Healthful Woman Podcast

Board-certified obesity medicine specialist and brother of Dr. Nathan Fox joins us for today's episode about weight management and treatment of obesity. Dr. David Fox helps people in his general practice understand the medical implications of obesity and works to destigmatize the societal shame surrounding what, at the end of the day, is a problem that can and should be treated as any other medical risk factor.

In part two of Jamie’s High Risk Birth Story, she covers her experience with a lumpectomy and C-section recovery, followed by chemotherapy, and the struggles of being a new mother while going through cancer treatment.

Jamie tells her story of receiving a breast cancer diagnosis late in her pregnancy and complications from preeclampsia. After her diagnosis, Jamie explains how she and her medical team planned for a lumpectomy, delivery, and egg freezing, and her experience learning she couldn’t carry more children after treatment.

There are different types of concerns that can arise when performing genetic testing; to use an analogy, there could be large paragraphs of text that accidentally repeat themselves, which alters the meaning of a chapter in a book, or there could be single letter changes in important sentences that change the meaning of an important thought. Our geneticist, Dr. Tamar Goldwaser, talks today about those latter changes: single gene mutations, and how we are able to detect them during pregnancy.

It's always great to talk with MFM's geneticist, Dr. Tamar Goldwaser, to learn about the fastest growing area of study in healthcare, genetics. In part one of this episode, Dr. Fox asks Dr. Goldwaser to describe the differences in genetic and prenatal tests that can be performed to learn more about a baby's genetic predispositions and potential disorders prior to birth. There are many different types that reveal different pieces of information, so hearing it from the doctor who will interpret your results is always beneficial.

So much of caring for patients with chronic conditions that can interfere with pregnancy and childbirth is personal, which is why today we talk with Zehava, a listener of the podcast, who shares her personal journey through pregnancy with ulcerative colitis, in the midst of COVID protocols in hospitals around the country. Although she delivered her son at just over one pound and 30 weeks, both mother and baby are doing well.

Dr. Nathan Fox continues his conversation with his father, Dr. Jacob Fox, as they define terms around memory loss and dementia to help people understand the factors that put people at risk for cognitive decline. Cognitive decline affects everyone differently, and neurologists have come a long way in helping people prevent the early onset of dementia in the past few decades.

In today's episode, we'll meet Dr. Nathan Fox's father, Dr. Jacob Fox, a recently retired neurologist who has served patients for over 50 years. As the medical field began to identify and apply terminology to Alzheimer's disease and cognitive decline, Dr. Jacob Fox transitioned his private practice into a research-focused practice at Rush medical school, where he helped expand our understanding of how the brain ages and taught the next generation of medical students.

We're featuring a redrop episode for this 4th of July week. We revisit an older discussion about the benefits of Yoga. Dr. Fox interviews his daughter, Kira Fox, who has been a certified yoga instructor since age 15. In this episode, they discuss how she started yoga, what it’s like to be an instructor from such a young age, and using her skills to volunteer and give back.

Does it matter which way a baby comes out of the birth canal, or which way it's facing during a C-section? For people in labor, not necessarily, as many different head positions result in healthy, safe deliveries, although labor times are often longer for people who don't deliver "the normal way." It does matter to your obstetrician, however, because the head position tells them how the labor is progressing and will affect any surgical delivery plans they may have. Dr. Fox tells us all about birth positions, face-up deliveries, and what's important about the angle and orientation of babies as they're being born.