The Barbell Mamas Podcast | Pregnancy, Postpartum, Pelvic Health
The times are changing and moms have athletic goals, want to exercise at high-intensity or lift heavy weights, and want to be able to continue with their exercise routines during pregnancy, after baby and with healthcare providers that support them along the way.
In this podcast, we are going to bring you up-to-date health and fitness information about all topics in women's health with a special lens of exercise. With standalone episodes and special guests, we hope to help you feel prepared and supported in your motherhood or pelvic health journey.
The Barbell Mamas Podcast | Pregnancy, Postpartum, Pelvic Health
How Social Media Shapes Women’s Health Choices
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Ever feel like every scroll brings a new rule for your body? We sit down with Dr. Emily Fender, a health communication scientist whose research tracks how women’s health messages spread across TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube—and why the loudest claims aren’t always the most useful. Together, we break down a simple lens you can use anywhere online: threat versus efficacy. Are you being scared into attention, or actually given steps and resources to act? That distinction shows up in everything from contraception myths to perinatal mental health, where severity gets clicks but supportive guidance often goes missing.
We dig into cycle syncing and the difference between evidence, overreach, and personalized training. You’ll hear why rigid phase-based rules can backfire, creating shame and cost barriers, and how athletes worry these narratives label women as fragile for half the month. We zoom out to the bigger system: incentives that reward certainty, influencer marketing that sells protocols, and even expertise drift when clinicians post outside their lane. Then we get practical about risk communication—turning relative risk into absolute numbers, spotting absolute statements, and demanding receipts when someone says “studies show.”
We also scout the horizon with AI. Some tools can surface studies and highlight exact evidence, but they can’t replace synthesis or context. Deepfakes and confident summaries raise the bar for skepticism, so we share a quick checklist to stress test posts before you share or act: scope, sources, statistics, and a simple “does this make sense” pass. Use social media for community, discovery, and momentum—then ground your choices in evidence, your values, and your lived experience. If you’ve been craving fewer rules and more clarity, this conversation offers a calmer, smarter way to navigate women’s health online. Subscribe, share with a friend who lifts, and leave a review to tell us the one claim you want decoded next.
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Welcome And Guest Intro
SPEAKER_00Hello everyone and welcome to the Farma Moments podcast. My name is Christina Farman. I'm a public forces post therapist and researcher and exercise and fighting and a mom of the two who have competed in classic powerlifting or weightlifting fighting post-partness or both in this podcast. We want to talk about the realities of being a mom who loves to exercise. Whether you're a recreational exerciser or an athlete, we want to talk about all of the things that we go through as females going into this motherhood journey. We're going to talk about fertility, pregnancy, and postpartum topics that are relevant to the active individual. While I am a public floor physical therapist, I am not your public floor physical therapist, and know that this podcast does not substitute medical advice. All right, come along for this journey with us while we navigate motherhood together. And I can't wait to get to it. Hello everyone, and welcome back to the Barball Mama's
Emily’s Path Into Health Communication
SPEAKER_00podcast. It has been a while since I have done an interview, and so I am unbelievably excited to be introducing Dr. Emily Fender. Dr. Emily Fender is a health communication scientist and postdoctoral research fellow based out of the University of Pennsylvania. Her research centers on how social media and interpersonal messaging influence reproductive and maternal health behavior with a particular focus on underrepresented populations. She examines topics such as contraceptive-related behavior, menstrual health messaging, and the impact of digital health misinformation. Dr. Fender earned her PhD in health communication from the University of Delaware and now writes and speaks about trends at the intersection of wellness, science, and social media. She is currently starting a series of workshops looking at creation online and tackling misinformation. Thank you so much, Emily, for coming. I'm so excited to be able to talk kind of in real life.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, me too. Really excited to be here synchronously. This is great.
SPEAKER_00Can you tell me a little bit about your background and what kind of made you really interested in this topic of health misinformation?
SPEAKER_02Yeah. So my bachelor's and master's are in communication. My PhD is in communication as well, but I really came into the space of health communication in my PhD, where we're looking at messages, the science of messages and how messages and communication impact human behavior and attitudes and thinking. And so I was just consuming social media content. I think I was in the second year of my PhD and studying health
Social Platforms As Health Engines
SPEAKER_02and calm. And I just noticed that a lot of influencers were on my like for you page and like on my Instagram were talking about the discontinuation of hormonal hormonal contraception because of terrible things like it's causing awful mental health outcomes, it's causing weight gain, it's causing PCOS, you know, it's causing all of these things. And I knew that a lot of those things were not factual, or at least the way they were presented in absolutes were not factual. And so I proposed a study to one of my mentors content analyzing YouTube videos about birth control experiences. And we published it and it took off and went viral in like all over the world. People reported on this study. It just, it absolutely went viral. This was before I was even doing social media content creation. It was my first first viral piece of information. And um, I just got so much positive feedback from the study from journalists, academics, students, birth control users, influencers reached out to me about it. All sorts of people reached out to me about this study, and it really catapulted my interest in studying women's health on social media.
SPEAKER_00That's amazing. And I think what we have to acknowledge now is that Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, they're health information engines. And some people are going to those platforms for health information even before like Google. And so I think it's such an important area of research that you are doing. And I think, you know, so many people are learning so much from you. Now you've published quite a few studies that have looked in different areas of women's health information online.
Threat Versus Efficacy Messaging
SPEAKER_00Have you seen some trends across different topic areas or things that you are seeing coming up again and again around health information online?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, the one thing that I tend to do as a communication scientist is content analyze these trends in regard to whether they're using efficacy-based messaging or threat and fear-based messaging. So when we think about threat, we think about, you know, are people talking about the susceptibility to symptoms or a condition or even an illness? And we think about the severity. So how deeply is it affected, affecting their well-being? And then the other component is efficacy. So are they actually posting, you know, resources or uplifting information where ways to overcome health challenges? And I've looked at these two variables across a many different contexts, you know, ranging from contraception to things like post-birth control syndrome to cycle sinking and menstrual cycles to breast cancer, cervical cancer, pap smears, all sorts of things in the women's health space. And, you know, it really varies in terms of which messaging they're using and which types of messaging gets engagement. For example, we just did a study. It's um, I just got a review from a journal, and the it was on perinatal mental health, and there was almost no efficacy-based messaging. It was primarily in a really high percentage of the videos were severity and threat-based messaging, talking about how severe, how bad this is, coupled with no efficacy, meaning that it's just it's very scary, it's very bad, it's very severe, and also like there are no resources or no things that you can do to combat it, was kind of the message that we got from that study. Whereas other topics like pap smears and cervical cancer, the posts that were the largest, we saw very little threat and severity messaging. And we were primarily seeing efficacy-based messaging. So lots of here's my top 10 ways to make a Pap smear more comfortable so that you'll be, you know, equipped to go to your Pap smear as well. And so lots of variation in that when it comes to things like contraception, we also see a mix of threat and efficacy messaging. Um, you know, here's like what you need, here are the things you need to do to come off birth control safely. And those perform very well. So a mix of those things.
SPEAKER_00That's so interesting. I wonder if there is like a control aspect to that. Again, I'm just like kind of brainstorming. With a paps mirror, like that's a preventative intervention. Like the idea is to prevent a bad outcome. With perinatal mood disorders, while our exercise literature is finally starting to get some new like gusto or steam behind it around how important it is in that postpartum transition. A lot of people think that it's something that you can't avoid. And I wonder if that's where so much of the negative messaging falls, and depending on the topic
Perinatal Mental Health Content Gaps
SPEAKER_00area.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Yeah. I think the topic area is probably something to consider here. My plan, I've had a like an evil plan this whole time, or maybe a very positive plan, was to analyze these different types of messages across all these different contexts and then combine it and do almost like a mini meta analysis with the data or a mini like like review of the of the studies. Um, sure there's like bias in that because it's only my research, right? And I'm doing it a certain way. And so there's bias there. But we'd be looking at larger over our like larger trends with this messaging by all these different topics. And so that's been really interesting. Um, and then what I've recently been getting into, especially in the pregnancy, we just did a content analysis of pre-eclampsia posts on TikTok and Instagram. And we had two maternal fetal medicine specialists code the information, the threat and efficacy messaging to see if there was misinformation. And there was one in six posts that contain misinformation or information that couldn't be discerned as factual because the context was so confusing. And so we're getting into identifying, using, you know, physicians to identify where the misinformation is lying. Because I can't, my, you know, my area of expertise in healthcom only goes so far.
SPEAKER_00Right. So you said one in six on the preeclampsia side. That's really interesting. We just had to, in the pelvic health context, we've had a couple of studies that have come out around fertility and diastasis recti kind of trying to do the same thing around content analysis. And it seems to be in that literature, between 35 and 50% of the content coming out online is not evidence informed. In the pregnancy space, to play devil's advocate and not thinking, wow, this is such a huge problem. So much of the information that is being sent out online is based on clinical experience
Misinformation Rates And Context Limits
SPEAKER_00or personal anecdote, simply because we just don't have the research to back us up. And I never thought I would do a postdoc, and here I am doing a postdoctoral fellowship because all of this information was literally a desert where there was no information about how to modify because I was still having to prove that exercise was safe in pregnancy. So it is really interesting in some of the pelvic health spaces. Our misinformation percentages are high, but also our evidence-informed capacity because of the research status right now is just also so poor.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that tracks with some of the cycle syncing work that I've done. We did two studies on cycle syncing, one, a content analysis, you know, finding that, you know, people are making recommendations for exercise and nutrition based on one of the four menstrual cycle phases. Um, and they they call it one of the four menstrual cycle phases. I think that there's like not scientific like conclusions around how we characterize phases of the menstrual cycle, but that's what social media says. And then um what we're kind of seeing is that there's not much research to point to, well, actually, you know, cycle syncing isn't um evidence-based because there's just so little evidence. No one has really like, have we actually tested cycle syncing? Have we actually, you know, got like done a study where women come in and are exercising differently for these, like, you know, four menstrual cycle phases and tested the outcomes of that? Like, I haven't seen that. I know that there are some scientists, um, Canadian scientists that are doing some work in this, but it's just not exactly testing cycle thinking yet. And so it's that same issue of, you know, we don't really have much evidence to say this is wrong, but we know that it doesn't make sense based on another body of literature. And so it's it's very um confusing for people, for the average person.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, absolutely. And I think we know the same Canadian scientist because uh Stu Phillips was on my PhD career.
SPEAKER_02Oh my god, really?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. That's incredible. Okay, great. He's the one who made me actually do my postdoc because I was doing it in geriatric strength training and I was a weight lifter and pregnant, and he goes, Christina, if you think that there's no evidence in loading up our older adults, like you should look into the pregnancy literature. And that was either the best decision I ever made or because it made me so mad that I transitioned into my postdoc as soon as I finished my PhD. And I've done all of this kind of part-time
Cycle Syncing Evidence And Nuance
SPEAKER_00because I still have clinical practice and all that kind of stuff. But he he's working on, you know, some work then he presented at the Canadian Society for Exercise Physiology around changing exercise dosage in different phases, but they went biphasic of luteal and follicular phase, so either early or late pregnancy and kind of using ovulation as that flip point, um, and and didn't really see a clinically meaningful difference. But you're right in that we haven't taken non-athletic, regularly cycling women and put them into an RCT one that doesn't test out some of these cycle sinking workouts and other ones that do. And so while all of our evidence right now, as you said, is kind of pointing to this not really making sense and auto-regulation of if you feel like trash at certain parts of your cycle, change how you're exercising in that day, um it makes it difficult. And so this kind of leads me into this next piece because I think that is such an important consideration because oftentimes I think where the misinformation comes from is that people disseminate information or put content out online with an overwhelming amount of confidence based on what we actually know about the topic. Are there different types of misinformation around like over-extrapolating findings versus saying something that is just purely wrong? Like, how do you break that down in your research? Like, do you categorize it as all just misinformation? Are there different degrees of it? I don't even know if I'm asking the right question, but can you kind of speak to that a little bit?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that's a great question. And that's a really hard thing to do. And that's not something that I have actually done yet because I feel like just learning how to content analyze these messages, like in from like a just like a basic standpoint, like how to characterize what they're saying and get agreement between coders on like people analyzing it is so challenging just by itself. But I have seen, you know, some research that's thinking about degrees of misinformation. The way that we characterize that in the previous study was yes, this is totally false. No, this is accurate. And then the other group that we kind of categorize the misinformation was depending on the context, this could be true or false, but we can't really understand from this 30-second clip what exactly they're pointing to. And so we've done three categories to group these things that are, you know, these messages that are happening online. I think there's some other um things that I'm coding with some medical students right now in some studies on contraception as well as HIV for women. And we are kind of characterizing the type of message. So, for example, one of the things we're looking for is was an absolute statement used. All women, every time this will happen to you, don't do this ever. Those types of statements, which we know that life is so much more nuanced than that. I just talked about this in a recent post where, you know, I was saying, um, oh, like all birth control will 100% cause weight gain, right? So much more nuanced than that. That's that's not true. So um characterizing the features of the messages like that, like are they speaking in absolute statements? Um, or, you know, can we're consistently capturing in these content analyses, like what the credentials are of the person, as well as do they ever cite sources? And one of the things that keeps coming up in my work is that a lot of these creators will say studies say, and then never link a study. It just, it just, it's a hallucinated Chat GPT reference. And there is just nothing I'm left after these videos, like, so where's that source? Like, where did that come from? And so I think that slowly capturing things like that and the little details will help us with misinformation. I was reading a study recently and it was looking at features and facets of misinformation, how it shows up in posts. And they were even looking at like links between like different styles of posts being more likely to be misinformation, like more like things like graphics, colors, fonts. I mean, they were linking all sorts of things to misinformation. And so I think that body of research is expanding, but it's um it's it's behind just like you know, women's
Identity, Risk Stats, And Belief Change
SPEAKER_02health.
SPEAKER_00So yeah, I love that. You all you caught a couple of things that are my pet peeves as an attempted scientific communicator online that research says, and then when I come and say, like, what research is this? It they turn it around. It was like, well, you should prove to me that this isn't true. I was like, why is the onus of interpretation or correction on the person that is correcting in the comments versus the person who is posting? And so you're you're spot on that people think that they gain credibility by saying research does or studies show without actually doing their due diligence. I love that. And then I loved your post about contraception because the other thing that I talk about a lot, and it it only works really in long form because it's really hard to nuance into a carousel post. But so many people don't know how to interpret research. And so, you know, if we say, well, there's a reduction in risk of gestational hypertension if you exercise during pregnancy, and then the person comes out and says, Well, I exercised during my pregnancy and I had gestational hypertension. This must be wrong. But those who have a negative outcome or those who don't fit into that criteria doesn't disprove science. It just shows that everything is multifactorial and you're trying to stack the deck in favor of the outcome you want, but we can't ever make guarantees.
SPEAKER_02Correct. Yeah. Yeah. People are tough with the way they interpret. I had talked about how, yes, there are some studies that show a 1.2 times risk increase of breast cancer with contraception use, but it's like such a small, small, small group of people, like 1.2 times like people think that that's like some massive jump and that that's just like enormous risk. And when you break it down, it just really isn't. And then the other nuance is like, yeah, and when you in some cases, when women discontinue birth control, there are some studies that show that the 1.2 times risk of breast cancer is completely gone then. And so there's just so many details that I find that people are just not even um open to hearing and understanding.
SPEAKER_00I am the biggest Adam Grant stan in the entire world. Like I just love everything that his brain puts out. And he talks about how like we get certain things that are whole like that we hold close to our being and our sense of identity. And when we put that under threat or somebody tries to challenge us on those belief systems, it becomes a almost like a bristle response, or it becomes very challenging to have meaningful dialogue. And I don't know if you've um noticed this, but definitely around the women's health space, the birth space, what your your thoughts and feelings are around motherhood space, a lot of those hold so close to that identity as mother or that identity as caretaker. And it's just such an influential transition for so many people that it is like how people interpret that. And when you do challenge back and say, you know, 1.2 is not that big. And I've heard some, you know, research that has said maybe instead of talking about the times increased risk, putting it into the context constect context of how that changes our relative numbers of like you have a one in one thousand chance and now it's a 1.3 in 1,000 chance that that makes people a little bit, it's more easy for them to digest.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00You're absolutely right around like that identity
Money, Marketing, And Wellness Claims
SPEAKER_00piece and then challenging when their information is incorrect.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, we talk about that a lot in the calm and misinformation spaces, like cognitive dissonance where they have something, a previously held belief that's really strong and you know, tied to them, like you were saying, tied to an identity. And when someone challenges it, they typically counterargue or try to refute what you're saying because it's too difficult to process the mismatch in what's happening with their previously held belief and identity. And so typically that's when we see a lot of like argumentativeness and not so great conversation and lack of dialogue. But the good news is that when someone deeply cares about a topic, in a lot of cases, the research shows that they'll be open to revising their beliefs if they're, you know, truly invested in that topic in a deep and meaningful way. And so there is some hope for those groups of people.
SPEAKER_00Do you think that becomes even more challenging when it's a marketing or like you're being paid based on holding those beliefs and that threat to not only from a sense of self, but a job security or a financial. Security lens? Because I feel like there's a lot of influencers who make a lot of money based on cycle sinking workouts or protocols that say you can only do HIIT training and heavy resistance training in the post-menopausal, pre-postmenopausal transition. Like there's just there's a lot of money in the wellness space. Do you think that has any influence?
SPEAKER_02I think so. Probably. I I think that a lot of the influencers that are like, you know, touting some of these like paid programs that aren't based on evidence. I I think that like genuinely some of them believe they're doing good. Like they they have to believe in the product. Some like a lot of them, I would assume, have to believe in the product. I I follow this one person, she's the biggest misinformation queen in women's health. And I follow her just to keep tabs to see what kind of like wacky stuff she's coming out with every week. Some of it's like, and I it's so funny, I'll get like messages from followers and they'll be like, why are you following this person? Like, because I have to know like what's going on. Like, how am I supposed to be in the know about what's trending in misinformation if I don't follow these people? Like, they don't have my support. I just need to know what's going on. Yeah, for sure. And um I, you know, she she really is centered in like, and these creators are really centered in female empowerment, and they really draw on, you know, those, they they really latch on to those statistics. The one that I can think of right now is that in 2023, only 7.9% of NA NIH funding went toward women's health and women's specific health in that grant. Now, that doesn't include any like foundational grants, or we're just talking about one granting agency. So the public doesn't fully understand that. They don't know like 7.9% is too low, is way too low. Like, I want to acknowledge that, but that is not the only source of women's health funding in you know, the world or in the United States. And sometimes I think that's, you know, not contextualized fully, but they grasp onto things like that, or they talk about the common one is there was never any research on women until 1993, when there's like a full list of the years and dates in which women were more fully integrated into government research. Um, and so they latch onto those things. And I really do think they believe that they're trying to empower women and provide, you know, unique targeted solutions for women. You know, I hear a lot about, you know, women are not small men. And a lot of this is based in like feminism and like being positive with women and guiding women, but it's just lacking nuance and not all of it's accurate.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And while of course we're gonna have some differences in female bodies versus male bodies, I think there's a lot that actually, especially in the sports and performance space, that works for both sexes.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And
Rules, Shame, And Accessibility
SPEAKER_00I think the the desire to feel seen and taken care of, as you said, like that is rooted in empowerment and locking shields with other uh women is coming from a good place.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00But when you unintentionally are making extra rules or making women second guess their behaviors or thinking that they have to do it this way, or else they're gonna be at risk for certain outcomes or things like that. We we've lost the plot a little bit and we've led women astray when I always say we don't have a movement problem in the US. We have a lack of movement problem. And so if your favorite type of exercise is Pilates and bar, I love that for you. If your favorite exercise is to cycle and spin, I love that for you. And I think we unintentionally create a lot of rules around women's health. And there is um one that just came out that I'm about to post about in a little bit that's really gonna rock the boat is a lot of pelvic health therapists will say you cannot berth on your back, right? You have to try and get into a sideline position or a hands-and-knees position or a squat position because you could increase your risk of perennial tearing. And that was based on the idea that your sacrum is fixed against the bed and so it doesn't let your tailbone kind of move out of the way and baby can cause tearing as head comes through. We have a systematic review that says that actually does nothing, like that there is no increase in risk between lying on your back in a lithotomy position versus um into squat and you know, other positions. That was rooted in something really positive, right? Around trying to give you choice and not making you stay stationary in pain management techniques, but it so quickly online got turned into that if you birth on your back, you have failed your birthing process.
SPEAKER_02Wow.
SPEAKER_00And so it just, you know, it just comes up over and over again.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that's really interesting. Um, in the focus group study that we did on, you know, what women, it was college women think about cycle syncing, one of the negative outcomes or the disadvantages that they brought up was how this could really make people feel women feel shame if they can't adhere to these rigid female specific female-specific right guidelines for exercise and diet that they will have somehow somehow feel like they failed as a woman and that these rules are just too strict and too hard and it could cause anxiety and depression. And I thought that was really powerful that that came out of that study. And it was a lot of, I mean, I personally conducted the focus groups, and it was a lot of women in agreement with this, you know, over the course. I think we had eight focus groups. They were large too. And these young women were very concerned that rules like this are just far too strict, not to mention they're not accessible. The one thing that came out was okay, so I have to pay for a Pilates studio membership, a yoga or bar membership. I have to have a place where I can walk when I'm on my period. Um, and then I also have to have a strength training, I have to have a gym membership to a weight room to do strength training during ovulation. How do I afford that? And so there's enormous privilege in some of these things that are being recommended, and it just does not need to be that complex. I mean, I I I yeah, I just thought that those were like these young women were spot on with some of this. I was like, yes, I'm glad that, you know, because sometimes you get worried that like so many women are buying into this stuff. Cause when I see these posts with like, you know, buy my PDF comment this to get my PDF on cycle sync in. I see 800 people reply for the PDF, I get worried. Then I, you know, have some reality with, you know, just some college women at the local university, and they're like, um, yeah, I don't know about this. And so it's good to see that perspective.
SPEAKER_00And I think about it from the rehab and athletics perspective is I can't control if my weightlifting meat is on my
Individualized Training Over Protocols
SPEAKER_00period day three or on my ovulation day. I can't control that when I have a meet that I have to be a part of.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And there's even research that's looking at like injury rates at different parts of the cycle, which I think is really interesting. But there is the risk that the way this is disseminated is around fragility, right? Around, oh, if you're gonna tear your ACL on your menstrual cycle, I'm gonna bench you if you're on your cycle. And like the team's tracking who's on their cycle and have how, like, you know, that that's an extreme interpretation of that data that is very much in its preliminary forms. But there is that worry around, you know, what does this add or how does this advocate for women in sport versus, you know, continue to to push forward this idea of fragility around the cycle.
SPEAKER_02Such a good point. We piloted the focus groups with student athletes, female student athletes. And that was the primary thing to come out of this. Was I would never be able to, I'm already at a disadvantage, and people already view my, you know, my career as an athlete as less than because and less important because I'm a woman. Here's something coming along saying that I actually can't train like a man and that I I can't, there are like one to two weeks out of the month where I really couldn't train hard. How would I ever have a career in athletics then? And how would women ever have a career in this space if there's research saying that we're incapable half the month?
SPEAKER_00Yes.
SPEAKER_02That's scary.
SPEAKER_00Yes, I agree. That's not feminism. No, and and so, like the way that I always talk to clinicians and I talk to my patients is that I need to know what your cycle looks like. So if I'm working for you as your coach and you're doing a weightlifting meat, that is a weight class sport. If you tell me, hey, I gain four pounds around my cycle every single month, and I know that you have to be 69 kilos and you're gonna probably be 71 because your meat falls on your cycle. I'm gonna diet you down to 67, knowing that you're gonna hit 69 because you're gonna gain that weight around your cycle. Okay. And so that to me is like having a very helpful approach because I know that you have that weight gain around your cycle. I'm going to take that into account when we think about getting you to the weight you need to be for your sport. But I'm not saying I'm gonna lighten the load on, you know, certain parts unless you tell me that you really feel like shit on day one. And I'm gonna say, hey, go for RPE of seven, whatever that means for you that day, and don't worry about the load on the bar.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it's it's just so individual, you know, health is not a one size fits all.
SPEAKER_00I always talk about frameworks over protocols because protocols don't work.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I learned that when I had a hip surgery, and they were like, by this week, here's your protocol, here's what you're gonna do for eight weeks in PT. And like it did not work out for me at all. I'm glad that it works out for other people, but I was just like so much slower to recover. So it's just different.
SPEAKER_00Yep, absolutely. One of the things that you've talked about online that I think is really interesting, um, and obviously I'm personally very influenced
When Providers Spread Misinformation
SPEAKER_00by this, is that you said that a lot of misinformation can actually come from healthcare providers. Um, can you kind of talk to that component? Cause I absolutely agree. I see people going outside of scope. And because, you know, they have these initials after their name, they kind of think that they can speak to everything. I see expertise drift. Um, can you kind of just talk to that component?
SPEAKER_02Yeah. We're doing a follow-up experiment on that study. It was just funded by a wonderful um new women's health organization. So we're designing the experiment right now to test how what's the response to like can people detect misinformation from provider content? Do they believe it's more realistic? And then are they, you know, confused even more by it? I mean, it's we want to look at the the impact, the effect of these messages on um health information perceptions. But this is very preliminary. Again, the study is um under review. We found in a content analysis, a pre-eclampsia post that we said, right, one in six posts had misinformation or were more was likely to be in misinformation. There was not a significant difference in who was distributing the misinformation, but there was a greater proportion of people who were calling themselves healthcare providers in posting the misinformation. One example, I just watched the video a couple days ago. It was actually a physical therapist. Um, and when we said provider, you know, we included it wasn't just physicians. But we had a provider say that, you know, the solution to pre-eclampsia is just a positive mindset and and that um you can you can kind of eat your way out of preeclampsia by like if you're eating these certain foods and you're eating high protein, you know, you won't get precclampsia, which you know is just not necessarily the case for everyone. It's just not that simple. So we saw that, and then you know, manifest it. And I was like, girl, I love that mindset. Like, I I love that, but I don't think that's evidence-based. I mean, positivity and mindfulness is evidence-based, but like not like that.
SPEAKER_00And especially because we were starting to recognize that a subgroup of those with pre-eclampsia have issues with placentation, like when the placenta embeds into the uterus, it actually causes some sort of infarction and blood flow issue as early as the first trimester.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I don't think that protein, like a steak's gonna help with that. And and I was like, oh no. So um, that was one of the posts that I watched, and then I was looking at it, you know, the misinformation from the lived experience and the patient perspective. And the one that stands out to me is this girl who had overcome perioclampsia was, you know, significantly affected by it. It was obviously a very traumatic and severe experience for her. And she said that, you know, moving forward, what she knows she needs to do, and her recommendation is that you should never get pregnant in the fall because you'll deliver in the summer when it's hot. And that will be more likely to cause perioclampsia because when it's hot outside, you're gonna swell up and get preoclampsia.
SPEAKER_00Oh, so there's like a misinterpretation of the swelling from preoclampsia versus heat-induced swelling.
SPEAKER_02That was my interpretation. And so that was kind of an odd one that to avoid preoclampsia, you should definitely get pregnant, you know, in August or September. Um, that's so that was interesting. Um, and I don't fully understand all the context and all the science and medicine behind that. It's just outside my scope. But that was something that the physicians kind of flagged as like, this is not accurate. So, yeah, more a greater proportion, and still it wasn't, you know, a ton. There were a lot of accurate posts, but there was a greater proportion of providers. My theory and my thought on this is that people are labeling themselves as providers that, you know, maybe they're actually not uh could be the case. And then what you said earlier about speaking outside of scope, I think that's a problem. I think it'd be interesting to talk about that. You know, maybe people, science communicators, providers, physicians feel compelled to speak on more topics so that they, you know, can help people and combat more misinformation. I know that for me, I'm so scared of disseminating misinformation further online. It is my biggest fear. Like, I my birth control posts are like medically reviewed, like my scripts. And, you know, even sometimes like they could be perceived as misinformation because I just can't get all of the nuance and all of the context in there. Um, like I recently did a post about birth control, and I, you know, flagged that, hey, here was a study that found a link with depot and injectable contraceptives
The Pressure To Be Spicy Online
SPEAKER_02and weight gain. We don't see that in every study, but here's an example because what we know from communication scholarship is that two-sided messages can be more persuasive. And when I say two-sided, I mean show both coin sides of the coin rather than just arguing for one, like admitting to and showing the full picture, even if it doesn't fully support your argument, while still advocating for one side is a really important persuasive strategy.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And, you know, but sometimes that can get you into trouble.
SPEAKER_00And so it's just so hard. It's so hard. Yeah. You you said a couple of things that I think are really important. I think there is this pull on social media to continue being innovative and have new messages and be spunky and sassy and explore new avenues. Yeah. And when you do that, it's so much easier to get into misinformation. Cause like I have my circle of topics. You know, my PhD was in geriatric rehab, my postdoc is in pelvic florist function, pregnancy postpartum. And so I kind of have a handful of topics that I feel really confident talking about. Yeah. But as soon as you start to drift, and we see these big podcasts like Huberman and Peter Atia and them who they go into this expertise drift and then they start putting out really harmful information. And it's because even if you do the research and you listen to the studies, I remember Huberman put out a podcast about fertility. Okay. And I listened to it being really interested in this area. And I remember saying to my husband, I was like, he's right, but he's not right. He's like kind of right in that he's talking about these studies, but he's missing the context and the bigger literature base that led us here. And I think that is where that drift can happen as well, is people read these ones, this one study and they like, you know, talk about it, but they haven't done their due diligence to know where the field was, where the field has gone, like what other studies say, and how does that compare to the study that you're talking about? And like you said, I am terrified. I post about the refuel study and I said highly active women. I'm like, I don't know if I could say highly. It depends on what you you believe is highly. So I removed the term highly, and I was just active women I put in when I was talking about it, because I am just like you, I am terrified of like perpetuating cycles of misinformation. And when there's this constant pressure of being innovative and there is this constant need for you have to be consistent and you have to keep posting. But it takes a lot of time to be understanding of the research that you are talking through, etc. And then to make it snappy and make it engaging. The ones that I do that are nuanced, you're right. Sometimes they're duds. I think they're super important, but they get way less views than when I'm like, you should be lifting in pregnancy.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, the absolute statements are the ones that people like and engage with. People don't engage with nuance. And so it's really challenging to like get your information out there and get traction. You have to be kind of spicy, and sometimes that's not fully accurate. It's it's a very, very challenging thing to do.
SPEAKER_00And that's why I love this podcast because I get to really dive into the nuance of things and then logger form information, like you know, Substack and things like that, I think are really great. Yeah, I think so too. Mm-hmm. So with the rise of AI, you've posted about using some, I think, assistive AI. And I've been
AI Tools, Deepfakes, And Sources
SPEAKER_00playing around with that too, around how do I help my processes become easier, but not necessarily generative AI. What do you think that's gonna do for the misinformation cycle with all of these like deep fakes and chat GPT sourcing information and what that's gonna look like for the social media landscape in the next I want to say months, but months and years.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that's scary. You know, I have partnered with some AI brands. The one I partnered with, I really liked because what it did was help pull sources and provide, like suggest studies to you that it pulled from a database. And then when it was summarizing and providing details and ideas for whatever you were creating, you could actually click the statement that AI made and it would highlight the evidence in the study. So you could go to the study and actually double check, like, hey, did this study actually say this? And what was the context around it? And point to that exact spot spot in the study. So I did appreciate that and I do like that. Um, I think there's, you know, there's also some really great, there's an organization that I've been um talking with and getting to know. They are, um, I don't know if I'm gonna say the name of them because I don't want to like misre misrepresent them or anything, but they're creating um a big AI tool that's going to help with the goal is to sell it to creators who want to disseminate more evidence-based health information. And the system will be pulling from a like one of the largest databases of studies available. And so I think that that, you know, for the average person who wants to talk about this stuff, I think there's pros and cons. Like there's now this tool that can help them, but they're still, no matter what, going to be, it's still going to be outside of the scope. Like if it's not your, if you're not doing the research and like you said, you don't know like the the literature and the larger body of research, there's still going to be important context missing. And so I think there's like some pros, and then there's a lot of cons as well. And then like the deep fake stuff, like as a creator, that concerns me and scares me.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I'm worried about my face being put on something that is not on brand with me or is not kind of aligning with my messaging. Yeah. And I I think the big problem is that we we need to be skeptical of almost everything, right? And and I want people to be skeptical of my stuff too. Like I put my sources there so you can go ahead and take a look and see if you believe in how I interpreted the literature versus what the researcher said. Yeah. I think that one of the good things about AI and the deep fakes is that I think it maybe. Maybe it could make people be a little bit more skeptical. Um, I was listening, I think it was Adam Grant again. I think I'm gonna plug him twice, but he was talking about how like when things confirm our bias, we are less likely to question if it's true. And so I'm obviously a person who self-selects that exercise is something that is beneficial for health. And so if I see something that's like, did you know that you know exercising reduces your all-cause mortality by 46%? 46% is a massive number. Maybe it's true, maybe it's not, but I'm not gonna guess it because it confirms my bias and I'm gonna pull that up to my story so fast. Right, right. And so I think that that misinformation, like kind of from perpetuating information, if you're a person, you know, kind of in the pregnancy space that believes that, you know, um, you know, being at home and and giving birth should be the way that you deliver. And then somebody talks about, you know, this study said this, you wouldn't, and it confirms that home birth is a better option. You're gonna pull that up to your story because you're gonna, it's gonna confirm that bias for you. And it just kind of perpetuates that cycle.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it's scary. That's why, you know, I don't even repost a lot of stuff
Bias, Reposting, And Skepticism
SPEAKER_02because a lot of it I'm like, wow, that's fantastic. That's real that that sounds like really good science. That's really interesting. But also, I know nothing about that space. And so I don't even know how to critique it. I I don't know anything about it. And so, you know, that's been a concern for me as me as well. Like, what am I reposting and endorsing? You know, that's been something I've been thinking about a lot.
SPEAKER_00I do too. People probably notice that most of the stuff going up to my story is like around my divisions that I lead or my own work because I'm the exact same. I never want to unintentionally misinform based on anything. So, kind of to take this conversation full circle, what would be your advice for a consumer or a mom who is trying to get information online? Because I don't want this conversation to seem like you shouldn't get information online. I think there's community aspects to social media where individuals with different health conditions can feel that they have a group of individuals who understand what they're going through. There's a lot of resource sharing that can be super helpful. I've had a lot of people from my page say that they they felt very empowered because I am able to give them this is what we know, this is what we don't know. And so, what would your advice be in 2026 around how to, I want to use the word safely, but intelligently navigate social media and you know, form the right conclusions based on what you're seeing online?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, despite the pre-eclampsia, you know, misinformation stuff from providers, I would still like trust information more so from people who are physicians, PhDs, um, you know, even PAs, like all sorts of like healthcare personnel, I would be more likely to trust information from them. I would be skeptical yet compassionate and empathetic toward people who are sharing their lived experiences and just always know that, hey, this happened to them. That does not mean this will necessarily happen to me. I can't tell you how many when I got diagnosed with my my hip injury, I went on the first thing I did was I went on YouTube and Instagram and TikTok and listened to people's experiences. And, you know, my recovery and my outcome was kind of like some of them, and then also not like some of them. And so just recognizing that your body is very unique and very different, and people tend to post when they have a bad experience. Just like we know from research that you're more likely to get feedback or comments, whether that's if you're a professor and getting evaluations from students or selling a product on Amazon or whatever it may be, you're more likely to get negative feedback. People who are really pleased with something are less likely to be vocal about it. And so odds are you're probably in a very biased, you're consuming very biased information that doesn't represent, you know, people at large. And so keeping that in mind and just knowing that, you know, you're probably gonna have your own unique experience with whatever you know you're experiencing. But like I don't think that social media shouldn't be a place where people avoid altogether for health information. I think there's a lot of empowerment, like you were saying earlier, and a lot of really great information out there. In the Paps Mirror study, some of the suggestions, you know, requesting a smaller speculum
Practical Tips For Smarter Consumption
SPEAKER_02if you're experiencing pain, I think that's fantastic. That's a great tip. You know, it's an empowering tip. So those are some of the things I would consider.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I always tell people to pause for a second after you read something to think like, do like a does this make sense check. You know, six if a lot like an example is this the statistics that are usually way overblown of like you have 80% increase of this. It's like, okay, anything in health behavior research is going to be small because we are tracking a lot of ins and outs of behavior over long periods of time from when you were a baby to however old you are now. And so I think always kind of doing that check and even thinking, like, you know, where, as you said, people who have bad experiences are louder in general. What is this person's influence or like what is this person's life circumstance and how close does this resemble my own versus not? As you said, in some areas of health, like it is a privilege. People are spending hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars on the tiny health hacks where one, you may not have that financial ability. And two, you're missing all of these big health indicators that don't need this specific type of creatine that's $90 for a 30-day sample. So I think knowing what those potential conflicts of interest and stuff are too is important. Not to say that you can't make money online, because I am not in that bucket at all, but that it does kind of change your behavior when we think see things like industry-funded research tends to have positive results when it's published. So we just want to notice or be aware of some of those biases. And I think conversations like yours and mine and having people listening to these types of conversations just makes them a smarter consumer of information and less likely to get um down rabbit holes that are potentially um dangerous or misinformed.
SPEAKER_02Absolutely. And don't trust the people that say studies say, and then don't say unless they have a PMID at the same time. Watch out for those people.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. It's funny if I ever miss having a DOI or PMID, people are always asking me for the research, which I love. Like I do not get a threat response from that at all. Um, and it's been really cool to see kind of my platform grow very slowly. Um, but it's doing amazing though. You but it's been like a long time of me consistently posting. I feel like there's some people that come on and they're just like able to blow into the hundreds of thousands of followers, and that has not been my experience. Maybe I'm just not doing it right, but I think you're doing amazing.
SPEAKER_02I mean, it's been I don't know if it's been slow or quick for me. I I'm just doing the best I can with the amount of time I have. If I was doing this full time, it may, it may be different, you know. But also evidence-based information and studies and stuff, you know, that type of content doesn't get the engagement that personal anecdotes or very negative content does or highly politicized content does. And so it's challenging.
SPEAKER_00One of the things that is a big pet peeve of mine is like if you're the only way that you have gained more followers is by shitting on somebody else. I always feel
Where To Find Emily And Closing
SPEAKER_00like there has to be a one-to-one. Like, if you're gonna like break down somebody else, then you need to put out your own ideas for them to be critical of you because these like blast accounts that have hundreds of thousands of followers. I'm like, it's so I could easily take somebody's thing and tell them that they're dumb or this idea is stupid, but I think that's not, I just always want to frame into positivity and like empowerment and like what you know and what you don't know. It's just absolutely.
SPEAKER_02I'm really glad you said that because that's the kind of content that I will not engage in. I I see it as defamation. And like you can get sued for that. I I don't know. I just that you won't find me cat, you won't catch me doing that. Absolutely not. But it's very engaging content and it travels well. And sometimes it really is debunking misinformation and getting the right information to people. It's just not a strategy I'm willing to engage in.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I've done a couple that have been based on the idea around like, hey, here's where this is coming from, here's why I don't like it, here's what our research says. But yeah, like I I try and make that like such a small percentage of what I do because what I want them is to get the information of what they can do versus you're right, like kind of hating on and rage baiting people online. Though I probably could get a lot of followers if I just rage baited people and just took crazy content online and started breaking it down. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for hanging out with me for the last hour. I feel like I could talk to you forever about all this.
SPEAKER_02I know, this is great. I love this.
SPEAKER_00Um, where can people find you online if they want to learn about your studies or things that you are kind of doing, some of your workshops, even like where can they find you?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so you can find me in Instagram. It's just my first and last name. Um, I'm much like much fewer followers and much less action going in on in TikTok. So Instagram would be best. Um, and I also run a Substack as well with longer form content.
SPEAKER_00Oh, I didn't know you have a Substack. I'm gonna go follow that right now. I haven't done Substack. I really like it.
SPEAKER_02I just do it once a month because it's a lot of effort.
SPEAKER_00It's a lot of effort.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it's like doing a whole literature review sometimes.
SPEAKER_00Agreed. And where I stay in my little pod of all the information I already know because it makes them easier. It does. It definitely does. Well, amazing. Thank you so much for hanging out with us. And I think your information and what your research is looking into is just so pivotally important. So thank you for all that you do and taking the time uh to talk to listeners. And um, yeah, we'll talk to you soon.
SPEAKER_02Amazing. Thanks.
