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What Did Pregnancy Reveal About Your Lifelong Health? · Life After Birth by Her Health Room

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  what if pregnancy was not just about having a baby, and postpartum wasn't just about recovering after birth?
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  What if pregnancy and postpartum, We're giving you clues about the next 10, 20, even 30 years of your health Because when I think about that word longevity, I think about men in their 40s, biohacking, supplements, cold plunges, LED lamps, you name it.
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  What doesn't come to mind as often as it should is women, mothers.
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  What about them?
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  Living longer, aging better is great, but what's really important is health span.
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  lifespan is how long you live.
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  Healthspan is how long you live well.
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  and improving your health span focuses largely on avoiding heart disease, cancer, diabetes, dementia.
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  But women who go through pregnancy and postpartum have an increased risk of certain conditions like diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, but somehow we're still missing mothers from that conversation.
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  And that's why I say your pregnancy story, your postpartum recovery is not irrelevant to your lifelong health.
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  It's actually a piece of the puzzle.
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  And you could even argue all the things that happened before pregnancy all build into the puzzle of pregnancy, the postpartum, and life after that.
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  You cannot look at women's health and look at it in isolation.
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  Sleep is information.
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  Your pelvic floor is information.
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  Your recovery is information.
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  It is all information that should be used to guide how your health and wellbeing is postpartum By the end of this video, I want you to go away with these questions: what did pregnancy reveal about my body?
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  What has postpartum exposed?
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  What have I normalized, and what do I need to take seriously now so in five years, ten years, twenty years, I'm not still paying for it?
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  Because we've had kids, we wanna be around for them.
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  We wanna be grandmothers.
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  And so we need to focus on I don't wanna just bounce back, but I wanna live well for a long time And I want to see a space where longevity for mothers, for women is also prioritized, and we're not just fed what works on the male body, completely ignoring that we have a completely different need, different experience, and different stresses through our life can affect our healthspan, welcome back to Making Room.
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  I'm Dr.
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  Remi, I'm an obstetrics and gynecology doctor and founder, of Her Health Room.
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  This is where I'm having conversations that help women navigate pregnancy, postpartum, and motherhood with more clarity.
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  This episode, it's longevity.
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  Longevity for moms, beyond the first six weeks check there is so much information that we have gathered about our health through pregnancy, through the postpartum period, that really should lend well into how we move forward with our long-term health.
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  Thinking about prevention as well as recovery.
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  Thinking about identity, thinking about systems, thinking about way-- the ways we as mothers carry everything and then wonder why we're exhausted, burnt out, anemic, disconnected from our bodies and not necessarily getting the follow-up we need.
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  And what we can do about it, because I do not think the system is here to save us.
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  So subscribe to this channel, subscribe to this podcast.
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  by the end of it, I want you to go away knowing how to take stock, knowing how to audit your health, knowing what you need to do, who you need to go to, what keywords, buzzwords you need to say to make sure that you can be as healthy as you can Because we're in a powerful window really, where we can make changes that will affect our life moving forward.
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  I will never forget someone who looked at me when I was twenty-nine, and said,"You better start exercising now so that you can build body mass, because the minute you're thirty-five it is all downhill." Did I listen?
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  Obviously not.
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  But it is something that still comes to mind today.
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  What things can I do now to make sure that when I go through the perimenopause and through the menopausal period, that I'm doing so as healthy as can be.
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  So in pregnancy specifically, there are a few main conditions that we worry about.
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  We know it's the ultimate stress test.
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  It's the ultimate test on your body to see what your body can handle with your genetics, with your makeup, with your lifestyle and diet.
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  What can your body handle?
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  And that is information.
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  And so we see it really with pre-eclampsia.
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  Women who have high blood pressure or pre-eclampsia in pregnancy are at risk of having high blood pressure in later life.
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  And because what happens in pregnancy is that your blood volume goes up, the resistance in your vessels go down to increase the volume spread around the body.
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  And with pre-eclampsia specifically, there are some issues around how the placenta forms that increases that resistance.
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  So if someone is able to have pre-eclampsia, they are therefore at risk of having high blood pressure, because as you age, the resistance in the vessels change, specifically the way that your, regulators in your body tell your blood pressure to be high or low change.
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  And so those women are at a higher risk of high blood pressure later down the line.
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  And what's important is even if you've just had high blood pressure in pregnancy, not full-blown pre-eclampsia, those women are also at risk of having high blood pressure in later life.
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  And what we do see, and I don't think is spoken about enough, is women who have pre-eclampsia or high blood pressure, they go to their GP at their six-week check, and they could be in their twenties or their thirties, and their blood pressure has not gotten back to baseline.
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  So then what that means is that people in their twenties, thirties, are then having to take high blood pressure tablets, as their standard.
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  That then becomes their standard medication.
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  So then when they then come back for their second pregnancy, they've now got something we would term as chronic hypertension.
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  And we know when your blood pressure's not regulated maybe'cause the vessels aren't working as they should, what you then do is have a risk of heart disease, stroke, small vessel disease in the legs in later life And then you have this huge period where you're living in ill health because you're managing your blood pressure, because you're at risk of heart disease, and that does show up in later life Similarly, if you have gestational diabetes, so, diabetes diagnosed in pregnancy after twenty weeks, what we know is that a huge proportion of those women, by the time they have a blood test at thirteen weeks, the diabetes is gone.
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  But you are still supposed to be having your blood sugar levels checked every year because of the risk of diabetes being there longer term.
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  And like we see with the high blood pressure, there are people who will have their blood sugar levels not return to normal, therefore they need to carry on treating the diabetes.
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  and therefore in their next pregnancy, they're like a Type II diabetic as opposed to just a pregnancy-induced diabetes.
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  But for the Type II diabetics, the pregnancy-induced diabetes, again, if you're having babies in your twenties, it might not be till your forties that it shows up, but it can show up.
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  And if you're in your forties and it goes, it might be that it comes back in your fifties.
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  So like the next five, ten, twenty years of your life can really be impacted by what we knew in pregnancy.
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  People who have a heavy bleed after delivery, there is new and emerging evidence of how that can affect your heart function as well.
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  And then what you see in later life is increased risk of heart disease, which we know is one of the major things we need to control against to have longevity, to have that longer health span.
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  And so knowing just these three things, just these three things, for me, is enough to indicate that what happens in your pregnancy can really show up for you in later life, and the time in between is not passive.
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  What I want to say in this video is let's stop treating pregnancy and postpartum as if they're disconnected from the rest of a woman's life.
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  Let's stop acting like they're just separate things,'cause they're not, and they really do impact on what's to come.
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  Pregnancy sits in the middle of your cardiovascular health, your metabolic health, your mental health, your sleep, your relationships, your work, your identity, and social support, and it's all connected What I wanna do is bring the idea about the four horsemen of chronic disease.
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  So the heart disease, metabolic dysfunction, neurodegenerative changes, and cancer The first of it would be cardiovascular health, so the heart health.
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  The blood pressure I've mentioned before, which we know.
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  The family history as well, so not just what's happening in your body, but what's happened in your family before.
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  Has anyone had really bad heart disease or high blood pressure at a really young age?
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  High cholesterol?
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  Thinking about movement, so how we eat, how we exercise, how we move.
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  Our fitness levels really affect our heart health.
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  But even more than that our stress levels, you know?
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  Like when you're mothering and you're carrying the mental load, you're doing the second shift, there's that sort of chronic level of stress that we often ignore, but that can also contribute to your heart health.
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  So the things that you can do to take stock is: Do I know my blood pressure?
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  Do I know my numbers?
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  If I had high blood pressure in pregnancy, have I gotten it checked beyond the six weeks or at three months, at six months, at twelve months?
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  There is a free resource that I'll link down below that prompts you or reminds you to go and check those levels because it's about prevention.
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  And Then we think about metabolic health.
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  So gestational diabetes, like I mentioned, is like a good sign of metabolic health.
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  But actually, for a lot of women, there's a huge proportion of women who have PMOS, and that disrupts your metabolic health can actually have an impact on your lifelong health.
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  So people with PMOS are at risk of having, diabetes in pregnancy, risk of endometrial cancer and metabolic health has far-reaching effects.
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  It affects how you feel, it affects how you exercise, actually, it affects your energy levels, and it affects your diabetes risk later on in life.
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  And so for someone who's had diabetes in pregnancy, making sure that you're getting that yearly check that I said, And oftentimes we'll think about bounce back, right?
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  Without thinking about maybe there's an underlying condition that means that it's harder for you to lose weight, it's harder for you to keep the weight off, it's harder for you to avoid the sugar.
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  And we're not doing anything beyond,"Oh, I need to lose weight.
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  I need to build strength." And it's important that you are body positive, I am, but making sure that you look beyond that and how can I make sure that my energy levels are great for the action and the activity that occurs in my day-to-day life?
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  The third things is brain health.
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  So people talk about neurodege-degenerative disease, so like dementia, Alzheimer's disease, cognitive decline, things that we see are on the up.
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  And although pregnancy might not give us a direct clue about that, what we do know in pregnancy as well is that there are changes that happen on a cellular level within the brain, and there's more information coming out around that.
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  But pregnancies associated with poor sleep in pregnancy, after pregnancy, raising kids, affects how you sleep, which can have effect on your brain health.
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  Chronic stress, again, like I've mentioned, your ability to move or not move, having high blood pressure can affect some of the smaller vessels that supply the brain and mean that they're not getting as much oxygenated blood as they need to.
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  And things like that can increase your risk of inflammation as well.
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  And so when we think about brain health, it's not just, does pregnancy cause dementia?
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  No.
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  The pregnancy period, the postpartum period, there are things that are happening in and around that period that can contribute to poor brain health.
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  And, you know, sometimes we'll say like,"Oh, mum brain," or,"I've forgotten this, I've forgotten that." But actually, there's a lot mental load that we as mothers have to carry or, I guess not have to carry, have been tricked into carrying around the house, that second shift, that working full-time, to meet your bills.
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  All of those things contribute to the load, contribute to anxiety, low mood, not being able to sleep, not being able to switch off the brain, and all of that can affect brain health later down the line.
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  taking stock of that, like what can I drop?
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  How can I do things that promote my brain to be healthy?
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  So making sure that you're sleeping as much as you can, which sounds stupid, especially if you have a crying baby, but can you get sleep at other parts of the day?
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  And this is something that I covered off in a podcast episode with a sleep trainer that's for babies.
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  But actually, maybe we need to think about sleep training for moms.
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  Like, how can women mentally switch off so that they can sleep?
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  And how can we not normalize things like postnatal insomnia or pregnancy insomnia?
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  And thinking about supplements, the proven supplements that help sleep.
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  So magnesium is one of those things that can help sleep but there'll be other things if sleep is really detrimental And discussing this with your clinician, there isn't a reason why we should normalize being sleep-deprived for moms and for women.
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  And then the fourth thing is cancer and pregnancy itself, has been proven to be protective over some cancers.
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  Breastfeeding has been said to reduce the risk of breast cancer.
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  Having a pregnancy reduces the risk of endometrial cancer as well.
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  There are also screening programs for other cancers so that we can make sure that we're keeping on top of things.
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  Cervical cancer, for instance, you can attend your cervical cancer screening every three to five years, depending on where you are, to make sure that you're not at risk of having abnormal cells which cause cancer.
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  Plugging into things like bowel cancer screening as well, when you're above the age of fifty, or picking up on any symptoms that might reveal an earlier form of cancer.
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  So just making room for yourself really, which is what this podcast is about.
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  Like making room for your own health, for your own physical health, mental health, social health.
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  Making sure that you're booking that blood pressure check, that you're booking your cervical smear test, that you're booking your diabetes test, that you're making time to sleep that you're not continuing in sort of this sleep deprivation and not glamorizing the busyness of motherhood, and understanding what changes that you can actually make in your own life to help increase your health span, to make sure that your life is long.
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  Like pelvic floor dysfunction might not cause you to live shorter, but it will prolong your unhealthy living phase and taking that to a clinician early, seeking a physiotherapist, thinking about a mummy MOT after you've delivered, and not just leaving things to the wayside thinking they'll sort themselves out because we know, we have evidence that it doesn't, and actually the only people who suffer at the end of it is us.
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  So this is it.
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  This is the heart of your body speaking.
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  This is the heart of longevity for moms, and there is so much that I can go into, and I will be doing more research, bringing it to you as well, thinking about things that I'm gonna be doing in my life, in my postpartum period and beyond, to ensure that I have a longer health span.
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  Really taking stock and auditing my own health, to make sure that I'm doing the right things let's get the basics right.
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  Let's think about preventative care with the information that we've had from the pregnancy and postpartum period before we do all those other things, you know?
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  Before we jump into: How do I appear good, look good, Botox like sometimes I'll go on social media and I'll see people taking 20 supplements a day.
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  Okay, that's all well and good, but have we done the basics?
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  Have we done the things that we actually know can cause you to have ill health?
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  Have we gone for our yearly checkups, our yearly blood test, have we done those things first before we buy into the fads of supplements that can't fix any of these things on this hand?
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  They have to be used sensibly with a clinician, I think.
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  A clinician who's good with longevity, who's good with lifestyle, functional medicine, and go from there.
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  Before you leave, why don't you go and check out my video on gestational diabetes?
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  So if you are someone who was diagnosed with gestational diabetes in pregnancy, go and see why the test itself is not the end, and what specifically you need to do after the baby is born to make sure that you are keeping on top of your metabolic health in order to serve your future health.
• 15:41
  So subscribe to this channel'cause i'll be coming back to this topic to give you resources, to speak with longevity specialists and lifestyle experts about what we can do from nutrition to sleep to stress to movement to increase our health span because it's not just the pregnancy period, it's not just the postpartum period, but it really is and beyond.
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  Hit me down in the comments if there's anything that you really wanna know about longevity, and make sure you take stock.
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  And maybe I'll produce a resource that can help you along the way.
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  Until next time.