Sound Formulas

pregnancyrecovery — Wed, 07 Feb 2007 16:11:18 +0000

From Dr. Dean Raffelock

pregnancyrecovery — Tue, 17 Oct 2006 07:50:39 +0000

Over the past years many women have emailed us to ask specific questions related to our clinically tested postnatal nutritional program called After Baby Boost and also questions about various pregnancy, postpartum, and general natural health care concerns. Some very good questions have come as a direct result of reading my book. This has been gratifying. My wife Stephanie and I have been pleased to answer these questions as time has allowed. Now with the addition of Sound Formula’s blog to our website, we can answer questions that others may also be interested in reading, post up research, new information, and also you can share helpful information with each other.

Please be aware that I can not give individual diagnosis or prescribe individual treatment on this blog but often can offer suggestions that you may want to explore with your own health practitioners or in some cases on your own. Obviously I can not take responsibility for any health choices you make if I am not your doctor but sometimes in sharing my clinical experience, previously unknown health options are brought to light that may be helpful. For those of you who are interested, I can act as a health consultant via phone calls. You can email my wife Stephanie at sraffelock@aol.com if this is something that you would like to do and want to know the particulars involved in doing this.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with my background, I have earned board certifications in clinical nutrition, acupuncture, chiropractic, and applied kinesiology and have been in practice for 30 years as of 2006. I have taught research based clinical nutrition for many years for various medical groups and symposiums and have written the book A NATURAL GUIDE TO PREGNANCY AND POSTPARTUM HEALTH Avery, Putnam, Penguin 2003 which focuses predominantly on the need for postpartum women to replenish their depleted nutritional reserves that their own bodies donated to form their baby’s body ( and placenta). Nutritional science, bio-identical hormones, brain chemistry, and leading edge laboratory tests are discussed as well. For those of you who decide to purchase this book on our website, I will be happy to sign the book for you if you would be so kind to let us know you’d like this when you order it.

From time to time we will do our best to have other doctors, medical and alternative, add their knowledge to this blog. So please keep posted for these developments.

We hope to make this blog as informative as possible and we look forward to your participation!

Warmest regards,

Dr. Dean Raffelock

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS #1

pregnancyrecovery — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 13:56:31 +0000

A very commonly asked question is:

Q-WHY DO I NEED A POSTNATAL NUTRIENT PROGRAM?

A-The short answer is that your body has donated lots of its nutrient reserves to make your baby’s body and placenta and you want to replenish your nutrient reserves so that you can enjoy the miracle that is your new baby and be healthy yourself. Also, it is very important to prevent immediate and future health problems by taking a high potency postnatal nutrient program to replenish these nutrient reserves. Most doctors recommend just continuing to take your prenatal vitamin after giving birth. In our experience, prenatal vitamins do not contain enough high quality nutrients to replenish postpartum nutritional needs.

Here is the more detailed answer from our articles section:

THE DEEP NEED FOR A POSTNATAL NUTRITIONAL PROGRAM FOR ALL POSTPARTUM WOMEN.

by Dr. Dean Raffelock

Throughout the past 30 years in private practice, hundreds of women have told me they felt that their current health problems started soon after the birth of their child. The child may have been her first or fifth, and might now be a teenager or even a grown man or woman, but the mother remembers the postpartum onset of her symptoms as if it were yesterday.

The symptoms that usually start within the first to twelfth postpartum months vary widely among mothers. A few of the most common are depression, chronic fatigue, insomnia, anxiety, lack of confidence, loss of sex drive and passion, muscle and joint pains, unhealthy skin and hair, digestive disturbances, bladder problems, heart disease, asthma, and a host of troubling emotions and moods swings. A woman can be puzzled, frustrated, even embarrassed when she reveals symptoms that have plagued her for years. She may have shared these self-observations with doctors only to find that they were not worthy of an acknowledgement or comforting comment from her physician. Any attempt on her part to connect the birth of one of her children with those symptoms may have been met with skepticism or passed over. Yet, she can’t shake the feeling that something about that particular birth began her health decline.

Her observations do have validity and merit. What most mainstream medical practitioners don’t fully take into consideration is that a baby’s body is formed and made entirely of nutrients donated by the mother’s body. Her child’s brain, eyes, muscles, bones, organs, glands, nerves, skin, tissues and fluids are completely comprised of the nutrients taken from its mother’s bloodstream via the placenta.

If there is a lack of vital nutrients, the mother’s body is the first one that is deprived because her developing baby is Mother Nature’s priority. All mothers need to consciously replenish their lost nutritional and energetic reserves during the postpartum period. If this isn’t done, they might end up spending the rest of their lives wondering why they “just haven’t felt the same since the baby was born.”

The energy demands of caring for a newborn can further drain and deplete the mother’s nutrient reserves, especially if she is breastfeeding and sleep-deprived. If a woman has lost a great deal of blood while birthing her baby, the need for replenishing the nutritional components of blood is even more critical. Women who undergo Cesarean section also need to restore nutrient reserves; not only have they become mothers, they have had to have major surgery in the process. Women who lose a good deal of blood during the birth process and who don’t replenish key nutrients might experience light-headedness and throbbing headaches, along with extreme fatigue, sleeplessness, anxiety, and depression.

A new mother is also faced with the stress of integrating the intense needs of a new baby into her lifestyle while tending to her mate and perhaps other children and returning to work. All of these responsibilities that women – and those who are cared for by them – have taken for granted for millennia demand high-quality nutrients. Our food supply presently contains only half the nutrients that food contained in the 1940s due to the nutrient depletions in our soil. This fact makes it very difficult, if not impossible, for a mother to fully replenish the nutrient reserves her body donated to make her baby’s body solely from the food she eats. Eating highly refined and processed “junk” foods further depletes vital nutrients, which deepens the need to replenish postnatal nutrients even more.

Every physiologic process in the human body depends upon nutrients. The most important time to consciously replenish postpartum nutrient reserves begins immediately after giving birth and extends to 24 months postpartum. The failure to do this often sets the stage for chronic health problems that may last for decades.

There was a time that women throughout the globe would be given their placenta in some edible form to consume directly postpartum, much like dogs and cats do instinctively. The placenta contains highly concentrated amounts of the nutrients that the mother has lost through giving birth. The fact that eating one’s placenta is now culturally distasteful further supports the need to make a concerted effort to consume the appropriate nutrients and nourishing foods necessary for rebuilding and replenishing the new mother’s donated nutrient reserves. A high potency postnatal nutrient program is now essential to help a postpartum woman replenish her nutrient reserves.

Presently, about 30 million Americans take anti-depressant drugs. The majority of these are postpartum women! Many doctors prescribe Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil, Celexa, and a host of other anti-depressant drugs before considering whether the mother’s depression, fatigue, or lethargy might be caused by postpartum nutrient depletion. Postpartum nutritional depletion can cause a physiological depression that is far too often misdiagnosed as a mental/emotional depression. All the brain neurotransmitter chemicals (like serotonin, epinephrine, norepinephrine, dopamine, and GABA) that deeply affect one’s emotional states, energy, and most of the physiologic processes in the body are made from nutrients! This is a medical short-sightedness that needs to change so that postpartum women will receive better care. A postnatal nutrient recovery program should be the very first thing a doctor thinks of and prescribes for postpartum women presenting these symptoms; especially with women who have no history of depression, anxiety, or fatigue prior to giving birth. If one does need the assistance of antidepressant drugs (and certainly some women do), these drugs contain no nutrients, so the need to replenish nutrient reserves still exists and should be addressed to prevent other health problems. It is fine to take AfterBaby Boost postnatal nutritional program and an antidepressant medication simultaneously. The need for high potency postnatal nutrients is greater now than ever before because the pace of life keeps getting faster, more complex and stressful.

Omega-3 oils are robbed from the mother’s body at a very high rate via the placenta to help form her baby’s brain, eyes, nerves, and cellular membranes. Breast feeding robs even more Omega 3 oils from a postpartum woman’s body because it is removed from her body to form the milk her body is producing. Many studies show the importance of Omega 3 oils to relieve depression, dry skin, thin hair and nails, fatigue and prevent heart disease in postpartum women. Omega 3 oils are an essential ingredient in a good postnatal nutrient program to assist a mother to replenish her nutrient reserves.

All the major nutrients are taken from mother’s body to help form baby’s body. Alpha Lipoic Acid and coenzyme Q10 are essential for the body to make energy. Without enough of these two essential nutrients the energy producing mitochondria in our cells will often make only 2 units of ATP (cellular energy) instead of 39 units of ATP per cycle. These two deficiencies are major causes of postpartum fatigue and mood swings. These two nutrients along with B vitamins, minerals including calcium and magnesium are also essential nutrients to help a mother replenish her postpartum nutrient reserves and should be included in a good postnatal nutrient formula. The postnatal nutrient program offered contains these essential nutrients in very high quality form.

Postpartum mothers require a nutritious diet, adequate sleep, moderate exercise and a high quality postnatal nutrient program. Prenatal vitamins do not adequately supply all of the nutrients that new mothers require after bringing new life into this world. A high quality postnatal nutrient program should be an integral part of the pregnancy recovery program required for all postpartum women to replenish their nutrient reserves. This can assist new mothers to not only regain their health and prevent later health problems, but also to allow her the best chance of happily raising her family and having other healthy pregnancies and healthy children if desired.

We at Sound Formulas are proud to offer the first and only clinically tested postnatal nutritional program called AfterBaby Boost.

Dr. Dean Raffelock is the lead author of A NATURAL GUIDE TO PREGNANCY AND POSTPARTUM HEALTH published by Avery, Putnam, Penguin in 2003. Dr. Raffelock has taught research based clinical nutrition for numerous medical organizations over many years, formulates nutritional products for a number of nutritional companies (including Sound Formulas), and has a holistic practice in Boulder, Colorado. Along with his Doctor of Chiropractic (D.C.) degree (1976) he has earned board certifications in Clinical Nutrition (DACBN), acupuncture (Dipl. Ac./L.Ac.), and Applied Kinesiology (DIBAK). He has also been certified as a clinical nutritionist (CCN) from the International and American Association for Clinical Nutritionists (IAACN).

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS #2

pregnancyrecovery — Sat, 14 Oct 2006 18:02:07 +0000

Q-Another frequently asked question is: WHAT WAS USED AS THE PLACEBO DURING THE DOUBLE- BLIND CLINICAL TRIAL THAT SHOWED THE EFFECTIVENESS AND SAFETY FOR BOTH NURSING AND NON-NURSING MOTHERS OF AFTER BABY BOOST POSTNATAL NUTRITIONAL PROGRAM ?

A-The answer is that a leading prenatal vitamin was used as the placebo. We chose not to use an inert substance but instead to use a prenatal vitamin. The reason for this is that many doctors suggest to postpartum women that they just keep taking a prenatal for their postnatal needs. We thought that this suggestion, though better than nothing, would prove to be inadequate for a truly effective postnatal pregnancy recovery period that would help mother fully replenish her drained nutrient reserves and prevent many postpartum symptoms. We are pleased to say that we were right.

The results of the clinical study lead to two important conclusions. (1) After Baby Boost was far more effective for relieivng all the common postpartum symptoms that were measured such as anxiety, sleeplessness, mood swings, fatigue, dry skin and hair, joint pain, vaginal dryness, etc. and (2) taking a prenatal vitamin during the all important 24 month postnatal “pregnancy recovery” stage is not adequate to fully replenish a mother’s lost nutritional reserves which were donated to form her baby’s body.

The added postnatal stress of loss of sleep, caring for other family members, perhaps breastfeeding and going back to work all use up nutrients at a high rate which slows down the nutrient replenishment phase for a mother unless one is using a high potency postnatal vitamin. After Baby Boost is the only clinically tested postnatal nutrient program on the market. It is safe for both nursing and non-nursing mothers.

Based upon years of very extensive nutritional blood lab tests ( fatty acids, amino acids, intracellular minerals, antioxidants, Kreb Cycle nutrients, inflammatory heart related chemicals, and hormones) on postpartum women, we highly recommend taking AFTER BABY BOOST for the full 24 month postnatal recovery period. This time frame recommendation is very consistant with the wisdom of indigenous people all over the world. They know that two years is the minimum period of time needed to replenish nutrient energy reserves and have another baby if desired.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS #1

pregnancyrecovery — Sat, 14 Oct 2006 05:49:03 +0000

One of the most frequently asked questions is:

Q-CAN AFTER BABY BOOST POSTNATAL NUTRITIONAL PROGRAM BE USED AS A PRENATAL NUTRITIONAL PROGRAM?

A- The answer is yes! Taking After Baby Boost would be far superior nutrition for both mom and developing baby than any prenatal vitamin. Prenatal vitamins hardly have enough nutrients for baby and certainly do not have adequate nutrition for mom as well. We recommend just reducing the #1 multiple vitamin/mineral formula from 4 capsules per day to 3 capsules per day while pregnant and increasing back up to 4 capsules per day for the 24 month postpartum period. Other dosages stay the same… 2-4 of the #2 Omega 3 oils per day depending upon skin and hair dryness, fatigue, moodswings, joint pain, etc. and 4 of the #3 Calcium/Magnesium citrate formula. We have had many mothers take the product this way as a prenatal with excellent results for themselves and their babies. In my opinion, based on many blood tests that measure key nutrients, prenatal vitamins are lacking in or significantly deficient in many key nutrients that help mother and baby avoid health problems due to nutrient deficiencies. Omega 3 fatty aids are a glaring example of this in that they are excluded from prenatal vitamins yet studies show that DHA and EPA are essential for both developing baby and mothers health as well. Alpha Lipoic Acid and Coenzyme Q 10 are other glaring omissions in prenatal vitamins along with lower overall potencies than what both mother and baby need during this important developmental period while baby’s body is forming. Our new complete prenatal nutritional program, Before Baby Boost, should be available by April 2007. Natural ingredients have been added to help the symptoms of “morning sickness.”

HEALTH POINT RADIO INTERVIEW WITH DR. DEAN AND STEPHANIE RAFFELOCK

pregnancyrecovery — Thu, 12 Oct 2006 01:03:16 +0000

Hello and welcome! This is Mike DeLuca for Health Point Radio, the radio show that gives you the latest and greatest from the world of health. Today’s show is about a subject that’s not discussed or paid attention to anywhere near as much as it should be. And the ladies out there who are pregnant or just had a baby—or someone close to you who has—you are going to be very happy to hear what we have to say today. Even those mothers who still have symptoms that began after having your last baby years ago will want to listen closely. We’re gonna talk about pregnancy recovery.

Listen–why is it that everybody knows that a new mother has expended and lost an enormous amount of her body’s nutritional resources in the process of forming her baby’s body and giving birth, but no one seems to think much about its aftermath? Ya know, things like post-partum depression, loss of sleep, loss of mental alertness. Well, ya know, maybe these are things a young mother is expected to go through. Just live with it, mom!Well, let me tell ya, that kind of thinking is ancient history. Our guests today are Dr. Dean Raffelock and his wife Stephanie who are founders of a company called Sound Formulas. They have developed a formula called After Baby Boost—actually a 3-step postnatal nutritional program developed especially for new mothers. It’s the first and only product of its kind. The After Baby Boost formula provides the nutrients, vitamins, minerals, and essential oils a mother needs to regain what she lost during pregnancy and birth. It relieves many common postpartum symptoms such as mood swings, fatigue, worry, irritability, mental fogginess, sleep problems, dry skin, and brittle hair and nails—all the things that so many new moms have been resigned to having—up to now. Dr. Raffelock has been practicing and teaching clinical nutrition for over 30 years. At the present time, he has a holistic multidisciplinary practice in
Boulder, Colorado. He’s published many articles, is a noted lecturer and author, and he appears frequently on TV and radio to discuss natural health care. He is the lead author of a new book on pregnancy recovery called A NATURAL GUIDE TO PREGNANCY AND POSTPARTUM HEALTH published by Avery, Putnam, Penguin in 2003. He has many positions, but one that is particularly relevant to this program is that he is the Vice-President for Research and Development for his company Sound Formulas, which is dedicated to formulating nutritional products for women. It was Dr. Raffelock who formulated the After Baby Boost postnatal nutritional program. Stephanie Raffelock is also a teacher and frequent guest speaker and lectures on the politics of women’s healthcare and women and their place in religious traditions. She is the President of Sound Formulas and administrates the practice of her husband.If you are a new mother or know someone who is, you’re gonna wanna know more about After Baby Boost. Your host today is Jennifer Daniels, a new mom herself. So let’s join her as she discusses the new After Baby Boost formula with Dr. Dean and Stephanie Raffelock. JD Thanks Mike and welcome to our show, Dr. Raffelock and Stephanie! DR: Thanks, Jen—we’re happy to be here. JD: OK—boy, after listening to Mike’s introduction I’d say you make almost the perfect team to talk about post-pregnancy issues in women, aren’t you? SR: Well, we’re perfect in the sense that both Dean and I are passionate about women’s health care and most especially the area of postpartum health. Our company, Sound Formulas is dedicated to helping women and I don’t think that there is a more important area of women’s health care than pregnancy recovery! JD: That’s for sure! Well, could you tell us a little bit about what led you to develop your new After Baby Boost formula? SR: A few years ago I was watching Oprah and her guest was Marie Osmond, who was talking about postpartum depression. And it really struck me because Marie Osmond is wholesome, all American mommy material and here she was talking about this major health crisis in her life. And I began to see how we have perpetuated a myth in this culture that if your baby is healthy, then you should be healthy too. So women feel guilty when they have postpartum problems and they don’t talk about them much. And I began to wonder about postpartum health and what it meant from a nutritional perspective. Were we doing enough for these women? JD: OK, how about you Dr. Raffelock? DR: Jen, right after Stephanie heard about Marie Osmond’s postpartum suffering on Oprah, she became very passionate about the need to support postpartum women in a new and much needed way. She asked me to write a book on the subject, which is now in publication. It’s called A NATURAL GUIDE TO PREGNANCY AND POSTPARTUM HEALTH and in it we wound up coining the phrase Pregnancy Recovery as it relates to postnatal nutrition. We define pregnancy recovery as the deep need for all postpartum women to fully replenish the lost nutrient reserves that their bodies donated to form their baby’s body. Pregnancy recovery requires a good diet, plenty of rest, and a high quality postnatal nutritional product. Continuing to take just a prenatal vitamin after giving birth is just not enough because prenatal vitamins don’t contain the right kinds and amounts of vital nutrients for mother’s to fully replenish their postpartum nutritional reserves. JD: You mean a new mom needs more than that? DR: A lot more, Jen. Besides donating all the nutrients to form their baby’s body and the placenta, a new mother’s body has continuing drains on her nutrient reserves. The extra energy needed to care for her new child requires high quality nutrients. And, other factors like sleep loss, blood loss from surgery or tissue tearing, breastfeeding, continuing to care for other family members, and perhaps going back to her job also continue to drain nutrients from a new moms already depleted nutrient stores. The pregnancy recovery period is 24 months, which is the amount of time most cultures on earth recommend women wait before having another baby. It takes about this long to fully replenish a mother’s energy and nutrient reserves; enough to for her to have the best chance of staying healthy herself long-term and being able to have other children if desired. JD: So that’s how you were inspired to develop a product like After Baby Boost? DR: That’s right Jen. The next step was formulating the world’s first postnatal nutritional product. I couldn’t believe that nothing like it existed! In my clinical practice I’d been looking at blood levels of key nutrients like essential oils, minerals, B-vitamins, antioxidants, and amino acid proteins in women for many years. These are all the nutritional building blocks a mom’s body needs in abundance in order to build a healthy baby’s body. There was no question in my mind that women who have had children were usually the ones most deficient in these key nutritional building blocks and that they needed a safe, effective, clinically tested product to assist their pregnancy recovery process. We formulated a postnatal product that included all key nutrients necessary for moms to recover their lost reserves and then put it through a double blind, placebo controlled clinical trial. We then tested it against a leading prenatal formula. JD: What happened? DR: Jen, our product After Baby Boost, relieved all the postpartum symptoms we tested for much, much better than just continuing to use prenatal vitamins after giving birth. A mother’s nutritional needs are different and in many ways greater postpartum and a real postnatal formula is what is needed to help mom’s fully replenish their nutrient reserves. Now that we know that After Baby Boost is safe and effective, even for breastfeeding mothers, we have just made it available for women everywhere. JD: Ok, well, let’s talk about what some of the post birth problems are. I’m sure that most women who have had babies are very familiar with them, but aren’t there many young mothers who don’t know what causes them? DR: Well, I’m sure as a new mother, Jen, you can speak to that. As was mentioned earlier, many of these symptoms are taken for granted—like you’re supposed to experience them, like some kind of penance. But there are real nutritional reasons that produce these symptoms. And there are real nutritional solutions, too. JD: Well, let’s talk about the causes first, OK? DR: Jen, every system in the human body is dependent upon an adequate amount of essential nutrients for its function. Every brain and nerve cell, every bone, every muscle, every organ and gland, our skin and hair, and all of our cells and fluids are made of nutrients and need a continual supply of these nutrients for optimal functioning. These nutrients need to be replenished every day. When something comes along that drains our nutrient reserves, there is a strong chance that there will be some form of malfunction in one or more body system that will eventually cause physical, mental, and emotional symptoms. JD: It’s a very demanding event, isn’t it? DR: Jen, Pregnancy and the postpartum period drain more nutrients, by far, than any other normal human physiologic process. A mother’s body donates all the proteins, vitamins, and minerals to form her baby’s muscles, organs, and bones, and her body also donates all the essential oils to form her baby’s brain, eyes, nerves, and cell membranes. Her baby’s body is nature’s first concern so if there aren’t enough nutrients to go around for both mom and baby, mom’s body goes without. And mom’s health can really suffer long term because of these nutrient shortages. The Standard American Diet, acronym SAD, is typically very deficient in many of the most important vital nutrients that moms need to replenish their own nutritional reserves. The lack of these nutrients leaves moms susceptible to many physical and emotional symptoms that can seriously affect their own health and their ability to take care of their family. JD: Like what, Dr. Raffelock? DR: For example Jen, 60% of the human brain consists of fat. The main structural fat that gives the brain its weight and size and the main cognitive fat that helps us think clearly, remember where we put our car keys, and remember to defrost tonight’s dinner, is the Omega 3 oil DHA. The vast majority of moms are very deficient in this essential oil. A lack of DHA oil can cause mood swings, baby blues, fatigue, joint and muscle pain, dry skin, brittle hair, mental fogginess, and quite a few other serious symptoms. The placenta will remove DHA oil from the mother’s blood like a vacuum cleaner so baby’s brain, eyes, nerves, skin, and cell membranes can be properly formed. Failure to replenish a new mom’s DHA oil supplies can cause any of the symptoms we just mentioned and these symptoms can remain, plaguing a mother for years after she gives birth. It’s never too late for a woman to replenish her lost postpartum nutritional reserves. Our After Baby Boost formulas supply DHA oil and EPA oil which helps to relieve pain and inflammation. It also contains many other essential nutrients to help mothers fully replenish their postpartum nutritional reserves. JD: Well that helped clear up some things for me, and I’m sure for many of our listeners, too. Listen, we have to take a break here, but when we come back, we should provide some details about your After Baby Boost formula, which I understand is a three-step nutritional supplement program. Right? DR: That’s right, Jen. JD: OK—so we’ll want to talk about that and also about some of the other victims of post partum problems, and they’re sometimes among the forgotten, too. So, stay tuned and we’ll be right back after this commercial break.

JD: OK, folks, we’re back. This is Jen Daniels, your host for Health Point Radio today, and I’m here with our guests Dr. Dean Raffelock and his wife Stephanie who have developed a new postnatal nutritional formula to help new mothers get through those difficult early months after childbirth. It’s called After Baby Boost. Just how long do those difficult times last would you say? Stephanie? SR: Well, Jen, let me ask you. How old is your child? JD: My daughter is 17 months old. Why? SR: And are you still experiencing some of the post-partum symptoms we talked about? JD: Well, I confess I am—mostly loss of sleep, lack of energy and fatigue—things like that. SR: How about depression or stress? JD: Well, I did have the “blues” for about the first year because it was all so overwhelming I think, but I’m getting used to it. My daughter’s older now and more manageable—but not always! But there’s some stress still, now that she gets into things. SR: I didn’t mean to put you on the spot, Jen, but you are a perfect example. It takes a time to recover from pregnancy. And our society has changed a lot. You know when my mother had me she stayed in the hospital for almost three weeks. When she first told me that I asked her if I had been a difficult birth and she said “no, that was just the way they did it then. You had a baby and then you stayed in the hospital and rested for a couple of weeks.” JD: Yeah—my mom told me the same thing! SR: Well, now here we are some 50 years later and let’s not forget that it took a mandate of Congress in the 1990s to allow women to stay in the hospital for just 48 hours after a normal vaginal birth. Also the near-by extended family has pretty much disappeared from the landscape and women don’t get the same kind of familial support that they used to. Your life has completely changed, your schedule is crazy, your relationships have been impacted. To deal with it all, you need some sort of help for a long period of time. And while nutritional help can’t replace family help and rest, it can and does make a difference in how your body handles all of these new stresses. Moms who don’t get nutritional help may never get back their pre-pregnancy level of health and well-being. After Baby Boost really addresses all of these issues. DR: Jen, if I can jump in here for a second about depression and new moms. There are now over 300 million Americans and close to 30 million Americans on antidepressant drugs, that’s one out of ten Americans! What’s very interesting about this to me is that the vast majority of those taking these drugs are women and most of these women taking antidepressant drugs have had baby’s! So there’s a good chance that these moms have depleted nutrient reserves. Antidepressant drugs are usually the very first thing prescribed to women by their doctors when they start to have almost any postpartum symptoms. I think the thinking here needs to change, especially with women with no prior history of depression. I think that doctors have to begin thinking like this.” Hmmm. Your body has donated an enormous amount of nutrients to form your baby’s body and the placenta. Let’s replenish your nutrition reserves with a good postnatal formula first and see how you do.” Jen, we are not saying that these drugs are never needed but we are saying that none of these drugs contain any of the nutrients that new moms need to replenish their reserves. So even if a mom does need anti-depression drugs, she still needs a high quality postnatal formula to help her through her 24 month pregnancy recovery process! JD: Well, let’s get into exactly what your After Baby Boost is and what it’s ingredients are. Let’s take it right from the top: What is After Baby Boost? SR: After Baby Boost is a three-step program involving three different supplement formulas. One is a special, complete multi-vitamin/mineral formula that contains key ingredients for replenishing energy lost helping you recover your stamina and strength. The second step helps to replenish the key essential oils to help with brain function and it has anti-inflammatory properties to help with those aches and pains that new mothers have. And keep in mind that if you’re nursing, these benefits pass to the baby. The third step is a supplement that provides the minerals calcium and magnesium in a very absorbable form that provides for bone growth and strength and helps with sleep. These three steps also help with the intangibles such as mood swings and the ability to handle the increased stress of being a mom. JD: And there’s no other product on the market that does these things? SR: No. You can find some of the pieces of this program here and there and certainly some prescription drugs that deal rather heavy-handedly with some of these problems, but none that are the comprehensive, all-in-one postnatal formula that often helps with the whole range of post-partum problems that After Baby Boost is. JD: Sounds really good! So let’s get into what the ingredients are, OK? SR: I’m going to pass this one on to Dean. DR: Jen, as I said before, I’ve had the advantage of looking at blood levels of these key nutrients in postpartum women for many years. So I already knew what the most common nutritional deficiencies new moms suffered from and what special nutrients needed to be included in After Baby Boost to make it the most effective postnatal nutritional product possible. JD: So did you make sure to include these in your After Baby Boost formula? DR: Absolutely, Jen. Included in After Baby Boost bottle #1 are very absorbable forms of essential vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants. It’s a complete multiple formula. However, I we’ve also included key energy producing nutrients like Co-enzyme Q10 and Alpha Lipoic acid. CoQ10 and Alpha Lipoic acid are not included in most multiple vitamin/mineral products, and certainly not included in prenatal vitamins, because either the knowledge isn’t there or because they are very expensive. However, they are essential for human energy production so we included them in After Baby Boost. The lack of either one of these can cause faulty energy production and the resultant fatigue, mood swings, irritability, and feelings of being overwhelmed that new moms are all too familiar with. CoQ10 is essential for good heart function, muscle endurance, overall energy, and even helps prevent gum disease. Alpha Lipoic acid helps the little energy producing batteries in our cells called mitochondria produce 36 units of energy per molecule of sugar. If Alpha Lipoic Acid is deficient in a mom’s body, many mitochondria can only make 2 units of energy per molecule of sugar! That’s a huge difference in energy production Jen. So a deficiency in Alpha Lipoic Acid can really cause a lack of energy that can affect moms physically and emotionally. That’s why these two key ingredients had to be included in After Baby Boost. JD: OK—so what’s in the second step? DR: After Baby Boost bottle #2 consists of the essential oils EPA and DHA. These oils have been donated to make baby’s brain, eyes, nerves, skin, and cell membranes. A deficiency in them can cause a mom to suffer from moods swings, fatigue, dry, scaly skin, dry lifeless hair, constipation, achy joints, dry mucous membranes, frequent colds, forgetfulness, high blood pressure and other health problems. We have formulated these essential oils with the proper amount of antioxidants such as Vitamin E, Vitamin C, and Rosemary oil to keep these essential oils fresh and from becoming rancid. Breastfeeding moms need to take extra DHA oil so that there will be enough in her milk to support her baby’s brain and eye development and some left for her own body’s needs too! It is essential that moms take these oils on a daily basis. JD: It sounds like you’ve pretty much covered the bases, haven’t you? DR: Well, Jen there’s more—and it’s very important. JD: Oh, that must be the third step then, right? DR: Right. After Baby Boost bottle #3 consists of a 1:1 ratio of calcium and magnesium in a very absorbable form. This helps restore better sleep and calmness in moms and helps to replenish these key minerals that may be lost in breastfeeding. Moms need extra calcium to help prevent osteoporosis (soft bones) and magnesium helps moms to relax, eases muscle aches and pains, helps energy, and is needed in over 300 important body functionsJD: Well we have to take another commercial break here; folks so when we come back we’ll talk about those forgotten victims of the post-partum period and also about the clinical testing. Please stay tuned!

JD: Ok! We’re back. This is Jen Daniels and I’m here with Dr. Dean Raffelock and his, wife Stephanie and they are the co-founders of a women’s nutritional company called Sound Formulas and the developers of a great new postnatal nutritional formula called After Baby Boost that deals with post partum problems in new mothers. Dr. Raffelock, we’ve reported that After Baby Boost has been clinically tested and this is really important to our listeners. Can you give us some of the details? DR: Sure, Jen. After Baby Boost was subject to a double- blind, placebo controlled series of tests that compared our postnatal product to a leading prenatal vitamin. We chose a prenatal formula for a placebo because many doctors recommend that women stay on their prenatal vitamins after they give birth. Based on all the blood testing we did, I thought that just staying on a prenatal after giving birth wouldn’t even come close to meeting a mother’s need for nutritional replenishment during her 24 month pregnancy recovery phase. We were right! Our postnatal formula After Baby Boost was far more effective for relieving postpartum symptoms including improved energy and stamina, improved sleep, less nervousness and worry, improved moods, greater ability to concentrate, healthier skin and hair, less joint pain, less water retention and even less breast tenderness. JD: Hold it, Dr. Raffelock. Better tell our listeners what double blind, placebo-controlled means, would you? DR: Sure Jen. It is a way to ensure that there is no tainting of the test results because neither the person taking the supplements nor the person administering the test knows who is taking which formula. After Baby Boost was tested for all the symptoms we just listed. Four of these symptoms are very common for most new moms. You must know about them, Jen! They are mood swings, joint pain, sleeplessness and fatigue. JD: Actually I know about all four of those! So—what were the results? DR: Mood swings improved 60% in the test group taking After Baby Boost compared to the placebo group just taking the prenatal vitamins. Sleeplessness improved 44% with After Baby Boost. Overall energy and the ability to do many activities improved 90% with After Baby Boost. And After baby Boost improved joint pain over 500%! We’re very proud of how After Baby Boost really helps new moms feel better Jen! JD: Those are very convincing! I wish I had known about it 17 months ago. In fact, I’m glad I know about it now! DR: Well, for those lingering symptoms we talked about Jen, I’m sure you would find After Baby Boost very helpful. Remember that the recommended pregnancy recovery period is 24 months! JD: I’m on board for that! Dr. Raffelock, earlier we mentioned the forgotten victims of post partum problems. Who are they and what does your formula do for them? SR: I’ll take that one, Jen. A mother’s lack of good postpartum health impacts the entire family; in fact I think it can impact an entire community. Dads have stresses as a new father too. He’s got another mouth to feed, more responsibilities…and dads today are much more involved in taking care of kids and home than they were in my mother’s generation. And if his wife is not up to task that this new gift of life brings, it can create disharmony in the marriage and in the home. I mean look at your outlook on life when you are rested and feeling good and your outlook when you are so tired and maybe even a little blue…it’s like who wants a cranky mom and who wants to be a cranky mom. That’s another important reason for keeping your energy reserves up through nutritional replenishment. And you know that when mom is taking her After Baby Boost nutrients she becomes a role model to her children who get the idea that it’s good to take your nutritional supplements and it’s good to take care of yourself. And don’t we all want to raise children who feel that taking care of their own health is a good thing? Having a baby is a life changing experience and when you have a sense of health and well-being in your own life I would venture to say that having kids is one of the ultimate experiences in life! JD: Yeah—it can be a pretty tough time. I learned that. But it isn’t all bad, is it? SR: You know today, we are addressing an area of women’s health care, pregnancy recovery, that doesn’t usually receive a whole lot of attention, so we have spent quite a bit of time defining the problems in this area. What is amazing is that more often than not even mothers who feel the worst kind of postpartum will still tell you that nothing is as great or wonderful in her life as her children. And I hope that we have inspired some hope for moms out there that there is a solution, which is postpartum nutritional replenishment. Something to help your body deal with the challenges and stresses that often accompany childbirth. The bottom line is we are talking about a product that has the potential and possibility to enhance and enrich the experience of being a mother by helping you to feel better. JD: Well, on that very positive note, we’ll take a break for a reminder how our listeners can find out more about After Baby Boost. And when we come back we’ll have some final words from the Raffelocks. Stay tuned folks we’ll be right back after this commercial break.

JD: This is Jennifer Daniels back with Dr. Dean Raffelock and his wife, Stephanie, the developers of what sounds like a wonderful new formula for new mothers called After Baby Boost. This has been quite a session, folks, and quite honestly as a new mom of 17 months I learned a heck of a lot. We covered a lot of ground, so can we try to summarize what we talked about before we leave the air? First we talked about what some of the problems that new mothers have. Could you go over them again? DR: Jen, the most common problems that new moms suffer from are fatigue, mental fogginess, moods swings, feelings of overwhelm, irritability, sleeplessness, dry skin and hair, and joint pains. JD: And your After Baby Boost formula helps relieve these problems. How? DR: After Baby Boost bottle #1 contains a very high quality complete multiple vitamin and mineral formula including antioxidants, B-vitamins, Vitamins E, C, D, minerals and key energy producing nutrients like C0Q10 and Alpha Lipoic Acid. After Baby Boost bottle #2 contains the essential oils DHA and EPA that help mom’s moods, energy, heart, skin and hair, and relieves joint pains. After Baby Boost bottle #3 contains a 1:1 ratio of highly absorbable calcium and magnesium to help moms bones, energy, ability to relax, sleep, and stay calm. It also helps muscles to relax. JD: And these come in capsule form. And what is the dosage? DR: Jen, taking After Baby Boost is simple. Four capsules of After Baby Boost #1 per day. These can be taken all with breakfast or two with breakfast and two with lunch. After Baby Boost #2 is two capsules per day. These can be taken two with breakfast or one with breakfast and one with dinner. And After baby Boost #3 is four capsules of our cal/mag product that can be taken 2 with dinner and 2 just before bedtime. JD: Well, that’s a lot of information in a very short time, but we have just about a minute left for a wrap up. I’ll turn the mike over to you for that. Who’s gonna start? DR: I will Jen. First thank you so much for having us on your show. I hope there are a lot of new moms, and expectant moms who will feel encouraged and relieved that they don’t have to carry on the old legacy of suffering postpartum symptoms in silence. There is finally a safe, effective, clinically tested, postnatal nutrient program to help them feel and function much better at a time when they really want to be enjoying and taking care of that wonderful new baby! Also Jen, Stephanie and I hope that before we leave this earth that the concept of Pregnancy Recovery including all women taking a high quality postnatal vitamin program will be as common as taking prenatal vitamins. New moms need many nutrients that aren’t contained in prenatal vitamins to relieve their postpartum symptoms and that’s why we’ve produced After Baby Boost. We know that it is safe and effective for nursing and non-nursing moms. Even women who had their last baby years ago and still have the symptoms we’ve talked about today can benefit from taking After Baby Boost. Stephanie, would you like to finish? SR: Sure. Just like I hope and pray that every woman in
America who is pregnant takes a prenatal vitamin, I hope that these same women will recognize the importance of taking a postnatal supplement too. Mothers are really our national treasures. They mold and shape the lives of tomorrow’s adults. From my perspective, mothering has to be the most important job in the world and I believe passionately that mothers in all phases—pregnancy, postpartum and beyond deserve the very, very best in healthcare and support. And if you are a grandma out there today listening to this, or a caring friend, remember that postpartum nutrition makes for the ultimate gift for a new mom. JD: Well, thank you Dr. Dean and Stephanie Raffelock. I guess the key question now is how can our listeners purchase your product After baby Boost? DR: Our website is pregnancyrecovery.com and the phone number is 303-541-9019JD:Listeners, that’s our show today and I hope you’ll follow the Raffelock’s advice and look into this exciting new product called After Baby Boost. I know I’m going to order it! This is Jen Daniels for Health Point Radio. Goodbye until next time and be well out there!

Reviews for the book-A NATURAL GUIDE TO PREGNANCY AND POSTPARTUM HEALTH

pregnancyrecovery — Thu, 28 Sep 2006 19:19:41 +0000

A MUST READ FOR NEW MOMS…You too can avoid PPD!

Reviewer:

Tracy Abbott (Los Angeles, CA USA)

Dr. Raffelock asked me if he could post up my original review of his book. Amazom.com censored it because they wouldn’t allow me to say how much benefit I have gotten from AfterBaby Boost because it was a book review only. Here it is:

I consider myself one of the luckiest moms on earth that I got turned onto a healthy nutrient track when I was pregnant and for my post partum recovery. And I’m not talking about the blah, blah, blah healthy stuff.. The stuff we all know..eat right, exercise, etc…that stuff has been written about for years..from banal REader’s Digest to Oprah Late At Night. What I’m talking about is the alternative, cutting edge stuff. Like replacing some of the lost omega-3 oils DHA and EPA which I leared awhile ago is downright stolen by the baby from the mom during pregnancy. And I made it my business to supplement my pregnancy and post pregnancy with the right nutrients so that I could avoid Post Partum depression with my new baby. I should say, avoid PPD without Prozac. Well, now new moms are lucky because everything I learned from various sources and vaious experts are now in ONE book. This is a one stop shop for any new mom who wants to take care of her body while taking care of her new baby. Doctors Raffelock and Roundtree have really answered any question I had and any new mom who might ask “what’s happening to me?” Or things like, “Why is my skin so dry?” “Why am I forgetful?” And more importantly… “How can I fix it?”
This information is invaluable. … But, if you take the postnatal vitamin program AfterBaby Boost your vitamin/mineral/ and omega 3 oil needs will be met. Personally, I think Prozac or as I call it, “Vitamin P” is being handed out way too easily and new moms have so much going on with their bodies that I would rather see nutrition be supplemented before jumping on Vitamin P. This book must be read by all new moms!

Interview with Robert Rountree, M.D. Part 1

pregnancyrecovery — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 19:32:21 +0000

Stephanie Raffelock’s interview with Robert Rountree,M.D.on Postpartum Chronic Fatigue, Mood Swings,Thyroid problems,liver detoxification and other postpartum symptoms and treatments.

MRS. RAFFELOCK: Dr. Rountree, what has been your experience seeing postpartum women,what symptoms are most common and what do postpartum women need to do to help themselves.

DR. ROUNTREE: What I can say from my experience as a Family Practitioner very much parallels the one that Dr. Raffelock has had which is that over the years, I’ve had the occasion to see many, many patients with chronic fatigue syndrome. And, frankly, it didn’t occur to me at the time what they were saying exactly, but later when I put Dr. Raffelock’s lens on, when I put this particular filter on, I began to realize that a significant percentage of them were saying their symptoms started after the birth of their baby.And sometimes I was seeing them 10 years later and they still had the same symptoms that started postpartum.

MRS. RAFFELOCK: It was 10 years later that the symptoms started?

DR. ROUNTREE: No, that they realized what had happened, they realized that their life had really changed with the delivery of that baby which made it confusing for them. So a typical scenario is that a woman comes in and says, “I’m really tired, you know, I’m really feeling run down.” And I say, “Tell me a little bit about the history of this.’ And she says, “You know, I’m not really sure when this started.”And then I start asking some questions. Well, was it last year, was it the year before? And they start looking back and doing a personal history and at some point they say,“You know, this really changed for me after I had my second child. And something shifted, and I don’t know what it was but something was different and I never quite made it back from that. I was particularly tired in the first six months, I went to see my doctor repeatedly. My doctor did a lot of tests on me, they were all normal. He told me it was in my head, that it was normal to be tired and depressed after you have a baby, so he patted me on the back and I pretty much got into a groove and got used to it and start thinking this is just the way it’s going to be from now on.”

MRS. RAFFELOCK: Tell me about where that idea comes from of it being normal to be depressed after giving birth. We have this whole accepted thing in our culture that postpartum “baby blues” is normal. Where did that model come from?

DR. ROUNTREE: Well, I think it just came from the observation that something like 80 percent of women complain of some degree of depression especially within the first couple of weeks right after having the baby up to about six months. I think this is where you see those extremely high numbers. And so the assumption was that this is the way it is as opposed to saying, you know, is there something we can do to prevent this from happening or is there an underlying dysfunction? Now, I have to give doctors credit, there’s been a lot of research done on things like thyroid hormone, measurement of antibodies to thyroid so –

MRS. RAFFELOCK: What can happen to your thyroid after having a baby?

DR. ROUNTREE: Well, postpartum thyroiditis which is inflammation of the thyroid, is probably the most common endocrine disorder. It’s extremely common. I’ve got some statistics here which I can supply to you later but postpartum thyroiditis is a condition that’s similar to other autoimmune diseases where your immune system makes antibodies that attack tissue.And specifically in this case they attack the tissue of the thyroid. The interesting thing about thyroiditis is that it goes through different phases. In the initial phase it actually can speed up the thyroid, it makes it hot and inflamed so it’s putting out more hormone and it can make the woman anxious, nervous, and that can also lead to insomnia which is part of this whole problem. If a woman’s anxious and she’s nervous and she doesn’t sleep and as a result of not sleeping, she starts to get depressed, so she has what we call an agitated depression.But eventually the gland burns out and then the woman goes into a fatigue scenario. Now, this is something I saw in residency. I remember diagnosing a woman with this problem who came to see me about three months after having had her baby and she was having all these strange symptoms that she couldn’t pin down. She was feeling nervous and anxious and couldn’t sleep, all these things that I’ve mentioned.And she had gone to see her OB/GYN doctor who said, “Honey, this sort of thing just happens.”

MRS. RAFFELOCK: So from a functional point of view, if you looked at someone with this thyroid condition, would you say that they were possibly nutritionally depleted, that this was something that could be handled nutritionally?

DR. ROUNTREE: Well, specifically when you’re talking about thyroiditis, it’s — from my understanding it’s not so much a depleted state as it is that your body’s in this heightened state of immune function. And we don’t really understand all the different aspects of that.Other immune disorders like rheumatoid arthritis and lupus are interesting examples. Often rheumatoid arthritis goes away during pregnancy and then can come back after the pregnancy is over. Lupus can get worse during pregnancy and subside when it’s over. So there’s some very complex things that are happening with the immune system in the course of pregnancy. There’s proteins that are being made called cytokines that regulate lymphocyte functions, specifically the TH-1 and TH-2 lymphocyte balance appears to shift during pregnancy. My understanding is that there’s an up regulation of the TH-1 lymphocytes during pregnancy and that has implications for autoimmune disease. So it may well be that that shift then goes in the other direction right after the baby is delivered. From a functional standpoint, to answer your question, this all gets back to what’s going on in the gut, what’s happening in the gut. Is there an increase in permeability in the gut called leaky gut syndrome ? Is there a change in the bacterial flora? Do you have more yeast growing in the gut as a result of all the hormonal shifts, all the extra estrogen that’s been around? Nobody’s really studied this phenomenon in enough detail to know what’s happening. But what we know from other cases is that when you develop autoimmune disease, it’s often the result of this whole series of events. It isn’t just a phenomenon that occurs over night. If you ask a rheumatologist about this, they’ll say one day you don’t have it and the next day you do. From a functional perspective, it isn’t that you’re walking down the sidewalk and one day thyroiditis drops out of the sky. Instead, what they would say is there’s a sequence of events that might start with some kind of genetic predisposition and then that genetic predisposition is acted upon by a number of different triggers. And those triggers can be dietary in nature, or it can be stress, it can be hormonal.So all these things are influencing your genes to turn them on or turn them off in really specific ways.So let’s say during the pregnancy, a woman has eaten the most optimal dietand she gets an overgrowth of yeast in her gut, or perhaps, she gets an overgrowth of fermenting bacteria because she was craving sugar a lot during her pregnancy, so she was eating too much sugar. Now, this isn’t to say that it’s leading to a nutritional deficiency so much as it’s saying eating all that sugar allows for the overgrowth of bacteria in your intestine that are fermenting bacteria.And those fermenting bacteria then release toxins and those toxins then affect the gut lining. And if you’re affecting the gut lining in that particular way, what do you do? You open it up, you make it more permeable. When you make it more permeable, you’re more susceptible to allergic reactions. Not the classic allergic reactions we think of like allergies to strawberries that give you hives or peanuts or something of that nature, but these very subtle allergic reactions that can cause inflammation.What happens in those kind of reactions is particles of the foods like gluten or corn are seeping through the intestinal wall and getting recognized by antibodies, IGG antibodies usually. IGG antibodies bond to this antigen, they float around the body until they find a landing spot which might be the thyroid in this case and then that sets off a whole inflammatory reaction from the immune system. So you can see how there’s this sequence of events that’s pretty complex and if you try to identify any one step and say, Well, it’s this, you know, it’s — yes, eating too much sugar causes thyroiditis, it’s not that direct. It’s a very zig-zaggy thing that happens.But nevertheless, it’s the result of a combination of genes, lifestyle habits, diet, and then this big trigger that, in this particular case, is called pregnancy. You know something like this must be going on because it can’t be normal to get thyroiditis.It’s common but it’s not normal, so there must be something, there must be some sequence of events that’s leading to this occurrence.

MRS. RAFFELOCK: So now, what could a woman do though to help herself if she had thyroiditis after her pregnancy? What would be the medical model for treating her and then what would be the functional medicine model for treating her? Or are they the same.

DR. ROUNTREE: They’re not the same. There would be overlap. Certainly, if a woman is having a lot of symptoms from a hyperthyroid phase of thyroiditis, then you might want to treat her with beta-blockers if you’re a conventional doctor. Because what are you experiencing? Rapid heart rate, insomnia, etc. So simply capping those symptoms can make the woman a lot more comfortable. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Unfortunately, I don’t know a lot of alternative treatments that can get that pulse down and make the person feel as calm. Dr. Raffelock says he can often do this with acupuncture and says that bio-identical progesterone can be helpful along with increasing T-helper 2 function, but there isn’t a standard medical treatment. So if the thyroid is really gone, you know, if your heart’s beating like crazy, if you have a pulse of 110 as a result of this, I don’t know too many other medical options for getting that down. So typically what you would do as a conventional doctor is treat those symptoms and then see what happens. And if what happens is that the thyroid gland then burns out and the woman becomes hypothyroid, you typically would treat with thyroid hormone replacement and hope that the gland will come back on its own.And I say hope because we really have no way in conventional medicine to encourage the gland to do that one way or another.All we can do is diagnose whether it’s high or low and then treat it accordingly. Now, in functional medicine, we assume that these diseases aren’t just a single phenomenon. As I said, it’s not just something that appeared one day or dropped out of the sky, it’s the result of this sequence of events, it’s a complex phenomenon and potentially it’s reversible.Well, what is it that’s going on that we’d want to reverse? The body is attacking itself. The immune system has made a mistake and it’s overreacting. So there is inflammation going on. In functional medicine what we’d want to do is treat the inflammation in as gentle a manner as possible, and there’s certain herbs and supplements that we could use to treat that inflammation.Probably the number one supplement would be essential fatty acids, the Omega 3 fish oils, for a number of reasons. One, is that they’re so safe, we don’t have to worry about harming the infant, in this case they’re very beneficial for the infant’s brain growth. So these Omega 3 fish oils are a good thing to take anyway. Everyone can benefit by taking a little bit of fish oil. But there’s also reams of evidence that essential fatty acids can help cool off the inflammatory process no matter where in the body it is occurring. So it’s going to be treating the leaky gut syndrome, it will decrease inflammation in the gut, and it’s going to reduce the number of inflammatory chemicals called mediators that are being released in the bloodstream, prostaglandins, in particular. Leukotrienes are another group of those.All of these things are involved in keeping that inflammatory process going. So Omega 3 essential fatty acids would be the first place to start and using a good antioxidants would be another place to start and that would include things like a carotene complex, but not synthetic beta-carotene.

MRS. RAFFELOCK: So there are nutritional supplements that can help?

DR. ROUNTREE: Yes. Fish oils, a carotene complex that has the whole range of carotenes in it. Tocopherol complex is the same concept, not just Vitamin E, but all the other things that go with Vitamin E, a little bit of extra zinc, some selenium, some Vitamin C, all of those things seem to go together to cool off the immune cells so that they’re not overreacting.So we might go with essential fatty acids, antioxidants, and then add some kind of anti-inflammatory herb like curcumin which is an extract of the common spice tumeric.

MRS. RAFFELOCK: And all of this would be safe if the mother was nursing the baby?

DR. ROUNTREE: Yes, the — the good thing about this approach is these are all foods, curcumin is extract of tumeric which has been used in curry. And pregnant women and women who have had babies have been eating curry in India for a thousand years and to my knowledge there has been no reports of any harm done to the fetus or nursing child. These are all food-based supplements. And the kind of doses we’d be talking about are not massive. They’re higher than a lot of people would be getting in a typical diet, but I’m not saying that the higher the dose, the better the effect you’re going to get. So we’re going to use reasonable doses of all these things.

MRS. RAFFELOCK: So now the thyroid thing is one end of the spectrum, you know, a woman gets this thyroid disease or whatever after pregnancy, what about a woman that has taken pretty good care of herself during her pregnancy, she’s taken prenatal vitamins, she’s now on her, maybe her second or her third baby and she is experiencing this phenomena still of feeling exhausted, feeling kind of depressed, they don’t know what the matter is. Why?

DR. ROUNTREE: So what we do in conventional medicine is we look for a disease to isolate.

MRS. RAFFELOCK: Label it?

DR. ROUNTREE: Yes. We put a name on it. So we would look for the thyroid problem. If you’re good and you’ve read the literature and you know about this, then you would check a TSH, a thyroid simulating hormone to see if it’s elevated. And if it’s not elevated, then you’d probably feel pretty confident in saying to that woman, your thyroid is fine. Okay? I’m saying this a little bit tongue-in-cheek, because those of us in functional medicine know that it’s quite possible to have abnormalities of the thyroid even if all the blood tests look fine. And for years the conventional endocrinologists have poo-pooed this, have said, that’s absolute nonsense, if the blood tests are normal then you are normal and it’s all psychosomatic. Well, you could take that same concept and apply it to just about any gland. You could talk about the adrenal gland, for example. You could say, well, we measured the cortisol levels and the cortisol levels are fine, so you don’t have adrenal insufficiency. Okay? But the — the notion — the concept of functional medicine that’s so important is that you can have dysfunction that’s unique to you as a person that doesn’t necessarily manifest as a full-blown disease. And unless you do the proper testing and use your intuition as a doctor who knows how to look for these kinds of things, you could very easily miss what the problem is. And this is what I think is going on with a lot of these women is they have subtle biochemical and hormone abnormalities that don’t necessarily fit into one of these boxes like hyper or hypothyroidism or even the box of postnatal depression which is another really big box.You know, maybe the woman’s mood isn’t low enough for us to call her depressed but she feels exhausted and is having trouble coping.It’s so tempting if you’re a conventional doctor to say, “Well, you have a Prozac deficiency.” To say, you know, “We’ve got just the drug for you and we can treat it and it make you feel better.” But I just read, for example, that right after delivery, tryptophan levels drop –

MRS. RAFFELOCK: And tryptophan does what?

DR. ROUNTREE: Tryptophan is an amino acid that’s found in proteins that’s converted in your brain into serotonin. If we start looking at it from that perspective, that’s how we begin to understand the nature of dysfunction. So instead of looking at the end result which is to say, this woman appears to be showing signs of a quote serotonin deficiency, even though we don’t know for sure that this is the case, still it fits the little box so we put you on the drugs Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft, Celexa, etc.But what if we start back from the beginning and say, Well, we have evidence that tryptophan levels tend to drop in women in this situation. Well, how can we replenish that tryptophan, what can we do about that? Well — and there’s a lot of different ways to deal with that. It’s not that easy to get L-tryptophan as a supplement anymore, but you can get something even better called 5-hydroxy-tryptophan or 5-HTP which is one metabolic step closer to making serotonin in the brain. So basically it’s a way of providing the nutritional precursors. Or you can get very sophisticated and you can measure amino acids either in the blood or in the urine in combination with measuring what’s called organic acids. So we have these probes. And these probes allow us to start uncovering some of the dysfunction that may be unique to that person.And what I would point out is that we’re not looking for just one thing. We’re not saying, Okay, our theory is that all these women are deficient in tryptophan. Instead, I would say, we start with this observation that tryptophan levels tend to drop and then we might say, “Well, what about you, Sally ?” You know you ate this way during your pregnancy it seemed to be pretty healthy, you exercised, you took care of yourself and then you crashed after you had the baby. Well, how about if we base our diagnosis on what’s normal for Sally as opposed to whether Sally fits this category of thyroiditis or depression or adrenal or an Addison’s disease or something along those lines. Instead, we’re going to say, “How about we compare Sally to herself?” And that’s a little hard to do if you haven’t been measuring these amino acids or organic acids throughout a person’s life. But you can get a sense from looking at those kind of tests whether they’re out of balance or not.And the good news is, there’s things you can do to bring them back into balance. So I might work on a very simple level with a patient where I’m saying, Okay, let’s just start with something like 5-HTP or maybe let’s use an herb like, say, St. John’s Wort. And let’s see what happens. Now, how is that different than the drug approach? Well, the drug approach is basically trying to suppress the symptoms, trying to control the symptom. If I’m giving a person 5-HTP, I’m basically saying, I’m gonna provide the nutritional building blocks and I’m gonna let her body do what it will with those building blocks. So I’m starting on the front end, I’m doing front-end loading here, starting on the front end and then I’m letting the body go through its own natural processes but I’m helping it along. St. John’s Wort does the same thing. Some people think of St. John’s Wort as being the herbal alternative to Prozac. Well, it’s not really true. What St. John’s Wort appears to do is not just raise serotonin levels, it appears to modulate all the neurotransmitters in the brain. Yes, it has some effect on serotonin, but it seems to be working by much more complex mechanism that may actually be working through the immune system as opposed to just blocking the re-uptake of serotonin so that you get more serotonin in the neurosynapses. Are — are you with me on that?

MRS. RAFFELOCK: I’m with you.

DR. ROUNTREE: So it’s an entirely different way of looking at things and saying, Okay, there’s dysfunction here. How can we bring it back into balance as opposed to how do we correct these symptoms as quickly as possible? And what kind of probes can we use to start investigating this dysfunction?

MRS. RAFFELOCK: Now, there might be some doctors that read this book or look into it and say, pregnancy recovery, what’s this recovery about? Women have been having babies for thousands of years. What’s this recovery thing about? And yet there seems to be a myth prevalent in this society that you’re supposed to be birth a baby, go out and plow the fields the next day. And really the emphasis shifts to the child. Not how are you doing. But, how’s your baby doing? Can I give you one more example? Their was a mandate of Congress in 1999 that said you have to leave a mother and child in the hospital for 48 hours after a normal vaginal birth. That was not for the mother however, it was doctors saying “We really can’t tell if there’s anything wrong with the baby unless we observe it for at least 48 hours.” So once again, back to the mother. Is there a recovery time for most women? And I know we have to treat everybody individually but is there some kind of recovery period that should be happening that isn’t happening for women? Are women more on Prozac now than our mothers who birthed us in the 50s and 60s?

DR. ROUNTREE: Well, certainly, we treat women very differently now than we used to 50 to 100 years ago after having a baby.

MRS. RAFFELOCK: How so?

DR. ROUNTREE: Where you would stay in bed for a couple of weeks, you know, and even today the traditional midwives, the women that deliver babies at home, they tell the mom, don’t get out of bed for two weeks except to go to the bathroom and to eat. But you are confined to bed. I command you to stay in bed.Now, we have a society whose values are not focused on that kind of self-care. And that’s really an understatement. So I think that part of the problem comes out of our society and what the norms are, where society values productivity, very masculine kind of values. And what has happened in health care with the advent of health management organizations which are really not health management organizations, they’re money management organizations. They’re organizations that were put together to figure out how to deliver medicine as cheaply as possible. And so if there’s no, quote, proof, that a phenomena exists, then that phenomena and it’s a phenomena that potentially could cost money to the insurance company, they don’t have any proof that it exists, then they’re going to sweep it under the carpet.So for a while there when it looked like they were going to be able to get away with telling women, you ought to be able to deliver that baby and go home in two hours, and I remember having to tell mothers that when I would see their baby in the hospital. I would get called in as the Family Practitioner to evaluate the child and make sure everything’s okay and then I was supposed to do the discharge, and I was supposed to tell the mom, “Okay, you can leave now.” And, sure, some moms wanted to get out of the hospital as soon as possible and maybe that’s not a bad idea except that if they go home and they’ve got three other kids to take care of, and the husband expects the woman to be making meals and cleaning up the house and all of that, and yes, that does happen.I think there are still some men out there that don’t realize that women need a lot more attention, rest, and support than that. So if you’re sending a woman home to that, it’s certainly not a healthy thing, but you can’t expect an insurance company to keep the woman in the hospital just so that she won’t be thrown into all those chores. Because that’s not their concern. Their concern is money. The only thing they want to know is are there studies that prove that she’s going to be healthier if she stays here or not? We don’t really have any studies like that. As you said, most of the studies have to do with the child.However, there is a doctor who I believe is at the University of Minnesota and I pulled some of his references. He’s been studying women for as long as a year after the delivery and trying to find out whether there’s correlations in long-term health with the amount of maternity leave that the woman had. And what he appears to be showing in his literature is that the woman who have very short maternity leaves have long-term health problems as a result. Their research is still fairly preliminary, I think, but there’s a couple of good studies that he’s done that went on between six months and a year and that’s what he’s found is that women with short maternity leaves ended up having a lot more infections, and fatigue, and quite a few other symptoms.

MRS. RAFFELOCK: And have doctors been trained to ask that question of a woman who complains of fatigue that began after the birth of a child? How long did you take off for maternity leave after the birth of your child?

DR. ROUNTREE: I wouldn’t say that’s a routine question at all. I don’t even know if that question ever gets asked. I do know that Dr. Raffelock has been testing blood levels of all the major nutrients (fatty acids, amino acids, intracellular minerals), testing bio-identical hormones,neurotransmitters and their nutritional precursors, etc. for many years and has found that the average time for a woman to completely recover her nutrient reserves postpartum is 18-24 months. This makes sense to me because she still might be breast feeding, sleep deprived, taking care of other family members and even go back to work. All these further drain nutrients from the mother so that while she is trying to replenish her nutrients lots of them are being drained off too.So there is the question of how much rest and also the question of these nutritional and hormonal factors as well.

MRS RAFFELOCK: What are some of your other thoughts about postpartum health?

DR. ROUNTREE: The question really has to do with what is health? Really and specifically when a woman is pregnant and after she’s had the baby, what does it mean to be healthy? And I think all of us have some sense of what that means which is that your skin has a certain glow to it, it has a certain vibrance, a certain color. That may be one of the biggest tipoffs we have, I think, is the person’s skin, you know, how does it look? What other symptoms are present and does someone actually feel good? An absence of symptoms doesn’t necessarily mean that a mother is in good health.I think a concept that’s maybe less well understood is the ability to bounce back from stresses. An unhealthy person doesn’t bounce back very well. Let me be more specific. It’s not so much that it’s abnormal to get sick. Everybody gets bad colds, everybody gets the stomach flu from time to time, you know, if you get a cut and it’s not cared for properly, it can get infected. Healthy immune systems are able to fight off infections. All these things can happen in a healthy person. But a truly healthy person recovers very quickly from this.So if you’re pregnant and you get a bad cold, it shouldn’t last more than two weeks. If you get a bad cold and it lasts for a month and certainly if it lasts for two months, something is wrong. So that’s one of the first questions that I ask a mother either while she’s pregnant or afterwards is, “Well, tell me about infections, how do you do with infections?” Have you gotten more than usual, are you getting one every month? Are you getting one every two months? One of the studies that I mentioned earlier on women who got more or less maternity leave showed that the women who got less maternity leave had more infections. So it’s a very indirect indicator that says, They’re not healthy. And they’re not healthy because their immune system isn’t bouncing back. Certainly, fatigue is another one of those indicators. It’s a red flag of unhealth. If a person comes to me and says, I’m fatigued, the first question I ask is, Do you get enough sleep? How much do you exercise and what do you eat? Okay? If you appear to be getting enough sleep and you seem to be eating the right kind of food and you seem to be getting enough exercise and you’re still fatigued, that tells me that you’ve got the beginnings of dysfunction. That something is out of whack.Now, I’ve had women come in that say, Oh, I’m not fatigued and you can look at them and tell that that’s not true. And part of the problem that I think we have in our society is we push ourselves so much because we are so focused on task and goals and getting things done that we’ve dissociated somewhat from our bodies. So there is fatigue as a symptom that a person would describe to me and there’s the kind of fatigue that they would get in their body that I could see as a general lethargy, a slowness, a tired look that the person has where they slump down. They don’t sit up in their chair, they, you know, they don’t have the physiology of someone who says — who’s telling you my energy’s good and you know that their energy’s good. So it’s a tip off to me if a person says I’m not tired or, you know, maybe I’m just a little bit tired but they’re slumped down in the chair and their body doesn’t look good, it’s somewhat intuitive but it’s extremely important information.So, again, I would look at the vibrancy of the skin, and I would include in that the tongue, you know, I think you can tell a lot by how robust a person’s tongue is, whether it’s coated or not, whether it’s got scalloping in it, or deep fissures or grooves, all of those are tipoffs that something is wrong. How do the membranes look in the eyes and in the nose? Are the membranes moist and clean or they dried and cracked and irritated looking? So that’s something you can tell from a quick glance just by pulling down the lower eyelid or — or using a speculum to look into the nose. So how are the membranes? How is the skin? What’s the color of the skin? And then what’s the person’s posture, what’s their physiology, how do they hold themselves? And then there’s the whole other issue of how fast do they recover from injuries, from infections, how frequently do they get infections? I think those are probably the three biggest areas that are tipoffs to me about robust health.I might throw in the other thing about intestinal health, because a lot of people don’t really think that much about intestinal symptoms until they become problematic. In other words, if they get severely constipated, which is a very common thing in pregnancy and even after pregnancy, if they get severely constipated, then they know something’s wrong or perhaps if they got bloody diarrhea they know something is wrong, and say, Yeah, I’ve got an intestinal problem.But what about gas and bloating and heartburn and cramping and all these things that a lot of us tend to think are just part of living? And I certainly have seen many patients over the years would tell me if I asked them point blank, “Do you have any intestinal problems?” And they say, “No, not really.” Then I would say, “Do you have any gas or bloating?” And they say, “Oh, yes, all the time. But I think that’s normal because I’ve always had that.” Well, that’s a tipoff to a functional medicine trained doctor that there could be all kinds of imbalances, there could be overgrowth of yeast as I mentioned earlier, there could be fermenting bacteria, there could be food allergies. There could be poor digestion and food absorption. So these subtle symptoms that a person might discount that I would be digging for and will tell me a lot about overall state of health, after all, if you don’t have a healthy gut, then it’s impossible for the rest of your body to be healthy.Something that the old time naturopaths like Bernard Jensen D.C, ND told us this years and years ago that you have to have a healthy gut. And I thought they were obsessed with their bowels. I didn’t really take it seriously back then, but now with all the new research that’s coming out about bowel health and the things that go on and imbalances and bacteria and yeast, I think we’re beginning to realize that its a very important area to focus on in people.

MRS RAFFELOCK: What about the body’s ability to process environmental toxins and toxins made within the body?

DR. ROUNTREE: So we’ve been talking about the basic issue of overall nutrients that the mother and the child need just for normal development, nutrients to build the bone marrow, nutrients to build other tissues like muscle and skin, nutrients for the mom to make breast milk. So I think we all understand that these things are essential from that perspective.But I think what’s less well known is the amount of nutrients that go into the process of detoxification which is an extremely important issue that I think comes to bear on this problem of postpartum fatigue.

MRS. RAFFELOCK: And what do you mean by detoxification?

DR. ROUNTREE: Okay. All our bodies have very specific mechanisms in place for getting rid of toxins. We basically have two different types of toxins that we have to get rid of. We have toxins from the external environment called exotoxins (from outside sources) and then toxins that we make in our intestines and we make in our cells called endotoxins (from inside sources). So one of those endotoxins would be free radicals. The simple process of breathing is producing free radicals. Free radicals are basically molecules that don’t have paired electrons on the outer surface and if you don’t have a paired electron, then you have a very highly reactive molecule that starts tearing up tissue like DNA and cell membranes, etc. But you’re also making a number of chemicals in your gut. Or if you have fermenting bacteria, they’re making huge quantities of chemicals with very strange names like cadaverine and putrescine, etc. You’re making secondary bile acids in your gut that are recirculating into the blood stream. Combine that with all the toxins that we’re hit on a daily basis, literally an onslaught of pesticides, the PCBs and the PVBs, the organochlorines, in particular, seem to be a big problem. These are persistent, organic pollutants. POPs is the term that’s being used to describe them. And the reason they’re called that is because they stay around for a long, long time. Some of these things were banned 20, 30 years ago and you can still find them in people’s body fat if you do a fat biopsy. So our environment is full of these things, it’s in the water, it’s in the food. If you eat animal products like eggs or chickens or red meat then you’re ingesting them that way. And your body has do something with it.So everyday your body has to go through this detoxification process where it’s taking these chemicals that could cause harm if they’re not processed and it’s also taking the hormones that are circulating in your body like the estrogens and cortisol and it’s dumping those out. If it didn’t, you would just be one big pool of estrogen after a while because your glands are making estrogen. They’re cranking estrogen out all the time.And that stuff has to get dumped out.In order to get dumped out, it has to be processed. And this processing is taking place in the gut wall, and it’s taking place in the cells of the liver, and to some extent it’s taking place throughout the body but particularly in those areas. There’s a little bit of it that goes on in the lungs as well. But it’s a very elaborate process. It usually involves enzymes and these enzymes require a huge amount of energy, a significant percentage of your body’s energy needs in the course of a day go into manufacturing these enzymes. So you have to take these raw materials, you have to take the nutrients and you have to put them together to form these complex proteins called enzymes. And then the enzymes work for a while and then they degenerate, they fall apart, and you have make new enzymes. So if you have an enzyme that’s trying to get rid of some of these environmental chemicals, right, and let’s say you had a particularly big exposure to those environmental chemicals in the course of a day, you’re going to run through that enzyme more quickly which means you need to make more enzymes which means you need all the raw nutritional materials to create the energy for the enzyme-making process, and then all the raw materials that you’re going to construct the enzyme out of, all the different amino acids, and then you also need cofactors for these enzymes. You need magnesium, you need Vitamin B-6 for example. In fact, that’s what a lot of vitamins and minerals are, they’re cofactors, they are cofactors for enzymatic activity. They make the enzymes run basically. So you have two different sets of enzymes in the liver and in the intestines involved in this process. One is the Phase I enzymes also called the cytochrome P450 or microsomal enzyme system. And then you have what’s called a Phase II enzyme system or the conjugating enzyme system. Phase I enzymes basically take the raw material, the hormone like estrogen and turn it into something that is a little bit more reactive, something that the body can work with.And that’s called an intermediate. And that intermediate is actually a highly reactive molecule. It may, in fact, be a free radical. It has to go through that process because it has to be sticky in a way is one way to think about it. It’s a sticky molecule now that it’s reactive so you can stick an amino acid onto it or you can stick glutathione onto it. When you stick those things onto it, it allows the body to excrete it through the body or to squirt it back out into the blood where it’s now inert so it can be filtered out into the kidneys and dumped in the urine. So if you’re thinking about nutrition from the perspective of these enzymes and the requirements of these enzymes, then first of all, you’re going to need a lot of those agents that are used in the Phase II system to conjugate those enzymes. And the agents would be things like sulphur and glutathione is something that I mentioned.Glutathione is a type of protein. It’s a tri-peptide, meaning it’s got three amino acids in it. It’s glutamic acid, glycine, and cysteine. So you need all of those raw materials to make glutathione which is one of the main detoxifiers. You need glycine by itself which is a detoxifier. As I said you need sulphur to help in the detoxification process. There’s a substance called glucuronic acid that’s used specifically to get rid of estrogen. That’s the one that gets tacked on estrogen so it can get dumped out. All these things are being made from raw materials. You also need a fair amount of antioxidants. The reason for this is if that Phase II enzyme system isn’t working properly, then you get a build up of those intermediates. And those intermediates are toxic. And if those intermediates start getting spewed out into the bloodstream now in the process of detoxification, they’ve created something that’s an even bigger problem. So if you don’t have adequate storage of your antioxidants to detoxify those intermediates, then you run into a problem where you start to actually poison your body. When you poison your body, the immune system doesn’t work very well, the mitochondria which are the little batteries or powerhouses in the cells that generate energy, they aren’t working very well, they start to get poisoned so your body cannot make adequate energy.

MRS RAFFELOCK: Do you think postpartum women are particularly vulnerable to these problems?

DR. ROUNTREE: Yes, because the baby is using a lot of the nutrients especially if you’re breast-feeding, you know, your body’s basically being parasitized so that all the nutrients are going out to help the baby and making immune cells for the baby, you know, your minerals and proteins, and Omega 3 oils are getting poured out in the breast milk, all those things that you need for detoxification. But also because your body has gone through this tremendous shift. Right? You — one day you had a baby inside of you, the next day you didn’t. Now, this tissue is going through what we call involution. Involution is when that enlarged uterus is starting to shrink back down again. Well, where’s all that tissue going? It’s being reabsorbed by the body. Well, what are the mechanisms in place to handle that? Suddenly those enzymes in your liver and in your gut are having to deal with all that extra material that’s being sloughed off. Okay? So you might say, Well, what does this have to do with a woman who’s tired six months later? It has everything to do with that because when you set these processes into motion, it can take years to recover. So this is pretty revolutionary stuff, I think and it’s straight out of the research papers. There’s really no question that this is going on. Maybe 10 years ago, you’d seen one or two papers about these enzymes and now there’s papers being published on this every single day in journals all over the world. So this is very much state of the art in terms of dysfunction in the body. What is optimal function? Optimal function’s when you got all these nutrients, you got all these precursors and the thing is running smoothly and efficiently. But it doesn’t take much to throw it off. Especially, in today’s toxic environment when we’re already having to deal with this onslaught of what are called xenobiotics, foreign materials that our bodies have never dealt with before and our bodies really struggle to deal with that. So if you’ve got that going on already and then you have a baby, and your body has to deal with detoxifying all the stuff that’s left over from that, you can imagine how that can throw you out of whack. And how if you don’t do something specifically to address that issue, then that imbalance can basically last for years. And I’ve certainly seen women who like I said earlier five years later, ten years later are saying, I was pretty healthy and then I had this baby and my health went downhill. Well, I think this is what’s going on. A lot of this can be corrected by taking nutrients the nutrients that replenish the body’s ability to correct these imbalances and heal itself.

MRS RAFFELOCK: Thank you Dr.Rountree.

DR. ROUNTREE:You are very welcome.

Sound Formulas

From Dr. Dean Raffelock

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