Nausea during pregnancy is a common and sometimes miserable experience. Whether your clients feel nausea during pregnancy depends on many factors. Thankfully, by understanding what’s causing nausea, you can offer support to your clients and help reduce it.
Nausea During Pregnancy: The Basic Facts
Some people get very little nausea during pregnancy or none at all. Others have a lot! It’s relatively common to have nausea in the morning, and it usually resolves by the end of the first trimester. However, keep in mind that for anyone who experiences nausea at all times of day, the term “morning sickness” may seem like a bad joke. For this blog, I’ll use the term “morning sickness” as a synonym for “nausea” without making assumptions about the time of day.
Most people with a history of nausea during pregnancy feel significantly better after the end of the first trimester. But try not to make promises to your morning-sick clients that their symptoms are short-lived—while it’s uncommon, some women experience nausea well into the second and third trimesters.
Many factors affect morning sickness, and of course, these can interact in sometimes unpredictable ways. Mainly, focus on pregnancy-associated hormonal surges, blood sugar balance, gallbladder and liver health, and fat and cholesterol status as the most significant areas at play.
Nausea During Pregnancy and Hormonal Balance
During the early stages of pregnancy, the body produces extra hormones such as human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG), progesterone, and estrogen. While vital for a baby’s development, this increase can be hard on your client’s body if their hormones aren’t optimally balanced. Sometimes nausea during pregnancy predominates during the first 12 weeks as the placenta is not yet able to contribute to hormonal status. After the 12-week mark, the placenta is fully formed and steps in to help with hormonal production.
However, nausea is about more than hormones. In fact, addressing morning sickness means easing the body’s ability to adjust to the increased hormonal levels. How? By supporting other physiological factors such as blood sugar balance, gallbladder and liver health, and fat and cholesterol status.
Think of working on these three areas as strengthening the hormonal scaffolding. Balanced blood sugar, vibrant hepatic health, and well-functioning fat and cholesterol metabolism keep your client’s body balanced and more resilient during the inevitable hormonal changes that facilitate the miracle of pregnancy. And keep in mind the underlying factor of stress. Less stress equals better hormonal balance and resilience. Stress reduction frees up physical and emotional resources that are necessary for a healthy pregnancy.
Nausea During Pregnancy and Blood Sugar Balance
One of the effects of increased hormonal production and metabolic requirements during pregnancy is heightened difficulty balancing blood sugar levels. Recommending regularly timed meals and snacks can make a big difference. Of course, the overnight “fast” can cause a dip in blood sugar—your pregnant clients may need a macronutrient-balanced snack before bed or even in the middle of the night.
To put it briefly, when a pregnant person’s blood sugar begins to dip, they often feel nausea accompanied by carbohydrate cravings. This is why eating a small starchy snack can help settle nausea temporarily. Unfortunately, this doesn’t address the underlying dynamics of unstable blood sugar. Thus, a critical consideration in easing morning sickness involves supporting appropriate blood sugar regulation, a bio-individual process. However, some recommendations are generally applicable and highly effective. Balanced meals including protein, fats, and carbohydrates, avoidance of processed sugars with a focus on naturally occurring sugars such as fruit, honey, maple syrup, or, even better, blackstrap molasses, and regular movement such as walking or appropriate strength training are all excellent ways to keep blood sugar balanced.
The Liver/Hormone Connection
When our body produces hormones, the liver is responsible for breaking them down to recycle the raw materials and either eliminate them or make more—hormonal metabolism. During pregnancy, ramped-up hormonal production may strain the liver’s metabolic functions, especially if it was working hard before pregnancy. Targeted nutritional, environmental, and lifestyle factors can help the liver do its job.
An often overlooked but potent recommendation to support these liver pathways is eating enough protein, a macronutrient that is sometimes unappealing during bouts of nausea during pregnancy. The enzymes and compounds in the liver that break down hormones are all protein-based. So work with your pregnant clients to find sources of easily ingested protein, such as broth, gelatin, cottage cheese, or protein shakes made with well-sourced whey, such as this brand. Beet kvass, beets, culinary amounts of turmeric, garlic, extra virgin olive oil, and cooked Brassicas vegetables such as broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, and Brussels sprouts are other excellent liver-supporting foods.
Gallbladder Health and Fat/Cholesterol Status
Did you know that eating cholesterol during pregnancy is crucial for the health of bile and sex hormones? We get cholesterol from animal foods. However, in order to digest fat and put the cholesterol in our food to proper use, the gallbladder needs to be in good working order. And for the gallbladder to work well, it needs cholesterol!
- Cholesterol is the building block for steroid hormones, which include sex hormones and hormones that help regulate blood sugar levels and fuel appropriate responses to stress.
- As Kristen Michaelis notes in Beautiful Babies, the body tends to use up cholesterol to make pregnancy hormones, leaving less available for bile production and fat digestion.
- Our body uses cholesterol to make bile, which the liver produces, and the gallbladder secretes so that we can digest fats and rid the body of toxic substances.
- The body can make its own cholesterol, but the process is inefficient. The less well your clients can digest fats due to low fat consumption, poor bile flow, or both, the more likely they will experience nausea during pregnancy.
Cholesterol Status Affects Infant Health
Remember that cholesterol is also vital for fetal development, including:
- Brain development and cognitive function
- Cell membrane development and function
- Facial development
- Kidney development
- Prevention of behavior problems
Cholesterol is so essential for brain development that fetuses produce most of the cholesterol found in their brains. However, cholesterol from the mother’s blood is also transferred to the developing fetus via the placenta to satisfy other developmental needs.
Practically, this translates to a need for well-sourced and well-digested animal foods if your client is experiencing nausea during pregnancy. Bitter foods can also help with fat digestion, such as arugula, dandelion greens, and radicchio. Avoid herbal bitters unless you’re well-versed in pregnancy-safe herbs—many formulas contain herbs that are contraindicated during pregnancy. To learn more, check out my herb and supplement guides made specifically for the family-building years.
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References
Sally Fallon and Thomas Cowan. The Nourishing Traditions Book of Baby and Child Care. Washington, DC: New Trends Publishing, 2013.
Kristin Michaelis. Beautiful Babies. Las Vegas, NV: Victory Belt Publishing, 2013.
Shumi Yoshida and Yoshinao Wada, “Transfer of Maternal Cholesterol to Embryo and Fetus in Pregnant Mice.” Journal of Lipid Research, vol. 46 (2005), pp. 2168.74. http://www.jlr.org/content/46/10/2168.full.pdf.