Latest / The LIFTS Podcast / Supporting New Dads: A Discussion on Paternal Perinatal Mental Health with Dr Michael Smith

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Supporting New Dads: A Discussion on Paternal Perinatal Mental Health with Dr Michael Smith · The LIFTS Podcast

• 0:09
  Gwyneth Hyndman - HMHB: Welcome to season six of our List podcast, where we talk about what it's like to give birth, to raise and nurture our babies and toddlers in Montana, and what it looks like to care for ourselves in this tumultuous season.
• 0:21
  Gwyneth Hyndman - HMHB: I'm Gwyneth Hyndman, storytelling coordinator for Healthy Mothers Healthy Babies, the Montana Coalition, and I'm so excited to share this space with mothers, fathers, caregivers, and providers who will speak on the beautiful chaos of the zero to three years
• 0:42
  Healthy Mothers: Good morning, everyone.
• 0:43
  Healthy Mothers: Today, we are gonna be looking at perinatal mental health for new fathers.
• 0:48
  Healthy Mothers: And back in June at our Perinatal Mental Health Conference in Billings, Dr.
• 0:52
  Healthy Mothers: Michael Smith, a naturopathic doctor from Nature Health and Wellness Clinic in Missoula, spoke on the topic of paternal perinatal mental health, and he's joining us here today.
• 1:02
  Healthy Mothers: And since we are gonna be looking at paternal perinatal mental health from the naturopathic medicine lens, Dr.
• 1:09
  Healthy Mothers: Smith, can you just tell us what naturopathic medicine is?
• 1:15
  Dr: I love that question.
• 1:17
  Dr: Oftentimes I'll p- tell people I'm a naturopathic doctor.
• 1:19
  Dr: They're like,"Natural what?" And a fun opportunity for me.
• 1:24
  Dr: Imagine going to your primary care doctor, and somebody who you can see for pretty much anything, and somebody who can order labs and order imaging and be that central hub person for your health.
• 1:43
  Dr: And then imagine being able to sit and talk with them for the first visit for 90 minutes or for the subsequent visits for 30 minutes, which is way longer than the average primary care visit, And being able to get a prescription if you need it, but not necessarily have to because we can talk about diet, or we can talk about herbs or nutrition or exercise or homeopathy or physical medicine or hydrotherapy or so many other modalities that exist.
• 2:15
  Dr: And you start getting the picture of that's what a naturopathic doctor is.
• 2:19
  Dr: That's what I do on a daily basis, where I am able to help patients from a very root cause, holistic perspective with their health.
• 2:31
  Dr: Oftentimes, especially lately, I've been seeing a lot of patients for really complex medical challenges.
• 2:38
  Dr: They've been through lots of physicians and doctors, and they don't exactly know what's going on or how to best approach it, and I'm able to give a whole new lens on their lab work that they've already done or identify labs that maybe we need to do that could ask-- help us ask different questions, so we can get different answers.
• 2:58
  Dr: I'm seeing many patients that are seeking for answers and seeking for help and clarity.
• 3:03
  Dr: And I know that sounds very broad, but a lot of sometimes what I'm doing is just putting those puzzles pieces together.
• 3:10
  Dr: One I am really interested in and focusing my practice on is more neurological health.
• 3:18
  Dr: So I love anything that has to do with the nervous system and by extension mental health which really is a manifestation of the nervous system as we talk about neurotransmitters.
• 3:30
  Dr: So I love seeing patients with Alzheimer's, with Parkinson's, with multiple sclerosis, with stroke, with seizures, and the many influences that affect our brain.
• 3:40
  Healthy Mothers: You spoke at the Perinatal Mental Health Conference in June,
• 3:44
  Dr: Yes
• 3:45
  Healthy Mothers: we've talked since then, and you're really still at the start gathering research on paternal perinatal mental health.
• 3:53
  Healthy Mothers: You've studied, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's.
• 3:56
  Healthy Mothers: Why this right now, and what, what grabbed your interest
• 4:00
  Dr: I think it really started with me being a dad.
• 4:04
  Dr: We had two kids.
• 4:07
  Dr: Our first was born in the hospital because we were very young, new parents that weren't so sure about a lot of things and just wanted the s- the security that provided, and it was a wonderful experience.
• 4:18
  Dr: We had a great labor and delivery nurse.
• 4:21
  Dr: Not without its hiccups, but it w- overall, the birth experience went really well.
• 4:26
  Dr: And then our second was born at home with a midwife and a doula, and that was an, a equally amazing very different experience as well.
• 4:35
  Dr: And me with my kind of medical inclination, being able to step in and help in that role, helping deliver the placenta, helping s- support my wife through that as a kind of a daddy doula in a way.
• 4:47
  Dr: So being very aware of that birth experience and everything that goes on just from me being a dad.
• 4:54
  Dr: After my our first, our daughter was born, my wife had fairly significant postpartum depression, perinatal mental health.
• 5:04
  Dr: And it was challenging for her And then after our second, we moved to New York City when my son was two months old.
• 5:12
  Dr: And for those first two months, we were living close to my wife's family, and things were going well, and then we moved, and very soon, the stress of being in a city, of having to carry a stroller up and down subway stairs and finding a house, living, dealing with 80-year-old buildings with gas leaks, like neighbors, the whole iden- i- it's an energy of the city that you really can't describe it in Montana because it doesn't exist.
• 5:40
  Dr: That really took a me- toll for her mentally.
• 5:44
  Dr: And then throughout my grad school experience, I was doing a lot of experiments these protein-based antibody tests that the whole experiment would take four or five hours to do start to finish.
• 6:01
  Dr: And so I would be at the lab by myself a lot, and sometimes really late.
• 6:08
  Dr: Sometimes I'd get home 9:00, 10:00, 11:00 PM.
• 6:11
  Dr: And it was-- it got really lonely, and I exper- started to experience a level of depression that thankfully I don't have right now, but it gave me some really good insight as to what mental health feels like, of what-- when things don't go well.
• 6:28
  Dr: I've certainly de- deal with my own ups and downs of anxiety that comes with normal life, stressors with work, with family, with other things that I'm going through, everything on my plate at once.
• 6:41
  Dr: All of those are there.
• 6:42
  Dr: So I feel like with that, that background of kind of the mental health, that kind of springboarded into naturopathic medicine, where I'm able to look at the whole body and really try to help individuals address their healthcare from that very holistic perspective.
• 7:03
  Dr: Shortly after moving to Montana one of the doctors that I work with, Dr.
• 7:09
  Dr: Christine White-Deibel here at Natura in Mont- Missoula, she introduced me to this world of perinatal mental health.
• 7:15
  Dr: She's presented at the Perinatal Mental Health Conference in the past, and she was presenting, that year and invited me to come just to be there.
• 7:27
  Dr: And it was just this wonderful experience, as it always is, and just being able to dive in and really with this inclination toward fathers going into that first conference last year, 2025, Being able, like looking at the amazing energy, the caliber of people that were there and the desire that there is collectively to support families during this very vulnerable time.
• 7:57
  Dr: Reflecting back on when our children were born it's vulnerable.
• 8:01
  Dr: There's a lot of things medically going on.
• 8:04
  Dr: There's a lot of things medically that can go wrong, and sometimes they do, and we need to adapt, we need to support.
• 8:11
  Dr: There's new stressors.
• 8:13
  Dr: There's a lack of sleep because babies don't follow an, a sleep schedule immediately.
• 8:19
  Dr: There's changing relationships with going from two in a family to three changes that dynamic between a couple, and now they have to share that time with a child.
• 8:31
  Dr: Going from three to four and so on, that can change the dynamic.
• 8:36
  Dr: And so I started doing research and getting in- more involved, and it's really resonated with me.
• 8:42
  Healthy Mothers: So what isn't and then what is your approach to paternal perinatal mental health?
• 8:50
  Dr: I'm not a mental health provider.
• 8:51
  Dr: I'm not a therapist.
• 8:52
  Dr: I know what CBT and EMDR are to a basic level, but I'm not able to do it.
• 8:58
  Dr: I refer to my mental health pr- colleagues for that.
• 9:01
  Dr: But I really believe that as we approach mental health, especially for fathers during the perinatal period, we can approach it from a whole person perspective.
• 9:11
  Dr: We can look at hormones that are changing.
• 9:16
  Dr: We can look at stressors and how we manage stress.
• 9:19
  Dr: We can look at sleep and how to optimize sleep and nutrition and ex- supporting exercise, and other underlying health conditions which manifest.
• 9:27
  Dr: And by doing that, I believe we can really get at least part of the way, and then with our, with the mental health col- with my mental health colleagues, work together in supporting the whole person as best we can.
• 9:41
  Dr: Back in October, almost a year ago, October of 2025 Postpartum Support International post-hosted a training for perinatal mental health for fathers in Helena, and I was able to attend that and have a wonderful experience being more formally trained in that realm being able to learn more, more from the mental health side of it than anything about how to help approach this vulnerable population of fathers who are part of this whole birth experience, but might not know what's going on and how to approach it.
• 10:19
  Healthy Mothers: For new dads, w- from the research, and it's really interesting, I think I told you last night I was up reading this, there's very little, to read about it right now.
• 10:29
  Healthy Mothers: It's a really still a fresh topic.
• 10:33
  Healthy Mothers: And one point that was made, and it was a Men's Health article on call, it was done in 2000 I think, and it was about h- this, epidemic of depression for new dads that isn't really being being brushed aside.
• 10:50
  Healthy Mothers: And but it was also making the point that perinatal mental health really hasn't been a big discussion point since, the mid-'90s.
• 11:00
  Healthy Mothers: And, that's still filtering down.
• 11:02
  Healthy Mothers: In the last month, it is all we're talking about right now,
• 11:06
  Dr: yeah
• 11:06
  Healthy Mothers: And at least feels like around here.
• 11:09
  Healthy Mothers: But, that's still being normalized.
• 11:13
  Healthy Mothers: We're a couple steps behind.
• 11:14
  Healthy Mothers: And, what he was saying is, it's some new dads don't feel like, their own anxiety or depression is they don't feel like it's valid, and they don't feel like it's a discussion point, or they feel like they're taking away from that conversation of new moms, and maybe you can go into that too,
• 11:35
  Dr: I think we can take a step back and look at where we've come with maternal health.
• 11:45
  Dr: For thousands of years, childbirth has been a maternal experience.
• 11:52
  Dr: And for many of those fathers, men were not even included in the birth experience itself.
• 12:01
  Dr: When I was doing some research, it, I think it was the 1970s that conversation started to change when fathers were actually allowed to be part of the birth experience in the labor and delivery unit in the hospital.
• 12:17
  Dr: So we have a, I would say definitely paternal programming, if not a ma- maternal programming as well, to really focus on the mothers, and rightfully 300%, like the m- the mother is doing the work of delivering the baby.
• 12:37
  Dr: The goal is to make sure baby gets out alive and that mom stays alive and healthy and well through the process.
• 12:44
  Dr: That is the goal.
• 12:47
  Dr: And at the same time, we now have these fathers, and I think I would acknowledge a little bit of maybe privilege with the medical inclination and training and education that I've had throughout the years going into my children's birth experiences with knowing what's going on, and many dads don't.
• 13:07
  Dr: Maybe they attend a birth class, but a majority of birth classes don't talk about the paternal experience.
• 13:15
  Dr: Maybe they do a little bit.
• 13:17
  Dr: They definitely don't talk about the, the, the mental health side of things.
• 13:22
  Dr: So we're seeing this like we...
• 13:24
  Dr: going back in history, fathers are already have a an underdog role going into this.
• 13:32
  Dr: They love their partner, their spouse.
• 13:35
  Dr: They want to support them.
• 13:37
  Dr: Underneath their shirt is a Superman outfit, and in the hospital they can't wear it.
• 13:43
  Dr: They're lost.
• 13:44
  Dr: If they're at a C-section, they're standing against the wall in scrubs and a hairnet and watching this surgery take place, because it is a surgery, where their child is born via C-section, and their wife is on the table.
• 13:59
  Dr: They can't do anything to help.
• 14:02
  Dr: It's a very vulnerable time.
• 14:03
  Dr: They don't know what to do.
• 14:06
  Dr: And compound that with financial stress or just work time obligation stress, running a household, taking care of other kids, sleep deprivation, so many other things.
• 14:23
  Dr: It all sums up to the point that a normal person, someone who does not have any medic- other mental, medical or mental health challenges would still struggle.
• 14:37
  Dr: And then we have all these things going on.
• 14:39
  Dr: Maybe they have a prior diagnosis of depression or anxiety or ADHD or OCD or trauma from their own life, and all of it's coming back, and then they can drop and get into a funk and stay there.
• 14:54
  Dr: And it's interesting when we think about the difference between paternal perinatal mental health and maternal perinatal mental health.
• 15:02
  Dr: We often talk about the baby blues for moms and be manifesting as more of a depression type picture.
• 15:13
  Dr: And For the dads it actually can manifest more of an anxiety and more of an OCD type tendency they can't control it so they go to things that they can control which is maybe their hobbies or their life or other things and they get really particular about certain things.
• 15:37
  Dr: Obviously there's no right or wrong way of how this manifests because every individual's mental health physical health presentation is different whether we're talking moms or dads or both.
• 15:52
  Dr: I I like to sometimes talk about how with paternal mental health, it's like they like to go to the man cave and just hang out and be secluded and not have as much interaction with others.
• 16:06
  Dr: And so it really does manifest differently.
• 16:10
  Dr: And as it manifests differently, it still affects so many fathers.
• 16:17
  Dr: Right now, I think the statistics are that about one in five mothers experience perinatal mental health.
• 16:27
  Dr: The, the rate for fathers is about one in 10, and that varies depending on the continent and where you live.
• 16:34
  Dr: The numbers are between 8 and 13%.
• 16:38
  Dr: 10 is in the middle, and I'm gonna guess that's probably underrepresenting the true nature of what's going on.
• 16:46
  Dr: I believe it could be as high as one in five.
• 16:50
  Dr: I really do, because one of the main risk factors for paternal mental health is their their partner also having mental health challenges.
• 17:05
  Dr: And we think about the, how culturally, stereotypically men are expected perhaps to be stoic, to be masculine, to be macho, whatever stereotype that we think about with fathers' masculinity, it often does not include the softer mental health side.
• 17:35
  Dr: We hear the stories.
• 17:36
  Dr: I think about children growing up on the prairie or growing up in these different rustic cabins or like whatever, and even in other literature, men are expected to hold everything together.
• 17:50
  Dr: They can't cry, and maybe once in the whole book you'll hear about the dad crying kind of thing.
• 17:56
  Dr: We don't allow that as a society, and certainly if we don't allow that as a society, we're not gonna allow it in ourselves, speaking as a dad, to be that vulnerable, to seek help, to want help, to believe that help is actually going to help, because we haven't seen it work for so many others in the past.
• 18:22
  Healthy Mothers: Yeah.
• 18:23
  Healthy Mothers: You had talked a little bit about what naturopathic medicine looks like in Montana specifically compared to other states.
• 18:31
  Healthy Mothers: Can you just talk about what that looks like here right now in this year?
• 18:35
  Dr: Totally.
• 18:37
  Dr: Montana is one of the best states that I know of to practice naturopathic medicine in.
• 18:43
  Dr: The only states that would be comparable or even better would be like Oregon and Washington and other states where naturopathic doctors have been around for only a couple couple decades longer.
• 18:56
  Dr: We've been licensed here, I think, since 1991, and we enjoy a really broad formulary.
• 19:04
  Dr: So like I said earlier, we can prescribe pretty much any medication, minus a few chemotherapy drugs, which I wouldn't prescribe anyway'cause I'm not a cancer doctor.
• 19:14
  Dr: We can act as primary care.
• 19:16
  Dr: I can work alongside primary care doctors to help care for patients.
• 19:20
  Dr: And we are recognized in the healthcare community for the work that we do, looking outside the box, thinking a little bit bigger, looking at the whole person, not just in the specialty silos that we often see medicine and healthcare in.
• 19:35
  Dr: Weaving that in.
• 19:36
  Dr: Naturopathic doctors are not licensed in all states.
• 19:40
  Dr: We're still working on that.
• 19:41
  Dr: We're not recognized by Medicare federally, so there are some barriers to healthcare, but we do our best working alongside Medicare providers and others to provide this quality care for patients that we see.
• 19:55
  Healthy Mothers: Yeah.
• 19:56
  Healthy Mothers: Can you about what attracted to you to naturopathic medicine, your journey into this?
• 20:03
  Dr: I love that question because it is really a journey.
• 20:07
  Dr: I've had my own s-share of health challenges throughout my life, different orthopedics.
• 20:11
  Dr: Things that have been not as ideal as I might want, and having different surgeries growing up, and growing up in a household where my, some of my siblings had other health things.
• 20:21
  Dr: And through all of that, my
• 20:24
  Healthy Mothers: Dr.
• 20:24
  Healthy Mothers: Smith where did you-- can you just say where you grew up?
• 20:27
  Dr: Yeah.
• 20:28
  Dr: I grew up, I was born in Edmonton, Alberta in Canada, and I grew up in Salt Lake City area.
• 20:33
  Dr: So access to amazing hospitals in the Salt Lake area healthcare there.
• 20:39
  Dr: Through all of that, my mother was always, like, researching and learning and wanting to figure out how can how can she help her kids the best way possible, and using the most natural ways that we can.
• 20:54
  Dr: And certainly, she's learned a lot through the years, and we've collectively learned a lot through the years.
• 21:01
  Dr: And some things have only been able to be solved with the conventional healthcare system, like what an orthopedic surgeon can provide.
• 21:09
  Dr: And being exposed to healthcare at a very early age, going to see doctors and specialists, and trying to put this, put my own puzzle together.
• 21:16
  Dr: In undergrad, I definitely wanted to be a doctor.
• 21:19
  Dr: I knew that, so I did the pre-medical program.
• 21:23
  Dr: And then I applied for medical school, and initially that it didn't play out the way I was hoping and was expecting.
• 21:34
  Dr: I was not accepted.
• 21:35
  Dr: I had one interview but it didn't turn out that way.
• 21:38
  Dr: It was at that same time that I got married, and my wife was able to finish her degree and finish her education.
• 21:45
  Dr: And between between us, me graduating and and her finishing, we had one kid, and when she graduated eight months pregnant.
• 21:57
  Dr: And then through that I applied to medical school again, was not accepted and I knew that there was something more that I needed to do.
• 22:05
  Dr: I had my test scores were decent, my GPA was not bad.
• 22:10
  Dr: I did a lot of shadowing.
• 22:12
  Dr: I knew that there w- the doors were closing for a reason, and it wasn't accidental.
• 22:17
  Dr: Ultimately, the journey took me to New York City, where I ended up doing a master's program and focusing on neuroscience and epigenetics, and this interface between our environment and our genetics and how we can influence how our DNA manifests in in, in our genes and our proteins and things like that.
• 22:40
  Dr: And so we moved to New York City when my daughter was two and my son was two months old, plopping into this big metropolis of a city and through that experience I, I still knew that I wasn't done.
• 22:55
  Dr: I knew that there was more training that I needed to get in order for me to fulfill my life's potential.
• 23:01
  Dr: And through that, there's two things that happened simultaneously in a way.
• 23:09
  Dr: The master's program I was attending was at a prominent medical school there in New York City so I would...
• 23:15
  Dr: In the hallways and things, I would see medical students.
• 23:17
  Dr: I would see seminars or conferences about all these new and evolving trends of therapy, and certainly that has its place, but it didn't resonate with me in the way that I maybe would have hoped because I knew that there's more to healing, especially my focus on neuroscience, and I was then very interested in Alzheimer's disease and dementia wanting to find a more holistic solution, not just finding a new biomarker that then we can use for a new drug.
• 23:52
  Dr: We have to acknowledge all of the factors, our diet, our lifestyle, and so many other things.
• 23:56
  Dr: So that kind of, in some ways, closed some doors, and it really funneled me into a memory that I had back in undergrad when I met with a naturopathic doctor, and I shadowed him, got connected with him through a mutual acquaintance.
• 24:12
  Dr: And I remember that, about halfway through my program"Yes, that's what I wanna do." And I want to be able to provide that holistic whole person care.
• 24:23
  Dr: I wanna be a doctor.
• 24:24
  Dr: It allows me to do that, so I did.
• 24:27
  Dr: I applied to different programs, was accepted and attended the National University of Natural Medicine in Portland, Oregon, where I did a four-year master's-- four-year doctoral program, very much structured just like medical school.
• 24:41
  Dr: And and then from there, took a, a journey.
• 24:46
  Dr: First, a brief stop in eastern I-Idaho, where I practiced for a year before coming to Missoula where I've been now for a solid two years, and I love it.
• 24:58
  Gwyneth Hyndman - HMHB: So going back to new dads and mental health in those first months and years of being a new dad just the effects of this are so wide-reaching, and I think we've talked about this too, how, this shows up in, excessive drinking and substance use.
• 25:19
  Gwyneth Hyndman - HMHB: And there was a study I was reading about, and it was still with back into that men's health article.
• 25:25
  Gwyneth Hyndman - HMHB: It was a Swedish study they were kind of going back to that was done in 2000, but it was about partners were reporting domestic abuse.
• 25:34
  Gwyneth Hyndman - HMHB: In 65% of the cases, it was after the birth of a child.
• 25:38
  Gwyneth Hyndman - HMHB: Ultimately it has such an impact on the whole household.
• 25:43
  Gwyneth Hyndman - HMHB: And you've just hit this point too where, you know, as you're doing research right now and gathering in research for here in Montana, what do you suspect is out there?
• 25:55
  Dr: Yeah great questions.
• 25:56
  Dr: From my experience and from a few people that I've been able to talk to I thoroughly believe that paternal mental health challenges are a problem are a challenge.
• 26:11
  Dr: When I was speaking at the Perinatal Mental Health Conference there were several people expressing how they would hear from mothers that their partners were struggling, And so they would give, develop programming or other things to help with that, but then the dads wouldn't come to actually receive that help.
• 26:33
  Dr: And so I hear anecdotes.
• 26:36
  Dr: I hear...
• 26:37
  Dr: I was talking to some friends recently about their experience with birth and with some other family members that they know and how it's it's there But it's hard to help connect fathers to resources and to help them.
• 26:56
  Dr: I think the step before that would be to convince them that there might-- there is something, there's something wrong, and I think men don't wanna feel like there is something wrong,'cause they're Mr.
• 27:07
  Dr: Fix It.
• 27:08
  Dr: They're Superman.
• 27:09
  Dr: They wanna keep everything together, and they might feel flawed if they acknowledge that there's something wrong, which there's nothing flawed about that.
• 27:19
  Dr: But helping them recognize that their testosterone is dropping, their cortisol is dropping or changing.
• 27:26
  Dr: There's other hormones at play that are changing physiologically in their body when their partner gives birth that are causing these things, helping them see that.
• 27:36
  Dr: And what I would love to do in my practice is help more dads.
• 27:43
  Dr: Help them recognize all of these things that are going on, whether we're talking hormones, whether we're talking lifestyle or stress or or different treatments.
• 27:53
  Dr: It doesn't need to be pharmaceutical antidepressants, and in fact, there's some research that shows that most dads actually want just talk therapy.
• 28:02
  Dr: They don't want necessarily medication.
• 28:05
  Dr: Both are an option.
• 28:08
  Dr: Helping them see those things, and that's where I would love to expand my, more of my practice into that realm.
• 28:16
  Dr: And if anything, as I do that, I would love to even just listen and go on a listening tour in a way of hearing stories from, of dads and from dads and how they need that support and then being able to then on a programmatic standpoint this is what HMHB is great for, but policy standpoint, how can we help promote mental health for fathers?
• 28:47
  Dr: Can we encourage more companies to have a better paternal leave policy to give them time to be with their babies and moms after their partner gives birth?
• 28:59
  Dr: Can we acknowledge in communities and church congregations teach people how to take care of the dads, not just the moms?
• 29:13
  Dr: How can we break down these walls that we often run into with these, with fathers seeking care?
• 29:23
  Dr: And how can we help them recognize that There is hope and there is help available?
• 29:30
  Dr: That's what I'd love to do.
• 29:31
  Healthy Mothers: Tell me more about the tour.
• 29:33
  Healthy Mothers: Why would this, when you talk about a tour, of taking it tell me what you're thinking with that
• 29:40
  Dr: I use that as a kind of a loose more of maybe semi-symbolic.
• 29:43
  Dr: I would love to travel Montana and just explore and learn.
• 29:46
  Dr: But technology allows us to bridge that distance much easier.
• 29:53
  Dr: Just to listen, to hear what different dads have experienced in their story, in, in their birth experiences, in their families.
• 30:03
  Dr: What does that look like?
• 30:04
  Dr: What are the threads?
• 30:05
  Dr: I've certainly from a research standpoint, I've looked at much research.
• 30:10
  Dr: I probably have a good inch or so a list of research I've printed, much less other research that I haven't printed out to read and highlight about this topic.
• 30:22
  Dr: From a naturopathic perspective with all the training that I have I know mechanistically how things work.
• 30:31
  Dr: But when I'm treating individuals, I'm treating people, I'm not treating lab values.
• 30:37
  Dr: So if-- even if your testosterone is low or not low or whatever, or, and vitamin D or cortisol or B vitamins or whatever we're talking about, it doesn't matter until it correlates with how the person is feeling.
• 30:54
  Dr: And as someone who is still fairly new on the journey of being a doctor and of helping patients I'm eager to just learn and to listen.
• 31:06
  Healthy Mothers: Dr.
• 31:07
  Healthy Mothers: Smith, if someone wanted to get in touch with you, we will have this in the show notes as well, too.
• 31:13
  Healthy Mothers: is the best way to get in touch with you and to continue this conversation if they wanted to contribute or just know about more about what you do?
• 31:23
  Dr: That's a great question.
• 31:24
  Dr: I think the best way would be to contact me through my office, Natura Health and Wellness Clinic.
• 31:30
  Dr: Our website is natura.health, and there's no.com, it's just.health.
• 31:35
  Dr: The email is info@natura.health.
• 31:38
  Dr: That's probably the best way to get ahold of me, and otherwise, I'm happy to continue the conversation.
• 31:45
  Healthy Mothers: Okay, great.
• 31:45
  Healthy Mothers: Thank you so much, Dr.
• 31:46
  Healthy Mothers: Smith.
• 31:46
  Healthy Mothers: I really appreciate your time today.
• 31:48
  Healthy Mothers: This has been wonderful and illuminating.
• 31:50
  Dr: Thank you for including me.
• 31:51
  Dr: I'm happy to be part of it and grateful for your time.
• 31:54
  Healthy Mothers: I think I've said this before, this is just a really fascinating topic to me.
• 31:57
  Dr: Yeah.
• 31:58
  Dr: I'm excited to see where this goes.
• 31:59
  Dr: I don't have any...
• 32:02
  Dr: Yeah, just as you said, build, if you build it, they will come, and that's the case.
• 32:06
  Dr: And certainly I would love to grow my practice in this way, but at the same time, I'm just clearly passionate about it.
• 32:14
  Gwyneth Hyndman, HMHB-MT: The Lifts podcast is hosted by Healthy Mothers Healthy Babies, the Montana Coalition, a nonprofit organization out of Helena, Montana dedicated to the health and wellbeing of families expecting and raising little ones.
• 32:28
  Gwyneth Hyndman, HMHB-MT: Opinions and views expressed in these interviews do not necessarily represent the views expressed by HMHB as an organization.
• 32:36
  Gwyneth Hyndman, HMHB-MT: If you have a topic or a story you would love to see covered on our podcast, or if you have any feedback on a podcast that has aired, you can contact me at gwyneth@hmhb-mt.org.
• 32:49
  Gwyneth Hyndman, HMHB-MT: You can also go right to our website at hmhb-mt.org.
• 32:55
  Gwyneth Hyndman, HMHB-MT: We look forward to hearing from you