Office Hours: Your Pregnancy & Postpartum Questions Answered

I'm Dr. Mark Hyman in each week, we're going to pull back the curtain and share the insights the research to lessons that don't always make it into your conversations with guests.

“Because at the end of the day, you are the CEO of your own health, and if you're many of your family's health too.”

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Once you conceive, the questions don't stop. They just multiply.

Pregnancy is a time of profound transformation. Your hormone shift, your metabolism changes, your nutritional needs increase, your nervous system adapts in ways that most women are not really prepared for. And postpartum, well, that may be one of the most misunderstood and underserved stages of a women's life. So in this office hours, we're slowing things down and answering your most common real-war questions about how to support your body during pregnancy and afterwards. We're going to talk about things like choosing the right prenatal vitamins and understanding the difference between folate and folic acid.

We're going to talk about managing nausea and pregnancy, acne, heartburn, which is common and needs many other common pregnancy discomforts. We're going to talk about supporting mental health during pregnancy and why it matters for your well-being postpartum. We're going to talk about reducing the risk of complications in pregnancy like preecampsia, which is high blood pressure in pregnancy.

“And we'll talk about nourishing your body in the third trimester to pair for labor and recovery. And they were going to move into postpartum. What happens with your hormonal shifts, thyroid shifts?”

What happens in your pelvic floor? How do you heal that? How do you support your immune system? How do you deal with some of the mood changes that happen with all these shifts and hormones? What about hair loss and how do you recover after a sea section? This isn't about doing everything perfectly. It's about understanding what your body is going through and learning how to support it with clarity, with some compassion and if you have an in-space tools. So whether you're pregnant now or you're planning ahead in the postpartum phase or supporting someone you love, my goal is to walk you through a process to walk away feeling informed, to feel empowered, to not feel so alone.

So let's talk about what happens once you conceive and how to support your body through pregnancy and postpartum. All right, let's start with pregnancy and prenatal vitamins and the whole difference between folate or even methyl folate versus folic acid.

“And the question is, can prenatal vitamins be harmful if I can't process folate? Well, yes, and it's important to take the right forms of these nutrients, especially when you're pregnant.”

One called methylated folate is a very important form of this vitamin, also known as vitamin B9.

It's different than folic acid, which is what's in most prenatal vitamins, which is often somewhat effective, but not always very effective.

And there's a lot of genetics that play a role here. The form of the nutrient matters, you want to have the right product. So quality is so important, and I would avoid anything with static fillers, colors, dyes, acceptance. And there's some great brands out there, I like we natal, it's actually a prenatal for men and women, and we've done some shows on the podcast on male infertility, but guess what folks. Men or half the equation in conception, so they batter, and then they are health matters, and they actually need prenatal sue before it doesn't matter what you get pregnant obviously, but the guy takes, but before for sure.

So I like we natal, there's many other brands like parent capsulations has prenatal vitamin, Storm has them, there are there many other companies to do, but you want to use the best quality possibly can. All right, what about question around nausea? This is a big thing. A lot of women get it, some women don't, but morning sickness, nausea, acne, and these are big things, they're going to talk about them. Now, if you're nauseous, there's a real simple practical thing you can do. One is making sure your blood sugar is balanced, so you want to eat, you know, often smaller, more frequent meals don't need a lot of carbs of sugar.

There's certain herbs, it can be helpful like ginger tea, you can just slice up from ginger, boil it, vitamins matter be six, very important, magnesium, really matters, and there's actually, you know, some study that show that if you've taken other be six and magnesium, it can really help. And there's even some sometimes medication like been depting, which is a weird drug that's used for insomnia, often known as unison, and I don't like prescribing drugs that often, but sometimes for women who really have intractable nausea, it can be very helpful in that early period with the B6 and higher levels.

What about psychotic pain, heartburn, these are all the things that women get, we got several questions about that, for example, why do you get psychotic? Well, it's usually caused by the uterus expanding, and you've got this giant nerve that comes off of your spinal cord and goes down through your butt, and as your uterus expands, and there's shifts in your posture, and there's ligaments that get kind of loose because of hormones called relax and that your body makes when you're pregnant, you end up, you know, often getting back pain.

There's just simple things you can do. Pelvic tilts, cat, cow stretch, really great, prenatal yoga, hip openers, really great, just moving helps. A heat and ice rotating can be very helpful, physical therapy, massage is great, myofash release, learning how to properly sleep, so you don't get in bad positions, and just walking, moving, the more you move, the better you're going to be. I know I have back issues, the more I move, the better I feel.

“So sitting here doing this podcast is probably the worst thing for me, actually, hard burn is often very common too. Why is that happen? Well, there's hormones that change, and you get the soft against relaxing a little band.”

So the sphincter, which is a little kind of valid at the top of your soft against kind of loosens, and then you've got this big uterus pushing up, and it Donald pressure grows, and then it kind of pushes food up. So how do you address that? Well, eat smaller meals, more frequent meals, if you have a big meal, it's going to make it worse.

Try four to six small ones instead of two to three big ones. Watch the trigger foods, if you're refluxed tomato base foods, citrus base foods, chocolate, fried foods.

I mean, listen, if I eat fried foods, I get heartburn, and I don't get heartburn, caffeine, coffee, which you shouldn't probably drink. Anyway, while you're pregnant, carbon and drinks may be an issue, peppermint, which sounds good if you're like peppermint tea, but that can make this fincter even worse. So watch out for that. Make sure you just kind of keep a log of food reading and see what I eat, and do I get refluxed, so that can help. Also, don't lie down after eating. That's just a general recommendation for reflux and heartburn, but give yourself two or three hours at least, ideally three hours.

“So you can digest rather than, you know, laying down after a meal. You can also elevate the head of your bed at night.”

You know, there's ways to do that with blocks, or you can, there's different even beds to do that. That can be helpful. Certain digestive aids in help like out of there.

I juice can help it's pregnancy safe. The ginger tea can be helpful. Make sure you chew your food, so you don't like have a lot of fun digestive food in there. Don't work tight clothing, and obviously you're pregnant, your belly is grown, but get pregnancy close. You're kind of have loose clothing. If you have a waistband around your belly, that can increase the pressure.

“Also, make sure you're hydrating, but not during a meal in between meals. It's really bad.”

So also don't chug a lot of water, just keep a steady flow going. Certain things are great. Magnusium can be really helpful.

It relaxes your system, calcium carbonate, or tons can be helpful, but you want to talk to your OB about that. I like magnesium glycinate often very helpful. A lot of people are magnesium deficient, and that can make reflex worse. And then, you know, if you're stressed, that makes a problem with your digestion. It slows everything down, and it makes heartburn worse. So simple, stress techniques, like breathing slow through your nose, five breath in. Pride breaths out, really slow, really simple. Thanks a couple minutes for less, and it can make a big difference in your nervous system. My favorite massage, you can get a bit of a size that helps with stress, gentle stretching, movement, being in nature.

And just simple things, doing things you love, all help. What about the mental health stuff in pregnancy? That's something people are talking about a lot. And, you know, you've got to manage all that anxiety, depression, it's a thing. And everybody's different. Some of them are into grades, some of them have all kinds of mood issues, but there's really foundational things around lifestyle that make a big difference in mental health. I see eating a whole food real diet, moving rarely makes a big impact on mental health, managing stress.

We just talked about with meditation, yoga, breath work, sleep, making sure you're part. I sleep, emotional support, you know, friends, therapists, whatever, and then, of course, keeping your blood sugar even, your nutrient levels optimize all that matters. Omega threes, you know, your baby needs a lot of Omega threes to make its brain, because 60% of the brain is made up of Omega threes, so it's going to take all yours. So you're going to get potentially low, so you want to make sure you get Omega threes as well during pregnancy.

If you're depressed or in pregnancy, there may be an increased risk of getting postpartum depression, which is a real thing, and that's kind of a drag. But there's a lot of ways to prevent that just doing all the things I said. Okay, well, there's another big problem when we're asking about, which is this thing called preeclampsia, which is quite a serious problem. And pregnancy, and you get flu retention, you get high blood pressure, can even lead to seizures.

That means bouncing your blood sugar, and getting you heard me talk about this forever, but, you know, eating whole foods, nutting a lot of sugar and starch, you know, having lots of fiber, protein, good fats, all comments and stuff.

And that works for high blood pressure.

The biggest driver of blood pressure issues is in some resistance. So if you're eating a lot of sugar, you're eating a lot of starch, it's going to drive up your blood pressure, and you want to be really, you know, careful about that. And, you know, I don't like the idea, like just whatever you want, have much ice cream or cake or cookies. I'm pregnant, I could eat, doesn't don't do that. It's not good for you.

It's not good for the baby.

“You want to still stay on a really optimally healthy diet, have, make sure you have adequate protein, lots of minerals, all that's really important.”

And I'll make a threes, like, you know, you want to be careful with fish drink pregnancy, but you can have the small fish, sardines, hearing, macrol, anchovies, small wild salmon can be helpful, all that really helps. Now, sometimes aspirin can help, so there's plus and minus on that. If you have a high risk of pre-eclampsia, if you had it before, if you have, really, if you're overweight, if you have a lot of instances, metabolic issues, you might want to take a baby aspirin. But you want to check with your obstetrician about that before taking any drugs during pregnancy.

All right. What about food, but should you be eating?

“Well, it's the same thing you want to be eating anyway, because the greater health of you is the same thing you need to create healthy baby, but there's a few things that are particularly important.”

One is making sure you've adequate protein because you're growing a whole new being. Two is lots of good healthy fats. Particularly omega-3, as I mentioned, a lot of your neurology tissue, your brain and nervous system, all made up of omega-3s. Colleen, which is really important, also important for brain development. And again, it's very low in many American diets, and it's important in our transmitter function, and you can get it from an angus, particularly angiocs, so no anguid illness, please. Making sure you stay hydrated and get adequate electrolytes, all that's important. So, I think just common sense, but again, don't over eat, don't just eat whatever you want.

No, it's okay to gain a hundred pounds in pregnancy, it's not. You're affecting the epigenetic programming of the baby, you're affecting your own health, and you want to just stay, you know, following the principles of the healthy diet, which I've written about a lot in the pegan diet or food, but that should I eat.

Okay, so how do I pick a formula? That's another question we got. Well, first of all, ideally, you want to breastfeed for at least six months or longer a year.

Sometimes it's not possible, I understand that. And so then the question is, how do you figure out what's going on with formula? And in America, formula is just crap. It's average formula has the equivalent of a coker to a day that the baby's consuming. Now, you wouldn't give your baby a can of coke, but you'd basically are giving it a can of coke if you're giving it the traditional formula. You don't want the corn syrup saws. You don't want all these additives. You want really cleaning ingredients. And there are good brands out there. Bobby is one. There's a new thing that happened. You should know about the FDA released a ban. Can you believe this? There was a ban on importing formula from Europe.

Which is way better formula. It actually has Omega 3s in it. They do a lot of really good things with it much better designed. We banned it. Why to protect the American companies that were making formula? But who was paying the price? The babies and the mothers? Who was going to the bank all day? The company is making the formula. So that's a good thing. The new FDA rule that lifted the ban on importing foreign formula is a good thing. And there's some great brands out there from Germany and other places. So I just kind of check around on that.

“Here's the thing about springtime. It's not just a change in weather. It's a season designed for your body to accelerate your immune system shifts.”

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All right. What happens after you give birth? Postpartum period is really misunderstood by many people. It's an underserved part of medicine. I didn't learn anything about it in medical school. And it's a really important stage of a mother's life. So you've got to know what happens. The question is you get all this hormonal imbalance, right? You run up all this flood hormones when you're pregnant. When you give birth, the postend is gone. All these hormones are gone. What happens? So the question is how long until your hormones get back into balance? Well, it can take a minute. It can take a minute. And some of them are more affected by it than others.

There is a thing that happens often after and I don't think we exactly know why, but it's shift in thyroid function. And women get postpartum autoimmune disease of their thyroid called Hashimoto's. And about 10% of women do this. And that can cause depression. It can cause lots of things. But depression is one of the key features of low thyroid function. So now depression, but fatigue, where you can get weight gain, that's very psychological. It's hormonal. And you want to make sure you do the right test. You know, function health. We do full panel of tests. Really important to get the right test. Because most doctors don't check the right thyroid test. They just don't.

They check TSH. And they leave it at that. But you want to check the free T3 free T4 thyroid antibodies. It function health. We see over almost 15% of our members.

And 500 of them was that almost 500,000 people now have an autoimmune thyroid problem. And most of them have never been diagnosed before.

And it's affecting the quality of their life. So you want to make sure you check the right test. Next question is about what happens to your pelvic floor. You get birth. It's a big thing. It's big head goes through your pelvic floor.

“You can get a lot of tissue stretching and lots of vaginal issues. What do you do after pregnancy to help with that?”

Well, there's lots of things. Physical therapy can help. And there's pelvic floor therapy that can help. Breath work, keycilled exercises, strengthening your core, your abdomen, your abdominal muscles, all really important. And that can help a lot. It's really important both after vaginal birth and even after a C-section. Also, women report getting sick a lot after pregnancy. And the question is, why am I sick so much after having a baby? Well, I hate to say this folks, but the baby is a parasite.

It steals all your nutrients. It takes everything out of you. And you got to put it back in.

So hopefully you're doing that during pregnancy. Hopefully you're taking the right multivitamin, fish oil, vitamin D, and so forth. But you want to make sure your nutrient levels are optimized. And again, and function health. We test all your nutrients. You can do the basic function panel, which has a lot, or you can even add the extended nutrient panel. And you can go to function health.com to learn more. The other thing they can make you sick a lot is you don't sleep in, because there may be up on night or your breastfeeding and night.

And so sleep deprivation does affect immune function. Microbiome changes also happen during pregnancy and that can affect you. So there's a lot of reasons.

But as long as you're making sure your vitamin D's levels are good, you're getting the right vitamins and minerals.

You've got to make a three-fats. You're learning, you know, how to do some gentle stress reduction, to stress suppresses your immune system too, because it help with the baby, do some general exercise. All that really can be helpful in supporting your immune system.

“All right. Next question was about postpartum depression. What can we do to prevent it?”

Well, the key is to do the things that work for depression for anything, which is getting your metabolic health strain. You're bouncing your blood sugar, because in some resistance prediabetes, blood sugar issues, all those cause depression. Making sure your thyroid's right, and those tests I just mentioned are really important. Checking for inflammation, you know, lots of inflammation in your body can cause depression. And you can use that test that we do with function health CRP, which is a measure inflammation.

There's other tests you can do as well. If you check your omega-3 status again, you can do that with function health. Low omega-3s will lead to more inflammation in the body. So all that's really important. And there's some simple things around making sure you're getting an exercise, getting your sleep sorted, this tricky, but getting support. Maybe you're husband and take the baby, maybe you get a support from a family member or helping many. All that can be helpful, getting time with friends, therapy if you need it.

If you've had trauma in your life, sometimes trauma informed therapy can be really helpful. What about postpartum hair loss? Is another question about that? Is there a way to prevent it? So much hair loss after pregnancy? Well, why does this happen? It's something called television, a fluvium, which is a big medical word. It's really common. It peaks around three to five months after birth, and it's mostly caused by hormonal swings, especially estrogen after you can birth.

And also can be from nutrient-depletion. Because like I said, the baby's a parasite, it's taking all your nutrients, so making sure on a healthy diet, but protein, hair is made of protein, things like biotin can be really important. And also just making sure you have a omega-3, which you're important for hair health and your thyroid's okay. All that can affect your hair loss, and it can really be from nutrient-depletion.

Not just in pregnancy and in the birth, but breastfeeding also.

“So you're still feeding another human, and you need to make sure you're getting yourself in a quality nutrition.”

Stress, you know, people say I'm so stressed, my hair is falling out, well, it's a thing. So I know it's hard for your new mother, new family, it's some interesting, but it's the best you can to find ways to kind of reset your nervous system, whether it's a yoga knee-dra, you can listen to Spotify, or a breath work, or meditation, or yoga, or hot bath, just simple things, make a big difference. And sleep disruption also gets something something that's hard to avoid. It also can be a big factor in stress, and causing more hair follicles to go into the shedding face.

And you know, there's a lot of ways to support regrowth of your hair, even if you totally can't prevent all the hormone issues, right?

So you need a lot of nutrients for hair growth. And then pregnancy can deplete a lot of these, like iron. For example, if you're fair in this low, because when there's a lot of blood, again, you had to be fair. And even if you're not anemic, if you're fair in which is the iron stores, like the money in the bank, as opposed to in your pocket, if your iron stores are low, with low ferret, and that can cause hair loss. And if it's under 45, it's a problem. And most lab reference ranges are like 16 is normal. That's not normal. That's optimal. It's called normal because people are low.

So you want to make sure you check that. And again, on function health, you can check iron, and you can check ferret in levels.

“You can check for zinc, also really important for follicle repair, biotin, really important for keratin production.”

Omega-3 is we check that at function health, vitamin D. We also check that. That vitamin D can, if it's not adequate, can lead to thinning of your hair.

Omega-3 fats also really critical for hair. I mean, they give reaseforces Omega-3 fats to make their coat shiny.

And protein, you know, hair is made up of protein, it made up of amino acids. So you need least 800 grams a day, especially if you're breastfeeding. So how do you do all this? Well, stand your prenatal vitamin, not just when you're pregnant, but at least 60-12 months after. Eat a lot of iron rich foods. I was talking to this nanny service with my daughters. I'm going to have a baby soon. And they're like, well, do they sheet liver or do sheet kidneys? So all that stuff, liver is probably one of the richest source of iron in the diet.

I love liver, but you can also get it from grass fed beef, from lentils, from spinach. You want a lot of zinc rich foods, pumpkin seeds, oysters, beans. And you want protein to be meal. So chicken, fish, meat, nuts seeds, beans. All that's really important.

Make sure you check your lab's folks. You got to check your lab's. If you don't know what's going on in your body, you can't manage it.

No, I think some tech guy said what doesn't get measured can't be managed. So you need to know what's going on. It's like you're dashboarding your car. I mean, imagine you didn't know how fast you're going.

“How much cash in the tank, like you need to know that stuff. The thyroid's really key, as I mentioned around post-partum, a depression, hair loss, and many other things.”

And this thyroid thing is a big thing. A lot of it's really common, as I said, and it can cause anxiety, depression, exhaustion, fatigue, hair loss, fluid retention, and everything from losing the pregnancy weight. And you want to get the right test, like I said, you don't just want the TSA, you want the free T3, the free T4, the thyroid antibodies. There's even something called reverse T3, which can be very helpful. Sometimes if there's stress, that can go up and it blots like a blocking thyroid hormone.

So until you fix those, your hair loss isn't going to get better. So you've got to make sure you check that. What about these sections? And recovery from C sections? Well, what are tips for recovering? And I delivered 500 babies. I used to do lots of C sections. It's a big surgery, right? And it's that little surgery. You know, recovery isn't just about healing the scar. It's about restoring your strength of your core and your abdominal muscles. Getting your gut health back in shape, making sure nutrient levels are good, making sure your immune system's working, and the inflammation's down.

And so there's some really good foods to help with your pair tissue and repair your body, protein rich foods, which are important. Probably about a gram of protein per pound of ideal body weight, and then you can just do the math on math. So if you're like, you know, 120 pounds, that's like 120 grams a day, but you can shoot for, you know, 80 to 120. That helps collagen formation tissue repair vitamin C also really important for recovery of collagen formation, a pepperage or a little high source of citrus or high sources.

All that's really important. Also zinc fruit healing. Great pumpkin seeds, oysters, lentils, taking supplements. Also helpful. Omega threes important for skin repair and healing, salmon, sardines, walnuts, all that helps. And collagen, you can use take collagen bone broth, that helps amino acids that can help rebuild tissue as well. And then, of course, you want to make sure you optimize your microbiome, that helps, especially if you're antibiotics, which they give you off in pregnancy or c-section to prevent infection.

And then, getting your blood sugar is sorted, because that'll help reduce the overall inflammation, your body. If you, you know, diabetics don't heal well, those are pries of your blood sugar's out of whack, you're not going to heal well. And you can support your scar tissue repair, right? So it can be difficult if you don't take care of it. So you want to make sure you, you can, you vitamin E oil, there's silicone gels you can put on your scar. And then, you, there's, there's many things, but you want to make sure you get your scar sealed.

And you also want to start to rebuild your core and your pelvic floor. So you can work with, you know, simple exercise or your own, or you can work with a pelvic floor therapist. And they can really help create a good plan for repairing all those things.

“And you want to support your energy in your hormones, right? You know, if you're postpartum tired and you have surgery on top of that, I mean, that's a lot, right?”

So having babies is the big, but then you get surgery on top of it, it's a lot. So you get more nutrient demand.

If you're got as healthy and you, you know, build with the stress that's going on, much as you can.

“So emotional recovery is important, healing the nervous system is just important, is healing the incision.”

And that's, that's really important. Like, I do breath work every morning. I do Qi Gong products every morning. I live a very high-paced life, and I need to break the immune nervous system like everybody else. So I encourage you to just find some things that work for you.

And closing pregnancy and postpartum aren't really separate moments. They're part of this continuous process of hormonal shifts of metabolic change and lots of transformation in your life.

So matter where you are in the journey, I want you to remember a few things. You're not powerless. A small consistent choices can mean only if you support your hormones, they can support your energy, they can support your mental health. And they can support your recovery and even your long-term health and well-being. Now, if this episode brought you clarity, please share with somebody who might need support during pregnancy or postpartum, I'm going to send it to my daughter. So many women go through these stages feeling confused or alone.

“And having the right information can make a real difference. If you want to go deeper, we've created a free resource to support you.”

Supplements for a healthy pregnancy, including guidance on nutrition, supplements, and recovery during pregnancy and beyond, you'll find direct links in the show notes wherever you are in the journey of pregnancy or postpartum,

whether you're in the early weeks or months in or still healing, remember this, your body's wise, it's resilient, and it's incapable of incredible change.

Thanks for joining me for office hours. I love diving into these topics with you. Remember, you are the CEO of your own health. And every choice you make can move your closer to healing and vitality. I want to keep these episodes as relevant and useful as possible. So tell me, what do you want to explore next? What questions are you wrestling with?

“What breakthroughs are you chasing? Share your ideas in the comments on social media or through the link in the show notes.”

I'm listening. Until next time, keep taking charge, keep asking questions, and keep showing up for your health. If you love this podcast, please share it with someone else you think would also enjoy it. You can find me on all social media channels at Dr. Mark Hyman. Please reach out. I'd love to hear your comments and questions. Don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe to the Dr. Hyman show wherever you get your podcasts, and don't forget to check out my YouTube channel at Dr. Mark Hyman for video versions of this podcast and more.

Thank you so much again for tuning in. See you next time on the Dr. Hyman show. This podcast is separate from my clinical practice at the Ultra Wellness Center. My work at Cleveland Clinic and function health, where I am chief medical officer. This podcast represents my opinions and my guest opinions. Neither myself nor the podcast endorses the views or statements of my guests. This podcast is for educational purposes only, and it's not a substitute for professional care by a doctor or other qualified medical professional.

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