Today Kelly and Tiffany deliver an in-depth discussion on preventing pre-eclampsia in pregnancy through holistic approaches and lifestyle changes, focusing on supporting the body's foundational functions.
00:00 Introduction
00:37 Discussion on Pre-Eclampsia
10:08 Importance of MTHFR Gene
13:18 Liver Support and Detox
Links to all the extra good stuff:
Hearty Habitat - Beautifulone code for 10% off : HERE
Childbirth Education Course Waitlist: HERE
Join our email community + get instant access to our awesome Sleep Freebie: HERE
Submit your answer-on-the-show questions: HERE
Today Kelly and Tiffany deliver an in-depth discussion on preventing pre-eclampsia in pregnancy through holistic approaches and lifestyle changes, focusing on supporting the body's foundational functions.
00:00 Introduction
00:37 Discussion on Pre-Eclampsia
10:08 Importance of MTHFR Gene
13:18 Liver Support and Detox
Links to all the extra good stuff:
Hearty Habitat - Beautifulone code for 10% off : HERE
Childbirth Education Course Waitlist: HERE
Join our email community + get instant access to our awesome Sleep Freebie: HERE
Submit your answer-on-the-show questions: HERE
Welcome to At Home with Kelly and Tiffany, where naturally minded women gather together as we pursue simplicity and confidence in health alternatives, so we can show up better in our busy lives and feel more at home in our bodies. Join your favorite home birth midwife duo for conversation, candor, and community.
Welcome back ladies. You were at home with Kelly and Tiffany. I am Kelly and I'm Tiffany. And here we are, we are talking about a very important topic today. Preeclampsia things that you can do that are in your control to help decrease your potential for developing it in pregnancy and postpartum. So we're going to dive into all of that information. If you have no idea what I'm actually saying right now, this episode is going to be great for you. But if you're somebody who's. You know, dealt with this in the past or concerned about it for your future. This episode will hopefully be a very empowering and encouraging one. Yeah, because I mean, again, like we've talked about this before on the part of the cast, but like the idea of preventing a major maternal disease process. Who do we think we are? How dare we now I'll just preface this all to say. We're not necessarily giving you medical advice, and we're not saying that if you follow everything that we say there's a hundred percent chance of. You not developing this thing, but it is what we have seen. Be an incredibly powerful protocol and encouragement. And just giving you a helpful view of like what you can control is worth putting the effort and control into oh yeah. Yep. All right. I want to read a review because it's very thoughtful and personal and you guys know, like I just loved the, I love the details. I love, I love learning about the person leaving the review. As we're reading it. Cause it just. There's not a, we've said this before. There's not a lot of back and forth on the podcast. This. It's a lot of force. A lot of force. This is one way we get to hear from you guys. And we're reminded that it makes an impact and that's. That's really helpful for us. Truly we re we really require it to keep moving forward. Please can do in it. Okay. So the title of this review is truly life-changing and it was left by Handel Psalm 42, 1. And she says, I just want you to know, I read downloaded apple podcast on my phone, just so I could leave you a rating and review. Oh, and I appreciate knowing that because that took twice as much time to leave the review. Yep. I would not have done it. No, I've been like, I'll just keep listening and like it. Oh, darn. I'm sorry. Like I listen on Spotify and I can't leave the, I can't leave the rating. Sorry. Oh, too bad. As someone else can do it. That's the, she says that's how much I love this podcast. And thank you so much. We love that you did that. It is now my go-to for pretty much everything. Health-related what I love the most about it is that while Kelly and Tiffany give you a wealth of information, they also present very practical and simple steps that you can take. A piece they might say and implement slowly in your own life. My husband makes our own soap, detergent, deodorant, and toothpaste. And I make a lot of our foods from scratch. So I just received so much encouragement and affirmation from what is shared on the podcast. If only I could get my hubby to embrace liver consumption. Yes. He's one step away. It's not far. Your husband is making deodorant for you guys. He's going to eat liver before, you know, it. He, that man is eating liver. She goes on probably the most obvious lifestyle change that I've implemented a seed cycling. I started doing this while postpartum with my second baby, a home birth, by the way. And I saw my cycle go almost immediately from a very irregular 25 to 33 day range to a healthy 28 day cycle. You've heard it a lot before, but seed cycling really changed my life. Thank you so much for all you do. And looking forward to other lifestyle changes in the future. Claire. Clear clear. Thank you, Claire. I'm buying you a drink. Yeah. Yeah, we are. You tell me that you heard us read this review on our show and I will buy you a drink, a S a P. I love hearing feedback. When women implement something, that's not like, oh my life entirely. Like I had up. You know, that like change everything about my life, just implemented one thing where she was like, oh, and then immediately I saw like this impact. It's pretty cool. And the seed cycling again for the win. I mean, it's just like, it's just taken. Taking the trophy every single time, a hundred percent. It's one of my faves for sure. Okay. So we were talking about preventing preeclampsia today, before we do that, I wanted to give a little shout out to a wonderful mother friend of ours who makes incredible skincare stuff that I just feel like I use it. It's pretty much the only skincare stuff that I've been using recently. And my skin is just so happy. I'm happy to give it to my kids because I know it's clean and safe. All of that good stuff. I can pronounce all of the ingredients inside of it. Except whenever I have something that has a hobo oil in it, we really enjoy saying the whole Bali. That's really interesting Kelly. So there that, there you go. But you will find her at Hardy habitat. So she's Hardy habitat.com. She's also on Instagram. We don't make any money from sharing this. I just want to share that. I love it so much. So we do have a code. Beautiful one to get you 10% off. There's Tabo bond, skin cream. Face scrubs, baby cream. She has a loose leaf teas, even. So all of them are like very simple ingredients, but just beautifully packaged and thoughtfully made. And we just left her. Yep. Absolutely. And also just enjoy supporting other women owned businesses, other home birth mom owned businesses a hundred percent. Woo. Yeah. Onboard for it. So if you're in a, you know, in need of. Any kind of skincare. Especially tallow balm. I'll just rub. Tolo over the whole body. Love it. It's so good. It really is. It truly is. Okay. So today we, again are talking about preventing preeclampsia, but before we can prevent or talk about decreasing risk of, we have to kind of understand what the heck we are actually talking about. Right? So preeclampsia, it's a disease process in pregnancy. It can come up postpartum as well. But can develop. It's often associated with high blood pressure and there may be severe headaches, potentially visual disturbances, high levels of protein in your urine. Or like a new development of decreased blood platelets. That's through lab draw right trouble with your kidneys or your liver. We're in more advanced cases, there's sometimes fluid in the lungs and signs of brain trouble in particular seizures. So obviously can lead all the way to. Death, right. It can be. So, it can develop into a clamp SIA that can bring a Mo like it can, it's a very serious issue that we're dealing with super serious. And sometimes it comes up absolutely out of nowhere and becomes really severe really quickly. Or sometimes it's just slowly developing over time and we get a couple of clues that it's like impending. And even though it is really serious and needs to be taken really seriously, and I'm sure we'll get some email from somebody at some point that will. Refute what I'm about to say next. But in general, Because of modern medicine, which you don't get to hear me say very often. And because of good prenatal screening, even really bad obstetrical care providers are going to screen for this. Pretty routinely. The intervention is to induce. And that is usually what, what cures your preeclampsia. So even though it has really serious implications and can Become very serious, very quickly. Usually we just move forward in a medical setting to stabilize mom and get baby born and everybody is okay. Yes. So this is talking about before it even develops or when we're starting to see, like you mentioned some of those signs, what can we do to start implementing some things, to support our systems, bring it back into normal as much as possible. So pathology of preeclampsia. It's technically like if you were to read up on it, right. It's typically unknown. Like where it actually develops from, there are two main theories though. The first one would be an issue with how the placenta implants written. So that's the very beginning of pregnancy, which is pretty wild to think about, but something that happens at that moment. Can have such a huge impact on what is going on with the rest of your pregnancy. And then the other theory which actually can be related, but is an insufficiency of the liver, which can cause toxicity in your body. So two theories that potentially can be connected as well. But. When we talk about that placenta attaching, most people are like, well, you have no control over that. Right. Technically. No right. Everything is happening so quickly. But to a degree we actually do. We've actually seen issues arise with things like placental abruption, or some kind of insufficient. Like insufficiency that correlates with some of the issues we'll discuss here. But that go on to be remedied or focused on result in healthy, subsequent pregnancies. So that's not always the case, right? A hundred percent of the time. Like, if that was, we would not need to, we wouldn't podcast anymore. We'd be sitting on an island somewhere that we own. Surrounded by enormous piles of money. And since we're not. We're going to chat and talk about. Ways that you can support the systems that are usually at play with toxicity in the body, basically. Yeah. So if you've had preeclampsia in the past or know someone who has this information that we'll share is not to say that like, You didn't do the right thing or that this is your fault or anything like that. Right. It's meant to encourage. But just a reminder, like this is a starting platform for you to then jump off, do some research, start supporting your body. We're not necessarily giving you medical advice here. Yeah. And the reason that we started sharing on this is because we started implementing some of these concepts with our own clients. So we would take care of women who were pregnant for the second time who had a history. Three of preeclampsia. And they were like, well, that completely threw off everything that I had planned for my birth. And is there anything that I can do in order to prevent that from happening? And we experimented a lot on that and we have been successful in preventing preeclampsia. With all of our clients. But especially those who have a history of preeclampsia. Yeah. So you touched on something important. A lot of times the moms are coming to us already pregnant and being like, what can I do? So. If you are, if you have a history of boot camps, preeclampsia, or concerned about it, for whatever reason for a future pregnancy. Implementing some of these things and understanding some of your risk factors and making some lifestyle changes before you even conceive would be just a huge plus, because there's so much that can be done with that information in that time to reduce risk in a lot of areas of your health. Yeah. And one of those things is M T H F R, which is a gene mutation that is prevalent in about 30% of us women. And it can contribute to higher rates of preeclampsia. So. So if we're looking for mutations in that gene and we find that we have a, some type of that which has, can be discovered with a blood test. Then we are already have a leg up on it because the main issue with MTHFR is methylation in the body. Having a really hard time utilizing specific nutrients and. Also metabolizing specific nutrients. MTHFR is responsible for the breakdown of folic acid, which creates full late. And so if you are ingesting enriched grains or enriched anything with folic acid and you're one of this 30% of people, then you're all, you already have the risk factor, right. But if you know that you have MTHFR and you start avoiding folic acid then you are, you're not creating that toxicity issue in your body. And there's. Some health conditions and disorders that can result when you don't get enough full, late, or when your body is not able to absorb it because you have this gene mutation or a mouth functioning. Gene and these mutations are correlated with higher risks of preeclampsia and issues with neural tube complications and even miscarriage. We see that all in combination and a lot of women's history and pictures. So knowing your MTHFR status is a really important piece of. Just general women's health and fertility and, you know, avoiding complications in birth and et cetera. It's just a, it's a really important thing to know. Yeah. So then you're left of like, okay, so how do I figure that out? Right. So there are some home tests available that I discovered recently that are actually pretty well priced because if you go into a provider most likely that particular provider is either going to say no, I'm not going to test for that. Or your insurance isn't going to cover it. And it is incredibly expensive out of pocket in that particular situation. So these home tests are actually pretty great. Most of them are like cheek swabs or saliva collections. We personally have a cash pay co-op situation that we. Run cash pay labs from, and they charge us$99 for this test, which is about the same that it's running for some of these home tests, which you know, is is a great option in comparison to women who have come in and said, I wanted to find out my status, but my provider was going to charge me like$3,000 to take this test. Just crazy town. So that's really marked up with insurance for whatever reason. And I don't know if that's the case. I don't know. I haven't checked on that in a couple of years. But I would say most women should just pay$99 and have it tested privately than to fight with your insurance company about it. Yeah, absolutely. So if, if for whatever reason, it's hard to get a home test or you're just having trouble getting tests of some kind. You two options, right? You can assume you just have it. And just ma if you're like, I'm probably one of the 30% or what harm is there in assuming that this mutation is causing me problems, I might as well just make some changes based on that assumption. But you can also pursue homocysteine testing as high levels of that homocysteine in your system. Are highly correlated with MTHFR issues and what is going on in your body. So usually the higher those numbers are, we see the symptom picture be problematic for those people. Yeah. And if you, even, if you test positive for MTHFR, you still want to know what your homocysteine levels are because that's the, that's the indication that you're. You know, having such a difficult time with it. Yeah. Cause there are plenty of women who have the mutation who have no symptoms or it doesn't. It doesn't impact this particular part of their lived experience. But have we ever taken care of someone who had preeclampsia in a previous pregnancy and was negative for MTHFR? Nope. Nope. Yeah, lots of little red flags there. So you can just assume you have it. You can you know, go head and find some testing, but based on that status or assumed status support for proper methylation and keeping inflammation low with rate changes in diet targeted supplements, lifestyle modifications, that's going to be your go-to. That's going to be the first, you know, run of support that you can have focusing. On your gut health so that your gut health is like whole body health. So the more that you can support that. The better your body is going to be at keeping inflammation down and supporting your detox, rhythms, all that good stuff. Like Tim mentioned earlier, avoiding folic acid in supplements or enriched and fortified foods. It hides in a lot of those things. So once you start taking, once you start. Being more aware of that, you see all of those. Usually processed things that you have to just go ahead and. You know, move forward and avoid anti-inflammatory foods, whole food focused including things like getting rid of gluten that even if you've never had a reaction to it in the past, it's very inflammatory for the system. For most people so helpful to just move on past that. Supplements like methylated Foley, fish oils, methylated. B's great to add in. It's already done the work for you of that methylation process. And so that just supports your body, helps it, absorb it and use it correctly. And then lifestyle stuff like. You know, trying to figure out what kind of things are you putting on and in and around your body that may be disrupting your endocrine system. So getting rid of endocrine disruptors, where you can other toxins, just in general, in your environment, your body, you basically have to realize that like it, especially this MTHFR situation, your body is taxed already. So, being able to decrease that toxic burden, where you have the chance to what you're putting on, what you're putting in your body, what you're doing with your body. Can help decrease that burden. Yeah. And just like being aware of how your body detoxes and supporting that and keeping those pathways open and like really focusing on that is going to change so much, no matter. What it is that you're dealing with, but especially if you're having methylation issues because of your MTHFR. And so. Yeah. And even if you, even if, so say you have a history of preeclampsia or you are again, concerned about preeclampsia in the future, it, and you'd have no idea what your MTHFR status is. And you're like, I don't really want to like, think about that at all. What you, some of the things that you really should be doing would be supporting then in particular, we talked about some of these ideas behind where preeclampsia can kind of stem from this theory of pathology emphasis on. Liver support is going to be. Such an important part of preconception if you're there, but throughout your pregnancy also. Yeah. And so you want to have like a very specific plan for liver support and be working with a care provider who can give you some guidance on that. We recommend our clients consider herbs like nettles and dandelion that they do gentle detox rhythms every single day, like dry brushing or Epson, salt baths. Those are safe when you're. Pregnant. Having intentional daily movement and adequate protein and fiber is a hugely important just to keep it bowel movements going, just to support every single system in your body with good protein. Also making sure that you have these gentle detox pieces, like, you know, keeping other toxins out of your body, implementing. Lemon water at the beginning of the day, all of those, all of those little things you can actually do in pregnancy to support your body's ability to move those toxins out. Yeah. I think sometimes people are like, well, I can't really like do the detoxes while I'm pregnant. So they just sort of, assume that they can't really do anything, but all of these things are gentle yet very powerful and effective and can help really decrease that burden on your body. There's some great research too about yoga, like, or like, just even in general, just Gentle stretching daily being correlated with a decrease in preeclampsia as well. So the idea that like intentional daily movement needs to be something so intense is actually wrong. Right? You can simply just be walking and connecting with your body and stretching and all those good things. And there's positive outcomes with that. Okay. So women are like, that's fine. I can do all those things, whatever. How do I know if my pregnancy is, if any of this is Actually helping if I'm moving forward healthfully, or if it's all just going to come to a screeching halt in the third trimester again. Yeah. And that's just the worst because you want, you want to be able to, to happily do the things and then be like, I feel like what I'm doing is making a difference. And sometimes some of these gentle things, right. I'm eating a ton of protein. I'm hydrating. Well, I'm moving my body and like, I'm doing what I quote, like I'm supposed to be doing. One of the things that we do to screen for women who have had preeclampsia or for whatever reason, have some kind of you know, metabolic function of some kinds that were like, Hey, we'd like to keep an eye on this. Would be to do an in-depth liver panel in every single trimester. That's going to monitor that metabolic function. It's going to catch any liver insufficiency signs early. So we do that at our first visit, we do that some point in the second trimester, some point again, in the third trimester, we get a really good baseline and then start to say, Okay. Some of these things are actually flagging already. Let's work on that. And then we can follow up to see. Hey, look at this. It's actually working or, Hey, look, we need to add a few more things in as we approach, you know, the rest of your pregnancy or as we approach the end of your pregnancy. So it may be something that you need to push for, but absolutely I'm asking for it and honestly demanding it as part of just your medical care. Would be, would be huge. So a complete metabolic panel, a really in-depth liver panel, and those would be like the baseline of what to ask for and what to assess and. Again, I feel like not every provider is always gives feedback on when somebody gets labs done, unless things are so out of whack. My sister-in-law being one who was like, for sure, anemic had no idea until she showed me her labs. When I asked her cause she was having all these symptoms and I was like, bro, you're a person should have. You know, spoken to you about this. So this would be something that like, you want to see the results for, if you need extra support or just want to have somebody else looking at them alongside you. That would absolutely be worth it. Yeah. And we do consults for that. If somebody wants to just get their labs, read by a compassionate care provider who can look at the numbers and tell you what that means. But we also have done these types of blood work panels on clients who don't have a history of preeclampsia, but something is coming up in their pregnancy. Like their blood pressure starts creeping up or they're having weird symptoms or a little bit of swelling or. You know, just excessive fatigue or way more stress in this pregnancy than usual for them or whatever. And so we're thinking let's just check and see how your liver is doing with the burden of what this pregnancy seems to be on you. And we catch things all the time that are just slightly outside of normal range, from a functional perspective. And then we have like a very serious heart to heart with our clients on like you apps for the, for the sake of. Staying low risk. You have to jump on board with some of these things and they do because they're very invested in outcome. And they turn stuff around things that for sure would have turned into some kind of complication preeclampsia or coolest ASIS or some kind of like crazy, you know, rash system like pups or something like that. All of that. It can all kind of go into this toxic burden basket of how your body is able to metabolize these things. And it doesn't, it doesn't just have to be preeclampsia that we're trying to prevent. Yeah, absolutely. So we've, we've just seen incredible results with this general protocol. So what we have shared should not be. Oh my gosh. That's so intense. Oh my gosh. That's so involved. What you should say or like see is wow. That is really taking care of my body and the system from a very foundational space. Because as we know, and as we talk about in pretty much any topic that we talk about on here, Is that when we actually do that, when we actually support some of that root cause foundational stuff with our health. The rest of our body just responds in kind. And it's like, thank you for taking care of me. And so the fact that we see such positive results with women implementing these things, both who have stuff going on with some of that first trimester blood work or not. Right. It's, it's pretty incredible because. There's just in most. Other models of care. This type of information is not given whatsoever. And what you are usually given is just simply because we know people will ask about it, talk about it. Most women are just told, take a baby aspirin. And go on your way and we'll hope that That helps you out. Yeah. And like, of course there is great evidence for efficacy. You will find that out there. That's why it becomes the recommendation. Unfortunately, we don't have research to support our holistic. View and protocol. So that's why the aspirin thing gets pushed. And I know that a lot of people are going to have that question, unfortunately. Like it just can't get touched on in an adequate way. In this podcast or in a podcast at all, there's so many pros and cons to be weighing out. Should you take aspirin every single day of your pregnancy and it's individual? So it just, it's something that you're going to have to do a little bit more research on and discuss with your care provider. Yeah, for sure. So on like, we just think that this information just like how foundational it is, it should really be. Foundational elsewhere. It should really be the bare minimum of what your what you deserve from your care, from your pregnancy experience. All of the information, all of the support laid. Out for you. So. Yeah. I mean, we, you know, we can't control every single outcome of pregnancy, but we can exert whatever control we can. Over some of the controllable things right in our lives. Provide our body is really the optimal functioning foundation. So that is, was our heart and sharing some of these things you may have probably have been told. There's really nothing you can do. And we'll just sort of cross our fingers and hope everything goes okay. But really there are these things that you can start implementing in your life today. To kind of reduce that risk or at the very least support your body. Well, right. And so that's what we, that's what we hope for you. Yes. And I mean, prevention is we're at midwifery care. Absolutely shines. And this is the part of our focus and our first ever childbirth education class. And we are sharing that with the ladies who jumped into our beta class already. It's a holistic childbirth education approach to the healthiest pregnancy and birth and postpartum possible. And it's all from our midwifery lens. We're currently building this course out with our beta group and preparing to help those ladies meet their babies this summer. But we're also kind of creating our own little baby with This class, which we're also hoping to launch sometime this summer. And we want you guys to be in on that with us too. So there's a link in the show notes for a wait list for ladies who want more from their pregnancy and childbirth education, more information like what we shared in this episode today, and you also get access to exclusive content and information while you wait on the wait list. And you can find that inside of our show notes or@beautifulonemidwifery.com. We hope we see you there on the wait list in the class on Instagram. On our blog. There's so many ways to connect with us. On our reviews on our five star reviews on our, on our fi if you, if you listened to this entire episode and it gave you any insight at all, leave us a quick review. Yes, please. Only five star ones though. No four stars nip, not going to read that one. Okay. We will catch you next week, ladies. Bye.