What Pregnancy Does to the Body

pregnancy childbirth and everything associated with it is in my personal opinion the most incredible process in all of human biology but it's not all lollipops and rainbows and as beautiful as the children may be the process of creating them let's just say it can come with some uncomfortable consequences and in today's video with the help of the cadavers here in the lab we're going to discuss some of the changes that occur to the mother's body during pregnancy such as morning sickness fatigue changes in taste and will even talk about what happens to the internal organs as that growing uterus creates that wonderful fetus gonna be a special one let's do this now obviously I don't have a uterus and I've never grown and carried a baby but I've been fortunate enough to witness the process twice in my lifetime now and I can say with the utmost confidence it absolutely blows my mind there aren't enough adjectives in the English language to describe just how truly incredible the process is so I want you to know that my goal with this video isn't to focus on the negative aspects of pregnancy instead I just want to highlight some of the most commonly experienced symptoms that come with pregnancy in a future video we can discuss all the many beautiful things that also come along with pregnancy first up is morning sickness but I want to be clear right from the start morning sickness is a misnomer it can happen at any time of the day and has no obligation to go away simply because you ate lunch but we still don't know the exact cause of morning sickness but it seems likely that the hormone HCG is at least partially if not entirely responsible HCG stands for human chorionic gonadotropin and it's secreted by the precursor to the embryo called a blastocyst which is just a few steps away from the egg fertilization and then over time it'll eventually start being secreted by the placenta itself and essentially tells the body and the uterus hey we're pregnant let's just keep things going how they are see HCG levels double every 48 to 72 hours during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy that is amazing to me that means this hormone is doubling every two to three days for 12 weeks but then it'll Peak and then it'll actually decrease for the remainder of the pregnancy if you have higher than normal levels of HCG that could mean there is a multiple pregnancy such as twins or triplets or it could also mean there's an issue with the pregnancy such as Down syndrome but for most individuals morning sickness tends to disappear around weeks 12 to 16 which coincides with that decrease in HCG so it seems reasonable to assume that it at least plays some role in the symptoms it's also possible that the hormones progesterone and estradiol play a role in the symptoms considering they have an effect on a wide variety of structures and tissues in the body including the stomach and intestines which makes a ton of sense when it comes to nausea but again we still don't have a clear understanding of the mechanism we can't say oh it's because of this much estrogen and progesterone and HCG that's why you get the symptoms more than likely they all play a role in some way but I want you to take a step back and try viewing morning sickness through an evolutionary lens because if you do that there's possibly a real good reason why it exists and that is to protect the growing embryo and fetus during its most vulnerable stage of development the first trimester if you're nauseous then you're probably going to be more selective with the foods that you eat meaning you're potentially limiting harmful substances from getting into the body and negatively impacting the pregnancy this is just a hypothesis but for me personally it makes a ton of sense but depressingly some individuals get a more extreme form of morning sickness that in some cases can last the entirety of the pregnancy which is just as awful as it sounds the condition is called hyperemesis gravidarum and it's actually pretty difficult to diagnose and parse out is this just normal morning sickness or do we have a real problem on our hands but it's commonly described as being excessive vomiting that can lead to weight loss and exhaustion and fatigue and result in higher than normal levels of ketones in the urine and blood if you picture debilitating nausea that can have a dramatic and negative effect on the pregnancy you pretty much got it but again for most individuals most of the time morning sickness does go away in the second trimester real quick I want to thank the sponsor of today's video ag1 ag1 has 75 different ingredients which includes vitamins minerals superfoods probiotics and adaptogens it has completely replaced my daily multivitamin but the thing that gets me most excited are the phytonutrients that help maintain a healthy gut microbiota during childbirth we are squeezing eased through our mother's birth canal and Mom's vaginal secretions which are loaded with microbes will 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a one-year free supply of immune supporting vitamin D3 plus K2 and five free travel packs with your first purchase go ahead and find that link in the description below next up is fatigue and while there isn't a single cause for fatigue during pregnancy a big factor is the hormone progesterone or more accurately a metabolite of progesterone called aloe pregnant alone which increases the Affinity of a neurotransmitter called Gaba now this is a bit in the weeds but just stick with me here Gaba has a wide variety of functions but it's the main inhibitory neurotransmitter in the brain and spinal cord an activation of Gaba receptors leads to drowsiness or just an overall more relaxed state as progesterone levels increase during pregnancy the hormone is metabolized meaning allopregnolone levels will also increase an aloe pregnant alone will bind to those Gaba receptors increasing their responsiveness to Gaba making you feel more relaxed and tired so basically higher progesterone levels means higher responsiveness to Gaba which leads to drowsiness now fatigue typically ends for most as the second trimester begins only to come back again in the third trimester but that's a whole other can of worms but this is interesting because progesterone levels actually increase over the entirety of pregnancy you see one of progesterone's primary functions is to create a healthy uterine environment for the embryo and growing fetus so it makes sense to have high levels of it throughout the entire pregnancy this goes to show that while progesterone plays a big role in fatigue it doesn't play an exclusive role plenty of other hormones and their levels are going to be changing throughout the pregnancy and when you factor in the stress to the body and mind from the whole situation I mean we have morning sickness an increase in blood volume it means just thinking about the fact that there's a baby growing inside of you when you factor all that together I mean it's not all that surprising that you'd feel kind of tired another extremely common experience during pregnancy is a change in taste typically described as a metallic or bitter taste in the mouth a 2004 study published in the journal chemical senses found that 93 of women report did a change in taste during their pregnancy now self-reported studies are not the most reliable studies out there but 93 percent is extraordinarily High while the mechanism isn't well understood it's likely that estradiol which is a type of estrogen plays the biggest role in these strange tastes a 2021 study published in the American Journal of physiology endocrinology and Metabolism found estrogen receptors in taste cells specifically those involved with tasting fat this means there's likely a difference in tasting ability between males and females considering females have more estradiol in their system I mean take pregnancy out of the equation males and females likely taste food differently in regards to pregnancy estradiolin estrogens are going to fluctuate Beyond normal ranges obviously for quite some time most likely this is what's responsible for those altered tastes but I want you to think about this eating certain foods literally becomes more intense which could explain why certain foods just must be avoided right you talk to pregnant women some foods just under no circumstances will they even entertain the thought of eating that food well other Foods even strange ones can become more enticing and lastly the third trimester just looks uncomfortable and for good reason too there's only so much space in the human body and now you have this gigantic uterus that's just pushing everything out of the way let me show you what I mean you are looking at an anterior view of both the thoracic and abdominal pelvic cavities so there's a lot of tissues and structures and organs to look at here so let's just kind of Orient you real quickly this yellow apron that's draping in front of the small intestine this is called the greater omentum and it's a fatty tissue but it's also made of something called peritoneum so you can see the intestines are going to be right behind it but real quick let's also look up here you can see the diaphragm muscle which is a skeletal muscle that is draped on top of the liver here and then to the left we have this pink organ which is the stomach and you're only able to see a portion of it but we're getting to like the pylorus and then it's going to be transitioning into the small intestine and then oh also underneath the liver is going to be the gallbladder we can also see the two lungs and then the heart still in the pericardial Sac but if I go ahead and reflect that greater momentum back you can see part of the transverse colon which is kind of interesting I this might even be a redundant colon because that normally doesn't take this unique pathway and then right here we have the small intestine which I can then reflect back and that allows us to see into the pelvic cavity into the uterus so let's go ahead and zoom in so we can talk about the uterus so now that we've zoomed into the pelvic area let's go ahead and Orient you so you know what you're looking at this right here is the sigmoid colon and then that would transition into the rectum which is going to be behind this structure here which is the uterus now the uterus can be divided into different sections this top portion here is called the fundus which we'll come back to in a moment then we have the body of the uterus and then what you can't see because for one it's embedded inside a connective tissue and two the camera angle just doesn't really work all that well is what's known as the cervix of the uterus now cervix actually translates to neck think like cervical region of your vertebral column so the cervix of the uterus is the neck of the uterus now again we'll come back to the fundus in a moment but to the side of the uterus we then will have What's called the uterine tube or also known as the fallopian tube and I'm going to go ahead and lift that out of the way and we're going to try to make this thing visible here this is an ovary and there would be another one obviously on that other side as well now fundus actually translates to end so this is the end of the uterus and the reason why it's important is because your OB GYN or your Midwife can actually use the position of the fundus to help determine how far along in the pregnancy you are so they'll do that by measuring the distance the fundus is away from the pubic bone which you might be able to see a bit to the bottom of your screen but how far along this is has a one in one correlation to how far along you are in your pregnancy so what I mean by that is let's say the fundus is 20 centimeters away from that pubic bone you are 20 weeks along and this starts to show up around 20 weeks but 24 centimeters you're 24 weeks 32 centimeters or 32 weeks so on and so forth now here's the crazy part the fundus it's going to go all the way up to the xiphoid process which is at the base of your sternum if you do this at home just be very careful because it's going to hurt a lot but there is a sharp point at the base of your sternum that is the xiphoid process and the fundus is going to come all the way up there when you are full term that is crazy to me I mean just thinking about all the structures that are going to shift absolutely nuts so now let's take a look at all the structures that are going to be shifting as the uterus is growing so again we have the greater momentum here and the small intestine so as what happens as the uterus starts growing the small intestine are going to start moving and shifting anteriorly and superiorly so they're going to be kind of like resting on top of the uterus like a shelf so you can picture all of it just flaring out and resting on top of it the same goes for the greater momentum because it would be on top as well and as it's pushing upwardly it's also going to have an effect on the stomach so what's going to happen is it's going to lift the stomach and it's kind of hard to tell from what we're looking at the stomach is going to start also transitioning into the horizontal plane so the pylorus of the stomach is going to start pointing anteriorly and it's going to become flat and this is a big cause of acid reflux or your gerd type symptoms a lot of times you'll hear pregnant women say like I'm hungry then they eat a little bit and then they feel full but they're not really full because the stomach is so compressed it just kind of feels full but that also can squeeze out gastric juices into the esophagus and can contribute to acid reflux type symptoms again definitely not the most comfortable of situations the liver is also going to get pushed as is the gallbladder and so as the stomach and liver are pushing into the diaphragm they're going to start pushing into the lungs and the heart the heart will actually shift in pregnancy and so again this is hard for me to do because the cadaver is preserved and everything is kind of like situated in the body but the heart would also like the stomach start to project anteriorly and come closer to the sternum because the sternum would be just right in front of it so the heart is going to come towards that sternum and lift the lungs are also going to start shifting and getting compressed and you might think that this could relate to like some kind of labored breathing but interestingly during the shift the ribs which again we've removed here the ribs are also going to start flaring out and actually creates more space so as the ribs come out it creates space that the lungs so even though the lungs are getting compressed they still have more space to flow into so you don't really see difficulty in breathing but I mean that is so much shifting that is all going to happen because again that fundus has to come all the way up towards the xiphoid process which would be because here's the sternum the xiphoid process is going to be right here above the liver so everything is going to be pulled up in the superior Direction and flaring anteriorly it is absolutely incredible and definitely uncomfortable now there are plenty of other changes that occur in a Mother's body during pregnancy such as changes to liver metabolism kidney function peristalsis in the digestive system and more so be sure to let us know in the comments below what other aspects of pregnancy you'd like us to cover in future videos but thanks again for watching everybody I hope you enjoyed it and I'll see in the next video [Music] thank you [Music]

Channel: Institute of Human Anatomy

Views: 2,262,678

Keywords: pregnancy, pregnancy symptoms, morning sickness, pregnancy fatigue, pregnancy always tired, extreme fatigue early pregnancy, morning sickness vomiting, morning sickness during pregnancy, pregnancy fatigue first trimester, pregnancy fatigue third trimester, human chorionic gonadotropin, progesterone, estradiol, estrogens, pregnancy weird taste, pregnant taste, the anatomy lab, ioha, institute of human anatomy, anatomy, human anatomy, pregnancy organs shift, pregnancy organs squashed

Id: 72anoQIso8s

Length: 16min 29sec (989 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 02 2023