Making Sense of Pregnancy: What Experts Want you To Know About Your Body
Have you been surprised by what we do and don't know about pregnancy and birth today? If you are pregnant, or have been in the past, this show helps you understand what's happening (or has happened) to our bodies--both the short term and long term effects of this transformation. We explore the boundaries of our scientific grasp on the wildly complex processes of pregnancy and birth.
After my complicated pregnancies, I went looking for answers and have interviewed hundreds of experts about women's health in this transition.
Every Tuesday you'll hear:
- Scientists at the cutting edge who are trying to uncover how pregnancy and birth work and what happens when they don't work
- Information you could use to better understand your own body in pregnancy
- .A better sense of the limits of your responsibility for what's happening inside your body
- Listen to hear what you won't find on a blogpost or a book off the shelf.
Making Sense of Pregnancy: What Experts Want you To Know About Your Body
Understanding How Uterine Contractions Work: A Key to preterm labor, period cramps and endometriosis? Conversation with Dr. Wang
Monitoring contractions in labor hasn't changed in 50 years--the most often used tool, the tocodynamometer, uses an indirect, one dimensional view of uterine activity in labor.
Dr. Wang talks about applying the tech used in cardiology to the uterus, to create a three dimensional way to non invasively measure electricity as it travels through the smooth muscle of the uterus, creating contractions. His lab is working on the tech that would allow us to distinguish, and potentially arrest preterm labor, to potentially jump start arrested labor, and to create a uterine measure of labor stages (which could be used in conjunction with cervical checks).
Understanding how the uterus works and the wearable technology that this work promises gives a sense of how complicated the uterus is when contractions feel fierce or labor stalls. It may also have applications that ease period cramps and monitor and potentially "turn off" endometriosis.
Wang Lab: https://reproductivesciences.wustl.edu/laboratories/wang-lab/
Dr. Wang's publications: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/myncbi/1Tux87w_RnEkl/bibliography/47687944/public/?sort=date&direction=ascending