Why Postpartum is not the "opposite" of pregnancy: Conversation with Dr. Uri Alon

If we wanted to bury the phrase “bounce back” to describe our expectation about how a body should respond in postpartum, I think today’s conversation can effectively do that.

I talk to a researcher who has gathered the largest sample of data about women, before, during and after pregnancy, tracking 76 different lab values for 300,000 women between 2003 and 2020. His work shows the significant changes to physiology during pregnancy, and importantly, how long it takes different physical aspects to recover from pregnancy.

Spoiler alert: the vast majority of tests take more than 3 months to recover.

We’ll also talk about how some complications may well be related to preexisting issues, as seen in the preconception labs.

You can find more of Dr. Alon's work here: https://www.weizmann.ac.il/mcb/alon/

The previous episode that examines a blood biomarker for depression with Dr. Jennifer Payne: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/can-we-predict-postpartum-depression-from-inside-the/id1779600854?i=1000711126548