kim_vopni (00:01.902)
Hello, Beth, welcome. Thank you so much for joining me today.
beth (00:06.313)
Thank you for having me, Kim. It's great to be here.
kim_vopni (00:08.819)
So we've known each other virtually, like we've never actually met in real life, but we've known each other virtually for, it's been a long time.
beth (00:17.429)
Mm-hmm, almost since the beginning of Fit to Be and at this point, we've been around since 2010 and it seems like just within those first couple of years, I ran into you back when you were doing EpiNo.
kim_vopni (00:30.142)
Yeah, yeah, way back in the day. Way back in the day. Yeah, and yeah, so here we are. And obviously there's been lots of changes and ebbs and flows within the work that we do. But I wanna start out first with you telling your story. So how did you get to the point of starting Fit2B and where you are now? What do you do? And just tell us a little bit about your story.
beth (00:33.524)
Right? Yeah.
beth (00:55.417)
Oh goodness, well, Fit2Be was born at a family Christmas party when my husband's cousin's husband, keep that straight now, there's going to be a quiz at the end, said, what would you do if you couldn't fail? And he's a serial entrepreneur. And I said, well, I've actually been thinking about starting an online fitness studio that's like for regular moms who don't want to be yelled at or...
you know, want an instructor that's just like in her living room too, wearing regular clothes just like her and has a mom-bot just like her. And he said, that's a good idea. But there's a lot of people on YouTube that already have a lot of YouTube stuff and how would that even compete? And I said, well, I think it would just be really different because YouTube is, even at that time in 2010 was very full of lots of videos about fitness. And I said, for one thing, I'm going to keep my clothes on.
kim_vopni (01:50.126)
Ha ha
beth (01:50.886)
And he was like, okay, well, what if I helped you with that? And we started filming that following March, and then we launched that following October, and we had like seven members in our first month, and now we have members around the world. And prior to that, I had been teaching group fitness since I was 18 years old. I started with step aerobics when I was 18 years old, and then I went to college, and originally as a political science major.
And then I realized I did not like political science, but I did like exercise science. So I completely switched to a Bachelor of Science from a Bachelor of Arts. It was a big pivot. And the rest is history. I just fell in love with studying the body and kinesiology and physiology and movement. And I went on to become a fitness program manager at a federal fitness facility here in the States. And then I had children and stepped back to just teaching classes in the community.
After I had kids, I had that quandary of what is going on with my body? What is happening? And I started blogging about my experience. So I already had the Fit to Be Mama blog when I connected with Chris, who became my business partner to help me launch Fit to Be. And we specialized in diastasis that following year because there was such a need for it. There was just nothing.
kim_vopni (02:53.329)
Mm-hmm.
beth (03:13.009)
really out there in the mainstream fitness world that catered to people that had diastasis concerns. And then the more I learned about diastasis, the more I learned about the pelvic floor. And I really didn't want to get into the pelvic floor, but you really can't address diastasis in core without addressing pelvic floor. So I think that summarizes it.
kim_vopni (03:20.782)
Mm-hmm.
kim_vopni (03:31.022)
Mm-hmm. Okay. Yeah. So let's start then with, so you pronounce it diastasis, I pronounce it diastasis. There's lots of different pronunciations. We all have a different approach.
beth (03:41.157)
Diastasis, that's my Western twang. Yep, that's the Western. I'm from the West. You know, we got that twang in there. Diastasis. Ha ha.
kim_vopni (03:53.13)
Okay, so diastasis, so with diastasis, I can't even pronounce it that way, diastasis or diastasis recti, let's just call it DRA, whatever we, you know what we're talking about when we carry on, but how do you define it? Well, so what is diastasis for one, but also had you heard of it, how did you, when you say you were blogging about your own,
beth (04:01.604)
Right, diastasis.
beth (04:05.717)
Sure. Yep.
kim_vopni (04:19.778)
body, had you heard of it before then and how did you find out about it? And then how did you start incorporating it into your work?
beth (04:27.605)
I heard about it first when I was going through my original certification through the aerobics and fitness association of America when I was just 18. And to credit them, it got like a whole two paragraphs and a picture of somebody doing splinted crunches in a group fitness class with a towel around their waist. And we were told as instructors, yeah, to have anybody that was pregnant or early postpartum to always
kim_vopni (04:45.036)
Interesting.
beth (04:52.201)
splint with a towel wrapped around their waist when doing crunches and there was a basic explanation that it was a split in the abs But that it could get better with splinted crunches. That was pretty much all that was said No, you can't restart the internet I'm gonna pop past Sorry
kim_vopni (05:12.334)
That's okay.
beth (05:15.477)
teenagers. Okay, so, um, how? Then in college, it really didn't get any mention much at all. What astounded me about going through a four-year Bachelor of Science degree, so exercise and sport science with my option in fitness program management and pre-physical therapy, it got maybe a mention.
kim_vopni (05:20.126)
It happens.
beth (05:40.705)
in the brief postpartum section. Looking back, I'm like, why isn't there an entire course on postpartum? There's not. Still to my knowledge, there's not. There's a whole section on seniors and aging, but there's nothing on specific, nothing specific to women, to pregnancies, to menopause, all of that. There's just big open gaps. Really nothing about the pelvic floor. So I had launched Fit to Be, and then I connected with Kelly Dean, who's a...
very amazing physical therapist down here in the south or the northwestern United States and She is a neuromuscular physical therapist that took her understanding of stroke victims and how they rehabilitate and applied that to core retraining and I went through her courses
with her in person and found out I still had a three and a half finger gap at the time. And my son, my youngest was two and a half. And I thought it had closed because the way I was taught to check by AFO, also they just did a basic like, here's how you check. They had us come up into a crunch and then feel it. So I, that check is not an accurate way to check. Like being already in a full crunch and then feeling the gap. It will feel like it's kind of closed or maybe even like it's actually widened. It's just not a good place to measure.
So, Kelly checked me at resting, standing, laying down, and she's like, yeah, you got a nice little trench here. I can feel your abdominal pulse. And so I went through full rehab with her, and then I said, how do I make my workouts match this? How do I teach fitness in a way that doesn't undo the work that you do with people? How do I align with you? Is there anybody you know that's doing this? And she's like, no.
This would be great. So then we spent many months puzzling and collaborating. I started talking with other physical therapists I started asking a lot of questions about movement mechanics That are different than in a normal core and realizing how much of my information really comes from research done on males That have not been pregnant That have one less hole in their bottoms
beth (08:04.613)
and starting to adapt the way I trained and how much it improved my fitness and my practice. And then working those cues into my workout videos and slowly but surely transitioning fit to be to be entirely diastasis and pelvic floor aware and integrating strategies into every workout that we do.
kim_vopni (08:05.044)
Yep.
kim_vopni (08:25.966)
Mm-hmm, very cool. So what is diastasis?
beth (08:30.481)
Ah, you asked me that and I went down a rabbit trail, sorry. As I, like I said, I first learned it as just a split in the abs, right? But we now understand that it's, a split in the abs implies that there's like a gash down your middle and it can physically and visually look in somebody who's really toned like there's a nice gap down the middle. But the definition I like of it is that it is a thinning.
kim_vopni (08:33.966)
It's okay. I followed you.
beth (08:57.337)
of the connected tissue, a weakening of the connected tissue that allows the two sides of your abdominal wall, not just your rectus abs, but your entire abdominal wall to shift apart. And it's called diastasis recti because of the rectus abs and that trench, or sometimes it shows up as a doming, not a trench. Like it can actually, you'll see some doming that happens in people with extra tissue and or diastasis. So
It's not as simple as saying it's a gap. We call it that, but it's more like everything has stretched and thinned out, and we now see that the, even the muscles themselves, not just the fascia, the entire abdominal wall, as it stretches to accommodate repetitive forward pressure, pregnancy, interabdominal fat, all kinds of situations.
can cause the entire abdominal wall to spread out and spread apart. And so I like that broader definition, butter, even though it makes it a little bit more challenging to discuss and work with.
kim_vopni (10:08.906)
Yeah, and I've always found the definition a little misleading. So diastasis recti means the direct terminology is separation of the rectus. And when you, when you consider really, we all have diastasis then, because the rectus are never fused together at the midline, there's always some sort of a gap and so that, that in and of itself makes it a bit challenging because there's a thought that we need to close it and to get them.
beth (10:20.981)
Mm-hmm.
beth (10:27.838)
Right.
kim_vopni (10:37.742)
back together, but they never were there in the beginning. And oftentimes when people are first learning about it, maybe they've had multiple pregnancies by that point or other influences, so they never really even, they're not sure what they were before. And maybe what they are now is not that far off where they were before. So it's kind of a little bit challenging, right? Yeah. Okay, so we started to work with Kelly and started to incorporate some of the programming. Now,
beth (10:38.069)
Mm-hmm.
beth (10:55.381)
what they always were. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm, yeah.
kim_vopni (11:06.778)
I know that there's been quite a windy evolution along the way with regards to exercise in this space. So where did you start and have you gone through that evolution as well with regards to what exercises you teach, if and maybe still are, are there any that you avoid and how do you navigate that?
beth (11:29.737)
Hmm.
That is such a multifaceted question. I was excited to see that I would get to answer it because I continue to believe that there are certain exercises that should be avoided at certain times, for a certain time period, but that there's not a concrete list and that can depend on the person and their goals. So, you know, if your goal is to be able to go for a jog,
without pain and with a lot of bloating later in the day, you're going to have certain exercises you'll do for that and certain exercises you don't need to do for that. And if you shift that same concept to other types of exercise, like maybe your goal is to get back to your Pilates class or your yoga class or to play soccer again or to join a rowing team or a paddling team again, it's all gonna depend on what your goals are, what you do. And so,
Whenever somebody messages me and says, well, what should I not be doing? I'm like, well, it's more about your strategy because what do you want to be doing? And that changes the whole conversation. We really were all about avoiding crunches and planks and sit-ups in those early days. I still think there's a time to avoid those things early postpartum and late postpartum, right? Unless you are training for an event that requires those motions.
those motions are not a necessary part of life. Somebody could argue that you need to be able to crunch and pick your head up as you get out of bed perhaps. I think we can get around that by retraining a log roll scenario where you are rolling to the side, which is a lot easier and more functional for people that have lower back issues or surgery or other things. So that's just a good life skill. But like, unless somebody really needs to be doing setups or has that goal, I don't train it.
beth (13:28.445)
but I no more say, we're not ever gonna do sit ups and they're from the devil, which I never said to begin with, but we know that those motions, for somebody that's just cranking them out and does not have a strategy in place, those motions can wreak some havoc on a core that has damage, a core that is not well connected, a core that has neuromuscular disconnect. If.
But there's so much messaging out there that, oh, to get a flat stomach, you gotta do crunches. So people will just finish dinner and get down on the floor and do their 500 crunches for the night. And then they're wondering, why is my stomach sticking out and why am I peeing my pants? Well, maybe let's just stop the crunches for a minute and let's just try something else. So that tends to be how I talk to people now compared to those early days of, let's just not ever do that at all. It depends on your goals. What do you want to be doing?
What does your life look like?
kim_vopni (14:24.758)
Yeah, I love that. And you know, it's, it mimics myself as well. The time, you know, I started in this line of work with pelvic floor. And then along the way, started to hear about this term diastasis and took a training with a woman in the United States. And the intention, she was really the only one teaching anything to do with it at the time. And my intention was to bring her protocol back to Canada. And the more I was learning and seeing the link between pelvic floor,
Um, I was starting to pay more attention to this. And at the time it was exactly to say no planks, no twists, no crunches, no, no. And then the world of ex of pelvic floor started to be more involved. And then there was obviously a big no list there as well, especially with prolapse, no this, no this, no this. And it just started to like, initially I kept thinking, okay, yeah, all right. It never made a hundred percent.
beth (15:04.713)
Mm-hmm.
kim_vopni (15:22.294)
sense to me, like they said, don't do crunches because it can widen the gap. But when we check for crunches, it narrows the gap. So that, that part never really totally made sense to me, but I did appreciate the concept of potentially pressure or maybe people not engaging properly and that kind of thing. And, but then, but it, it still never felt right though, that we would have to completely eliminate this movement for the rest of our lives just because we have been pregnant or
beth (15:41.423)
Exactly.
kim_vopni (15:52.322)
given birth and I thought, okay, for a period of time, I can buy in with that, that we may do log rolls or we may do this, but we need to retrain the capacity for that movement somehow. Doesn't necessarily mean we need to do millions and thousands of crunches, but yeah, exactly. So yeah, so it's been an interesting evolution just as I keep saying that word, just to kind of see where we all are kind of ending up. And it's all a big...
beth (16:07.307)
500 after dinner.
beth (16:17.258)
Mm-hmm.
kim_vopni (16:21.45)
It depends, as you say, it depends on your goals, it depends on your history and your story and your biomechanics, and it depends on a lot of things.
beth (16:28.437)
Mm-hmm. And how that scales to creating workout videos, I get asked a lot like, okay, you're not necessarily working with people one-on-one. Where is the quote unquote depend happening? And that just comes from the sheer volume of videos we've created. Like we have almost 400 workouts at this point and they're all labeled and categorized and so people can find what they need. And they all contain strategic queuing based on.
kim_vopni (16:43.575)
Mm-hmm.
beth (16:56.981)
pressure and mechanics and strategies. And it's multiple strategies that are offered. Like try this. I teach very differently than a lot of instructors you're gonna find somewhere else that are just like, do a sit up, do this, push, reach as far as you can. I'm like, hey, how about if you try this movement and then try breathing here, then try breathing here. Which one feels best for you? Great, keep going. If you need to shift, maybe try this other strategy. Try elongating your spine here. If that doesn't feel right, try this. It's very like experiential.
And like you said, there's this broader conversation happening. And it's like as more players join the conversation about diastasis, as pelvic floor therapists come in, as athletic trainers come in, as nutritionists come in, it continues to morph and create this bigger picture of all of these dominoes that play into diastasis. And I'm not, I love that metaphor because
You can look at dominoes as if you tip over one, the rest of them go. That can be a negative or a positive. I like to see it as a positive for diastasis, that you can interrupt the things feeding into a diastasis, and there's always more than one, by tipping over any domino in that lineup, and that domino might be your nutrition. It might be your type of exercise. It might be the fact that you've never integrated pelvic floor.
And so your core is like, what? We're so missing something. And I mean, your pelvic floor is the base of your core. So if your diastasis isn't responding, what if it's something else down lower in the chain, like your pelvic floor? It could be your sleeping habits where you're not getting enough rest and therefore your muscles are never getting the time they need to rebuild and heal. Or maybe you're just in that toddler season of life where-
kim_vopni (18:38.99)
Right, right.
beth (18:52.061)
alignment, shm alignment. It's not happening. You're trying to keep a little human alive who is hell bent on killing themselves and you are constantly hauling taters after them and in all kinds of weird positions and you don't have time to think about exhaling to engage and keeping your spine in alignment. Forget it. So if you can fix and there's even more things than that, but if you can fix even one of those, it makes a difference and I feel like that takes a lot of pressure off.
and it broadens the conversation in good ways.
kim_vopni (19:24.802)
Yeah, totally. And I love that you brought that up too, because that was another piece where a lot of us who are now starting to kind of bring this into some sort of teaching with our clients, and we have the alignment and the posture and the breathing and all this kind of stuff. And people would panic and say, but I bolted out of bed to get my crying baby in the middle of the night. And they would freak out thinking, I've just broken everything and I've undone all these strategies. And we're like, it's okay.
it you know you don't have time to sit there and go okay my baby's screaming crying but inhale exhale engage and roll and it's just not real life right but it is they are helpful strategies from a retraining perspective it's just not that's not to be expected that that's going to be the rest of your life.
beth (19:54.357)
Yeah.
beth (20:07.069)
Right, I got a cold last week. You know, we had to reschedule this podcast because of it. Sorry, but thank you. And you know, there are strategies. There are strategies I know to help with the cough. By the way, one of them is to try to pre-squeeze that pelvic floor and try to just gently co-activate through that pelvic floor and low abs and to sneeze into your elbow while looking up. It helps to elongate the core. It helps to distribute pressure.
Did I remember that every single time? No, because you get hit by a coughing fit or a sneezing fit. There's not always time to think. And whether you believe in, I'm just gonna throw just a tiny bit of science slash religion in here because I think it hits multiple crowds. Whether you believe in evolution or creation, it would be a terrible design. It would not work evolutionistically speaking. It would not work creationistically speaking to have women have babies and then fall apart.
or have us completely fall apart after a sneeze, or have us completely fall apart after bolting out of bed to take care of our child. That's not a sustainable design. It doesn't further the species. It doesn't help us be good stewards that multiply and spread out over the earth. It doesn't help us evolve. So like, if you find yourself to the person who might be thinking, oh, I just can't do everything right. None of us can. And we gotta have grace on ourselves. And if you realize that, oh my gosh, I just finished a coughing fit.
kim_vopni (21:28.886)
Yeah.
beth (21:34.149)
I did just bolt out of my bed and now my core feels weird. Open up your toolbox. If you're listening to this, you probably have some tools because you probably are familiar with me and Kim. If you're not, then we have great resources for you. But there are so many tools you can use in those after moments to just reconnect, nourish. And it's not about undoing the wreckage. It's just about reconnecting. And the more you reconnect, the faster it happens.
kim_vopni (21:59.81)
reconnecting.
kim_vopni (22:03.606)
Yeah, yeah, I love that. How would somebody know, so somebody who might be new to the term diastasis, how would they know? You talked a little bit about checking and you know, Kelly found the trench whereas you thought you didn't have one. And trench is a word that some people use to describe the gully almost between the two rectus when there's been some separation. So how do you recommend that people...
assess themselves or should they go to somebody to be assessed?
beth (22:36.963)
Um...
I feel like there's such a language and semantics thing that can come into play here. I like to use the terms that people use, not just professionals. Sometimes that gets me in trouble with professionals. But I'm not here for professionals. I'm here for the frazzled mom who has five minutes to figure this out.
kim_vopni (22:56.266)
Mm-hmm. Been there.
beth (23:07.149)
Ideally, it would be great for every single person who thinks they have diastasis to have access to an amazing physical therapist, physiotherapist that's right around the corner, that takes care of their child while they're being seen, that's affordable. The reality is most people don't have that. So if you have a physical therapist in your area or even within an hour and you call them and say, hey, do you do diastasis stuff? And they say, yes, then you should book in.
You should go there and just go from there. But if you're not able, if you don't have that privilege, if you don't have that level of accessibility, if you don't have that funding, if you don't have that insurance, then there are some things you can do to start at least figuring out if you might have this and it's not the end of the world. And one of those things is, if you go to like lean back, or even like if you've been reclining and then you lean forward, if your tummy makes a weird shape,
and terms that lay people, so the average person at home uses, is like an alien bulge or like the movie Alien where it's like coming out of the stomach. Oh, such a horrible metaphor, but hey. Or like it's hunting or a doming shape and if you can't really adjust that, like if you're like, whoa, that was weird, but oh, let me try sitting up and let me try maybe flexing my muscles a little bit more. Maybe that'll change it.
But if you're like trying to change it, nothing's happening. No matter how you lean back or sit up and that your stomach is just not doing what stomachs maybe should do that you think. That can be indicative. If you really struggle with your posture, like if you know you need to sit up straight, but it's hard for you to sit up straight. You go to sit up straight and something hurts. Your stomach feels like a deflated sack of potatoes with no potatoes.
That's literally, I hear that. My stomach feels like a deflated sack and I cannot sit up because there's just not much core connection happening. That might be a lot of core weakness. That might be some diastasis. It might be some low back issues. It might be pelvic floor. There's a lot of those play together. If you have an outy belly button where it used to be an any belly button that
beth (25:29.329)
could maybe be an umbilical hernia, but I had that. I do not have an umbilical hernia. And when I went through AB rehab, my Audi became an Innie. And so, yeah, so it's almost like a little turkey timer. Whoop, it's like, it's done cooking in there. So, those are just a few things to look at. Also, if you're laying down.
kim_vopni (25:40.558)
Interesting.
kim_vopni (25:48.097)
Yep.
beth (25:53.853)
you know, just chilling and you kind of feel around in your tummy gently. Don't be digging around in there like you're on a hunt for dinosaur bones, but like just feeling gently and then you maybe lift your head and shoulders up. Like you're kind of going to do a little half crunch and you can kind of feel what your muscles are doing. And when you're doing that, maybe you feel a big pulse underneath your fingertips around your navel. And if you have extra love around your middle, as my mom calls it, you can kind of still slip in between the folds and find your navel area.
But if you're like feeling a big jumping pulse underneath your fingers, if you're feeling digestion happening right underneath your fingers, that can indicate that there's a lot of thinning happening in that fascia. The really cool thing is that your body is very resilient and it's made it this far. So even if you feel those things, don't panic. Even if you don't feel those things, like the same great...
exercises and tools in the toolbox that we use to address pelvic floor and core and diastasis stuff is still great to do. It will help strengthen your core. It will help your posture. So it's not anything to freak out about. I see it as a door, not a disaster.
kim_vopni (27:07.746)
I like that. And for those that are watching this video, I'm just going to have a bit of a sidebar here. This is a total sidebar, and I don't mean to make this about me, but I want to explain why I'm being so fidgety here on the video. I don't know if you've noticed. I get this thing called proctelgefugax. It's fleeting rectal pain, and sometimes it can be really intense. And so I'm sitting on a ball and I'm sort of rocking back and forth. So I just wanted to give...
I wanted to explain myself in case you're wondering, why is she so fidgety? Okay, so I'm just, I'm dealing, I'm having a moment, but yeah, it's something like it's, it just, it's happened to me for probably, I don't know, I would say six years. And the first time it happened, I thought, you know, of course something, it was very serious and this, and then I started to investigate. Thankfully I work in the world, so I kind of knew some people to ask and places to go and figured out what it was, but.
beth (27:35.953)
I'm on a ball too.
beth (27:40.053)
I just watched a video about that today.
Yeah.
beth (27:56.243)
Yeah.
kim_vopni (28:04.694)
Um, yeah, there's no real rhyme or reason. It just comes out of the blue and, and it usually lasts for a few minutes all the way up to 15 minutes. So I'm currently experiencing that and I'm being a little fidgety and I apologize for that. So I just wanted to give you that, uh, that sidebar there.
beth (28:16.265)
You know what? I work in the movement world, so I'm on a ball too.
kim_vopni (28:20.798)
Yeah. And also, I'll do an episode about it too, because it's actually quite common for people to experience this. So I'll do an episode. But anyway, okay. Coming back, I loved all the things that you talked about. And one thing that you had mentioned previously, like a little bit earlier on, as well as when you were describing ways to kind of notice, is bloating. And so I want you to talk a little bit about what does bloating tell you?
I think lots of people have bloating. So when could it indicate diastasis?
beth (28:55.537)
I'm so glad you circled back to it. And I didn't even list that in my most recent little ramble about how you can notice it again. But yes, that's huge. A lot of people, that's one of their biggest complaints is they'll wake up with a flat stomach and then by the end of the day, they look pregnant. And so when your abs are not maintaining good tension, when they're not big and thick and juicy and strong and holding you in,
kim_vopni (29:12.066)
Mm-hmm.
beth (29:23.401)
Well, the things that they hold in are your digestive organs. And if your digestive organs are not being held in a good position, they're not gonna function as well. And then you end up with this lovely, I say that sarcastically, horrible vicious circle where because your digestive organs are not held correctly and they're allowed to fall outward, that creates lots of space for them to get full of things. And you might also be dealing with some constipation or maybe you have diarrhea. It could go either way.
because they're not being supported to do their job. So now you have more pressure inside you that pushes out and creates more bloating and then that adds to the diastasis because now your diastasis is being pressured open a lot. And so again, that speaks to nutrition. It speaks to the abdominal wall. You can strengthen the abdominal wall to help hold your colon and semi, not semicolon, wow.
colon and small intestine, large intestine. Wow. I'm also a writer and I do editing a little bit part-time sometimes just for fun. Like that, I'm a grammar nerd. So get my body parts and my punctuation mixed up sometimes. But also addressing your nutrition and dealing with the stuff that might be causing you to bloat up. My husband likes, he's from Montana. He'll say bloated up like a toad.
kim_vopni (30:25.454)
That's what it should be.
beth (30:53.429)
you know, because they like to puff out their chests. And, you know, you might love your dairy products or you might love your bread, but if those things aren't your friends, then avoiding them for a while, at least, to allow some of that inflammation in your gut to go away and then also addressing the strength of your core can really make a big difference in you. And for the...
there's a lot of people that will end up getting surgery just because of this. And they think that getting surgery will fix it, but I'm over there like raising my hand going, okay, but if you're having that classic flat in the morning, bloated in the evening, to me that says there's something in your digestion and nutrition. And also some muscle fatigue happening. So you can stitch up those muscles and fix them and in the States it's totally out of pocket. It's gonna be tens of thousands of dollars. But if you go back to those eating habits,
those muscles are still gonna get all that pressure from inside and they're just gonna get restretched out. And then you end up with surgical revision or surgical hernias and that's worse. You do not wanna be in that position. So you really have to look at everything happening in the gut, but you don't need to do it all at once. Even just one thing at a time will make a difference.
kim_vopni (32:12.754)
Yeah, I love that. And it's very true with, you know, I work really primarily with people with pelvic floor challenges like incontinence and prolapse. And the same thing happens, a lot of them will pursue surgery, or be recommended to have surgery. When we haven't addressed the behaviors, the foods, the constipation, the other things that could have contributed to the development of the problem. And if those aren't addressed prior, the likelihood of that coming back is very high.
And same as you mentioned with dioceses. So a question I have for you, if we again, kind of go back to when we were starting and the amount of research that we had, there wasn't a lot at the time. There still isn't a ton, I would say. But one thing that is kind of debated in the world is Is there a link between dioceses and pelvic floor dysfunction? We have some research that says yes, we have some research that says no.
And in my experience, when, so now I've transitioned to being completely online, but for many, many years, I worked one on one with people in person, assessing people all the time. And I did see, so even if the research hadn't told me, I did see that a lot of people with diastasis did have. Often back pain, often pelvic floor dysfunction, and we see a link between just back pain and pelvic floor dysfunction as well. So.
I've always seen the link there, even if research wasn't telling me. What have you seen in terms of, I know you work primarily online, but you speak a lot. You have an amazing community of people. So what are the questions that come to you and do you think that that's common?
beth (33:56.725)
Well, like you said, there's conflicting research. I just pulled up some notes really quick. There was a study in 2007 done by Spitznagel that said, yes, there's a relationship between the presence of dioceses and stress urinary incontinence, fecal incontinence, and pelvic organ prolapse. But then in 2017, Carrie Bow did a study that said that in the first year postpartum after just one baby, there was not a significant difference.
found in prevalence of urinary incontinence in women with and without diastasis at six weeks, six months, and twelve months. And when I've actually done some research on this, me and Granya Donnelly, who is a prominent researcher in this field, we did a massive survey of people. We got well over a thousand responses and about 800 of those were usable responses. And our research that has still not been published, but I'm open, I'm able to talk about it, is
there is definitely a statistically significant correlation. And, but a lot of our participants were people that were past that year. And so one of our theories is that if we only look at that first year postpartum, a lot of women are very diligent actually about, you know, postpartum care or trying to heal during that year.
But then you add another baby to that and you get a few more years down the road. And yeah, maybe that diastasis goes back and the pelvic floor goes back just fine after that first baby. But then you put another baby through that area and you put a few years of raising toddlers and now you're gonna see something different happening. So that's our theory. I do think that, you know, Anthony Lowe has a theory as well about how
What if healing a diastasis and all of the work that we do that really tightens up that whole set of corset muscles and all of that stuff actually can put more pressure downward on the pelvic floor? Because sometimes we also see people that have healed, their diastasis is doing great, you know, they're back, but now they've got some incontinence. And so is that, are we squeezing the ketchup bottle and it's squirting out the other end, so to speak?
beth (36:11.365)
And I think that speaks more to the strategies that are being used in the process of healing. If you've got a program for diastasis that's all about the transverse abdominis, it's all about constantly pulling in the abdominal wall and squeezing that toothpaste right in the middle, you might end up with some downward pressure and some downward problems. So, you know, I definitely, that is not my focus. My focus is on the entire core canister.
as I know yours is, like starting really from the bottom up. And I think it can also go back to once somebody has, they feel like their diastasis is all sorted. And so then they jump back into full fitness. Like, yes, I've been released from my physical therapist. I'm going to run a marathon. I'm going back to yoga. And that's, yoga can be pretty high pressure if it's not still scaled and good strategies put in place.
So I think that sometimes we might be seeing incontinence happening or other pelvic floor problems happening because somebody's jumped in too quick, but then there's also aging. There's also aging. By the time women are actually able to focus and deal, yeah, with their DAS, a lot of my clients are 35 to 40, because now they have the mental bandwidth and their kids are older and they're like, okay, I'm ready to deal with my body. That also happens to be the time when perimenopause kicks in.
kim_vopni (37:20.174)
Yep, and menopause.
beth (37:38.193)
perimenopause brings with it a host of hormone changes that affect all kinds of stuff in the pelvic floor and core. So, diastasis gets blamed for so much. And even the healing process of diastasis ends up being the brunt of all of it. And it's like, well, there's a lot of other things going on.
kim_vopni (38:00.982)
Yeah, yeah, I actually there was a more recent piece of research as well too, that was looking at as you've just said, okay, if we're only looking in this first 12 month postpartum, what about the rest of like, as you say, all the other things that happened in this person's life and this was looking at the people around the time of menopause and post menopause. And they showed in this study that diastasis was a predictor for pelvic floor dysfunction.
beth (38:14.389)
Wait.
kim_vopni (38:29.81)
in this population. So I've always sort of felt like there is the link there. And really, a lot of the approaches to healing both pelvic floor challenges and diastasis are similar. They go together. It's core pelvic floor, breath alignment, it's the same stuff.
beth (38:35.705)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, I personally say yes.
beth (38:49.409)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
beth (38:57.653)
and
kim_vopni (38:59.582)
Yeah. So do you think that it's ever too late to heal a diastasis?
beth (39:01.287)
I love that.
beth (39:08.253)
No. No, I don't. I have several clients that are in their 60s and 70s that are like, oh my gosh, my abs have never been this good and I'm not peeing my pants anymore and I'm trying to tell all the ladies at the senior center but they just think it's all normal and they just laugh at me. I'm like.
beth (39:30.753)
Yeah, those are my favorites, honestly, because, you know, when women get to that age and they discover what works, they're going to tell everybody. And they do not. They do not care what you think. Oh, they're a hoot. But no, I don't think it's ever too late. And the reason for that is because your muscle tissues and your fascia tissues are not tissues that are unresponsive to movements.
kim_vopni (39:40.619)
Yeah.
beth (39:58.889)
They are vascular tissues. Even your fascia, even though it's less vascular than your muscles, it's highly innervated. Your fascia is basically nothing but nerves. That's what fascia is, is massive bundles of nerves and connective tissue. And while fascia connective tissue doesn't respond as quickly, it moves more at the speed of a snail.
it does respond and we can see that in time lapse photography stuff. If there's any body nerds listening I highly recommend Tom Meyer's Anatomy Chains and his Anatomy Fascia in Motion. I think it's called oh it's so good there's like a one hour video and he actually shows time lapse photography of new fascia being laid down by fibroblasts so those are the cells that make new
fascia. In your bones you have osteoblasts. In your fibrous tissue you have fibroblasts. In your muscles you have myoblasts. And so those things make new tissue. And they keep making new tissue as long as they are stimulated to make new tissue. Your bones are stimulated to lay down new tissue when you balance and jump and swinging, swinging motions. What's other one?
load when you're carrying load. Duh. That should be the first one I said because I love weightlifting. But yeah, that's what stimulates bone cells to lay down new bone cells in your muscles. Again, carrying loads, swinging, stretching, getting things moving is what brings circulation and tells your muscles, oh, hey, we might need to make more of ourselves because, wow, that will need to do that again. And in your connective tissue, same thing. If you're, if you're sending signals,
Your nerves are like, oh, well, okay, we're sending signals now. We need to lay down new track and create more of this. And that doesn't ever stop, unless there's disease. You know, there can be diseases that happen that prevent those things, obviously. But unless you're dealing with specific diseases, even in the case of osteoporosis, we can reverse that with exercise.
beth (42:23.949)
more than we can reverse it with medication. So that to me, that's really exciting. I love the fact that a muscle is a muscle no matter how old and the same with our bones. Our skin, you know, we get a little wrinkly, obviously. I mean, things, there's some shifting there. But when it comes to your muscles, I remember when I was in college at Oregon State University, one of my favorite studies in that senior and aging class that I took was
You know, they did this at Oregon State, they had a group of men in their 80s and a group of guys in their late teens, 18, 19 year olds, right? And they put them on a weightlifting protocol. Same protocol, come in, exercise two, three times a week, do your stuff. And both groups gained the proportionate amounts of strength and bulk.
Now, the 80 year olds started at a lower point because they weren't as strong as the 18 year olds. But by the end of the study, and there was a percentage and I don't remember what that was, but let's just say, let's just say it was 120%. The 18 year olds had improved 120%. The 80 year olds had improved 120%. And it was astounding. They actually were not expecting that. They were expecting to show that older people did not see as much benefit. But they discovered the opposite,
older people had the same proportionate benefit. So it's never too late.
kim_vopni (43:59.766)
Yeah, yeah, I love that. I think it's a testament to the fact that with dioceses, with prolapse, so many people are told not to lift, not to twist, not to, no, like that whole no list. And how is that going to be building capacity and resilience and laying down new tissue and making things stronger if we remove that stimulus, right? So I think that's fascinating and yeah.
I love all you're doing. I've loved watching you over the years and you've just created such an amazing community. So thank you so much for joining me and sharing your wisdom and for all the people that you support online.
beth (44:32.897)
Thanks.
beth (44:41.269)
You're welcome, it was my honor. Thanks for having me.
