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
Can an activity tracker tell you if you are pregnant? Conversation with Professor Benjamin Smarr, Part I
In the olden days, women measured something called basal body temperature (BBT), which is core temperature, to track ovulation by measuring their temperature right when they wake up--it's the first thing you'd do-- with a special thermometer that measured to at least one-tenth of a degree, and record it on a chart (maybe on your phone, maybe on paper) to identify a subtle temperature shift. But those were the horse and buggy days of biohacking. Now we can wear a ring that provides a continuous read out of your temperature and sends it to an app on your phone; and not only can it tell you if you are ovulating, it may be able to tell you if you are pregnant. Today we talk to Dr. Benjamin Smarr, PhD, who has used sensor data to uncover some of the dynamics of your body in pregnancy.
You can find Dr. Smarr's work here: https://smarr.ucsd.edu/