Health & Wellbeing Podcast #33

This episode I’m joined again with the lovely Brooke Hile – women’s health physiotherapist. She joined us previously to talk about hypertonicity of the pelvic floor muscles (aka when the muscles in your vagina are too tight) and is back to talk about our lady bits again, but this time it’s the boobs. We are chatting about mastitis, and how physiotherapy can be helpful to reduce the occurence of it and how it can help with treatment. We also talk about how to prevent it with proper feeding techniques, probiotics for mastitis, herbs for mastitis, and what to eat to prevent mastitis.

Have a listen at Soundcloud here on on the embedded player below, then check out the pretty diagrams showing how you can do some self drainage at the bottom of this post.

Podcast Breakdown

0:00 Intro

1:50 What is mastitis?

2:25 Why you should learn about mastitis whether you plan to breastfeed or not

3:08 What are the symptoms of mastitis?

4:08 Abscess in mastitis

5:00 Benefits of breastfeeding

6:00 Conventional and common treatments for mastitis, and the wrong way to massage your breast if you have mastitis

9:37 When should antibiotics be considered for mastitis?

10:17 Antibiotic resistance

11:32 The golden key with mastitis: drain the breast. Some tips on how to feed on the affected side with mastitis

13:12 Ultrasound treatment of mastitis

14:26 Reasons why women can get mastitis

16:00 Breastfeeding isn’t easy

18:45 the natural treatment for mastitis including diet and herbal medicine

19:48 Echinacea, Calendula and lymphatic herbs for mastitis

21:45 How stress affects the milk ejection reflex, and how herbs can help this

23:50 Probiotics for prevention

24:25 Prevention tips

24:45 Posture when feeding

26:50 More on probiotics

27:50 Gut health and biofilms

28:30 Looking after your immune system with nutrition, dealing with stress and the importance of a village

30:50 How recurrent mastatitis is associated with some common vitamin and mineral deficiencies

32:00 How an incorrect latch and tongue tie may affect drainage

Self-Drainage for Mastitis

These exercises can be practised daily to encourage good lymphatic drainage and help prevent mastitis, but they can also be done to help with a current infection.

Thanks to Brooke for the guidance with these exercises. Drawings are by Caitlin Duckett.

Effleurage Encouraging the flow from the breast to the lymph system for clearance, gently sweep under the breast up towards the armpit

“The Pec Wobble” Pull the pec muscle off the chest wall and give it a wobble, this is as aggressive as you will get – not it is not the breast tissue you are moving but the muscle.

“The Lift and Twist” Gently cup the breast and lift it upwards, maintain the lift and gently rotate the breast back and forth.

“The Lift and Bob” Gently cup the breast and lift upwards, maintain the lift and bob up towards the collar bone and underarm

Get in Contact with Brooke:

Instagram @thingsdownthere
Brooke’s booking page: https://auappts.gensolve.com/p360/clinician/details/brooke_hile

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Related

Caring for Mama Podcast

Self Care for New Mothers

The amazing benefits of breastfeeding

Why You Should Choose Chemical-Free Products For You & Your Baby

Filling Your Own Cup First

Naturopathic support in pregnancy

How to manage reflux in babies

Why Gut Health is Critical to Your Wellbeing

The post Mastitis – How Naturopathy and Physiotherapy can help with Prevention and Treatment appeared first on Alison Mitchell Naturopath.

Here’s a completely unselfish reason to ask for a back rub before you breastfeed – it helps lactation and means you have a more satisfied baby.

In the attempt to find a cost-effective way to help with breast feeding, a study was done to test the theory that back massage for new mothers, along the lines of acupressure and shiatsu would help with breastfeeding. The results were impressive!

The study was based in a hospital in India, and a group of 220 new mothers were split into two groups (Group A: 100 received a back massage and Group B: 120 who didn’t; both groups received normal hospital care).

The study excluded mothers and babies with issues that would affect breastfeeding, this included:

• Newborns with poor neonatal reflexes
• Newborns with prematurity, congenital anomalies or any neurological conditions leading to poor sucking reflexes.
• Mothers with any acute or chronic illness
• Mothers with nipple or breast abnormalities or attachment difficulties
• Mothers on medications affecting lactation or breast feeding

In many of these instances, these are the mothers and children who need additional breastfeeding support but it is understandable for an initial study such as this, that those fitting these categories would be excluded from the study as it would skew the results. In future a study focusing on those that fit these exclusions would be very interesting to see.

The massage was applied for 15 minutes before a feed, 4 times a day, consisting of small circular motions with the thumbs along either side of the length of the spine.

How effective this was in supporting breast milk production was gauged by the difference between the groups of the mean(average) weight gain, number of wees and poos by the baby, hours slept after a feed and ‘satiety of baby’ at the end of the feed (a combination of some subjective and objective assessments). As the quantity and quality of breastmilk production cannot be measured, weighed or analysed under a microscope because it’s getting swallowed by the baby, these methods of assessment give us a good idea about how effective the massage is in increasing breast milk production.

The weight gain difference between the groups was the most notable, with a massage group gaining a lot more weight on the first day after birth compared to the non massage group, and this difference continued for the next two days they were studied.

The number of wees and poos was only different after the second day (increased in the massage group).

There was more babies in the massage group that slept for longer than 2 hours after each feed, and this increased with each day studied.

The satiety of the baby assessment was based on whether they fussed or cried after a feed, and whether the mother felt the baby was ‘satisfied’ after the feed and went to sleep easily. This category showed a significant difference between the groups in particular, for crying and fussing. 35% babies in the test group (A) compared to only 10% of babies from the control group (B) were satisfied after breastfeeding on first day, where as 69% from Group A compared to 43.3% babies from Group B were satisfied after breastfeeding on day 2. On third day 93% from Group A and 56.6% from Group B were satisfied from breastfeeding!

All of these factors indicate that breastfeeding was improved significantly by the back massage.

Works Cited:

Patel, U., Gedam, D.S. Effect of back Massage on Lactation among Postnatal Mothers.  International Journal of Medical Research and Review. 2013 Jan-Mar, 1(1).  http://www.academia.edu/3486501/Effect_of_back_Massage_on_Lactation_among_Postnatal_Mothers

The post A massage for Mum means a better feed for bub. appeared first on Alison Mitchell Naturopath.