Mastitis – How Naturopathy and Physiotherapy can help with Prevention and Treatment

Alison — Sat, 08 Dec 2018 00:04:52 +0000

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.