mother is um

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widely wildly under talked about and I don't know how you can begin

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to PR pre-prepare somebody for it not going like ideally I don't know if you

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can I don't know if you can talk to that but obviously you're working a lot and you've been inspired from your own journey to you know support

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women and parents to deal with that huge stressful

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emotional shift that happens and ends up kind of like staying within the body for long periods of time and can take a long

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period of time to like work through yeah I'm so so glad that you

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brought that up too because I think that you

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know the way one of the ways that I'm interpreting what you just said is that we

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we don't talk about the trauma or the the the scary things that can happen for women in in birth or even you know as

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the partner there in the room or there with her I'm sure you went through your own experiences as well and and we don't

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as a culture tend to share that because I think we're kind of afraid of making other people afraid we don't want to put

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bad thoughts into other people's heads yeah and um

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I think that there's such a balance there and know and it's an opportunity for us as a culture to start to

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understand the experience of child birth a little bit better medically it is a very big deal and I didn't realize that

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as a doctor going into it I thought oh I'll be fine I'll I'll be fine you know I was concerned about postpartum

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depression postpartum anxiety but I thought you know I'll cross that bridge when I come to it which unfortunately a

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lot of women have that that mindset going into pregn I'll I'll worry about postpartum when

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it's right here with me and yeah and I wish that we could change the narrative

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a little bit and start to help women understand from the research what

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is going to help them have a better postpartum um and I think that by sharing our birth

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stories um as honestly as possible that's that's a way to kind of open up the door um I thought a lot I so I wrote

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a whole book about this and I thought a lot in in writing about how much of my

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experience do I want to share in the book because I don't want to be over you know I don't want to seem like I'm being

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an alarmist or or scare people right but I want people to know that for me as a

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doctor I went into this very unprepared and if I could have done it again

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here's what I would do instead and so I think there's a lot of value for us in just sharing our stories

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because it opens up the door for and it allows women to think if things don't go according to my

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birth plan what do I want to happen instead what what's the next best

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option yeah I think when when you think about it like taking a big step back looking at the the whole picture I think

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that the preparation thing is absolutely key and if you were to like run a marathon you wouldn't just like go do it

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and like expect to not have like significant soreness and distress within your body you know like it's a massively

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physically emotionally stressful time to like get that baby out of you you know it's like absolutely intense and wild

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even just as like the father being there and watching my my partner my wife going through this unbelievable ordeal like

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making noises I've never heard another human being make before you know it's like it's it's out of the ordinary it's

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very unfamiliar it's very unusual and I guess you can't like put yourself in that unless you've been in the room with

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somebody giving birth before but preparation in regards to you know

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feeling depressed anxious stressed after something like that I think you it only

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goes to serve your future self to to prepare yourself for that and whether that's in the shape of um no self

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therapies that you can do to like help you get through that having a support system having a community educating

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yourself previously to like what are the possibilities listening to other people's birth stories I think that's

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super valuable even like just the idea like you know we're a nutritional based supplements supplement company here and

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we have amazing protocols for so many things hormon related and it would make

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sense like if you were about to give birth and your body was about to manufacture these amazing amounts of

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phenomenal chemicals that are going to make this baby come out of you and actually help you deal with that with

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some of the pain and you know getting the baby out contractions it's all biochemical your body needs necessary

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ingredients to make those chemicals happen they need to be in abundance they need to be sufficient and available so

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it just makes sense like for me as a nutritionist that you would need to obviously have the right nutrition not like 3 days before you're about to give

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birth but your body needs to be very used to that that um Quality nutrition

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coming into the the body so your body is used to absorbing it and assimilating it on a frequent basis yeah it just makes a

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lot of sense to me that you would want to make those necessary

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preparations not just for birth but for the inevitable like I don't want to use the word crash but like your body is in

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like significant serious like work let's go mode during like child birth and it

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has to have this like massive down regulation of this like all these things it needs to make to to get everybody out

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of there and it's like I don't know I've not read many books or listen to many podcasts or seen it in any movies where

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they talk about preparing for that inevitable biochemical shift that

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happens yeah and I think that's such a such a great way to to think about this

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Simon because pregnancy really is preparation

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for everything that's going to come next right and and there are so many books out there on how to have a healthy

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pregnancy that when I started to write a book I was writing for pregnancy and

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then I had my baby and I realized no this needs to be a postpartum book because this is the area that we need

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the most help with and you're right we do go through this massive crash so in

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pregnancy you know our hormone levels build and build and build and depending on the woman that can be really good or

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really uncomfortable yeah so like myself for example I had a great pregnancy I felt wonderful my skin looked great my

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hair looked great I slept well um for the most part yeah but then it was with

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the CRA the hormone crash and the the nutrient the massive nutrient loss that I had um I was sent into really a

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downward spiral and I did not do well with that and so I love the way that you

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describe pregnancy as sort of this long-term preparation for the marathon

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that's about to happen you know this this long um event of not just childbirth but then

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figuring out how to be a mom to this brand new creature this brand new baby that's here and so when I was writing

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the book the book is called post the essential guide to creating your postpartum self-care plan in pregnancy

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because it's exactly it's addressing exactly what you're talking about we need

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to know how to prepare ourselves in pregnancy for a better postpartum which

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by the way is also going to give you a better pregnancy yeah but there are a few key areas and you've already

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mentioned one I mean it's the first one I talk about it's diet and nutrition and so we have research-based uh well we

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have nutritional needs in pregnancy and postpartum and they're a bit different according to the research and so

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figuring out how to kind of stagger and structure that easily in pregnancy is going to help with postpartum when you

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don't have the time or the mental capacity for that um but yeah nutrition and hydration is a massive one and then

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we have some others that just make sense so there's um exercise is another massive piece here

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uh sleep of course is massive it's a lot easier before the baby comes so thinking about it before the baby comes is really

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important Stress Management and then of course support which you also mentioned

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and support for me means um getting your getting you know your entire medical

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team on board so knowing who your members who are the members of your medical team and who to call if there's

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an issue and then it's your support people so I always say you know somebody like

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the partner so in your you know your family you might be maybe you were like your wife's medical advocate in the room

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if there was you know yeah if she needed somebody to speak up for her and she couldn't you were that person you had

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that that opportunity to stand and be there for her and I think you know for

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women having those conversations with our partners before the baby comes about what do we want what happened you know what H what

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do we do if things don't go the way we're hoping they go yeah super

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important yeah because you can imagine like if things aren't going the way you're expecting them to and there's no

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plan just think about the the spiration of thoughts that would happen to

18:04

somebody like know trying to give birth and like things are happening and decisions need to be made the extra

18:09

stress that goes along with that like yeah like again simple preparation and I'm sure there

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are lots of resources that people can actually like do to like even like checklist things off to make sure that

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you know things are in Preparation and whether you it's your partner or your Midwife but to have everyone as as you

18:27

say like on board in regards of what's going on just so they know that if there are deviations to the plan we know what

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those deviations are we're not like shocking anybody we're not like freaking people out and we're not going to have like um like aftermath of like oh I

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should have done this or should have done that why didn't we do that but it's like it's in the moment it's like incredibly like stressful amazing

18:47

beautiful thing but it's also like things can change and Things Can Happen really fast and the more you're prepared

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for that like I don't think you can be 100% prepared for anything in life but something like that like the the more

18:58

preparation you have the better yeah

19:03

1,000% and again I think it's this fine line this fine balance between you know we

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never want people to think about to think about what the the scary

19:16

things that might happen to the point where they actually get really upset or terrified or worried about this because

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that's why we we live in this beautiful world that has access to both like Midwifery and really wonderful

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state-of-the-art Western Medical Care and so we have a lot of options but

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we need to know what our options are when we're going into the experience of

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giving birth and you know what we might when we might deviate from what

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our hopes are if that makes sense absolutely yeah yeah um I I'd love to

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just just feels appropriate to share a little bit about like my birth story with my with my second kid so his name is Wyatt but he um he came out 10 and a

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half pounds on my quite small wife and he had a he has a rare genetic condition

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which we didn't know about um until a couple of days after he was born so he came out absolutely massive but he also

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came out like blue and not breathing so it was like unbelievably stressful this is all at home with my two incredible

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midwives but the first four hours of the labor were just like my wife was in absolute heaven like she had like the

20:29

light coming through the front room in the pool everything was going W wonderful and then it just like soon as

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that baby started to come out everything was just like just went to hell so so quick but I personally had like so much

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trust and faith in these midwives that they were here that we'd seen multiple times um before the birth you know we

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had a plan and everything like that and that was out without question I

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would have like I mean I was freaking out but I would have been freaking out to the point of not being useful whatsoever and I ended up being quite

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useful like in that moment for my wife and for my son so yeah even just like

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the preparation of like knowing who's going to be there who's in the room and just like knowing who they are a little bit

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knowing their name being with them in like a room for some for some sessions where you like you start to feel an

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energy you start to feel comfortable with that individual like significantly easier than just like having a stranger

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coming into kind of like deal with that type of thing it just it just eased everything in a horrifically wild

21:33

stressful situation anyway um so yeah super thankful that we were able to like

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have the opportunity to get to know Our Midwives a little bit and have that super super team available to us because

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yeah I don't know how I mean it was stressful afterwards but it would have been a lot lot worse like the I think

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the prolonged of the that post period would have been significant if not for

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like what we' had done in preparation yeah yeah and I think too I mean it it

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really does come down to support being one of the most important pieces of the

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puzzle here so like having that faith in your medical team is

22:14

everything did you guys did you use a doua we didn't have a yeah we did we had

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my actually yeah my wife's um Auntie she was a doua there as well so like yeah we had a doua we had two midwives we had

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myself and my uh my mother-in-law with an amazing team around us and yeah it was just like so good to have strong

22:36

experienced women in that environment if I'm being honest with you probably I don't know it wouldn't have been any better with a bunch of men I don't think

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it was just great to have was were women whove like I think there was like probably six or seven kids between the

22:47

between between them all they'd obviously seen a lot of things but then they were just you know they were

22:53

extremely close family members as well so that bond that trust that these individual can like kind of take care of

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my wife and take care of me in that moment you know like it was just wonderful even like when we had to go to the hospital with my wife and my son and

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I I we three of us went into ambulances not to have to worry about like the house and like the the stuff

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that everything that had happened like you have to worry about that because like all these people were there like trying to there to take care of us yeah

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oh that's great yeah it was huge it makes a difference it makes a really big

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difference and yeah even if you've got other kids like we had a I had a 2-year-old at the time as well like with

23:32

a friend of mine and like I absolutely knew that that child would be taken care of for four hours if it was just four

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hours or it was 48 hours that we needed them just to like not to have to have

23:43

that extra worry or concern in my mind I mean it's not like you know turn putting the garbage out it's like looking after

23:50

like a human being but it's it's great to know that you've got these people in your corner and I think a lot of people

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if they reach out um can create a really strong support system that's going to like get them through so much of you

24:04

know pregnancy birth and everything off done yeah and that's

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so I think that this is um one of the pieces that again for women to come back

24:15

to this idea we I I'll speak for myself I have never been very good at asking

24:21

for help from other people and one of the things that I learned firsthand was no I actually do have to be asking for

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help um in my postpartum experience and

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also how would everything have looked different if I had asked for more help

24:38

and support before my baby came and so that's a big piece of

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creating your self-care plan too is is just building the muscle of asking for

24:48

support and knowing for example when you think about who's going to be in the delivery room that day with you you know

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is it somebody who can support you um or is it somebody who might freak out

25:00

and need your need your support which you're not going to be able to give at that time I mean it sounds funny but my

25:07

Midwife was telling me horror stories before my daughter was born about having

25:12

like these Partners in the room who just like shouldn't have been in the room oh my gosh yeah and my daughter's dad he

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and I both mutually decided long before she came that he wasn't going to be in the room because we both knew it wasn't

25:24

going to be for the best so she was glad for that but uh yeah that's something

25:29

you have to consider something you have to anticipate because yeah like that I don't know one person that might faint

25:35

and like crack their head open like there's doctors and nurses in the room for sure but they shouldn't be attending

25:41

concussions they should be attending other things and I actually just heard a story about that this woman had an

25:48

emergency z-section and her partner fell backwards against the wall in the room and you know was I know luckily he was

25:55

fine thank God but but that's that happens and so how can we keep that from

26:02

happening as much as possible you know how can we set people up for the best birth experience possible and the best

26:09

postpartum possible too because again as you mentioned there's this whole

26:14

hormonal roller coaster that happens for the woman that that it all happens on

26:20

the inside and nobody really knows it or sees it that's right yeah yeah yeah I want to touch on that because I so when

26:26

I studied nutrition we had this amazing huge um I think it was probably three

26:32

different classes in three different SE three different semesters where we spoke about female hormone health and the male

26:39

hormone Health took an hour and the female hormone Health took

26:44

almost a year to like cover extensively to the point where we were like really covering our bases and I just remember

26:50

this this fluctuation chart of like a standard cycle and the ups and downs and

26:56

like the different hormones involved in in you know having the ability to um you

27:02

know release release an egg house it and then do that all over again like it's unbelievably complex and complicated and

27:09

I think we'll talk about this now but like we're probably doing a poor job in preparing men and women to understand

27:17

how complex that is and how many things like outside of us like whether it comes to like seed oils processed sugar stress

27:27

all these things that significantly damage your ability to manufacture these hormones and keep them

27:33

in in check and how we have like we have to worry about like xenoestrogens and all these things that mimic these

27:39

hormones that cause huge problems for people like I think that if we were to

27:44

have the better education like in like the be beginning of high school about these things and not just for like women

27:50

do women's health and men do Men's Health but to bring that in because I was 30 years old when I really learned

27:55

about this and I was like super fascinated by it because it was so complex I think we would serve everybody

28:01

if if everyone was a little little bit more understandable about like the

28:06

complexities of the female hormone of Health System oh I love what you're

28:12

saying and I actually am getting Goosebumps because for me this is how we

28:17

change the world right we live in a culture that

28:23

values speed and flavor and convenience over

28:28

Whole Foods and slowing down and really nourishing and resting and those all Rec

28:35

havoc on our hormone system and again just to speak to the female hormonal system when we live in a world where

28:41

we're in constant we're under constant stress we are eating highly processed

28:47

foods with artificial colors flavors chemicals those hydrogenated trans

28:52

fat-filled processed oils we are and then all these other toxins which were

28:58

Exposed on a daily basis we set ourselves up for massive

29:04

hormone disharmony and we see evidence of that all the time obesity numbers are

29:10

rising infertility rates are rising menstrual irregularities and problems

29:15

are on the rise PCOS is on the rise everything is is looking like it's

29:20

reaching a crescendo and I think that all we have to do is is slow down for a second and

29:28

and ask ourselves if we're really living the way that we want to live you know again it comes back to

29:34

this foundational message of self-worth like if I were to choose myself

29:40

today how would I live my life would I still pick up that dingdong

29:47

and eat it with my convenience food you know my convenience store coffee would I

29:53

gulp it down on my way to work sitting in traffic would I let myself get

29:58

stressed out by my inbox I I that's not how I want to live my life you know and I don't think that's how most people

30:04

want to live their lives so yeah you spot on and I I always

30:09

think I try and come back to the idea of like thinking about us us in like communities of 20 people 50 people 100

30:15

people living underneath the stars and how you know our biology is absolutely

30:21

no different our environment certainly is but like we can absolutely get back to the understanding that you know it

30:27

might not be possible to like take days and days off during like a menstrual cycle but you've certainly got the

30:34

ability to be able to like take care of yourself differently once you know what's going on for you and your body

30:40

and like yeah I I always think back to like what would what do our ancestors be doing in these situations and it's

30:47

always fundamental it's always it's about nutrition and rest and movement and all all these like things I think

30:52

everyone kind of like knows that it's beneficial for us but yeah with the

30:58

complexities of like the hormonal system and yeah we see so many different

31:05

hormonal disorders that often get like in this like reductionist manner like

31:11

separated to be like very very different like you would see someone different for PCOS you see someone else for like you

31:17

know um other hormonal conditions rather than like sitting back and recognizing

31:22

that know your hormonal system yeah it's absolutely you know it's very very complex but

31:28

it's it's a it's a symphony it's a symphony that that that needs um

31:34

attention and awareness and yeah like if there's an issue with you know one part of it that comes all the way down then

31:40

there's going to be like this this um poor back feed Loop that we're going to

31:45

see issues with and it's yeah it's like just simple understanding of of that is

31:51

without question how we start to get people a lot a lot healthier because yeah there's so much in our environment

31:56

that's like completely destroying hormonal Health fertility Etc and I love this Vision that you kind

32:04

of created for me a little bit earlier of these communities of people living under the stars right living outside and

32:11

our hormones do very much uh they cycle alongside these these

32:19

cycles that are happening in nature all the time these daily Cycles these monthly Cycles these yearly

32:25

cycles and when we don't give ourselves the time and

32:32

space to respect those Cycles things go wrong right when we keep pushing when we

32:38

we live in a culture again where women it's this bounceback from from childbirth culture where women are

32:45

celebrated for getting their body back um they're celebrated for going back to work they're celebrated for you know uh

32:53

doing it all when when really what we have to do is is return to this very

33:00

ancient long-standing tradition of allowing ourselves to be nurtured

33:06

postpartum and it's really really hard for us as women and and I figure at this

33:12

day in this day and age there is more than enough information out there so I wrote this book because I said I want to

33:19

just give people one resource to find all of the information they need because we don't really we're not lacking for

33:26

information we're lacking for the right information maybe yeah but here it is if you're pregnant or even if you're

33:32

postpartum or you you know somebody who is here's the information and and what

33:37

we need more than anything is the opportunity to practice self- advocacy

33:43

to practice finding support and asking for support and the opportunity to

33:48

practice taking care of ourselves in a very deep way because as women a lot of

33:54

us just we weren't taught that we weren't raised that way so that's really kind of where I um have started to focus

34:02

my practice and transition my practice and it's been absolutely amazing to see how these fundamental things are

34:09

actually some of the most life-changing absolutely yeah I think that um I don't know if it's if it's

34:16

natural organic but like I feel that we were talking about it earlier about about caregiving as a as as a woman and

34:24

I think that so many um so many women out there like are a lot less selfish

34:31

than men are and they want to care for others a lot more than they want to care for themselves um when I first started

34:38

practicing nutrition for some reason every other client I got was like a 55 year old woman whose family had now

34:45

moved out and they had they didn't know what to do with their the energy that

34:50

they had because it was so used to taking care of the kids taking care of the house taking care of all of these

34:56

things and then never took care of themselves or they they said I'm sure they did but like it was like fifth on

35:01

the priority list and then when I started to help these individuals first of all understand that

35:08

and that's okay it's very important to be a caregiver but like there has to be a point where you have to stop putting

35:13

that energy back in towards yourself to start healing to start recognizing the

35:18

the the maybe the unhelpful patterns or the unhelpful habits and it's a very powerful thing to to become aware of and

35:25

I think that um certainly has a part to play when people want to do something

35:32

about their health they want to be they want to be an advocate and there's all this information out there but it's like we need like

35:38

bite-sized easy steps to kind of like get there like whether that's just starting with a healthy breakfast then

35:43

it's like working on moving your body daily and then you can like start building up all these things that are

35:49

going to certainly benefit you and then you've just got this absolute arsenal of all these things that you're doing for

35:54

yourself and you just start wrapping yourself in love and gratitude and hope and joy and you pushing out anger and

36:01

rage and panic and anxiety and depression which carry a significantly different uh energetic frequency and

36:07

then you just start smiling more and you start feeling better and people start noticing that and people probably want a

36:14

little piece of that and you can start thinking about I don't know more wild

36:19

things like getting early morning light into your eyes getting e evening light into your eyes and like looking up at

36:25

the stars like we spoke about it earlier I think that if we didn't have so much light pollution in towns and cities and

36:32

we were able to look up with the Stars and see the cosmos and see the shooting stars and see all these amazing things we would just like be in absolute awe

36:39

constative all the time about how like kind of meaningless we are in this Incredible Universe and we would just walk around with more joy that's a

36:46

separate topic but I think you know what I mean absolutely in fact I love that

36:51

topic and I think it's totally relevant because it's it's life right

36:59

yeah so I think we agree that we're like conventionally speaking we're doing kind

37:04

of a poor job in regards to like educating people about preparing for

37:10

pregnancy female hormone health and you know we've got individuals like you are writing amazing books but where do you

37:15

think the uh the massive shortcomings are with like our educational system for

37:21

example that's a good question uh again I'll start with the story about

37:28

my experience because I think this is happening a lot and I am a woman who

37:34

attended all of my scheduled medical visits a lot of women in pregnancy don't

37:40

and that's another massive problem but um and I started out my pregnancy pretty

37:46

healthy and not every woman does but one of the massive this this is an example

37:52

of a massive shortcoming that when I started to reflect on my experience after my daughter was born I realized

37:59

and I had an OBGYN and I also had a midwife not one of them asked me one

38:07

question about how I wanted my postpartum experience to go what I wanted it to look like what would happen

38:16

what did I want to happen in the event that something might go sideways while my daughter was being born you know

38:22

nobody talked to me about the actual steps that were need needed to prepare myself for the day of

38:30

her birth and what came next and I think that that is just a massive example of

38:38

this the way that the the current health care system is failing women these conversations happen they're not even

38:45

conversations they're experiences that happen for women behind closed doors because they've already given birth

38:51

they're not out there sharing their stories with the world because they're recovering they're recovering from this

38:57

this massive crisis sometimes or a massive event they're also learning how

39:03

to be a parent maybe for the first time ever or maybe how a parent a newborn with one or two or three or four other

39:10

kids and they're they're quite often usually

39:15

pretty lucky if they can figure out how to get at least one good meal in a day

39:21

and a few hours of sleep while doing everything else and that's that's not okay we need to be having these

39:28

conversations with women before the baby comes so that she can start thinking about and

39:35

envisioning what she wants her postpartum experience to look like because you know I touched on this

39:41

earlier but the idea of of stress and pressure and a fast-paced life that has

39:47

massive effects on our Hormone Health and even in the absence of any outside

39:54

stressor a postpartum woman can expect that her hormones won't come back into that that cyclical balance for six

40:02

months they usually say but sometimes and quite often I think it takes a lot longer than that and I say give it a

40:09

year you know just give yourself that time and space and and I talk to postpartum women who are so eager to get

40:15

their hormones Back in Balance they're so eager to lose the postpartum weight and and the kindest and most

40:23

honest thing I can tell them is just be patient and practice these things

40:29

practice the nutrition don't stress about not getting exercise seven days a week instead one

40:37

day a week find some time to exercise and then build on that you know it's

40:42

these small steps it's taking those small steps to move forward to the life that you want rather than than being

40:49

stuck where you are worried about what you're not doing yeah I think for probably a lot of

40:54

women um their past experience of making um Health changes is probably based

41:02

around diet and weight loss and those things are usually quite like uh they're very acute they're very

41:08

large they're very um invasive in regards to someone's habitual routine so

41:15

I would guess like a lot of people like in that postpartum section where they want to get their their health back back to normal they're probably going at it

41:21

with the same level of intensity and expectation that they would with like a wild diet

41:28

um which without question isn't the way to go you know in regards to like something so wildly um traumatic to the

41:37

body and to the psychology as well so yeah having those like stepbystep guides

41:42

and like you know working on like you know working out or just walking once a week you know is ending that's that's a

41:48

big win rather than trying to do like you know 5k Every Day like setting yourself up for like massive disappointment and you know and future

41:56

anxieties and depression I think that's a really great way to look at it and your piece talking

42:01

about the kind of like educational system around like medicine and child birth I'm I'm pretty convinced I'm not

42:08

gone to medical school but I'm pretty convinced that the um the information that they would learn

42:14

is about you know getting that baby out safely as possible keeping the mother alive and then like after that like it's

42:22

there's probably no not a whole lot of Education wrapped around like what you can do and what you can offer and even if it's just as simple as doing those

42:29

like pregnancy visits with your doctor um just guiding people in the

42:35

expectation of going to speak to somebody or going to like these certain resources where you can like begin to

42:41

prepare themselves because these doctors are so unbelievably overworked anyway you can't expect them to like you know

42:46

see every mother and every baby for you know weeks and months ahead like there's a lot of if you're lucky fortunate

42:51

enough to had like Midwifery within your circles then that's certainly an aspect that they can they can help contrib too

42:57

but again having having a baby especially for the

43:03

first time is a very um difficult thing to go through and you want to trust as many people in as you can so you go and

43:09

see the doctor you've got that White Coat Syndrome thing right you trust that individual and there's a big responsibility within that community of

43:15

doctors to help guide people and educate people to the right resources and even if it's just a word or a a leaflet or a

43:24

pamphlet or something that gives people like Direction towards thinking about

43:29

six months a year after birth and like what to expect how you can you know help

43:34

facilitate that massive fluctuation in Hormone Health differently um oh my for

43:39

me it feels like a super super simple thing to to introduce and it would be unbelievably effective yeah I couldn't

43:47

agree more just something to open the door because too many of

43:52

us are as women we just we don't know we don't know and we don't know that we

43:59

actually should be thinking a lot more about this especially if we are one of the women who has new medical conditions

44:08

pop up in pregnancy which happens all the time or who go into pregnancy with

44:13

medical conditions because that means you you're probably going to take

44:18

those with you in the postpartum period and you're going to need even you know an additional level of support

44:24

there and it has to start with the ways that you take care of yourself yeah with the diet the Sleep the exercise you know

44:31

the stress reduction all of these very foundational pieces yeah we've had a few people on

44:37

the podcast who have used our products um either through their whole pregnancy or just postpartum and what we found

44:44

very similar to individuals that have like suffered with anxiety and depression for years and years and they tried all the drugs and um they've not

44:51

supported them in the long term and then they want to move to a more natural food-based alternative

44:57

and these individuals for like 10 years 20 years they've primarily been like chronically Nutri nutrient deficient for

45:04

so long and their body has just struggled and struggled and then they're taking a product that you know so bioavailable that actually gets through

45:10

the bloodb brain barrier to actually support neurological health and their

45:16

their brains literally turn on in some cases in days and we see remarkable

45:21

things and we've seen the same with individuals through pregnancy and postpartum that you know we spoke about

45:27

that huge hormonal um necessity during child birth and how we have a huge down

45:33

regulation and crash of those hormones that your body needs to build up its resources again and you can do that with

45:40

really poor horrific supplements like from Costco or you can do it with like

45:46

really well researched nutrition and obviously diet and food and the the right choices that you would make as

45:52

well come into it but we found like yeah just like so many individuals are chronically nutrient efficient and when

45:57

you actually take a product and do some other things to like you know boost your digestive and intestinal Integrity all

46:04

these things can come full circle and you can actually make significant changes quite quickly that's amazing you

46:11

know one other piece of of postpartum that I think is so interesting that people don't understand is this

46:17

this piece about brain health and the way that hormones and our brains interact with each other and how in

46:26

postpartum our brains go through almost a second adolescence we know that in

46:31

adolescence our brains become super neuroplastic because they're we're learning so much that's why teenagers

46:37

sleep all the time because their brains are learning and changing and growing at such a rapid rate what we're not talking

46:44

enough about yet is that that happens again postpartum because as Moms new moms now

46:52

we are surviv we are we're programmed to for survival of the spe species right so

46:57

now our brain is constantly alert trying to discern the cries of our babies

47:03

trying to scan the environment for safety trying to reconfigure all of the

47:09

relationships in our lives around this new person in our life so it's fascinating that that we have this kind

47:16

of second adolescence or second period of brain growth massive brain growth postpartum that requires a lot of

47:24

additional nutrients and a lot of additional support to really kind of

47:29

help us integrate all of this new information yeah that's a massive point

47:34

I think about the Animal Kingdom in those types of situations where you can look at many other mammals like lionesses for example how they are on

47:41

hyper alert for their babies for significant literally for 24 hours um

47:47

and you know their their babies their clbs are like good to go in a year and a

47:53

half as like know massive adults that can take care of themselves but for mothers of humans like humans are kind

47:58

of like useless for a couple of years and then they get a little bit more useful and then they're kind of good to

48:03

go I guess technically at 13 14 or 15 but like that's over well over a decade

48:09

that your mother that um is going to be super

48:14

super stressed out all of the time I'm 40 I'm the youngest of three brothers my mom still like massively like is always

48:20

like concerned about me about my well-being on definitely like a different level but like she's always

48:26

thinking about it you know it's like it's I'm her I'm her child I don't think that ever changes but you can certainly

48:32

do things and have practices in your life to help um help regulate that kind of that

48:39

emotional Sensitivity I guess yeah absolutely and it does it starts with the foundations and nutrition hydration

48:47

are are nutrition and hydration are essential

48:52

absolutely wow well we' come to the end of our time here and we had a bunch more questions for you but like the best

48:59

podcasts are the ones where we just like go off and it's all organic and natur I don't even think I looked at my notes once which is just fabulous that's the

49:05

way it should go um can you let us know where people can connect with you please

49:10

absolutely so uh my website is a great place to start it's

49:16

www.soswl.com and that's S as in Sam a n is in Nancy o

49:23

s is in Sam and you can find me on in Instagram too I'm pretty active there it's the

49:28

same uh Instagram name same handle Sonos Wellness perfect well I'll make sure

49:34

that those links are in the show notes so people can navigate towards those easily and they can check out your book

49:40

there on the website I guess as well um but thank you so much for coming on the show I learned more about um Hormone

49:48

Health for sure I learned more about you know I just yeah it's just such a wild wild journey and I think I think it's

49:53

just as as a father as a man having that understanding and respect and you know is is very very important and it just

50:00

only just like helps to navigate us towards a a better Journey for like you know getting women to have and I don't

50:08

want to say better births but like being able to have better structures and support

50:14

systems around them to deal with deal with those things yeah and it's that's actually equally important for the men

50:20

and the partners too uh we've got to figure out how to support each other in

50:25

that absolutely absolutely well thanks again for coming on the show really really

50:31

appreciate your time today thank you so much for having me this was really so much fun beautiful well that is it for

50:37

this episode of True Hope cast the official podcast of true hope Canada again all the um links and everything

50:44

you might need to connect with uh Dr Emily will be in the show notes so you can find them there but other than that

50:49

that is it for this week we'll see you soon [Music]