Healing Your Hormones with Erin Holt, Functional Medicine Nutritionist Artwork

The Postpartum Revolution

Welcome to The Postpartum Revolution! This podcast was born because, as a pelvic health physical therapist, I’ve heard and seen the ways our system has failed postpartum people in America. Newly postpartum people have repeated the same questions to me, with fear in their eyes and fatigue written all over their bodies, and I’ve grown tired of soothing them with the reassurance that it’s “all a part of the process, it’s normal to feel like this”. I began to wonder - what the hell kind of “normal process” is this, that produces tired and scared mothers? While not everyone has a negative experience with childbirth and postpartum, many people do. A lot of factors influence our postpartum experience: understanding how your body recovers, how much community and financial support you have, and how well our society helps to support a new family. My goal is to provide education about the postpartum recovery process, so you can set yourself up for a successful return to the things that bring you joy. I also want to bring awareness to the larger, systemic challenges that pregnant and postpartum people face, so that collectively we can start to turn the tide of our culture, and our children won't be trapped in an unhealthy and unsupported birth and postpartum culture. We have lost our power in the birth and postpartum world, and our loss is directly linked to other people's gain. It's time to take back the power over our bodies, our births, and our postpartum health. We are the change we have been waiting for. Let's go.

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The Postpartum Revolution

Healing Your Hormones with Erin Holt, Functional Medicine Nutritionist

October 16, 2020 • Annie Hopkins, Erin Holt • Season 1 • Episode 22

Female hormones are finally getting their time in the sun - and everyone wants to talk about "how to balance our hormones"... but is anyone asking WHY our hormones are out of balance?

During early postpartum, a period of hormonal imbalance is just a part of the deal - childbirth changes our bodies and our hormones are no exception. Our systems are designed to find balance again, but the conditions must be right... this is why ancient wisdom teaches that rest and restoration during the 4th trimester is so vital. But here in modern day America, motherhood is anything but rest... we are overworked, underfed, and overtraining all in the name of "health".

Enter Erin Holt.

Erin is a functional medicine nutritionist who takes the term "nutrition" to a whole new level... it's not just what we eat, it also includes how we are (or aren't) nourishing ourselves holistically, and her "unique" approach to hormone health addresses the whole picture.

We talk about how...
- Hormones are not the chief problem - hormones are RESPONDING to the chief problem
- No one has cured anybody by correcting a lab value: lived experience first, labs second.
- Thyroid meds without a life that supports your thyroid doesn't cut it.
- Our culture has no idea how to handle postpartum depression and grief (the grief associated with loss of self), so we easily fill the hole with trying to "fix" - dieting, etc.
- We’ve been taught that our bodies are something to fear, to not trust, and we’ve divorced ourselves from our bodies.

So, lab values and supplements aside, how do we heal hormones? (hint: it's not exercise and calorie restriction like we've been told). In order to reclaim our female bodies, to understand that we are not broken, flawed, crazy, etc. we need to:
- Set boundaries - we cannot continually give to others
- Feed ourselves completely with adequate calories and nourishing foods
- Manage our stress response
- Learn how to quiet down to listen to our body's natural rhythms - tracking how our energies cycle with our menstrual cycle/the moon.
- Let our intuition guide us out of the chaos that is modern day America

Connect with Erin:
https://www.erinholthealth.com/
Instagram
The Funk'tional Nutrition podcast - available wherever you listen!

Other Resources:
6 Tips for Moms Who Don't Have Time To Eat
Body Full of Stars - Molly Caro May

Questions? Comments? Suggestions? Want to be a guest on the show? Email me at thepostpartumrevolutionpodcast@gmail.com

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