Discover the often-overlooked importance of pelvic floor health and how it plays a crucial role in pregnancy, childbirth, and postpartum recovery. Learn the benefits of strengthening the pelvic floor through simple exercises like Kegels, squats, and bridges enhancing core function, reducing discomfort, and improving overall physical wellness for women before, during, and after pregnancy.

Also covered are ways full-body movement supports better lymphatic flow, reduces swelling, and helps prevent postpartum challenges. Involving partners in the recovery journey can lead to healthier moms and stronger family dynamics. Whether you're planning for a baby or already a parent, this conversation offers practical insights for building strength and long-term well-being.

Highlights of the Podcast

00:01 - Core Strength & Pelvic Floor Basics

00:54 - Kegels & Easy At-Home Exercises

02:08 - Squats & Full-Range Movements

04:30 - Relaxin & Joint Stability

06:40 - Bridge, Cat-Cow & Vinyasa Yoga

08:42 - Postpartum Depression & Movement

09:45 - Dad’s Role: Supporting Mom

11:30 - Mom’s Mental Health & Reframing

12:50 - Long-Term View: Building Strong Families

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:00:04] All right. So, you know, we've talked a little about, you know, making sure that, uh, these 20 year old women are getting the nutrition they need and getting the mental function on the stuff that they need to produce healthy babies. Um, and so one of the things I want to make sure we ran through was the physical activity function. So pelvic floor issues, like we've thought about the pelvis before, how your core is actually your pelvis and everything that attaches to it. It's not, it's not here. It's lower. So it's not your abs. It's not where your belly button is. It's below your belly, but around your pelvis. Um, and so the, some of the core musculature that we have in that is the pelvic floor. Um. And when we, what we see with women who have a properly, you know, functional pelvic floor is their pregnancies are much easier. The births are much. On average, like everybody still has like pregnancy is still chaos. Um, but on average, The birthing is easier. The pregnancy is easier and the post is super, is a lot better. So like how I make the comment about how we've had a decent number of 26 to 28 to 30 year old women roll through here who would tell me that they pee on themselves a little when they laugh or if they jump up and down, they, you know, like they're like, I pee on myself a little bit at 28. And you're like what happened? It was, well, I was fine. Then I had a baby and this is what happened. Well, of course, like, you know that's the thing because what What happened was... You didn't get the education on pelvic floor strengthening that you probably should have gotten, uh, or you did, and you didn't do enough on it. Like I'm not trying to say that zero pediatrician, I'm sorry, zero OB gins, zero midwives, none of these people are teaching pelvic floor function, but that seems to be, we're not, let's just put it this way. We're not doing enough pelvic floor strength things.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:01:53] Okay. Um, so the, the easy way to remedy that is to start, you can do this, some of these things at home. Um, Kegels are a great one. And, you know, and you can do this every time you go to the bathroom if you wanted to. And I would recommend that. Like for instance, if you're, let's say you're just picking ages, you're 26 and you're like, Hey, my husband and I are thinking about having a baby in a year. Great. Every time you got to the. Urinate a little bit, stop the flow of urine, urinate a little bit stop the floor urine. That those are them. That's the musculature that you've got to work on for Kegels and you know, Kegel's are great. I want to really understand how much Kegels are great. How much we love them, but they're not the only exercise. If all you did was Kegel's, you would be better than if you didn't do anything, but you wouldn't be as good as if you did all the things, right? So Kegles are great, you can do it whenever you're going to bathroom. And if you're listening to this and you're like, ah, damn, I already screwed myself up. I'm one of those women who pee on myself a little bit whenever, you know, I laugh, so I wish I would have known this beforehand, you can do these and it will often remedy the issue. So by the way, if you pee on yourself a little bit, when you laugh or something like that, and that happened after birth, like that's a pelvic floor issue by flat out, so find a pelvic floors specialist and they can fix that. So like, do they do the Kegel thing, right? And, uh, you know, squats are another great one. Uh, now the depth of the squat on that does matter. However, I'm going to tell you that you should go all the way to the floor and then come back up. So drop your butt, like the whole ass to grass thing, Get your butt really down low. Uh, and then, come all the back up and then get to the point where you don't have to hold on to anything. Then we can build up into single leg step ups and that type of thing.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:03:36] But the reason why we want to go all way down and all the way back up is because. not that entire range is critical for the pelvic floor. That entire range is critical for all of your function. Because if you say get a little heavier when you get pregnant or later in life or for whatever reason, you need to be able to have the ability if you slip or anything else to have that full range of motion functionality. Cause we talk about full range a lot. And so along that full range you're going to get a really good really good hit in the pelvic floor. You're going to get really good function in the hips and the knees. The ankles get the whole thing going because here's the thing you're going to recognize is that as you get pregnant and as you go along, you're going to start having things puff up. And so as those things happen, you want to make sure that you're having good lymphatic movement through the entire body. If we're honestly, you know, a couple of times a week or a couple times a day, you you're doing, you, know, 30 squats, great. That's going to help move all that fluid. You're not going to get. You have a lower propensity of having the swollen ankles of having the swollen legs of having lymphatic issues. So make sure you're doing those full range, full function, because yes, pelvic floor is in a specific range. But again, we have to take care of the whole body. Um, and so that's going to be really, really helpful. Plus it helps your metabolic function. And if you're moving your whole body like this a lot, that's going to mean knees and hips. Remember your knees. Femur hips, femur pelvis femur. So you want to get that whole emotional whole motion function going because as the whole pelvis gets stronger, as it starts moving around, so think about this, like some of the people that recognize us, as you get further along in your pregnancy, you start producing a hormone called relaxin relaxin does exactly what you think it does. It relaxes everything.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:05:28] Well, if your pelvis is like iron steel tied together and it still kind of slips out every once in a while as it gets, starts getting loosey goosey. It like, we see like, like, you know, from a back pain, you know, pelvic pain type of stuff we see, we see the graph goes like this, right? Cause it's obviously much, much higher at the end of the pregnancy that is in the beginning of the pregnancy. Well, here's the thing. If your pelvic floor, if you're, if your musculature around your, your core's tight, if your legs and butt are like worked out and they're good to go, you're going to have a lot less problem with. You know, the relaxing causing back pain and hip pains and knee pain. then you would, if you didn't do that. So this is one of those big deals. So as you're starting to go through this, this is one of the things we do. So, and real quick, if you guys are watching this and you're like, oh my gosh, my sister, my best friend, like, like they need this information, send them to us. This is one things that we do, like even here to go talk to fertility clinics about having them, their patients come in vibe. Five is going to start helping class pelvic floor strengthening classes with us. That's when the midwives were working with us, the pediatrician's offices are working with Like this is a big deal. Like we're moving in this direction. So if you guys are wanting some help on this, hit us up, we'll help you guys get where you need to go. But the other thing that we see a lot is bridges. You know, the cat cow stuff, you know, so those where you're laying on your back and you're pushing your pelvis up and you coming up to a bridge, you know planking is one of those things. But here's the thing on planking. And I want, we talk about this a little bit, but I want to make sure everybody hears this. If you've never done these, planking, is not the first thing to start with. Planking is a higher level exercise. that you need to get some of the stuff strengthened around it before we start throwing planks in.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:07:07] Um, so, you know, planking is fantastic. I love planking, but not everybody is ready for it. Um. That's one of those things like as we walk people through this, like we go, what do you do for a workout? And a lot of people go, I don't really work out. Okay, great. Planking is probably not where you need start. Um? So as you're going through and doing these things, and you can Google these, um, doing them, this is the thing, right? Cause we talk about form when we talk about getting your form washed all the time. outside of the Kegel stuff, have somebody work with you and watch you on your form on this stuff, because doing it right is the most important thing. So if you do it wrong a lot, you can create a problem, or if you don't write a lot you can correct the problem or build yourself up. So, and you don' have to have somebody watch you every time you do, just at the beginning while you're learning to do it, like am I doing this right? And as soon as you do right enough, that's the motor function you've built. That's the habit you've now built. You're gonna do these exercises right. You're going to much higher propensity of doing these exercises properly in the future. So Those are gonna be really important. The cat cow thing is great one of the things that we I work on with pregnant women when they have back pain is Doing that cat cow because all you're basically doing is you're supporting of your knees and your hands You're supporting your core and then you're just kind of going flexion extension flexion Extension so you're kind of you know moving it back and forth and that helps move out, you know irritations, inflammation, helps move nutrients in and out. It's a fantastic exercise. So there's a whole list of these things. Vinyasa flows are great for pregnant women.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:08:42] They're pretty okay for the pelvic floor, but they're really, really great for women who are gonna get pregnant and pregnant, because as you're moving through these vinyasa flow, especially if it's warm in the room, you're getting all your lymphatics to move around. You're getting your fluids and all this stuff to start moving around. And as you start doing that, you're gonna have less inflammation, you're going to have less joint pain, You're going to have more functionality. when you give birth, it'll be easier. And then one of the big things is that because of what that exercise does, you're gonna have less postpartum issues. We need to walk into pregnancies thinking that we can actually prevent postpartium issues. And the reason that we do that is like, okay, what do we know? We know for a fact that metabolic function or your diet and that type of thing plays a giant role in postpartrum. We know that exercise is the number one thing that we treat depression with. So we can get you exercising all the way throughout your pregnancy and afterwards. bang, that's going to be a major benefit to reducing postpartum issues. If we understand, Hey, we need to teach the guys. And this is one of the things we do is we teach the guys how to take care of the wife, the wife. The woman is going to take of the baby because we can't breastfeed. You're the guys can change diapers and stuff, but we can breastfeed if you're doing that. And the mom has a very, very specific role with baby when it starts. So if what we're going to do is say, okay, bottom line, there's a whole lot of other things we can do, but bottom line mom takes care of baby. husband or dad takes care of mom. If we can get that established and then teach the dad how to take care of Mom, we're gonna have a lot healthier moms, which means we're going to have a whole lot healthier babies.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:10:09] And it's always funny because people are like, you're gonna teach the dads how to care, 100% we are. Because when I talk to dads, to new dads, like new dads just hang out and like, here's all the things you need to know. Like, damn, thanks for telling me. I would never have known that. But that's not true. We would know it. And we do know it after the babies, after we've had the first kid, after we had the second kid. And somebody starts talking to us about it. We go, Oh, I wish I would have known. Like one of the things I tell guys all the time, cause I had to learn this the hard way is one of ways you can take care of your wife is have her go grocery shopping. They were like, what? I'm like, I know. What I did wrong was I thought, man, I'm gonna go grocery shop and I'll get everything so that she doesn't have to, right? That sounds like obviously I'm doing a favor for her because we need some stuff in the house and I'm going to make sure that we have it so that doesn't worry about it Well, here's the thing I didn't recognize. She'd been in the house for like four days with just her and maybe like she needed a reason to leave and going grocery shopping was her reason to leave. And so factor that type of stuff. And like, again, dad takes care of the husband, takes care of the wife, you know, well, wife takes care, baby dad takes care of mama. So, all right. What is she going to need? She's going to eat a little bit of escape and, you know, and she's going need some time with her friends. And so if your wife, like, The first week or two, she's not going to want to move anything because she's all torn to hell. So whether she had a C-section, she had a vaginal birth, like she's not ready to go out dancing. Let's just put that out. Uh, even if she's like a drinking, which is what I'll tell that later, but she needs to be at a time to go sit with her friends and hang out. She needs time to read a book. She needs to time to get a massage and kind of relax.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:11:48] And so those are the things that we got to have to start factoring in like, okay, when are we going to add these things in? How are we going to do this? What are the other fun things that you notice is that, and I've, cause I've been dealing with women, you know, this whole like for a long time and I talked to all the moms is one of the things that helps break that, that postpartum is when you send them out and they're like, Oh, I have the whole day. I'm going to go do me for the whole. The vast majority of them, not all of them. A lot of them will go out and they start missing baby. And they might not miss baby enough to be like canceling their plans and coming home, but they start to miss baby. And so then when they go back home, it doesn't feel like a punishment. It feels like a reward and just that small mental change from, I have to take care of this thing too. I get to take care this thing radically changes how everybody feels. It changes the metabolic function. It changes, you know, the emotional content and it's much, much better for both baby and for mom. So giving mom a little bit of break is really, really important. So, you. As we're starting to go through these exercises and things like that, this is one of those things that we need to recognize that This is a thing we need to do even after you give birth. Again, like I said, you're gonna be all tore up inside. So maybe planks and maybe, you know, single leg squats isn't gonna be something you do the day you come home from the hospital. Maybe it is, but probably not. So we got to give yourself a little bit of time to heal and regenerate as we go through. And so that's kind of the thing. If we can start taking the four pillars and applying it to, you now, pregnancy.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:13:19] I mean, like, what are we gonna do for mama? We're gonna get in for baby. We're going to get mama as clean as we can diet wise and supplementation nutrition, chemically wise, right? We're gonna get, you know, the exercise built up so we can get all that function going and we're going start taking care of what we can do to make sure her mental state's in the right spot. You know, that builds society for the future. That builds the legacy. So you get all four of them by taking care of pregnant mom or taking care mom before she's pregnant. So these are big things that we can start. If we start trying to recognizing, Oh, the health of our nation starts before they're born. It starts with taking care of these women who are gonna be mama and then carrying them through. So however you wanna look at this, if you wanna like this as a women's issue, you should. If you wanna to look at this as health of the nation issue, you should, if you want to look at this as building families better like whatever, however you want to look this that makes it a positive function because all of those things, if we take care of mama right, all of things get better. So this is one of those things that if we can start focusing on it, we're gonna make a lot of really positive change in the health. in the psychological, physical, and mental, metabolic health of our nation going forward.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:14:26] So this is why I think that if we want to change what's going on with their elderly and with our 20 year olds, we got to start before everybody's born. And so if we can start to focus on that piece and growing forward, we're going to be a great place. So, uh, if you guys have any questions, questions at chalmerswellness.com. Uh, if want, if your trying to figure out how you can be part of this and get the education and everything. Hit us up. You can, you know, on the drop in the comments, your pillars of wellness.com gets, get ahold of us. Um, and if you guys are in the Frisco area, give the office a call, uh, and you know pillars, wellness. Comm go there, give me the office call. And what you guys all set up, you know, we get you set up with vibe, you know, so you guys can just hold the floor work. We get you setup with nutritional consoles. We can walk you through with the detox stuff. Um, so anything that you guys need, hit us up and we'll start walking you through it. Uh, otherwise have a fantastic day. Thanks for your time.

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