Sara Reardon
speaker
284 appearances
2 recordings
2 series
first heard May 2025
last heard Jun 2025
Sara Reardon’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
So I like people to take collagen. I don't know much about creatine, so I don't comment on that a ton. But I think that there are some supplements that you can take, but it's a combination. It's like you can't just take ashwagandha and think your pelvic floor is going to be better. It's always a piece of the puzzle, but it's not just
I think our society still wants this like magic pill or this like silver bullet and it just doesn't exist.
You know, I mean, totally. And people like, how do you strengthen your pelvic floor? I'm like, you have to exercise. And they're like, well, do I have to do it forever? And I'm like, well, do you have to brush your teeth forever? Like, you don't have to, but your teeth will get like gross and you'll get cavity. So it's really a choice, you know, and I don't mean to be glib about it.
But it's like, this is if we want to take care of our bodies, we like, have to take care of our bodies. And You know, pelvic floor dysfunction is associated with depression, higher risk of ending up in a nursing home, higher rates of surgery. And so I'm just like, what can we do to care for our bodies in the long term? I don't want to spend gobs of money on diapers when I'm older.
I want to be able to travel. I want to be able to run three miles for the rest of my life. And so how do we help keep people with a really high quality of life into our later years which is now 40s, 50s, 60s, we start seeing our body changing so significantly. But if you have a pelvic floor issue, it can really affect that.
And even relationships, like if you can't have sex or it's painful, I mean, these can cause a lot of marital relationship challenges. If you can't have sex, you may struggle to get pregnant. I mean, the effects go so deep that I don't think we realize how much pelvic floor issues can really influence someone's life. But that's why I'm so passionate about giving people the resources for help.
Right.
Yes and yes.
Yes. When you are pregnant, that is the time that we often see pelvic floor issues arise. And we don't have any standardized postpartum rehab for women in the United States. In other countries, they are sent to postpartum therapy, physical therapy, like automatically. And we don't have that system here yet. But during pregnancy, your pelvic floor muscles are getting weaker over time.
Your pelvic ligaments are softening and loosening, and you have less stability in those joints, which that's what our body's supposed to do. It's designed to do that, but you can get pelvic floor issues as a consequence. So... I always say, you know, your pelvic floor is this basket of muscles that supports a growing baby, right? Your uterus is inside that basket.
And the beginning of pregnancy, your baby's a size of an avocado, right? And then maybe the size of a papaya. By the end, it's the size of a watermelon. And so if you think about a hammock holding an avocado, it's not going to change very much. But if you think about a hammock holding a watermelon, that hammock's going to sink down. It's going to stretch out. It's going to get weaker.
And that's what happens during pregnancy. Your pelvic floor gets weaker just during pregnancy. And low back pain and urinary leakage are present in over like 75 of pregnant moms. Unfortunately, doctors will say, oh, just wait until after pregnancy. But if you don't address it during pregnancy, it's likely to persist after the baby's born.
So I always tell women like during pregnancy, I really recommend strengthening during the first and second trimesters. I have a whole online program for pelvic floor strengthening during pregnancy. And then in that third trimester, focus a lot more on relaxation and stretching because you need your pelvis to open up and your pelvic floor muscles to relax for a vaginal birth.
We don't need super tight pelvic floors for a birth. We need relaxed muscles that can lengthen and coordinate and get out of the way for baby to come down the vagina. So if they're super tight, it's almost like doesn't allow baby to come down. So I focus a lot more on like yoga and breathing and learning how to push properly and different positions to push in that third trimester.
And then postpartum, you should do recovery. You should do You know, retraining, re-strengthening, reconnecting to your pelvic floor and core because it's been through 10 months of change and then birth, sometimes which required a surgery. So it's definitely a time I think women need to be proactive. And we also see a lot of issues arise postpartum.
And I really encourage women to get them addressed, whether it's, you know, you gave birth three months ago or three years ago. It's never too late. I would definitely get help for the issues or read the book and kind of get started because there's a lot that you can do and it doesn't get better as we age.
Yeah, people with vaginas.
No, but really, you know, I think that when people like even, you know, my mom's in her 70s and she's like, well, I don't know if I need this book because I'm in my 70s. I'm going, well, you're at a risk of leaking urine. You could end up in a nursing home. You pee every 30 minutes when I'm with you. Like, yeah, you definitely need this book.
Or it may be a young woman in her 20s that has pain with sex. And she's like, well, I don't I'm not pregnant, but and I don't leak. And I'm like, yeah, but you might have pain or you're sexually active. What I really think that I tell everybody is read the first chapter and the last chapter. Those are my two favorites. I just did the audio book recording and reread the whole book.
And those two chapters, I think, really sum up what's important, what's kind of total BS, because there's a lot of like wellness industry stuff for the vulva and vagina, why we need this. And then you can kind of cherry pick which chapters you like. Like if I have a peeing problem, then I'm like, okay, read the bladder chapter. If I'm pregnant, read the bladder chapter.
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