02 Aug 2024

The essential aspects of pregnancy preparation, emphasizing the importance of starting early. It explains the necessity of beginning preparation 5-6 months ahead of time to ensure optimal health for both mother and baby. The discussion covers crucial topics such as physical exercises to strengthen the pelvic floor and core, detoxification, and the role of essential nutrients and supplements like methyl folate and B vitamins.

Also addresses common pregnancy challenges, including nausea and emotional well-being. It highlights the significance of maintaining good gut health for serotonin production, which is vital for mood regulation and sleep quality. By discussing the importance of a well-rounded approach that includes physical health, nutrition, and mental well-being, the video provides comprehensive guidance for expectant mothers.

The importance of building a strong support network to navigate the demands of pregnancy and postpartum recovery. Valuable insights are shared on leveraging community and familial support, along with cultural practices that can aid in the process. This holistic approach ensures that mothers are well-prepared, both physically and emotionally, for the journey of pregnancy and beyond.

Highlights of the Podcast

00:30 – Early Preparation

01:00 – Physical Exercise

01:37 – Detox and Nutrition

02:10 – Supplementation

03:27 – Addressing Nausea

04:51 – Importance of Gut Health

05:45 – Sleep and Stress Management

06:35 – Building a Support Network

08:23 – Nutritional Cravings

10:07 – Holistic Approach

11:32 – Community Support

12:45 – Mental Health and Stress Relief

13:53 – Cultural Practices

15:17 – Comprehensive Pregnancy Prep

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:00:04] So I’ve been hearing a couple questions here and there about, pregnancy prep and how we do it and that of a thank you. So I’m going to ask you about supplementation. One of the things on pregnancy prep that we always do is I always like to start months ahead of time. So, you know, if you’re if you’re looking to get pregnant, I’d like to start five, six months ahead of time because there’s lots of things we gotta do. And I go over this often, but I keep getting questions. I want to make sure I go over in detail. There’s a couple other things you really want to start focusing on. You have to understand that procuring a child. I have seen nothing more destructive to a woman’s body than having getting pregnant, having a kid, car wrecks and all sorts of different exercise. It’s. Babies are going to tear you apart more anything. So one of the things we always do is I design exercises around. So, of course, strengthening stuff, pelvic floor straightening stuff, stuff that’s going to help you kind of get up and move around glutes if you acquire stuff. Because after you have this, you know, even in a great birth, there’s trauma to that, to the park area. I’m sure we can all there’s can be less argument about that than anything else. And so having the musculature already toned and ready to go, to come back together and heal after you’ve had the child, is a really, really good thing to do. Plus getting that stuff to move around, you know, as the baby moves through, you want that stuff you want to do with musculature, you want the pelvic girdling with pelvic floor to respond in the best possible manner. And the way you do that is get the muscles ready to go.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:01:37] So it’s kind of like warming up before you do any of that, or training before you do a marathon. Same idea. And so there’s exercises that you do that are really, really beneficial to the core function that all that sort of stuff. The other thing is that we start cleaning up the body. So when we talk about detox, you know, supplementation, stuff like that, a lot of times people don’t have the, you know, you know, the chemicals of their own needs because of their diet or because of genetic issues. And so we can go back through, we can test, we can clear out the parasites, cleared the yeast to get ready, get the liver and kidneys really fed well so they can detox the body as best as possible. We’ll other things we can do is check for things like empty trash. If you’ve never been pregnant before and you’re having trouble, it could be because you don’t methyl folate very well and folate hypercritical for, pregnancy because of what actually causes the brain and spinal cord to form, creeks. That helps create the neural tube, which becomes the brain spinal cord. That the other thing that we have to understand is that if mom is nutrient deficient, which is about 95% of human beings, if women in the United States, she’s gonna have trouble, you know, processing her own chemicals, dealing with her own biochemical needs, nutritional needs, let alone detoxing properly and carrying baby. So we really get the nutrient needs of the women up really, really high. The other thing is, it’s always funny because you’re bringing prenatal all the time, and they’re like, what do you think of these? The problem we run into is that a lot of this stuff is like 70, 80% of your daily needs, which sounds great. But if you’re not getting over 100% of your nutritional needs, you’re not gonna able to fill mom’s needs and baby’s needs. So and some of those things you don’t want extra, right? Cause you don’t want extra.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:03:27] There’s B vitamins that cause flushing and stuff like that and igneous things like that. So you don’t necessarily want, you know, 200% of everything. So there’s, there’s a variety of things we gotta kind of pull up. The other thing is that there’s things you can do to prevent nausea. And so as you go through tumor extract, ginger is great. You know, methylated B6 is really important. Things as bile salts, the suspension. So just jumping into pregnancy, you know, and sometimes it’s like, oh, we weren’t planning on this, but here we are. Great. There’s a lot of things that you can still do, nutritionally. But when we start working on, we’ll start working on these things. We are up a lot of stuff. So like I said before, it would be only your mouth would be volume. So just start with a fully methylated full spectrum. But you’re gonna need the B12 for energy. You’re going to the B6 to keep the methylated, to keep the bile salts in suspension congeal. Bile salts are a great way to show nausea. So if we’re going to loosen up the congeal bile salts in the liver and get those flowing out, we decrease the chances of nausea. B6 is also going to help B6 and B to help you sleep. So again you definitely need to make sure that you’re sleeping when you’re pregnant. so that’s going to help move that through. Here’s one of the big things is you will miss a lot. If we don’t get the get going really well, we don’t get the amino acids. And we need specifically tryptophan. You’re going to have issues of emotional problems because what happens is that all of your serotonin is in your gut. So you take in tryptophan.

[00:04:51] It goes from tryptophan to five HDP five ATP to serotonin, serotonin to melatonin. So getting the gut back together so the gut can produce that serotonin properly is really, really important. Because not only do we get the serotonin for your mood and for your emotional state, we also help you get to sleep, which for a lot of women seems like that’s not a problem. But again, it’s the quality of the sleep that you’re getting, not the quantity. One of the other things I like to do anytime we’re going to talk about neurologic function and building a baby is a lot of neurologic function involved is I like to make sure that we have a sleep study and make sure that you’re breathing properly at night. Just because you wake up and you feel like you’re rested doesn’t mean anything. You can have obviously oxygen issues throughout pregnancy throughout your life. If we don’t check for those, we don’t know. Especially with, the Covid vaccine out there, it’s causing some issues with ponds. And so I want to make sure that we get all that sleep checked. And then, you know, going through it’s we have to also work on the mind, because when you have emotional issues, it changes the way your chemistry works. So even from the easy neurologic peaks, right. So you get stressed out, you go from parasympathetic which is resting digesting to sympathetic which is fight, flight, freeze. You want to stay out of sympathetic as much as possible when you’re pregnant, because you don’t want the cortisol to come up. You don’t want all the stuff to happen. You don’t want to be stressed out because those stress chemicals do affect baby. Because again, if you’ve got a lot of stress chemicals in you babies and you, it’s definitely going to the baby. So we want to keep those things out. The more we can cycle through the positive thoughts, you know, gratitudes, you know, the, the things that calm you down and make you happy.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:06:35] And the more happy chemicals that are in your body, the better. And so there’s a whole lot of stuff that where you focus on these things when you start to feel yourself. So worried about x, y, z. Right. Focus on these things like look at these things we do we do different tests to make sure that everything’s okay. You know, doing DNA tests before you get pregnant to. Great idea. Because you find out that you have, you know, FHA, Anti-tracking, T or any of those, any of the issues we can go through and be like, okay, are we covered for these issues as far as nutritional deficiencies and function? Make sure all those things we’re getting ready for. As you go through pregnancy, there’s a lot of stressful things that go through that happen. And so making sure that you’re in a workout program to help kind of break that, that psychological stress, making sure that your nutritional profile is high, making sure the foods you’re eating are super clean and good and best for you. So like, again, like we always go through whenever I do, diet plans, I always go bring your ten favorite foods and I’ll, I’ll come up with a way to eat those foods with a pizza and cookies and cakes and whatever that is essentially healthier for you so that you can still have those things. Because one of the things that everybody talks about, and it’s a thing when when we get pregnant is have weird cravings. Oftentimes has weird cravings are directly tied to nutritional deficiencies. You know, chocolate’s a big one for magnesium. You know, you’ll want salty stuff when you’re low, running low on sodium chloride. And you know the salt, you know, in your body, potassium chloride, things like that. And so we want to make sure as you go through any time that, you know, even with your nutrition high, if you’re like, man, I’m really craving salty foods. Well, you should have some salty foods because that’s what your body’s telling you it needs. You need to get it, but you have to make sure that those salt is high quality stuff. You don’t want just Morton’s white salt.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:08:23] You don’t want the processed trash that’s on a lot of, you know, snacky foods. If you want something crunchy, there’s lots of crunchy things that will be beneficial for you. You know, and a lot of times as babies start to grow, we might have issues with them. You know, they’re hungry for the candy because stomachs are congested. And so it’s all smashed up. And so going through and making sure that you get the right amount of nutrition and it’s really, really important. So make sure you’re getting your clean proteins maturing clean fast depending on your glycemic function where you’re on the somatic type chart, making sure that you’re either not getting any part or you’re getting the right amount of carbs, the right kind of cars for your glycemic function for wherever you’re at. And so there’s a lot of things that you have to kind of factor in as you go through it. Now, if you’re usually a heavier set person, then, you know, even if you, you know, you eat pretty well, but you hold a lot of fat, you’re most likely either miso and, either miso and no or straight endo. And so cutting all the sugars out from your really, really big thing for you. Again, swap them. Don’t just be like. All right, that’s it. For nine more months. No more. The things I enjoy. No more candies or cookies or other sort of stuff. That is not a great idea because it will stress you out. Which is again, we already talked about that. You don’t be stressed out. You’re going to feel like you have to give all these things up, which is not true. And you’re always walk around wanting things you can’t have. And then that oftentimes leads to bingeing until you’re just like, well, I just have a hold on right now and I just have a ton of stuff. And search turns in shock. Not the best idea. But there’s also a lot of maintenance stuff, like I love for women to do Kimmy Castor packs and, you know, take extra stuff to kind of flow the bowel through, you know, get the liver to kind of really like, you know, clean out, keep the used tissues down. RFA is great for having these.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:10:07] So, you know, when you’re getting ready to get pregnant. There is an optimal way to do things, and that should be nutrition is going to be you got to work out, you got to clear your mind. You got to make sure you’re sleeping properly. We got to deal with your stress. If there’s lots of little things that you gotta kind of put together so we can get Ahold of a woman six months before she’s planning on being pregnant, then we can start putting all these things into place. You can start practicing, you know, making sure you have a bed time, making sure that your, you know, you’re off devices 30 days before you’re trying to sleep so that you the most deep, the deepest, most restful sleep you can. And I would have 100% start building your network. One of the things that I see is horrible that we’ve decided to do in this country is we’ve cut off our community. So, you know, there’s a lot of men right now. And Peterson talks about this, everybody. Doctor Peterson talks about this all the time. You know, we don’t have the education. We don’t have the the tutelage and the and the, mentorship from men to to your younger men. But we also have lost it for women because what used to happen 56 years ago, not all the time, it to a great degree was we had a community. And so when we get pregnant and then have a child and then her whole community would come around, all the moms, all the, you know, you know, your friends and your your mom, your grandma, you know, all their friends would come help and she’ll be like the person who had the baby. They put, mama, you’re tired. Go take a nap. We’ll take care of baby. Oh, your family needs food.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:11:32] Susan will make the food for you guys so that you can take that. You can take some pressure off of you. And that’s the baby starts crying. You know, we’ll help you take care of baby. You know, you spend as much time as you can with baby, but whenever you start to get fatigued, we’ll take over. You can go rest so you don’t lose your mind. And by the way, the way you’re feeling is normal. And they could go through. They could, they could counsel you. Because these women have also had babies. And so they could talk to you about, oh, you’re feeling a little repressed. That’s cool. That’s very normal. Go take a nap, eat something. And here’s how we’re going to help you get through it, because that’s hyper critical. So if you can sort of building your network of people who are maybe pregnant at the same time, if your relatives are in town, if you have church members that you can start leaning on, you start putting that network together so that you have a place to kind of offload your stress and offload your problems. Because a lot of times what happens with women is they go, I can handle this. I’m a tough woman, I can get it done. And a lot of women are super, super tough, wildly mentally strong. It’s amazing. However, everyone has a breaking point and if you hit your breaking point, you don’t have a you don’t have a pressure release valve. Everything goes sideways like fast, like you were fine two days ago and now everything’s hell. Like you’re super depressed. You you’re stressed out. I can’t do this.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:12:45] Like, I don’t know how I thought I was going to go do this. And the whole future, you get massive anxiety because we can’t do it today. How are you going to tomorrow? I did it five days from now and it’s just spiraling out. So building your network of who you can talk to, who you can get relief from, here, you can help, who can watch the baby when you sleep, you know, because a lot of times, like when my husband over that. Well, if your husband’s working, maybe he can’t. You know what happens in the middle of the day? You know, some people can’t afford nannies and things like that, but they have friends that can help come in. So of building your team that so it’s a lot more than just, you know what someone so I want to take is you have to encompass the whole thing. Again. If you look at all of our problems from from the body is a holistic issue, right. Because a lot of people will go, oh, well, I get the exercise thing. Like that’s, that’s an obvious thing. You should definitely train for any massive physical event. And having a baby, some massive physical that like that makes sense. And then like, oh, and yeah, prenatal supplementation and vitamins and stuff and you know, making sure you get the food and that makes sense. But the mental piece is where people lose this. They don’t they don’t think about building the team. They don’t think about, you know, creating an environment that is going to be conducive to not just baby, but to mom and to the whole family.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:13:53] Right? So, you know, in in my wife’s culture and the Arab culture, the, the, the grandma or the, the wife’s mom would come and hang out and I’ll tell you where, when she first told me she was moving in, I was like, that’s a little bit weird, but I mean, whatever. And then like three days in, I was like, oh my God, this is the greatest thing that’s ever happened. Because whenever Lou would need something, she had two people to take care of me and her mom. And a lot of times, even though you know who I am, I always say she wanted to talk to her mom because I’ve never had a baby. Her mom has, and so it was very beneficial to have her around. So building that team is something that I see people forget or just don’t how to do a lot. So if you’re if you’re pregnant right now, if you’re about to be pregnant right now, you’re trying to figure out what to do. You know, college will help you with, well, the supplementation, the extra stuff. But you got to start building your team right now. So start looking around you like, you know, if you don’t go to church, find a church you can deal with because there’s it’s a place where good people gather, right? There’s not a ton of bad people in churches. That’s that’s a that’s a given. But there’s going to be people who are looking to help. And you can find those people there. You can find people who are looking to help, you know, there’s Facebook groups, they’re going to help out, you know, figure out, like, you know, in your circle, like you’re going to have your friends and your friends. You’re going to have people they know. So start reaching out to your friends and be like, hey, who can come? Help your free to go. I’ll help. Fantastic. Thanks. Who else? Because you don’t want to have 2 or 3 people. You won’t have 20.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:15:17] Because the more people you have who can help. But with deeper tensions. And so we call the first 3 or 4 people, and they’re like, sorry, I’m here, I’m in Mexico, sorry I’m here. I can’t do that. The more people you have to call, the better it’s going to be. So make sure you’re building that team because that something I don’t think that we see very much of. But that’s really a big piece as well. So there’s a lot to do with pregnancy practice. You have to not just worry about the baby. You got to worry about mom. And I think a lot of people are not worrying enough about mom. And that’s why we see a lot of this postpartum issues, because those postpartum issues are about nutrition, but they’re also psychological. So if you plan for that ahead of time, here’s all the supplementation you’re going to need. Here’s all the nutrition you’re going to need to make that serotonin. Got to make the dopamine. Got to make all those neurotransmitters so I can give you the chemicals. Are you ready to make those. But I also need to give you pressure release valves for your psychology. Like I really help you with the load. And how do we help you with a load? That’s how you build your team. And so those are really important things. If you guys are looking to do this, if you’re kids or if you’re a grandma and your kids are looking to have kids, make sure you volunteer that information. Hey, I want to help. Here’s why it’s important help. Help your daughter build their team. So those are really important things. If you guys have any other questions us up. But that’s that’s what we try to do for pregnancy. And it’s been helping a lot with a lot of these women we work with. So if you have any other questions, questions that Chalmers Warren sitcom use dropping comments. Thanks for your time.


As always if you have any questions, please send them to Questions@ChalmersWellness.com

Check out Chalmers Pillarsofwellness.com for Wellness updates! And ask me any questions you have at questions@chalmerswellness.com. I answer all of them and look forward to hearing from you.

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Dr. Matt Chalmers

Disclaimer: This content is for informational purposes only. Before taking any action based on this information you should first consult with your physician or health care provider. This information is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health providers with any questions regarding a medical condition, your health, or wellness

 

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