How to Rebuild Your Body After Pregnancy? The Recovery Plan You Must Know About | Dr. Lara Morgan Lee | #176

**Lara Morgan Lee** (0:00)
Menopause is right around the corner. And you're talking about building unbreakable bones and being strong and longevity, and these are so important. But if you show up at the door of perimenopause, still adapted and weak from pregnancy, your outcomes are going to be worse.

**Vonda Wright** (0:11)
Dr. Laura Morgan, she decided there was a huge gap in the care of women, both active and athletes, postpartum.

**Lara Morgan Lee** (0:20)
I hate the phrase, listen to your body. It doesn't work for postpartum. We need to have frameworks in place so that they also understand that they can still build the strength and fix that diastasis that was still lingering. There are providers and physicians or things that they can do to make it better long term.

**Vonda Wright** (0:34)
What is the nutritional recovery that we need in this period if we're going to treat moms like athletes?

**Lara Morgan Lee** (0:40)
Number one, protein. Protein is a building block for your muscular healing and for your wounds to heal. Number two, fiber, because it's going to be long-term health and longevity for your body. If you wait for the moment you have an hour to exercise as a mom, you're going to fail. It's not going to happen.

**Vonda Wright** (0:53)
If you can do 10 minutes and you have a couple of weights at home that you can do something small with, you can go directly from postpartum, sometimes into perimenopause, without any lag.

**Lara Morgan Lee** (1:03)
This isn't just about appearance. This isn't about a bounce back. Athletes don't bounce back. We're rebuilding the body you need for your whole life.

**Vonda Wright** (1:14)
If this helped you see your body differently, that's exactly what this channel is for. Every week, real science, no fluff, no fear. Just the truth about what your body can still do.
Subscribe and let's keep going. Okay, today is really exciting on The Dr Vonda Show because I get to talk to another sports medicine doctor. And listen, I have been so privileged my entire career to always be in practice with non-operative sports medicine experts. And when paired with a surgeon, we provide the best total care for the athletes and active people. So Dr. Laura Morgan is one of these people. She is an internist. Her residency was in internal medicine, and then she did the extra step of getting a sports medicine fellowship and certification. I did that on the surgical side. She's done this on the internal medicine side. And then afterwards, she also has taken care of athletes at the highest level, at the professional level, and active people across the entire spectrum of activity.
And then a light bulb went off in her, and we're going to dive deep into this. And she decided there was a huge gap in the care of women, both active and athletes, postpartum. And the whole ridiculousness of putting a finger in the air and saying, oh, I think you're ready to go back after the complete misunderstanding that giving birth is like a marathon. So, Dr. Lara, thank you so much for coming today. And there are not many people doing what you're doing. So you're really a pioneer in the field of how do we treat women in general and female athletes in specific like an athlete with a plan, not just, I don't know, some arbitrary six weeks of you can finally have sex again and maybe you can go run again. I mean, we should get into, is there any research at all? And if there is, what does it say? And what protocols do you use? It's just such a wide open field because the most searched question for postpartum medicine is when can I start running again? And that may miss the point altogether, right? So take us through your whole story and your three children and when the light bulb went off and you're like, oh my God, the gap and let's just go.

**Lara Morgan Lee** (3:47)
I mean, you summarize it. We could end the show there almost because that is exactly it. No, we need some action items. Nail on the head there. So yeah, so I'm Dr. Morgan. I am a board certified sports medicine doctor, not surgeon, unlike Vonda. I am sports medicine, but I did. I worked at the elite level. I was a team physician for the Cleveland Cavaliers, for the LA Kings hockey, which I know we both share a love of that sport as well as USC Trojans. And I really built my career taking care of these high level, very active people. I was on the sidelines building protocols for down return to sport in it, just in the best way. And I absolutely loved it. And after the birth of my first daughter, I realized we were doing a huge disservice to an even bigger population. You know, I had my daughter, she was breeched. So I had a C-section. I had a very easy pregnancy. I was active the whole time. Being a sports doctor, we know the value of that. And after I gave birth, my C-section wound de-hist a little bit. My husband was packing it. I'm lying on the floor. I should also add my husband is a surgeon. That's not like a big deal.