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66: The New Postpartum Exercise Guidelines That Ditch the Six Week Rule with Dr. Margie Davenport

35m 17s

66: The New Postpartum Exercise Guidelines That Ditch the Six Week Rule with Dr. Margie Davenport

Kristen Parisi hosts the podcast "Whole Shabang," focusing on pelvic health, fitness, mindset, and finances. Dr. Margi Davenborg's research challenges outdated postpartum exercise advice, introducing individualized guidelines and the "get active questionnaire for postpartum." Recommendations include gradual progression towards 120 minutes of exercise per week, emphasizing the mental and physical benefits of postpartum exercise. The guidelines also address sleep quality and daily pelvic floor training, highlighting the importance of a holistic approach to postpartum recovery.

Transcription

6084 Words, 34554 Characters

[Music] Welcome to the whole Shabang. I'm your host, Kristen Parisi. I'm a pelvic health physiotherapist who is on a journey to learn everything I can, both pelvic health, fitness, mindset and finances. I love to share what I learn with my clients at my clinic, Blueberry Therapy, but what I hear every day is I wish I knew this inflammation sooner. So if you are ready to brazenly and unashamedly dive into the truth about peeing and pooping, pain and sex and a whole lot more and you want to feel empowered, healthier, wealthier and wiser than you are in the right place. Let's jump right into it. Let's be honest, if you've ever been told you can't lift more than 20 pounds during pregnancy or that you need to wait exactly six weeks postpartum to exercise, you've been fed outdated advice. And I'm thrilled to tell you that the research is finally catching up to what our bodies have been telling us all along. Dr. Margi Davenborg is an exercise physiologist and researcher at the University of Alberta who's literally rewriting the rules. She led the team that created the world's first comprehensive postpartum exercise and sleep guidelines in 2025. And she's publishing groundbreaking research on weight lifting during pregnancy that's going to blow your mind. In this episode we're digging into why the magic six week postpartum checkpoint has been completely removed from the new guidelines. What the get active questionnaire actually tells us about when you're ready to move. And the shocking data showing that people who lifted heavy during pregnancy had a 51% reduction in adverse pregnancy outcomes. Yes, you heard that right. 51%. If you're pregnant, postpartum or working with people who are this conversation will completely change how you think about exercise during this life stage. Let's dive right in. Well, whole Shabang listeners, we are back with Margi Davenborg and I'm so excited to welcome you to the podcast. And for our listeners out there, we're going to dive into all kinds of really cool things about how to exercise in pregnancy and postpartum with a person who's doing a ton of research in this. So Margi, can you talk to us a little bit about how you landed at the University of Alberta and you know, what are the things that shaped what you're researching today? Great question. Really long story. I'll keep it nice and brief. So he was like lifetime ago. I was a national team athlete. When I retired, I didn't really know what to do with my life. So I went back to school for kinesiology. I was interested in exercise and diabetes and the only person that was doing exercise and diabetes at that time was somebody who did pregnancy research. And so I was you know, early mid-20s and had no real interest in pregnancy. So when I started working with her, I learned about physiology and how cool and exciting and you know, one of the nicest things about pregnancy is nothing ever is staying the same for very long. And so I fell in love with pregnancy and postpartum. I then went to the University of Calgary for postdoctoral fellowship. I did work in aging and cognition, which is becoming more relevant now than more than ever for myself of course. And then I moved to the University of Alberta and realized that I was really most passionate about pregnancy and postpartum. And so I started the program for pregnancy and postpartum health back in 2013. And we've been really pushing the boundaries of what we know in terms of guidelines for exercise and pregnancy and postpartum since then. That's amazing. And you know what? Just like I know we're gonna be talking more pregnancy and postpartum, but aging and cognition, what an amazing area to think about. And you know, once you get through that pregnancy and postpartum, how do you maintain that cognition right? Oh, absolutely. And it's actually it's funny because you know, we think of them as being two completely separate areas, but they're actually really interconnected. So we now know that changes that are happening to your brain during pregnancy can potentially impact cognition and brain health later on as well. So kind of connected still. Oh yeah. Yeah. And I'm sure we'll come back to that at some point during this podcast. So just in this last year, then you released the world's first comprehensive postpartum exercise and sleep guidelines. So first kudos, that's an enormous accomplishment. So for somebody who's listening and maybe is six weeks postpartum, can you walk us through what this exhausted person who's wondering, you know, how they should exercise? What should they even think about at that six week mark? So I think actually the first thing that we should talk about is that six week mark. So it it's a bit of this like magical number that I'm not sure where it came from. Probably it's just sort of the appropriate timeline for the majority, but not all healing. But what we do know now based on research and certainly from what you know postpartum women are telling us that some are ready well before that six week mark. And others are ready way past even the first year postpartum to even consider being physically active. And so one of the key things that we did with this particular guideline is reflect the individual journey of a postpartum woman understanding that for some, you know, restarting really early on is going to be most appropriate for them. And for others, it's waiting. So we actually don't have that six week checkup anymore. We removed it all together and we replaced it with what we call the get active questionnaire for postpartum, which is a self-completed tool for people who are ready to start their postpartum physical activity and exercise journey. They complete it, they identify if they have any potential contraindications, so medical reasons where exercise may need to be modified or paused for a little bit. But if they are not answering yes to any of those questions on the get active questionnaire for postpartum, then they're ready to start rebuilding their foundations at a very individualized pace. That's fabulous. You know, it's really interesting in the clinic. I always say to both my therapist and the patients that come through that nothing magical happens at six weeks really. And it's so funny that you're reflecting that and really understanding that it's individualized journey. And yet that get active questionnaire can help figure out where you're at. So can you talk to us about like the most common reason someone might need to modify their approach and how to have that conversation potentially with their healthcare provider based on that get active questionnaire? So there's actually two parts to the get active questionnaire postpartum. So the first is screening for contraindications. So those would be, you know, your typical health conditions. You're you're having heart disease issues or new onset respiratory issues. That sort of thing. The second piece which I think is almost more important in some ways are that it recommends screening for specific barriers. So there are many many barriers to postpartum exercise and physical activity, whether it's a baby who's not sleeping or you have no support or you're just like completely gassed. But we also highlight the importance of other barriers that need to be screened and treated, whether it's mental health, whether it's pelvic floor dysfunction, abdominal wall function, all of those can be key barriers to postpartum exercise. They are not reasons to avoid it, because we are at the data that we had with the 2025 Canadian guideline was that exercise was actually quite beneficial for helping to support and in many cases improve those particular outcomes. But screening and treating for barriers is really really important and, you know, helping to helping women to overcome them is really essential. That's fabulous. And for our listener, I will make sure I link that get active questionnaire to the show notes if you're feeling like you want to see where you stand. So let's say somebody does that and they're yep, they're ready to get going. What are the first few things that you suggest that they should start with? So that we had a number of different recommendations. So the first one was encouraging a gradual individualized symptom based progression towards 120 minutes, a moderate to vigorous physical activity each week. So you do need to start off slow to begin with. So early on after delivery, we encourage movement. So it's kind of interesting because, you know, I've had a vaginal and I've had a cesarean delivery and they're both very different for sure. But what happened with my cesarean delivery was I was told to stay in bed for three days. I'm an exercise physiologist. I work in the field and I did exactly what I was told. But with any other abdominal surgery, what happens is that people are actually told to get up out of bed. You're not going for a light walk. You're not going for a brisk walk. I would call it a shuffle, but not being afraid to, you know, go to the bathroom or wander over to the the bassinet and see baby. That early movement, early mobilization is actually really important for helping to support healing and recovery. Now, after that, once those sort of early days are past and you feel like you're ready to do something a little bit more, beginning with just very light intensity, even just walking is phenomenal way to restart. But keeping in mind, it's funny because over the last about five or six years, we've really changed the way that we thought about postpartum from, you know, you're going from pregnant to non-pregnant to, you know, you've just gone through this really incredible time in your life. You've gone through labor and delivery and that it's really essential that we rehabilitate, that we build foundations and gradually progress back after delivery. So again, that looks very different for everybody. The progression is going to be quite gradual. So you slowly build, you see how your recovery is feeling. If you're completely exhausted afterwards and you're not able to, you know, care for baby, care for yourself, you might want to just take it back a notch. But as you are feeling okay, if you're not having a significant increase in symptoms, when you are gradually increasing your walking, then you can continue to progress. But everybody's pace, everybody's journey will be very different. Yeah, and great advice for anybody that's listening is listen to your symptoms, give yourself a bit of grace during this time. So for somebody who's progressing and they're aiming for that 120 minutes, why is that the sweet spot? And really for our listener, what does moderate to vigorous exercise actually look like when also you're probably sleep deprived and dealing with this body that's healing? So how we came to the 120 minutes, that is probably the number one question. If you look at every other guideline out there, everybody sort of picks this magical 150 minutes. But with our both pregnancy and our post-proneum guidelines, we followed a very rigorous process called agree to and grade. They're just fancy ways for talking about that we had to follow a very specific process to develop the guidelines. So the first thing we had to do was put together all of the available literature and looked at, you know, if you had an increase in your overall volume of activity and increase in your intensity of activity, the increase in the duration of activity, did you have a concurrent reduction in different health outcomes? And we had a lot of them, we had about 30, but 10 were identified as absolutely critical. So one of those was mental health. What we saw is that if you increase your volume of activity, your risk of having depression actually dropped linearly, so about the same amount. So the greater that you increase your volume, the greater the reduction in depression. Before we started the entire process, we identified a very specific threshold to be able to identify what volume of activity we want to look at. And what we found is that in order to have, I believe it was at least a 25 percent reduction in the odds of whatever outcome that we needed that 120 minutes. Now the key thing that often gets missed is that even at the activity levels well below that 120 minutes, that you can still get really substantial health benefits. And depression is probably the key one that we talk about the most is really important postpartum. Women are very vulnerable to mental health challenges and exercise can be a really important component of helping to support overall mental health. So just 80 minutes per week. So just over 10 minutes of sort of a risk walk is associated with a 25 percent reduction in having postpartum depression. That's fabulous. You know earlier, I interview Dr. Jen Heiss, move the body, heal the mind. And that was very much for conclusion that it doesn't, you know, exercise is so good for so many things. And you need a certain amount of exercise to make physiological changes in your muscles and that kind of stuff. But from a mental health perspective, a little bit goes a really long way. So so amazing that you're seeing that as well in that postpartum when there's so many things changing. So you really from a mental health perspective, those first 12 weeks are really important. Can you explain why that time period really matters, especially with somebody that is struggling with depression or anxiety? So there are a lot of changes that happen when you go from pregnancy through labor and delivery, especially if you've had a very traumatic delivery. And then all of the hormonal changes that are happening, sleep deprivation, potentially you have, you know, conflicts with your partner or you're just not getting enough support. It can be a really challenging time for sure. And so those first 12 weeks, especially, seem to be, you know, where we see the highest rates of postpartum depression. One of the pieces that we included in there was when we looked at the timing of activity postpartum, we did look at whether or not you start moderate to vigorous intensity physical activity. So that would be going for a brisk walk or higher, raising your heart rate to your starting to sweat a little bit. If you do that in before 12 weeks postpartum that you actually have better mental health benefits, then if you wait after that 12 week mark, why this is important is because for about six or seven years now, we've had this idea that you should not run at all or have any high impact activity until after that 12 week mark. It was a phenomenal paper that was started by three really well-known, very brilliant physiotherapist, one of whom I worked with very, very closely. But at that point in time, we didn't have evidence to support timing postpartum in terms of when and where you should be doing activity. And so they basically did it based on their best experience, best practice recommendations. But the data that we have now actually suggests that earlier activity is totally fine. You don't have to be completely healed from having any urinary incontinence. So you can still have some leaking because we're approaching it a little bit more focusing on the balance between what your physical health is and what your mental health is. And I think that we have sort of over emphasize the importance of your physical health and under emphasize the importance of your mental health. And so the field is really rapidly changed. And so now we do recommend reengaging in those higher intensity activities early on than we have previously. That's such good news for so many people where running is their mental health. And potentially people who have run through much of their pregnancy to be able to take a short break and get back to it when they feel that they need to and not completely stop if they have a little bit of urinary incontinence because we know the mental health and the physical health need to come along. That's important. It's critical. And I mean the converse to that is that some people when they hear that you need to be ready to return to running at 12 weeks, some people simply aren't. So they might need much longer to be able to return. So it's that flexibility and reflecting the combined physical and mental components of return to higher intensity activities. So this guideline not only talks about exercise but talks about sleep. And as we're talking about mental health, that always comes up. And we know that sleep and poor sleep, especially really impacts mental health. So for new parents that can't always control their sleep. What's your advice for someone who babies wake up every two hours and how can exercise potentially help with sleep quality? Yeah, great question. Really. So I was a mom where neither of my kids slept for a very long time. I was extremely seriously sleep deprived. Before we actually started this entire process, we asked women what was most important to them to have in there. The first one was mental health. The second one was of course sleep. And you're absolutely right. There's not a lot that you can do, especially in those early days to be able to help baby sleep. Although there are newer studies that are starting to support that, but we're still, I would say, relatively early days. What we found, we did two specific systematic reviews where we looked at sleep in particular. And what we did find is that physical activity actually did help support sleep quality. It did not support sleep duration. It did not support the amount of times that you were actually sleeping. So you're not sleeping longer. You're waking up just as frequently. But when you are asleep, you actually sleep better. And so you have better overall sleep quality. Why this is important is that horror sleep quality is associated with an increase in depression and impressive symptoms. So it's not a cure all, but it can help provide just another way to help support sleep. But it's a really spicy topic for sure. Sleep is. Yeah. About your baby's sleep, about your sleep. And I hear you, I had my second, you know, really didn't like to sleep very much. It was very broken for a very long time. And there are like a lot of periods during that time where I have very few memories I swear. There's a good gap in mind too. But you almost get to the point. I remember, you know, I was so desperate to get any amount of sleep that I was, you know, I had my husband basically put our daughter to bed. And we were going to sleep trainer. And she was screaming, I was crying. It was the worst experience of my life. And so, you know, if there's anything, you know, that can help that's less traumatic for everybody, I think it's helpful. But I also appreciate that it's not always something that you want to hear necessarily right away. And so, you know, I try and have that gentler messaging that when you are ready, you know, this is something to be aware of. For sure. And for somebody that, you know, is getting up a fair bit that some activity might make the quality even when you do get to sleep better. I think that's a good hopeful story. So as a pelvic floor physio, I love also within this guideline that you make some recommendations about daily pelvic floor training. So here are that people daily pelvic floor training. This is something a lot of people skip and or don't do very well. So what are we missing when we ignore this? And how does it connect to the bigger picture of postpartum recovery? Yeah. What we were talking about before are the barriers to postpartum physical activity. And urinary incontinence is one of them, you know, there's a variety of severity of leakage that you can have. It can be very minimal or it can be quite significant. We know that for a long time, you know, if you really think about our moms and our grandmothers, they just basically suffered through for the rest of their lives. But there's now data which suggests that if you don't treat pelvic floor dysfunction, it can be such a barrier that there's research suggesting that if you have urinary incontinence, that it actually increases the risk of cardiovascular disease later on in life. Pretty wild. A little bit like seems like it doesn't really make sense until you think about one of the key ways that we can prevent cardiovascular disease is through exercise. And so if you are somebody who is avoiding exercise because you are leaking when you're doing that risk exercise, when you are trying to jog or run or do anything a little bit higher impact, you are absolutely not going to do that. So I think one of the key things we wanted to do with this only in part because we, you know, had some really phenomenal pelvic floor physiotherapists who were supporting us on this project. But also because we heard about it from the woman as well that it is a key barrier to exercise postpartum is that we need to raise awareness. We need to talk about prevention and treatment. But then we also have to think about, you know, places in Canada, you know, if we're in a major center, I'm in Edmonton, I have easy access to pelvic floor physiotherapists. If you go where I grew up in rural Ontario, there's no chance that you can do that. And so there's some really brilliant people like Shanei Dufour who are starting to really look at remote delivery of pelvic floor muscle training. It's not going to be as good certainly is if you had that direct assessment. But it's certainly going to be better than nothing. I think it's so important to say because we know that pelvic floor physiotherapists can work so well and it always makes me excited to work in this area because there's a tremendous amount of research. But you're absolutely right. There are many people either because they can't don't have local access and or they don't have the finances to afford it. Actually, so just before this podcast, I was on a call and Shantel Dumolin was talking about group based pelvic floor physio and delivering that remotely. And I think those kind of models that Shanei or Shantel are talking about, we'll see more of those that gives more access, which I think is important for everybody. Absolutely. So if we back it up, well, and we've been talking primarily about postpartum. And I know you've done a ton of great stuff in pregnancy-based exercise research. What are the things? So in preventing pregnancy complications, we can actually use exercise, right? So what have you discovered about exercise during pregnancy that can actually impact conditions like gestational diabetes, like preeclampsia? So back in 2019, we released the Canadian Godlines for Physical Activity throughout pregnancy. Throat is a really critical one because, again, we did a systematic review and meta-analysis looking at physical activity on the risk of having those pregnancy complications, but also other key conditions such as miscarriage, stillbirth, return delivery, and baby birth weight. What we found was that the vast majority of the literature at the time was based on walking. There were just a couple that would get up into about the intensity of maybe a jog, but nothing really higher than that. So just engaging in walking activities for at least 150 minutes per week were associated with a 40% reduction in the odds of having gestational diabetes, preeclampsia, gestational hypertension. We saw a 67% reduction in the odds of having its oppression during pregnancy, but critically, those other three conditions I talked about, miscarriage, preterm delivery, and having a small baby, which are key concerns that women tell us all the time with our reasons that they don't exercise, we found no relationship between physical activity and those three conditions. So we do recommend throughout pregnancy. When you can, there are definitely going to be days you don't feel well. If you have pregnancy sickness or you just got to are tired and done with it all, you need a day, that's totally fine. But what we do want to make sure is that we encourage some level of physical activity throughout pregnancy whenever possible, because we also know, same as in the postpartum period, that activity levels well below those current recommendations are still associated with really substantial benefits. So for example, to have a 25% reduction in the odds of having preeclampsia, you're talking about going for a brisk walk for 10 minutes per day, that's a huge benefit. Yes, so I think that's a really important thing for our listener. If during pregnancy, you're really not feeling well, even getting a 10-minute walk daily makes 25% reduction in preeclampsia, I heard you say, which preeclampsia itself has so much predictor of future heart disease, right? Yes, absolutely. So it's one of the things that I was most excited about with the 2019 Godline was that we did look at the relationship between exercise and risk of preeclampsia. Before that time, there was no preventative therapy for low risk pregnant women. Crazy thing is that one of the biggest risk factors for preeclampsia is a first pregnancy. We do have a low dose aspirin as an option for those individuals who are already at increased risk for developing preeclampsia, but exercise is now endorsed as a frontline therapy for preeclampsia prevention by most major organizations around the world. So it's very exciting. That is really exciting, and I don't know the answer to this, Mark, you maybe you do, is there a dose response then? So if you do 10 minutes of brisk exercise and you see a 25% reduction, as you do more, is there more reduction in preeclampsia? Yes, absolutely. So preeclampsia, gestational diabetes, gestational hypertension, depression, and then waking. We see a dose response with each of those outcomes with volume of activity. Now the tough part of that is that like I said at the beginning, the vast majority of research studies that were done up until that point in time were really focused on walking. So walking is this fantastic exercise, modality, it's easy, it's accessible, you know, you obviously have to have a safe place to walk, which may not always be the case in Edmonton in the middle of winter or depending on where you're living. But what we don't have or didn't have at that particular point in time was our athletes. So what happens if you are running for 300 minutes per week or more, we don't have a lot of information about that sort of higher end activity to be able to say that, you know, if you continue, you know, for three hours a week or five hours a week or ten hours a week, do you continue to see a reduction? Maybe we do, maybe we don't, we just don't have that data. But based on what we have, especially at, you know, so that 150 to 300 or so minutes per week, there's definitely a dose response. Okay, fabulous. So we might have to have you back in a while to see what the research bears out in that then. So the other thing that I love about you is that you're out there breaking taboos. So you mentioned your work aims to address taboo topics like high intensity exercise, heavy lifting, and contact sports during pregnancy and postpartum. So areas where I feel like a lot of people avoid, like you're getting in there, which I love, what's maybe one myth you're actively working to bust? And what does the evidence actually say? Yeah, you're absolutely right. It's funny because when we are talking about pregnancy, there are so many limits. Become from this standpoint that you actually have to prove safety, whereas with virtually every other population, we start with this idea that exercise is actually quite beneficial and that you need to prove that it's going to cause harm. So I don't, I don't like being told, but to do very much just ask my husband, me neither. It's good and bad, right? And so, you know, I have a lot of athletes who come and talk to me and say, you know, I, you know, I don't want to walk while I'm pregnant. I want to go and run or, you know, my doctor said I can't lift over 20 pounds. Well, you know, before I was deadlifting 250. So that's a big drop for me. And it's great to say that, you know, go and be active and go for a walk. But if you're an athlete and you really identify with that, whether you're recreational or a professional athlete, it's just simply not going to work and it will cause a lot of anxiety. It will cause stress and de-stress, but also potentially depression as well. So with some of the myths, and I mean, basically, if somebody is being told you shouldn't do this, we're probably actually testing it right now because why not? We're in a position where we, where we can. But I think where we've made some of the biggest strides is actually in weight lifting. So for the longest time, people were, you know, told that you shouldn't lift during pregnancy. You definitely don't want to lift over 20 pounds. You know, if you have a toddler, good luck. And a lot of that actually comes from occupational lifting literature. So if you think about it, your at work and your lifting, you know, heavy packages and you're moving them around, you're not going to necessarily think about your posture or your technique. You're probably just going to get her done. You're unlikely to have proper breaks and really that sort of thing. But that is not recreational weight lifting, right? And so what we've started to look at is the impact of heavier weight lifting on health outcomes. So a couple of years ago, my postdoctoral fellow, Christina Provitz, she contacted me and was like, you know, I was just told that I can't lift heavy in pregnancy. And she's like, what's the literature? And I was like, well, there isn't any to want to do something about this. And so we did a survey of 692 people who lifted more than 80% of their 1 RM before they were pregnant and continued during their pregnancy. So they were doing what they weren't supposed to do. We then took a look at that data and we looked at what happens if you reduce your activity. Do it. The guidelines typically will say don't lift heavy and looked at their health outcomes. Those who continue throughout their pregnancy to lift heavy weights, they had a 51% reduction in adverse pregnancy outcomes. Massive number. If I were to do that study in person before we have that evidence, others would never let me get that through. But using that evidence, we were able to take the next step, which was to do direct assessments of fetal well-being in response to a debt lift, a back squat, and a supine bench press. And so my master's student, Amy Mulek, who is a strength and conditioning coach and a former Olympic weightlifter, she ran this study. We had them lifting up to 90% of their 10 RM. So that would be equivalent to about 75% of maximal efforts. So pretty close to what the Godlins recommend. And we found that the training was actually really well-tolerative, both by mom and by baby. And so we now have a new study, which is starting to actually do those direct assessments of weightlifting at 80, greater than 80% of their 1 RM. So I think from a weight lifting perspective, that's where we've made the biggest strides in changes. But it also think that when we talk about weightlifting and pregnancy, by removing it, we're actually taking away some of the most important activities that we should be considering during pregnancy. We want to maintain our function and our muscles. We want to maintain our bone health overall. You go through pregnancy, and you remove these activities, it's going to be that much harder to rebuild in the postpartum period. So I think those Godlins are going to change pretty quickly if I have anything to do with it. Yeah, that's really exciting. So making some big impacts in postpartum about sleep and exercise and pregnancy exercise weightlifting, mental health. Honestly, it's just so encouraging to see that the research is being done and that people can feel much more confident in continuing to engage with things that they've done or even starting things during pregnancy, which is pretty cool. Yeah, so actually going back to the 2019 Godline, one of the things that we thought before that time is that you shouldn't do something during pregnancy unless you were doing it before. And so we actually did specific analyses to look at what happens if you start exercise in pregnancy and you were not active before. And those people actually had the greatest health improvements overall. So starting at any point during pregnancy is going to be helpful, whether it's the day you become pregnant or the day you deliver. That's such a great takeaway for my listeners. And it all goes back to exercises medicine for so many reasons, right? Absolutely. So if people are really encouraged in or interested in learning more either about the guideline or yourself, Margie, where can they find you? So the easiest way to find me is through my website, so exerciseinprignancy.ca or on Instagram at Dr. Margie Davenport Fabulous and I'll link all of that in the show notes too. And so I'm ending all of these podcasts with a question that's the easiest question for you, right? Absolutely. So if you had to have a theme song for your life or career, Margie, what would it be? So I'm going to do it too because I can't make a decision. So I think the first one is survivor. You know, there's a lot. It's really an uphill battle when we talk about exercise and pregnancy and postpartum, but we're surviving and we're making strides. And then the other one is my way by Prince Natura. I love it. My way. And nobody has ever chosen that one, Margie. So that's a good one. Thank you so much for joining us on the whole Shebang. This has been a real pleasure. And I really, I think I need to have you back in in a year or so. Yeah. Well, the IOC guidelines are coming out next year, so there'll be lots of exciting stuff, especially, you know, for higher intensity, longer duration exercise. It's going to be exciting. Fantastic. We're pre-booking it. Great. Thank you. Thanks for having me. I hope you enjoyed listening to this episode of the whole Shebang as much as I enjoyed making it. Please take a minute and share this episode with a friend or leave me a review. For more information about what's coming up next on the podcast or how to work with me, please head on over to blueberrytherapy.ca. Here you will find the show notes and a whole lot more about the services and products available to blueberry therapy. Hope you have the most amazing day and see you back here soon.

Podcast Summary

Key Points:

  1. Host is Kristen Parisi, a pelvic health physiotherapist on a journey to learn about pelvic health, fitness, mindset, and finances.
  2. Dr. Margi Davenborg has led groundbreaking research on postpartum exercise and sleep guidelines, challenging outdated advice.
  3. Guidelines emphasize individualized approach to postpartum exercise, removing the traditional 6-week mark and introducing the "get active questionnaire for postpartum."
  4. Recommendations include gradual, symptom-based progression towards 120 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity per week.
  5. Exercise postpartum can support mental health, sleep quality, and pelvic floor health.

Summary:

Kristen Parisi hosts the podcast "Whole Shabang," focusing on pelvic health, fitness, mindset, and finances. Dr. " Recommendations include gradual progression towards 120 minutes of exercise per week, emphasizing the mental and physical benefits of postpartum exercise.

The guidelines also address sleep quality and daily pelvic floor training, highlighting the importance of a holistic approach to postpartum recovery.

FAQs

The guidelines suggest individualized exercise plans, removing the traditional six-week postpartum checkpoint, and using a 'get active questionnaire' for screening.

They can complete the 'get active questionnaire' to screen for contraindications and barriers to exercise.

Start with gradual, symptom-based progression towards 120 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity per week, focusing on individualized pace and listening to body signals.

Research shows that this volume of activity can lead to significant reductions in adverse outcomes like depression, supporting mental health during the postpartum period.

While exercise may not increase sleep duration, it can improve sleep quality, which is associated with better mental health outcomes.

Daily pelvic floor training can help address urinary incontinence and other pelvic floor issues, contributing to overall postpartum recovery and well-being.

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