Ep 304: How Chiropractic Care May Ease Your Postpartum Journey

Dr. Nicole (00:00.14)

In this episode, I'm joined by prenatal chiropractor, Dr. Elliot Berlin to talk about how chiropractic care can support your body in the postpartum period. From relieving aches and pains to helping you shift out of stress mode and into healing, Dr. Berlin breaks it all down. If you're curious about safe, effective ways to care for your body after your baby, this one's for you.

Dr. Nicole (00:29.624)

Welcome to the Birth with Power podcast, where knowledge is power and power transforms birth. I'm Dr. Nicole Callaway-Rankins, mom of two and practicing board certified OB-GYN with over 20 years of experience and nearly 2000 births attended. I've seen firsthand how the hospital system can leave women feeling unheard and uncertain, but that doesn't have to be your story. Here, you'll get the knowledge, support,

and strategies to take charge of your birth experience so you can walk into the hospital feeling calm, confident, and empowered. Note this podcast is for educational purposes only and it's not a substitute for medical advice. See the full disclaimer at drnaclomeragins.com forward slash disclaimer. Now let's get to it.

Hello there, welcome to another episode of the podcast. This is episode number 303, whether this is your first time listening or you've been here before, you know I'm so glad you're spending some time with me today. In this episode, we're welcoming back Dr. Elliot Berlin. He was a guest on the podcast way back on episode 44, where we chatted about chiropractic care during pregnancy.

Dr. Berlin is an award-winning prenatal chiropractor, childbirth educator, labor support body worker, and the host of the Informed Pregnancy podcast. He's also the co-founder of the Berlin Wellness Group in Los Angeles and a passionate advocate for empowering parents through informed choices. Today, we're talking all about chiropractic care, this time in the postpartum period, what it is and how it may help you heal after giving birth.

We dig into everything from physical healing to emotional wellbeing and how this kind of care fits into a holistic postpartum recovery. Now, listen, I know that some doctors can be quick to dismiss things like chiropractic care or other so-called alternative approaches, but I really believe it's important that we expand our lens and stay open to options outside the traditional box, especially

Dr. Nicole (02:42.488)

when those options may offer real benefits for postpartum healing and wellness, an area that we already don't do a good enough job as it is. Now you're gonna walk away from this conversation feeling more knowledgeable about your options for postpartum care. So let's get into the conversation with Dr. Berlin.

Dr. Nicole (03:08.758)

Dr. Berlin, welcome back to the podcast. I am so excited to have you back.

Thank you so much for having me back. I'm an avid listener to your podcast and it's an honor to be a guest.

Well, thank you, thank you, thank you. So why don't, those of you who don't know, you might just start off by telling us a bit about yourself and the work you do and your family, if you'd like.

I like chocolate and vanilla. It's hard for me to pick.

I'm team chocolate all the way.

Dr. Elliot Berlin (03:34.798)

I respect that. I just can't pick a favorite with my babies or with my ice cream. Elliot Burden, I'm a car director, pregnancy-focused car director here in Los Angeles, California. We work mostly with fertility, pregnancy, postpartum, and growing families. And my wife is a psychologist. We sort of do the mind-body thing together.

And over the years, it's just been a lot of questions that get asked again and again and again, made me do research and answer those questions again and again and again. And eventually I started looking for ways to kind of put those answers out there so people asking the questions can find them without necessarily having to find me. So that led to a magazine and then podcast and then some documentaries, a streaming platform.

Altogether, collectively informed, pregnancy media. Awesome. So that's my other hat.

Love it, love it. And then how did you get interested in the pregnancy, prenatal space in general?

Well, you know, I was gonna do medicine actually. was my jam. was an EMT when I turned 18 in New York City working in emergency rooms and ambulances. I was on my way to medical school, sort of a family tragedy switched me over to more of a holistic path. And I still wanted to very much be in healthcare and I still love medicine. I just wanted to be on the more holistic side of

Dr. Elliot Berlin (05:12.128)

of the equation and love working together with the medical community. My wife and I were finishing grad school and we thought, let's have a baby. And then we tried and no baby came. And so we got thrown into the medical world of fertility for a long time, a really long ride. eventually medicine gave up on us and said, we'll never have babies together. But we took some time off because they were suggesting egg donation. They were suggesting.

Gotcha, gotcha.

Dr. Elliot Berlin (05:41.806)

Adoption right and it was so unexplained which was really a little frustrating But we're in place to become parents. So we just took some time to get helping improve our relationship which would you know suffers a little from that roller coaster of fertility sure and our finances and our mental health and physical health and Then when we started to look into okay, how do we become parents? We found out we're a prick

Every two years another baby popped out. It was like we couldn't turn it off all of a sudden. And four healthy kids later were very grateful and wanted to help other people who were on that journey as well. So we opened our mind body practice for general health and wellness, but with an eye on boosting natural fertility and everything kind of grew from there.

Gotcha, love that, love that, love that. So I wanna focus this conversation specifically on chiropractic care in relation to the postpartum period. So for those who haven't heard about a chiropractor, what exactly do you do and how does that apply specifically to postpartum?

I look at chiropractors like we are WD-40 for bones. Wherever two bones come together, they form a joint. There's generally supposed to be some movement between the bones around the joint. Some of them should have more movement, some have less movement. And one of the things that can go wrong is they lose some of their mobility. They become restricted, either partially or completely. And those restrictions in the skeletal system cause problems. Some of them are palpable. You might feel...

loss of range of motion. I'm restricted. I can't move my neck as far as I should be able to. Some of them are pain. When bones don't have any movement between them, they become swollen and painful. And some of them are not so palpable. It's just a dysfunction. So you have a static environment where the body is supposed to have dynamic function. think what most chiropractors have in common is we look through the body for these restrictions.

Dr. Elliot Berlin (07:43.392)

and overcome them. We restore motion between the bones and release that restriction. There's a lot of different ways to assess where the restrictions are and a lot of different ways to release them. So because of that, if you go to 10 different chiropractors, you might have 10 very different experiences, restoring motion between the bones and the body is very restorative. And so if you have that loss of range of motion, you can get the range of motion back. you have pain, the pain can go away. But also if that

restriction, especially along the spine, is causing pressure on nerve structures, the spinal cord or spinal nerves. It's profound. Like, now you have not just pain where the issue is, but could be radiating down into other areas, down an arm, down a leg. But also, not all the nerves are pain nerves. So if you have irritation to a nerve that's carrying other sensitive information, like how high is my blood pressure right now, then

you have sort of garbage in garbage out of the brain and spinal cord are not getting accurate information, then their response will be inaccurate as well. So because there's wide applications on how chiropractic can help the body and one of its doctor tools, its diagnosis and treatment tools, which is the nervous system, which controls the function of pretty much every simple organ in the body, can help it heal itself from the inside out.

Gotcha. So how might that be particularly useful after having a baby?

Okay. So after you have a baby, there's, there's a few great things for chiropractic. one, sometimes people come into the office during pregnancy or pre-pregnancy with chronic issues. A neck injury, I just had one this morning, an injury that was caused by a car accident seven years ago, never really got treated. And now it's become a chronic issue and chiropractic adjustments are helpful for a short period of time. then.

Dr. Elliot Berlin (09:37.358)

It just kind of locks back up again. Massage is helpful for a little while, then it locks back up again. But after you have a baby, there's a small golden window of opportunity because you still have all the pregnancy hormones, the relaxation and hormones that make the ligaments more forgiving. They're less stable, but they're a bit more relaxed. more moldable client. During that golden window of opportunity, we can take things that have been more chronically plaguing you.

in the skeletal system and release them in ways that we can't once that opportunity goes away. We have the opportunity during pregnancy too, and you hear this all the time, people during pregnancy, lifelong migraine sufferers all of a sudden have no migraines during pregnancy because of the relaxin and other things like that. Of course, there's other people who never had a migraine that killed them during pregnancy. It's a different mechanism. But during pregnancy, we have this opportunity too, but we're kind of restricted in some ways because of the pregnancy and the baby.

Gotcha.

Dr. Elliot Berlin (10:33.13)

Once that baby's out, we can go hog wild and we have the benefit, we have the assist from the hormone favorability. So that's one thing that happens after it becomes, but know, pregnancy is a lot of work on the body. I think that a non-pregnant body is sometimes like driving a sedan and a pregnant body is like driving a race car. And with a race car, you need a lot more maintenance because it's doing lot more vigorous work.

after that baby comes just on a purely physical level, musculoskeletal level, from all the strain and the sleeping different positions. And it's not just that. Now that there's a big baby, there's presumably a whole bunch of bending, lifting, holding, feeding, changing. That's a whole new strain that during the pregnancy, most common, all of it, people come in for lower body stuff, the lower back, the glutes, the piriformis, the sciatica.

and then it kind of migrates up to mommy neck and mommy back from all the taking care of a newborn. So there's lots to do just from a musculoskeletal level there.

Yeah, yeah, definitely. So then we can get this question out of way. Is it safe after birth? And that answer sounds like yes, but then how soon after birth? And then what about if you had a cesarean or a complicated vaginal birth?

All great questions. So, safe, yes. Nothing's 100 % safe, and neither is chiropractic in general during pregnancy or after pregnancy. I would consider it very safe. But, you know, risk is a weird thing. It's really a personal risk-benefit analysis that we make, and one person might find it, quote-unquote, safe, another person might find it risky. Statistically, it's something that's fairly safe to do at all times.

Dr. Elliot Berlin (12:19.726)

unless you have a particular risk factor. And with pregnancy, it's not just safe, but helpful for the pregnancy in a lot of different ways and for the person who is pregnant. But we do modifications. And then in postpartum, you generally don't need modifications, but after a difficult birth or after a cesarean birth, there would be modifications. So after a cesarean birth, I usually wait about two weeks before we consider doing anything, unless something happened.

during the birth or right after the birth. somebody throws their neck out, there's no reason to wait to work on her neck. can do that. Lower back stuff, I personally, most chiropractors don't do massage, but I went to massage therapy school and chiropractic school separately. And so there's a lot of massage work we can do even right after a C-section if there are lower back issues. Sometimes there's a lot of swelling or there's lymphatic work to do and that can all be done at that point.

After a C-section, we have a pretty specific recovery program where in the first couple of weeks after the cesarean, one of the tools that we use is therapeutic laser. Yeah. Yeah, low-level laser therapy. Okay. You know, just like plants can take light energy and convert it to cellular energy with photosynthesis, we can too with the process called photobiomodulation. And so if you take the right wavelengths of energy, red infrared, near infrared, via the blue

They have different effects, therapeutic effects on cells and a bunch of cells to their tissue. One of the most widely documented is post-surgical healing to prevent infection, improve, to decrease pain, improve collagen output so that the body can heal itself in more productive way. And we, I do the lasers, obviously it's really hard to get people.

into the office and it's something you need to do every day. Right after they're both recovering from having a baby and having surgery. So I send the laser to them with instructions on how to use it. And they do it every day for generally about two weeks. And then by week five, they come in for manual therapy specific to scar healing.

Dr. Nicole (14:33.846)

Okay, I had not heard of that.

Yeah, it's amazing. I mean, I use a laser for so many different things because the blue laser is antimicrobial, antiviral, antifungal. So, for example, sometimes people come in with clogged milk ducts and they're starting to get infected. And so by alternating blue laser to kill the bacteria just in that localized area and strengthen the tissue, we can sometimes help avert.

the need for further intervention. So very helpful tool postpartum. And after a vaginal birth, I'll sometimes see people an hour later. So if I'm doing doula work and I'm at the birth, I'll sometimes stick around until the dust settles and do a session right then.

after.

Dr. Nicole (15:21.792)

Okay, all right. Love it. Love it. Now social media and TV often portrays chiropractors as just cracking everything. You see those videos of the cracking sounds and all of that. So can you walk us through actually what a postpartum session in particular might look like and the types of techniques or approaches that you use?

Absolutely. So it's weird. I did a video, there was like a web series and I came and filmed here for YouTube. that video went up, now it's got like five million views. And there seems to be some sort of weird attraction to people loving to watch.

Yes.

other people get adjusted and hear the noise of the crap. The way they edited this video that they shot here when I adjusted them all, it was, I don't think it was that loud when they were here, but they really.

The crackage there, I don't know if sounds like people breaking fresh celery. But I get people that come from hours away after watching that video just to come get that cracking noise. The truth is, what I said earlier is there's a lot of different ways to find restrictions or subluxations between two bones and several different ways to release them. Some of them are the cracking, some of them are much more subtle and gentle and quiet, and some of them are even

Dr. Elliot Berlin (16:50.222)

assisted by tools like tools that tap for to bring back into play. So it's not always cracking and some people respond amazingly well to cracking and love it and we'll drive silver hours together. And other people just don't respond well to it. In that case, there's many other tools in the tool belt. And once in while somebody comes in and they're like, I'll do all the things, but no adjustments.

You know I'm a chiropractor. Wonderful. I'm a mechanic. Whatever you do, I'm just a car. But because I do other body work, I do massage and I do lymphatic work and I also do some energy work modalities like craniosacral and refluxology which are rooted part in structure and part in energy or charcoal balancing which is pure energy.

There's a lot to do, postpartum, and you know, we're looking at the whole organism. So I'm not just looking at, you're backwards, let's do this adjustment. There's a very big nervous system shift. The autonomic nervous system, often after the baby comes, the best birth ever, still kind of is jacked up into sympathetic fight or flight mode.

And it's a very depleting place to be at an already depleting time. so anything we can do to shift that autonomic nervous system away from feeling like it's in danger, like you're running from a tiger into a zone that's more reflective of reality, then that can be incredibly therapeutic as well.

Yeah, definitely, definitely. Now you mentioned this earlier, but I want to touch upon it again. Let's talk about day to day issues that those new moms face, things like aches, exhaustion, posture, or holding a baby. Chiropractic care can help with that and how, so.

Dr. Elliot Berlin (18:38.934)

Yeah, well the aches and pains are a direct hit for chiropractic and especially chiropractic combined with massage. It's all musculoskeletal. We are the WD-40. So I think there's two sides of the coin to musculoskeletal health and wellness in general and postpartum is no exception. Part of it is the WD-40. So in the bones, releasing restrictions where they come together in the soft tissue, loosening up muscles, frown shut tendons, anything that can become

stiff and short can become too stiff and too short and then pull on things harder than they should and sometimes compress the things that run in between. So if we can use massage diagnostically to find those restrictions and therapeutically to release them, then that's one form of WD-40 that can be very therapeutic and together with the adjustments because your muscular and skeletal system are deeply intertwined. When we do them together, we have a

a really more profound therapeutic release on the musculoskeletal system. But the other side of the coin is duct tape. And duct tape is looking for things that are weak and unstable and strengthening or stabilizing them. We do some degree of that in my office. Other typewriters do more. But generally speaking, I work in conjunction with physical therapists who are, you know, that's more of their primary thing. And they sometimes do WD-40 in the background.

So there's overlap between what we do, but together, if you're boosting the things that are weak, that are stiff and tight and strengthening the things that are weak and unstable, you become really healthy in your body.

Gotcha. Gotcha. So then does chiropractic care help with things like rectus diastasis or pelvic pain after birth? Or is that something more that physical therapists do or work together?

Dr. Elliot Berlin (20:28.974)

Yeah, so the pelvic pain sort of depends on the source. There's a lot of things we do and the nature of the pelvic pain. So if it's rooted in musculoskeletal, that's we shine there. And again, there's the golden window after the baby comes to fix that. If it's more internal, that's generally going to be more of a pelvic health physical therapy specialist. We do things also with the laser externally, but to have an impact upon getting rid of excess fluid.

and also activating the pelvic floor muscles and the core muscles. Sometimes before you're able to, before you get the all clear from the doctor or midwife. So there's things we can do there as well. But it's, again, it's in conjunction. When we're working as a team, our patients get the best result. So some of that falls more in the chiropractic and some more in the physical therapy.

For sure, for sure.

Dr. Nicole (21:22.936)

Gotcha. And then how many sessions, like what does it look like? Is it six weeks of sessions weekly or three months or does it just depend? What's typical?

Yeah, so what's typical is a good question. What happens for an individual? Our care is extremely individualized. I'm always trying to work myself out of a job. So when somebody comes in with excruciating pain, either during a pregnancy or after a pregnancy, I generally will see them if it's a tough case, know, something really intense going on, or if it's chronic, if there's a lot of buildup that needs to get worked through. I'll generally see them twice a week.

for just a couple of weeks. And if I do four visits and we're not making a significant difference, then I don't just keep doing the same thing and wonder if 40 visits will make a significant difference. So I always try to work myself off the job. I'm doing what I'm doing and it's working, I should have to see who left and left. Eventually, once in a while for maintenance. Most of our patients come in 10 or 12 times a year just for a maintenance session.

Okay. Okay.

even when they're feeling great, because they want to keep feeling great. Sort of like doing the oil change and not waiting for the engine to smoke. But twice a week is generally my max. I rarely see anybody more than that. Once a week is a lot more common, and it's generally for like four weeks or six weeks. And by that point, if I haven't worked myself out of the job, I'm sending off for imaging or trying to figure out what I'm missing.

Dr. Nicole (22:32.578)

Yep, yep, definitely.

Dr. Nicole (22:52.216)

Gotcha, gotcha. Okay. Now what about emotional wellbeing? Does chiropractic care help with things like stress or just feeling overwhelmed or even sleep?

Yeah, so the nervous system, if we go back to the autonomic nervous system, it responds to stimuli around you and within you. So if it's hot, your body will take action to warm you up. If it's cold, it will take action to help you sweat and cool down. And that part of the nervous system is automatic. You don't think about it and say, want to raise my blood pressure. I want to move some blood over to this part of my body and take it away from here or, you know, improve my digestion, anything like that. It's just automatically happens.

And there's a spectrum of intensity of the stimuli. So if the stimuli are coming in saying danger, you have one reaction. If they're coming in saying safety, you have another reaction. And it's a spectrum where on one end you have the pure total adrenaline fight or flight emergency reaction. On the other end, you have the pure total parasympathetic I'm at rest reaction. the organs that are involved are

your eyes, how dilated they become or how constricted they become, how sensitive your skin becomes. If you're moving blood flow to your arms and legs or if you're moving it more to your posture, if you're breaking down sugar that's stored up at the liver, or if you're storing up for a later time, if you're storing up sugar for energy at a later time when you'll need it more. And when you go into emergency mode, your pupils are going to dilate. You need to see the battlefield really.

as clearly as possible, you become much more sensitive. Things that are painful become very painful because you need to know exactly where and when that hit came from, let's say the tiger claw. And you shunt blood flow to your arms and legs away from your posture and you break down sugar and funnel it to your arms and legs so you can have that superhuman strength. And digestion and the reproductive system basically shut down because they're not necessary.

Dr. Elliot Berlin (24:50.56)

And during the time of an emergency, your brother's like, not the best time to have a donut and not the best time to have a baby. So, you know, in that sense, if you're in that mode all the time, even when you're not being chased by a tiger, you start to get predictable symptoms. your pupils always dilate, you're prone to headaches because you're letting in too much light stimulation. If the blood flow is constantly moving away from your posture into your arms and legs, you're going to get postural muscle. There, you're going to become hypoxic. Not enough oxygen, you'll get.

headaches, you'll get neck pain, shoulder pain, back pain, stomach pain because there's enough blood flow coming to those areas. You'll get digestive dysfunction because your body's not paying attention to your digestive system and maybe even fertility issues because your body's really focused on the emergency even if there is no real emergency going on. After you have a baby, there's generally a jack towards that emergency mode in that part of the nervous system and

Anything we can do to bring it down to less emergency would be very therapeutic on all of the levels we just discussed, including emotional well-being and depletion energy and physical pain and restriction. So with chiropractic, we can do that by restoring nerve flow where it's being impeded. And with massage, we can do that with all the things that come from

comforting touch, but also by loosening up those tight muscles. With energy work, that's the whole goal of energy work, really. right, right. A bunch of tools that we have to help with the emotional well-being. in general, we're always looking at the whole organism, not just a particular part.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense, lot of sense. So if someone is thinking about maybe I want to see a chiropractor after pregnancy, where should they start and what should they look for? there any reflex?

Dr. Elliot Berlin (26:46.382)

So, great question. I think that it's important to know that any chiropractor who's licensed can work on somebody who's pregnant and can work on somebody who's recently had a baby. Within that, there's not a whole lot of training in chiropractic school. I can't speak for today. I went to school like 150 years ago. My understanding is still, even if there's more training, there's still not a lot. And a lot of the training that there is,

Same.

Dr. Elliot Berlin (27:15.962)

is what not to do. You know, don't do this on someone who's pregnant or that one's pregnant. And so if you want more of the training on what to do, that's more postgraduate. And there's a whole bunch of postgraduate courses. A lot of them are given by an organization called the International Chiropractic Pediatric Association and ICPA. And they have a website, ICPA, the number four kids.com. And

If somebody's looking for a tarot breaker who's got certifications from an organization like that, they have a World Wide Listing there.

Okay, well, that's incredibly helpful. And then you said, are there any red flags where you should be like, don't go see that person?

Um, I think that the red flags really come from reviews. know, uh, think we're all probably going to have people that really resonate well with the kind of care we give and people who are probably not a good match for us. Gotcha. And some of those people are going to reviews that indicate they were not a good match for us. Right. Um, and if I could, would like for a review indicating the same. Um, but you know, someone's got 90 % of the reviews saying,

You know, this, this doctor is just a scam for X, Z reasons. I think in any industry you have people who are in it for heart, purposes and people who are looking, you know, how I was, when I was a kid, one of my teachers said, you know, there's two ways to make shoes. Someone who really cares about the user and the comfort of their foot and how they feel in their shoe. it's going to make shoes that are going to

Dr. Elliot Berlin (29:01.23)

become very popular, even if it takes time. And so I was interested in, you know, making as much money as possible. I was just going to spit out all these different varieties and styles of shoes that eventually is going to falter away because they're not comfortable. And so I think that's true in any, any industry. And it's true with healthcare too and chiropractics, no exception. So I do get sometimes people that are like, oh, this is refreshing. Cause when I went to my chiropractor, they were like,

immediately told me need to come three times a week for four weeks and I need to come twice a week for eight weeks. And I was like, what kind of diagnostics did they do? And they're like, nothing. I'm like, how would they even know that? And again, if I'm not making significant progress in four visits, I'm definitely scratching my head and looking to figure out how we can get you.

Right.

Dr. Elliot Berlin (29:55.18)

better without doing the same thing for over and over again. So I guess that's a flag. If you see something like that in the reviews, that might make you think twice.

that's concerning. I would also say that maybe a red flag is not being, if like they're totally anti-medical, like don't ever go see a doctor, you know, that kind of thing. Same thing on the flip side, if you have a doctor who's like, don't ever go see, you know, a chiropractor, you want a practitioner who wants a holistic, like a collaborative approach and not just like, you know, crapping on all the other professions or whatever.

Totally. I think the evidence-based skepticism is healthy on all sides. But, if you just have somebody who's militantly anti, look, I didn't want to be involved after my family trip. I didn't want to be on the drugs and surgery side of healthcare. But I respect it. mean, anybody who doesn't realize the innovations that we have and the medical marvels that we have available to us as a result of the medical industry is completely blind and

You know, if you try to convince your patients never to go that path at all costs, you're not doing them a service. And that's true. That's a red flag. And the other side is true too. And you know, sometimes what I think makes a great doctor is somebody who knows what they know and knows what they don't know. So, you know, sometimes I'll hear somebody ask their doctor, can I get a chiropractic adjustment? And the doctor's like, I don't know.

I don't know how much I don't care about it, doesn't it? I think that's a great answer. I don't know because I don't know. But if you just say no because you don't know, that's a disservice. And same for us. I'll get people saying, should I do this intervention? I could tell them what I know about it that's factual. Or if I don't know enough, could just say, I'm not sure I can research you or refer you out.

Dr. Nicole (31:47.512)

So is there ever anyone or a situation where someone postpartum should not see a chiropractor or where they should be, you know, discuss it with their OB or midwife first?

I think that if you come to see us and there's something that's a red flag, we will generally find it and investigate before doing any kind of treatment. And so we're primary care providers in that sense. And we can generally do that. I think a lot of people, you know, if you've had a surgery that didn't go well, you know, for example, just had a patient, not that she was post-traumatic C-section. then things look really weird after her.

Gotcha.

Dr. Elliot Berlin (32:28.27)

Cicerin was recovering. They looked weird and they felt weird and it turned out she had a massive hernia. And there's nothing I can do for that hernia. know, I could laser for some of this discomfort and inflammation, but there's nothing I can do to remedy that hernia. And so that's a referral out to somebody else. And then it actually turned out, you know, to be a bigger issue with infection and other things like that.

We just have to know what's in our wheelhouse and what's not in our wheelhouse and work. Like you said earlier, when we work in collaboration, give the best, we'll around a pair of patients get the best results.

Gotcha. Gotcha. It's probably important for whatever practitioner you see that they're actually like talking to you and asking you questions about yourself and your health and not just immediately going to the thing.

Totally. And we sometimes get into a rut because I'm sure you do also see the same things over and over and over and over again. And when it walks in, you're like, I know what that is. really, you still have to pretend like it's your first time every time because sometimes it's masquerading as that and it's really something else. And sometimes there's more than one thing going on.

Yeah, definitely, definitely. Okay, so then as we wrap up, what would you say, and I ask all my guests this, what is the most frustrating part of your work?

Dr. Elliot Berlin (33:48.204)

I think the most frustrating part of my work is accessibility and I blame it wholly on our Berbeman Trans system.

Our insurance system is trash and it's a ripoff, I think, in some ways.

I think it's broken in a lot of ways. don't think that insurance should even be involved at all in actual preventative care. It's not an insurance thing. If my car needs an oil change, I don't look for my car insurance to cover the oil change. And I don't think it makes sense for us to do that with our bodies either. That's on us. Health insurance really is disease insurance. It should be there when something's gone wrong.

and we need to get back to health. And I think that's one of the biggest flaws of the system in the first place is we just give ownership over every decision that we make in our life to the health insurance companies. And they're not deciding based on what's best for us, and certainly not their primary way of deciding things. But what it did for me is they have a calculation that they use for a chiropractic visit and how long it'll take and you know.

what it's worth and so they have a certain amount that they'll cover. Most chiropractic visits, really most of them after the initial visit are five minutes long on average. My chiropractic visit is between 30 and 60 minutes long. So now because that system has determined that as a chiropractor, I can only get paid for a five minute visit, then I have to make this awful choice. Do I only do the five minute visit or

Dr. Elliot Berlin (35:25.922)

do I not take insurance? so, to me, there's a million people doing the five minute visits, so I have to take insurance. But it does break my heart that as a result, I now am not accessible to a lot of people who I love to be accessible to. it's the most frustrating part.

Yeah, definitely, definitely. On the flip side, what's the most rewarding part of your work?

God, every day is rewarding. look, I've been blessed to work with really, really nice people. our office team is incredible right now. And our patients would just get blessed with the nicest patients. And they're on the greatest journey, you know, of life, having babies. And so there's not a minute, like every day I love going to work. And every day I love going home.

I double blessed in that way. It's hard to pick a favorite there. It's sort of like the chocolate and vanilla. Everything is great.

That's amazing, that's amazing. So then what would you say is your favorite piece of advice that you would give to help a new mom or parent postpartum?

Dr. Elliot Berlin (36:26.978)

I think support, it used to be that we lived on family properties and family villages and everybody in the village helped out when you had a baby and you helped them out when they had their baby. And we don't have that anymore. And it's very hard to do all these things on your own. Some of that is filled in with professionals. Like that's how we have childbirth educators and doulas and lactation professionals and postpartum doulas and nannies and night nurses. All that used to be built in.

Any way you can get support, whether it's peer support, professional support, family support, friends support, try to arrange that ahead of time because without it, it's really, it's a lot for, you know, one or two people.

It is, it is for sure. And then where can people find you the additional resources, links, all of that stuff to help them specifically with postpartum recovery?

well, everything's in one place. So we do have a streaming platform called Informed Pregnancy Plus, which has a lot of documentaries, three dozen documentaries, a bunch of web series with new ones coming out all the time. In fact, we have a brand new web series that's going to come out this year. It's called The Fourth Try, and it's all about the fourth trimester and different things that you can do.

It's pretty fantastic. We take this dynamic new mom who has a baby in every week for the first 12 weeks. We arrange for her to do something for her health, whether it's mental, physical, or spiritual health. she kind of cameras role as she's doing the thing. But then also she talks about what it was like from her perspective and the practitioner talks about what they did and what the goals are there. So it's going to be a great addition to the Informed Pregnancy Plus collection. There's workshops on there. There's

Dr. Elliot Berlin (38:08.526)

lot of mind-body stuff on there, meditation, yoga, nidra to help with sleep, yoga, fitness classes. So that's one of our greatest resources. Our podcasts are the Informed Pregnancy Podcast and a brand new exciting podcast that just came out today called One Way or a Mother, which is a much more in-depth detailed view of a birth journey. The entire season is one story.

And it's kind of like a mini documentary about the pregnancy journey and birth. All of it is on informedpregnancy.com. You can get to any of our stuff from informedpregnancy.com and on Instagram at Dr. Berlin spelled out D-O-C-T-O-R-B-E-R-L-I-N.

Perfect, perfect. Well, thank you so much for coming back onto the podcast. Super excited that you came back. Tons of great information that I know folks are gonna find helpful.

Thank you so much, Dr. It's great to see you as always.

Dr. Nicole (39:07.608)

Wasn't that a great conversation? I still appreciate him coming on to share his perspective. It's obvious that he is quite passionate about his work. Now, you know, after every episode when I have a guest on, I do something called Dr. Nicole's Notes, which are my top takeaways from the conversation. Here are my Dr. Nicole's Notes from my conversation with Dr. Berlin. Number one, chiropractic care is more than just about making loud cracking sounds, okay? Social media can have you thinking.

that chiropractic care is all about the loud cracking noises, but chiropractic care can actually involve a whole range of gentle, effective techniques beyond just adjustments. For example, it can also include massage. So it's not just about the cracking, it's more than that. All right, next up, teamwork makes the difference in postpartum recovery. I've always said that collaborative care

will help lead to better outcomes and we should be open-minded about considering non-traditional therapies. That includes OBs being willing to work with chiropractors, but the reverse should also be true as well. You want a chiropractor and specifically a chiropractor trained in postpartum or prenatal techniques who values teamwork and a holistic approach to postpartum care. You don't want someone who is going to poo poo traditional medical therapy. They both have.

a place. Okay, number three, every approach has risk, even quote unquote natural ones. This is something I also talk about often just because a treatment is natural or holistic doesn't mean that it's risk free. have jokingly said that anthrax and arsenic are both quite natural, but of course they will both kill you. Now chiropractic care is generally safe, but like anything else, it's not a blanket solution.

Now, one thing I will say specifically about chiropractic care is that I personally recommend that you do not let anyone adjust your neck. There's a risk of something called vertebral artery dissection that can lead to stroke. It's rare, but it does happen. So I say no to any neck adjustments. The big picture is that you shouldn't give something a pass just because it's natural.

Dr. Nicole (41:21.334)

What you want to do is understand your personal health needs and choose treatments, whether traditional alternative that are evidence-based, review the risk and they are tailored to you. And then the final thing I'll say is that your emotional health and your physical health are deeply linked. I really appreciate Dr. Berlin's approach about how it acknowledges that mind-body connection is so, so important. After birth, your body's going through

major shifts and it's not just those physical shifts, stress, exhaustion, even feeling off, those things are real. And when we address some of those muscular skeletal issues underneath, that can help calm your nervous system and improve your overall wellbeing. Trust me, and the flip side is true. When you address some of the reasons for stress, your pain may get better. All of this is connected.

Okay, that's it for this episode. If this show has helped you feel more calm, more confident or more empowered, I would so appreciate if you show your love by leaving me a quick review in Apple Podcast. It may not seem like a big deal, but that simple act makes a huge impact in helping me to continue doing this work and reach and serve more people. And if we're not connected yet, come on over and follow me on Instagram at Dr. Nicole Rankins.

I've got lots of great content for you there as well. Encouragement, real talk, all of it. My DMs are open. I'd love to hear from you. And then do me one more favor. Come on back next week and remember to trust your power and take charge of your.