All Episodes

February 14, 2025 15 mins

Happy Valentine's Day to all my heart buddies. Today is an extra episode just for you! Expert Dr. Kelly Sadauckas and I continue our series this month as we explore post-surgery intimacy and pelvic health for heart surgery patients. In this episode, Dr. Kelly educates us on the significance of understanding concepts like metabolic equivalent tasks (METs) and cardiac rehab to ensure safe resumption of sexual activities. She explains that a MET of five indicates moderate activity, similar to intimacy post-heart surgery. She touches on pelvic floor health, relaxation techniques, and the mental and physical impacts of surgery scars. It's important to consult health professionals in case of pain or issues, promoting informed, healthy recovery, and sexual well-being post-heart surgery!

This episode's video is live on YouTube. Be sure to subscribe so you don't miss when they are posted!

To connect with Dr. Kelly and access her courses, etc, go here: Pelvic Floored: The best online pelvic floor exercises & wellness Coupon code is OHS2025. This is an affiliate link which costs you nothing but does support this podcast. Thank you! I hope you enjoy Dr. Kelly's offerings!

Join the Newsletter for almost weekly content for this podcast and other heart related news.

Join the Patreon Community! The Joyful Beat zoom group is where you'll find connection and hope that you aren't alone in your journey.

If you just want to support the show as a one-time gift (thank you), go here.

**I am not a doctor and this is not medical advice. Be sure to check in with your care team about all the next right steps for you and your heart.**

How to connect with Boots

Email: Boots@theheartchamberpodcast.com

Instagram: @openheartsurgerywithboots or @boots.knighton

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/boots-knighton

Boots Knighton

If you enjoyed this episode, take a minute and share it with someone you know who will find value in it as well.

Mark as Played
Transcript

Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
If you're a client, and maybe it is like, a couple weeks before Valentine's
Day, you might say, well, am I allowed to,
like, return to sexy time? And if no one has talked to you about this,
this is a really important conversation. To have sex
is awesome. It can be a part of a fulfilling life.
And sometimes post surgery, it might

(00:22):
hurt. Or is the heart ready for.
Right. So those are the key things that we want to talk about in
today's podcast, and I'm so excited to be able to talk about it with
you. Hey, welcome back to Open Heart Surgery with
Boots. I am your host, Boots Knightman, joined by my friend,
Dr. Kelly Sudowkis, and we are

(00:44):
rocking Love Month, Heart
Month with pelvic health and open heart
surgery. Yep. And
today, normally, I air every Tuesday,
but we are bringing you a special episode today on
Valentine's Day because it is

(01:05):
time to have a conversation about
sexy time after surgery.
Now, this. I was not aware of the things
I needed to think about. No one ever talked to me about it. And I
am learning with all of you listeners. I am still
astonished. Everything that we've already talked about with Dr. Kelly this month

(01:28):
has blown my mind. And I keep telling
her, just treat me like I have just walked into her office. This
is 101 pelvic health post open heart surgery, and
it only continues today with a very, like,
normal part of being a human being.
Absolutely, Absolutely, Boots. And so if you're a client

(01:50):
and maybe it is, like, a couple weeks before Valentine's Day, you might
say, well, am I allowed to, like, return
to sexy time? And if no one has talked to you about this, this is
a really important conversation. To have sex is
awesome. It can be a part of a fulfilling life. And
sometimes post surgery, it might hurt.

(02:11):
Or is the heart ready for this? Right, so
those are the key things that we want to talk about in today's podcast, and
I'm so excited to be able to talk about it with you. Now,
some of your listeners may have had the privilege of
going to cardiac rehab. Did you get any
cardiac rehab boots or, like, do you have any statistics about, like, what percentage of

(02:34):
heart surgery patients get cardiac rehab? Yeah. It's
interesting you bring this up, because I was not referred.
I was treated almost like a celebrity
in the hospital because, quote, unquote, my surgeon
said they only operated on fat people.
His exact words. Those are not my words. I would not use

(02:56):
that to describe people anyway. And I
remember the nursing staff coming in and being amazed at me because at the time,
I was really athletic. I mean, I still am, but just in a new way.
But my defects was so unique to them.
They had not usually operated on like
skiers and so they just didn't think I needed to

(03:18):
do cardiac rehab afterwards and that I could just go back. I remember the exact
words at my six week follow up were, go live your best life. And that
was all the parameters I was given. Now
I've joined Women Heart, which is listeners who've been listening
for a while have heard me talk about this nonprofit.
It's a national nonprofit for women by

(03:40):
women with heart disease. And we,
we do a lot of lobbying at the federal
level to get women better heart health
care. What Women Heart has found is that
more times than not, men are referred for cardiac rehab,
but women are not. And I have spoken to so many women

(04:02):
who were not referred at all, like myself, and it's, and it's
such a missed opportunity. And so yet another reason for
this podcast, we all, no matter what our backgrounds are, we all
need to be referred to cardiac rehab. Exactly. And I
would now also argue pelvic rehab. Right. But probably cardiac
rehab. Yeah,

(04:25):
cardiac rehab, probably a little bit more of a priority. And what
it is for your listeners, if you don't know, it's just like you would go
to physical therapy for knee rehab after a total knee replacement to retrain
the knee to work. Cardiac rehab is
progressively and scientifically challenging your heart at
different levels of exertion while a trained staff

(04:47):
monitors your blood pressure and your heart rate. And
one of the terms they're going to use in cardiac rehab and if you start
to do some research by yourself is a metabolic equivalent or a
met. And when we talk about sexy time
post heart surgery, a MET is really important.
So the technical term of a metabolic equivalent, and I'm going

(05:09):
to read it here because I don't have it memorized, and you'll see why. One
metabolic equivalent is equal to three and a half milliliters
of oxygen per kilogram of body weight per
minute. What? So
it's how much oxygen your heart and your lungs are processing per
minute. And mets, it's a way of describing how hard

(05:31):
you're working. So like zero mets is like sitting absolutely
still. One MET might be walking around the
house. But here's the thing. Chicken wings.
One met for someone like boots at her heart
surgery is way different than a different human's. One
met a different human. Walking across the house might be

(05:52):
moderately to extremely stressful. So walking across the
house could be considered 5 metabolic equivalents. All Right. So this is like
a whole nother topic to get into.
But the skinny is post heart surgery, we
need to be gradually progressing your activity and assessing your
response to this activity and having skilled medical

(06:14):
providers to assess your heart rate and your blood pressure response is
awesome. And if we don't have that, you can do some
judicious googling, Right? Mets
after heart surgery, scholarly mets after heart surgery,
and bring it to your medical practitioners, like, I want to understand this more,
and then they can guide you. In general, mets of around one are

(06:37):
like our lowest, easiest activities, like bed rest might
even be considered a one. Sitting up in the chair, taking a
shower might be a MET of 2 to a 3. Once we
get up to 3 to 4 now, it's like leisure activities. So for
some people that might be walking, for some people that might be sitting up in
a chair, once we start to get to five

(06:59):
now. And this is typically what's assumed to be the metabolic core
equivalent of sexual activity as a met of five, a moderately
vigorous activity. Now, depending on
where we are literally in the position for
on top or bottom, that's gonna matter. So if you are, you know, this is
your, your first go at it and you're like, I'm a little nervous. Maybe you

(07:22):
should be the more like, receiving partner, the partner that's doing a little bit less.
As you work a little bit farther out in your recovery, you can be more
of a active participant and move around a little bit more. That'll
be a higher metabolic equivalent. But this is
really important for you to understand where it fits into things, because it's a, it's
a pretty vigorous activity. So if you're still

(07:44):
working on like walking on the treadmill for like 10
minutes, and that's exhausting, you're probably not quite ready to
participate in vigorous, intimate activities just yet. But it's
something that you can work towards by increasing the duration of that time on
the treadmill by introducing things like weight training and, you know, stair
climbing and things. And again, I'm not a cardiac rehab specialist. I want

(08:06):
you to get your cute butt and your cute heart into a trained
cardiac rehab practitioner. But it's progressive
load on the heart just as important as progressive load on
muscles after a shoulder surgery or a knee surgery.
And it's just, it's great to know. And then beyond, like the mets, like, what's
the highest it goes to? I think it goes to like 10, actually. As far

(08:27):
as, like the metabolic equivalent scale, 10 is like a high intensity
activity. So we want to make sure that we're working up
towards those activities when it's meaningful to
you. So that's mets for heart surgery. The other
important piece is heart surgery is stressful. We
talked about that in our last couple of segments.

(08:49):
Together with stress comes
a passive elevation, an. A subconscious
elevation of your pelvic floor muscles. So
if you have a vagina, that could mean that it doesn't feel
as good as it once did. It might actually be painful because honestly, ladies,
the door's closed. If you have a penis, you might find that you're having

(09:12):
trouble hoisting the main sail. And if that's the
case, those two conditions, the pain with intimacy or the inability
to have that erection or that climax, that. That can be due to these
pelvic floor muscles resting too tight in general, and they're
not really healthy. So as a treat, we're going to have a pelvic
floor relaxation, whole segment for you to go

(09:34):
through. But here, together, if we've had open
heart surgery, if we're having it in the future, it's
very important for you to relax your pelvic floor for overall health and wellbeing and
for sexy time. So sitting here, wherever you are, I want you to relax
your tummy, close your eyes if you're not like
driving or something, and if you're out for a walk or a

(09:57):
run, pause for a moment and take a couple beautiful, nice, deep belly
breaths. Inhaling, fill up your lower belly in all
directions. Exhale. Notice how your lower belly
rebounds. Your beautiful pelvic floor is at the bottom
of this pelvis. As you breathe in and your
belly gets bigger in all directions, front to back, side to side,

(10:19):
it should also soften and elongate in a downwards
direction. Inhale, soften in that downwards
direction. Exhale, Your belly rebounds in. Can you
keep your pelvic floor soft? Taking a
few breaths to relax and soften that pelvic
floor will make all the difference in the world and your quality of

(10:40):
life. And then if we're looking for sexy time, it
will help open the door, so to speak, or prepare those
muscular tissues for having the resiliency to have that erection.
So those are just a couple of cool things to
talk about. Does. Does that make sense? Boots? Yeah. And I just totally relax
like I was. I just totally went into it just then. That was.

(11:03):
That worked. It's so helpful. And. And that little bit during out the day.
Yeah. And if you. Now that we tune into how that feels,
can we keep that relaxed as we like, gently engage our core and then Go
about our day. And that will do all the difference in the world,
not only for sexy time, but also for, like, pee and poop complaints
in general. So those are the biggest things if we're. You know, if we're

(11:25):
watching this on V day. Hey, have. Have fun out there, kids.
But if you are actively having some pain with intimacy, work on relaxing the
pelvic floor. And if you have questions about the intimacy, just
don't be ashamed to ask. It's a functional activity. And if
you're afraid to ask for any reason, you could then ask,
well, how could I improve my athletic performance

(11:49):
to tolerate five METs? Yeah, that
was. I'm glad you just mentioned that, because I was gonna ask, like, for those
out there. Yeah. Who might be wanting to be very
private. Right. Which I respect. Yeah. There you go. So how
can I improve to 5 Mets? I like to 5 Mets. And that's. And the
cool thing about the Mets. Yeah. And they're. They're a little

(12:10):
sciency. Right. But they're. There's also this
cool scale called relative perceived exertion.
That. There's a terrible version that's like one to
26, and there's a relative, like, a one to 10. That's
perfect. And so how hard we work.
Right. One is super easy, 10 is super hard. Around

(12:32):
a five or a six. You know, that's right around this
five or six met. And it's not an exact science, but that is some
way that you can kind of start to correlate. So if you are walking around
your house, and that's five or six out of 10 on your
relative perceived exertion scale, you're not ready for
sexy time yet. But something that typically would be seen as the same

(12:54):
as sexy time is like stair climbing for, like, 10 or 15 minutes.
That should be up to five or six mets by the end. So if that's
feeling medium hard to you, then you're probably
ready. Um, so. So it's just a neat way to talk
about it and something for us to all be aware of. Yeah.
Thank you for this awareness and something that really, like,

(13:17):
absolutely. Is so necessary and important.
Yeah. And if you're having, you know, further difficulties, you know, please consider
working with a pelvic floor specialist or a sexual counselor, because there's
a whole load of stuff that goes into this. There's body
image. We might have scars that hold a lot of emotional weight.
The scars might be painful, and they shouldn't be painful, my

(13:39):
friends. So if they are, we need to be working on the scar mobility,
we need to work. If you've had a sternotomy, we need to work on that.
Costal cage mobility. All things
that basic physical therapists can help with. But you
know, the cardiac rehab are kind of the progressive cardiac exercise.
If you feel that functionally you're fine but you're still in pain

(14:01):
or there's other stuff. Right. Regular pts can help with the
physical pain. Sexual counselors, pelvic pts can help with some of the
other intricacies. Always a good lube is
nice as we age, but that's not going to cover all
the other stuff. And it's okay to talk about. And if it's important
to you and your partner, you both deserve to talk about it.

(14:24):
Right. Cool. Excellent. Thank you for this.
You're so welcome. So, yeah, I'm sure there's stuff that we forgot about, but I
think this is a great start. And I don't have any
like sexatum specific courses on my website
yet, but I will and we're offering all of your
podcast people the coupon of OHS2025 for

(14:45):
25% off all of our online courses. So keep checking
back and you know, check out the blog and Suzanne and I's Instagrams
for fun topics relative to 6A 10.
Yes. And thank you so much for being here, listeners for this special
episode. And we'll be back on Tuesday where we're going to talk
about who. All the best

(15:08):
topics. I tell you, we are where it's at, people.
So I love you, you matter and your heart is your best friend.
Advertise With Us

Popular Podcasts

Stuff You Should Know
Dateline NBC

Dateline NBC

Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com

On Purpose with Jay Shetty

On Purpose with Jay Shetty

I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!

Music, radio and podcasts, all free. Listen online or download the iHeart App.

Connect

© 2025 iHeartMedia, Inc.