Above Navel diastasis, baby skin biome, hormone supplements and a better bra boosts performance!

FTV; 

In this week's episode I answer some of the questions that have come up this week.

I talk about above navel diastasis and how the approach to recovery is slightly different from below navel, or completely open, DR. It's remarkably straightforward but still important to note the difference.

I'm also talking about whether you should wash your baby with soap every day or not.

Hormone therapies, are they an important addition to your health regime and who can you trust to provide them?

And, finally, a study about the importance of wearing a proper bra when exercising. Seriously, get one fitted if you can afford it! The actual research article can be found here

As always; HPNB only has 5 billing cycles.

So this means that you not only get 3 months FREE access, no obligation!

BUT, if you decide you want to do the rest of the program, after only 5 months of paying $10/£8 a month you now get FREE LIFE TIME ACCESS! That's $50 max spend, in case you were wondering.

Though I'm not terribly active on  Instagram and Facebook you can follow us there. I am however active on Threads so find me there!

And, of course, you can always find us on our YouTube channel if you like your podcast in video form :)

Visit healthypostnatalbody.com and get 3 months completely FREE access. No sales, no commitment, no BS.

Email peter@healthypostnatalbody.com if you have any questions, comments or want to suggest a guest/topic       

Transcript

Welcome, Updates, Q&A Invite

Speaker 1 0:00

Hey, welcome to the healthy post natal body podcast with your postnatal expert Peter Lap. That as always. Would be me. Um this is the podcast for the 8th of March 2026. And remember last week I did um did a wonderful interview. Uh so uh which was a new uh with a new episode. Um so this week we get one from the fall, right? Um above naval diastasis, baby skin biome and soap. And hormone supplements and bras . That's right. The middle age right can I will tell you all about the importance of wearing a proper brassiere. Um this is one from 2023 something. April 24, 2023. Um is actually a really uh useful little episode. I I get some of these questions coming up quite regularly. So, you know. Here we go without further ado. Edition. Here we go. Sorry, I'm not messed up today. Um we'll talk about it next week when I do a QA. By the way, Peter at HealthyPostnatobody.com for your QA questions next week. Um, that'll be a new one. I've got one or two already, but I'd love to hear from you for more. Um I'll also tell you a little bit next week about the plans for the podcast and HP and B and Mass. Right, above naval diastasis recta. Let's begin there. I had uh a chat with somebody this week who had above naval diastasis recta, Clue pretty much was in the title there. So that is separation of the stomach muscles, but mainly above the belly button. Right. So as I've spoken about before, there are several kinds of diastasis recti. You have the above navel, below navel, completely open, and all that sort of stuff. And all of them require a slightly different approach to recovery. As you can imagine, you know, if this if the muscles above your belly button are split and the ones below your belly button are not, and then vice versa, though the ones below your belly button are split and the one uh or I've moved apart. I don't like the term split because that's not really what happened, but it's the separation below your belly button is a bit bigger than say the ones above, then that of course requires a slightly different approach to recovery, and this quite often gets missed in most um postpartum exercise programs, especially when you're working with a PT with uh I mean the clues in the title, right? It's it's personal training. So a PT should always pick up on this, right? When we start, when I or indeed one of the people that uh that now works for me, when they start uh assessing people, when we start assessing people, we check to see where the separation is the worst uh or or the the the largest, so to speak. Um how deep it is and what your muscle functionality is. And again, I've I've spoken about this before, it's about more than just a gap, right? Uh, but when we're talking about above above navel and below navel, then we're talking about where the separation is uh the most significant. Um it doesn't matter from a recovery perspective, as in you can recover from both, right? It it is really no. I have not come across a case where there was diastasis recti above navel that couldn't be uh be sorted out with some exercise. I've come across, as I've said before, uh some pretty bad cases of diastasis recti that needed surgery, but they tend not to be above navel, funnily enough. Um below navel that makes more sense. That's where a lot of the of the pressure buildup was during the pregnancy, and uh because you know, babies sit a lot of the pressure is is on at the lower end, but I've never come across an above navel that can't be recovered through exercise, which is a bit of a win, right? Apologies as I yawn my way through that, um which is a bit of a win. So the difference in the approach is it's relatively straightforward in that you focus a little bit more on the muscles above. This sounds so obvious. Um, but a lot of personal trainers seem to miss this. You need to focus a little bit more on the muscles above the belly button. So, yes, you focus on the entire core as we do for the healthy plus natal body program. Of course, you the entire core uh group of core muscles still needs to be worked because it's about more than just a gap, right? But you focus a little bit more on the upper part of the obliques and the middle part of the obliques than you do on the lower bit. So a lot of the fold-over crunchy exercises actually become much more useful. Now, I've done a whole thing before on whether you should do crunches uh for diastys rectile or not, but that's not what I'm talking about. I'm not talking about a full setup or anything. Crunch exercises, if executed properly, do not hinder the recover from the recovery from diastys rectile, right? I hope you I hope you're all on board with this now. A crunch is a completely safe thing to do when you have diastys recti, if you exhale through the motion and you focus on the right bit, and you know you're you're in control and all that sort of thing. Whether it's useful is a completely different matter. So if, for instance, you have below navel uh diastysis recti, then you um a crunch becomes significantly less useful. Whereas uh exercises that include say leg extensions, such as biceps think of bicycle crunches, the crunchy bit of the bicycle crunch is for below navel less important than the leg extension part of the bicycle crunches, whereas for above navel that kind of flips around. So the leg extension bit becomes less important than the than the foldover crunchy bit is, and that's important to know because an exercise such as the um alternating heel touch crunches that we do is really really useful for above navel diastasis rectile. It does nothing for below navel diastasis rectile, but for above navel, it's actually really really useful because it teaches you to control that top part and it works in side-by-side motion the top part of your obliques. So that is an exercise. So you need to start incorporating those muscles more in your program than you would for say below navel DR or uh above naval DR. Sorry, I'm I seem to have a yawning fit at the moment, so I have to do a little bit of editing here and there. Apologies for that, and you know, if I'd been a bit more planned, uh more organized, I would have recorded this earlier in the week, but I've been too busy. So it's it is essentially that straightforward. Work the upper part of your core, so the above belly button bit a bit more than you do the below belly button bit. Now, of course, the healthy post-dental body program is designed to tackle everything, right? So if you do the HPMB program, don't worry about it. Um, it's been taken care of for you. As you know, I put that thing together specifically for that reason. The benefit, of course, and this is what you'll find with any sort of uh online program, and whether it's Mutu or Jessic Mandelza or any of the more expensive um virtues out there, the idea is still that you know you get more from working with a personal trainer because everything can be completely targeted and personalized for your specific situation. However, if you're going to do a program, uh standardized program, just make sure it hits absolutely everything in the way that said HPn B program does, and Mutu is also pretty sound for this one. A lot of the other ones seem to uh seem to miss this a little bit, and they mainly focus either on above navel or below navel, and they then therefore by definition completely miss the miss the middle bit. And a lot of them focus too much on the core, anyways, right? Because of course you still have to focus on your glutes and and your posture muscles and and all that sort of stuff. But I want to stay relatively speaking on topic because you know that would be nice for once, right? We need not uh waffling too much. Uh so yeah, take a slightly different approach. Work the ones above navel uh uh work your top muscles a bit more than you do the below navel uh uh muscles. Straightforward enough, and it shouldn't have taken me 10 minutes to explain that one, but apparently it has. Right. Let's talk quickly about uh soap and um and babies. I was a bit surprised to to hear this. Of course, uh I did an interview with Dr. Hugh Farmer, and I've mentioned this before. The uh we did this about the the uh skin bio, right? Dr. Hugh Farmer 2021 sometime so we printed this. If you if you look on on uh on the podcast website, you you can't really you can't really miss it. You go to Apple and you look for Yuke Farmer, you you can't really miss it. Now, I can't believe I have to say this, but you shouldn't wash your baby with soap every day. Um, I came across someone um who was drawing that pretty much every day because baby poops and peas and all that sort of stuff. Um, the advice Dr. Yuk gave about taking care of your skin biome also goes for babies, right? That is not just for mothers. Um so when he was talking about probiotic creams and all that sort of stuff, there's no point in using a probiotic cream because it tends not to do anything because most probiotics are dead, um, consists of dead bacteria, basically you're spreading dead yogurt on on your face and and and and on your skin. Umollions, lotions, and sprays and and and all that sort of stuff, um are not a substitute to as he would point out, and this is not my um because this is not my area of expertise, so I'm just repeating what he said, and he has a PhD in this stuff, right? So, I mean he's the guy we listen to. Quite often, if you use anything other than water to wash your baby, you're actually damaging the skin more, you're drying it out and and and all that sort of stuff, right? Um uh some lotions, uh, sprays and creams and ointments and and all that sort of stuff are not actually a substitute for just having a healthy skin bio. So if you wash your baby with soap regularly and you dry its skin out, and there's inflammation or batches of flare-ups and all that sort of stuff, and eczema, which is which is very common, um, to be fair, the lotions and the creams and all that sort of stuff are not actually going to be the permanent solution. They might make the eczema go away a little bit and and moisturize the skin a little bit, so have it be less dry, but that is not the same as having a healthy skin biome, right? It's just uh in that conversation with Dr. Varma, um I was spoken, I was talking about you know, wash my face or wash my body two, three times a day, depending on how often I showered, and then I put uh lotion on afterwards, so face cream or whatever, and and it makes my skin better, feel better. So, yeah, but the problem with that is that as soon as you keep doing that, your skin stops producing the lotion, it's uh the the oil itself, the stebum itself, and and you're you're replacing the natural um the natural oils of of your skin, which are helping keep your skin healthy and all that sort of stuff, or keep your body healthy and all that sort of stuff, and replacing it with something completely and utterly artificial, which just gives you the appearance of better skin rather than actually giving you better skin. Um so you know it is if your baby has completely healthy skin, um then you probably don't need any lotions and creams and all that sort of stuff, it's kind of what he was saying. If obviously, if you have things such as eczema and all that sort of stuff, psoriasis, um then lotions can be a temporary solution, but definitely then don't make the situation worse by constantly throwing harsh soap at it. Are baby soaps better than um uh than normal soap? So you know the old say green gray or green bars of soap and all are different soaps better? Yeah, but they still kind of do their thing, so yeah, though you'll see a lot of the pH neutral stuff and moisturize, moisturizing stuff and all sorts of stuff, but they're still essentially killing off that skin bio as you use it. There isn't a soap out there that does not do that, so just be careful that you don't overuse that. I'm not saying don't use soap on the baby, um, you know, dirty baby needs washing as well, but not necessarily every day, or in in the case of particular person I came across twice a day, and the baby's skin was just a mess. Um, and then you can because like I said, you can throw loads of lotions at it, and there are more than more than enough people willing to sell you stuff, um, but you don't necessarily need to buy all the stuff people are trying to sell you. Which brings me on to hormone therapies. Now I'm not talking about HRT, right? Uh that is no way that is not at all what I'm talking about. I'm talking about hormone therapies, and should you get uh melatonin, should you get many of the hormone therapies that are currently being offered by uh alternative healthcare professionals? Um, in this particular case, I uh I know somebody who um works and after I because I don't want to throw people under the bus, right? But there's an all there's several alternative health therapists, so to speak. That's not a title, by the way. Uh that's not a thing, right? Alternative health therapists um working in Edinburgh, there's actually quite a few of them, and um they're more than happy to sell you a whole bunch of stuff, right? They're usually associated with a particular health care store that is um that that we have in in Edinburgh. Uh, and again, I'm not going to name the names. Um, it's not Holland and Barrett. This is one of those you walk in there and they'll sell you immediately, sell you 40 quids worth of nettle oil or or whatever it is, right? And they'll also give you hormone treatments. They basically uh take your blood type, uh they they they they they they draw some blood and then they send it off to a magic lab in uh usually Germany or Switzerland for for credibility. Um and then the the the test itself is already two-three hundred pounds, right? And then they come back and they say, by the way, you're short of these hormones, yeah. Let's take these supplements. That's kind of what they do. Um now, in some cases, like I did an interview with, say, Dr. Cadi Burton a while ago, uh, a long time ago, and she's uh she's into that um holistic functional medicine, and she has a proper medicine, so to speak, Western medicine background as well. Um and she was much more talking about helping people understand um the blood works, what is right for them, and what isn't. So she's not talking about selling stuff, and that's the difference between a lot of these people. A lot of people that are really good at this stuff don't have to sell you anything because the advice they give you, that is what they're selling, right? That is what they're doing, that's what they're telling you. It's kind of that's kind of what I do as well as well. I've got a little HP and B program, and but I basically give that away. Right? The three months free, that's the same as Mutu charges you a year for, and then I just put a cap on the on the other thing so you get charged a maximum of seven or nine months afterwards, so you never pay more than than 50 bucks. Um, and that is for a lifetime of sending me all the all the questions you have and all that sort of stuff. Um so what someone like Dr. Kali Burton is saying is I will look at the condition you already have and see and I'll give you advice based on I don't sell you any any supplements, and I think that is that is key. So if she says uh you're short of magnesium or whatever, right? I'm not sleeping well, accident. I take a magnesium, no, I'm not. Okay, these are the foods that are high in magnesium, these are what you can do. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm in this particular case, I'm talking about people selling you a hormonal supplements because they say your hormones are out of work. Um, and there's a certain person in Edinburgh who's a dentist by trade, uh, in the Edinburgh area, who's a dentist by trade who does that as well. And this is a problem. We have to realize that unless you go to your GP or the NHF professional, a lot of these guys performing these tests and giving you advice are not actually licensed healthcare professionals in any way. Right? They didn't even go to PT school, they didn't even go to personal trainer school. They they usually studied at that that hogwash uh university in uh in London, which again isn't a real university. Um I can't remember the guy's name, but he you know, he thinks you know all autism is completely curable with turmeric and all that sort of stuff. He's one of those guys. Um he's so far removed, they're so far removed from anything that they're just not credible anymore. Um, and they're willing to sell you really expensive stuff, thousands of pounds a month and all that sort of stuff. So the uh so the problem with a lot of these things that are being offered isn't so much that you might not need melatonin to sleep better. You can get that through your GP, by the way, right? You can go to the NHS. Um uh it's that they're selling you items just because you know they can, because you're willing to buy it. Turmeric shouldn't be that expensive. You shouldn't buy a turmeric supplement, you should go to the shop and buy turmeric if you want it. Right? My dogs get turmeric. Uh, my my dog with our threatus gets turmeric, he feels a hell of a lot better with it. But if you think I'm paying anything more than a fiver for turmeric pace, you're out of your mind. I'm not giving them special turmeric pills because that's not what is required. That is all I'm saying, right? So be careful. Don't start messing around with hormone therapy, first of all. Right? It it is one of those most people genuinely don't need it. A healthy diet, sleep, manage your stress levels, exercise, and all the sort of stuff. Do those things, and nine out of ten times, if not 99 out of 100, hormone levels won't really be an issue anymore. For most people that are looking for those shortcuts, is because you haven't done the hard work, and that's a little bit annoying, admittedly, that it's hard work, but you know, you kind of uh it's kind of a big thing, uh, kind of a big deal. Speaking of big deals, sports bras. I have I say this any and all of my clients if they show up for like a high-intensity interval session or something like that. Um wear a good bra. Buy a decent bra, especially if you are an athlete. I've worked with several um people that are professional uh sports people. And I always tell them this. It is astonishing to me how many women still don't seem to realize that being comfortable when you exercise increases your performance. Right? So up to a point, because that that's kind of the point of me bringing this up, because it's it's it seems obvious to me, right? If you're comfortable, you'll simply be better at exercise because you're not thinking about anything else, you can just focus on the exercise. However, there is now um a study that came out, peer-reviewed, and ever finished a lovely, lovely bit of work by the University of Memphis. Uh provided uh the equipment was provided by SheFit, so that's one of those bra companies. Um so that's a bit little bit of the you know, that's the conflict of uh that they had to um uh that they had to Jesus Pete really just run this through first. No, this is a conflict that they had to come on, what's that called again? Jesus declare, there you go. See, English language is such a difficult anyway. They were saying that a lot of women experience pain whilst uh running. Uh they they were saying that about 72%, up to 72% of women experience some sort of breast pain whilst running, and that's that is going to hinder your performance, right? The impressive thing about this particular study is that it showed uh, and this is a tiny study, right? There's only 12 runners and all that sort of stuff, but um they found that there was less knee pain and joint joint stiffness and all that sort of stuff, um in the with people who have a high support, uh high support bra, uh a high support sports bra. And they said that a high support support bra can improve females running performance by up to 7%. Now that doesn't sound like a lot, right? But it does show you that it will improve any performance of anyone doing any sort of exercise. Um, so not just your running doesn't use it better, but if you're a football player, your football will be better, tennis players, your tennis will be better, and you can't really run a big study based on just tennis performance and all that sort of stuff. It's incredibly difficult to measure. But it's an absolute no-brainer to me that if you're exercising, your performance will be better, you'll be more comfortable with uh with a good sports bra. So, you know, like I said before, if if I if I train anybody, it is I good sports bras are expensive, right? Don't get me wrong, but a lot of my PT clients uh can obviously they can afford PT. I'd rather you not take PT for like a month and then go to a bra shop uh to get measured. The the go to a proper sports bra shop and then they they measure you and they fit you with one. Spend your money on that and then come back to PT a month later. Um and you'll just you'll simply get better results. It's an absolute no-brainer for me. Be sensible with where you spend your money, right? Don't just willy-nilly just buy a crappy bra and then pay for loads for loads for PT, especially if you're anywhere near professional level or you want to be a professional level athlete, something like that, spend your money on the right equipment if you're almost at that level. Where 7%? 7% is huge. Um, anyways, I will leave it there. That was uh apologies for loads of editing. The UK government decided to send an emergency alert test out to every every phone in the UK, even if it's on silent. And that's always brilliant when you're recording your podcast, right? Because that's exactly the sort of shrill noise you have um you want to have in the background. Anyways, apologies for the short podcast, it's a bit all over the place. Like I said, next week we have a lovely hour-long one uh talking about exercise over 40, exercise diet over 40, and all this sort of stuff, with someone who has a completely different approach to what I have as a PT. And that's always fascinating to hear. Um, so Peter at healthyplusnatalbody.com. If you have any questions, any comments, anything like that, just give me a shout, right? That's what I'm here for. Have a great week, new bit of music. You take care of yourself. Bye now.

Speaker 26:38

Barely breathing, don't let go. Hear the whispers, listen close. I know you've never strayed from the fold, but that's how freedom begins. I am a man in Christ. We are the actions! Make your choice. So let the battle before.