 You know, I had a conversation recently with a similar conversation with a few women and they were actually discussing their fears of postpartum depression. After having seen several female friends go through this and see it really become very debilitating, they were really worried about why it keeps happening and what they can do to potentially prevent it. So in this video, I thought we would talk a little bit about postpartum depression and really postpartum symptoms or syndromes. And I think it's very important to talk about because in Chinese medicine, there's a very ancient cultural understanding of why it happens and why this is a very important time in a woman's life to be very careful and take extra precautions. Hey, I'm Dr. Alex Hain, Doctor of Chinese Medicine. Now before we jump into this video, two very important links right below. The first is for my free weekly video newsletter and a free guide for daily rituals that can potentially help you add years to your life with Chinese medicine. The next is if you'd like to become a patient of mine locally or online via telemedicine, the link to my private practice contact info is right below in the description. I had this profound experience several years ago, maybe about five years ago, when actually my girlfriend had broken her ankle. We went to a friend's birthday at one of these American Ninja Warrior training gyms and she had jumped off something not that high and her ankle instantly snapped. I mean, it sounded like a tree branch. It was quite a severe. It was not only both sides of the ankle, it's called bimalliola or fractured. The foot was also dislocated. So a foot broke and was hanging off to the side. When I went after she had surgery because it was pretty severe, we went to a mentor at the time, an acupuncturist. And the first question he asked her was, were you on your menses? Were you on your cycle? Were you bleeding? And she looked at me with this crazy wide-eyed look and she said, yeah, how did you know? And he said, you know, because women are often very susceptible when their resources are running low and they're bleeding. So sure enough, she was dead in the middle of her five or so days where she was bleeding and that was a susceptible time for her because the surgeon and the team in the hospital asked if she'd been hit by a car. She'd only jumped off something about three feet tall, landed at a weird angle and it snapped very severely. Now in Chinese medicine, women are often described as being a lot more complicated than men due to the complex physiology of their menstrual cycle and childbirth. But one aspect that we want to focus on here is all of the care taken for prenatally, for during the pregnancy and postpartum because there is extensive not only cultural knowledge, but Chinese medical, these adages, these sayings that are really important for women to heed during their pregnancy and postpartum so that they can have the quickest recovery and be as healthy as possible. You know, for example, some women will develop pathologies at that time, postpartum, that they have for the rest of their lives. And there are even these Chinese adages about postpartum and the specific care you should be taking. You know, in China, for example, they'll even say, just don't take a full shower because one of the main fears is of catching wind. Now, one of the best ways I've heard this described what wind is, right, wind is often described as one of the pathological factors that can affect you, the external influences that can affect you. And a mentor of mine described it as anything that invades from the outside, right, that can potentially be classified as wind or a wind based pathology. And the point being, if you're in a climate that's cold and you're going to take an outside shower, which was even true for the women when I lived in China and Beijing at a university, big university, the women would all have to go outside or everyone outside to shower communally. And so the risk of actually catching something is, is there, it's real. And of that progressing to be something more serious or more severe. Now, there are a couple of primary conditions that we worry about in Chinese medicine during the postpartum phase. They are primarily we think about blood deficiency because you are bleeding out literally heavily, blood stasis, catching colds and getting sick, or even constipation, which can lead to infection and other problems down the line. Now, another very common thing is that not only do you see these general prescriptions for the recovery and how much time a woman should take off after delivery, you often see these blood building traditional formulas used, going back thousands of years. You know, I'm aware of when written in one of our texts, herbal texts from around the year 220 AD, that's a couple hundred years after Christ, already giving women these prescriptions for exactly what to do prenatally during their pregnancy and postpartum. Now, one of them is utilizing these blood building formulas for at least a month following their pregnancy. There are formulas even used for if the loci is not fully expelled to prevent what we consider blood stasis. There are formulas primarily for building your resources are obviously the biggest thing, the amount of blood and resources lost from a Chinese medicine perspective. But I think what's also very important is that we often think of the blood as can be the hormonal layer, but also the blood is strongly related to the state of the spirit and the state of the spirit. I mean, blood function and quality and quantity in Chinese medicine is often linked, for example, to one pathology, anxiety and depression. So we're talking about postpartum depression. It is common to see women develop postpartum depression, just like you can also sometimes see women who go through menopause. And as their hormones change, they'll say it was like somebody flipped a switch and I developed depression. It's very similar that kind of pattern of in one case, it's the blood loss. And in one case, it's the change in the hormones, but both are related to hormones to some degree in Chinese medicine terms, because when we're working on the blood level or nourishing the blood, it's often tied to hormones and mood and hair and nails and all kinds of different factors, not just this pseudoscientific idea of the blood. So what do you do about this, right? Well, the short answer is go see a Chinese medicine practitioner who specializes in herbs, obviously before, during and after your pregnancy, no matter what you do in terms of conventional medicine. But what I would say also is especially postpartum. Conventional medicine does not have good resources for strengthening your reserves, right? That is really not its primary focus. It's not primarily focused on wellness. In Chinese medicine, there is a really sophisticated understanding of what formulas to take prenatally, what formulas even to take during what trimester, what trimester in your pregnancy. And then postpartum, what formulas to take to rebuild yourself to make sure that these kind of things are not happening. And that postpartum is not going to be a difficult, scary time for you. So my short answer is there's not really much I see besides utilizing formulas for the purpose they have been created to strengthen the resources and build up those reserves so that if whether you're doing that during the pregnancy, the postpartum is not as bad or whether you're catching it quickly, postpartum, you build the resources that way. So that's kind of a long answer, but postpartum is important even in the modern era, obviously biomedically, but also in ancient times, pregnancy is obviously much higher risk and risky to the woman as well, delivering the baby. So those are some very basic beginner thoughts on postpartum care in Chinese medicine. Before we go today, don't forget to check out the links below this video. 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