104. How Artificial Light May Be Affecting Pregnancy & Labour | Nikko Kennedy

Birth, pregnancy and fertility are profoundly circadian processes — yet almost nobody talks about the role of light in maternal and infant health.

In this episode, I speak with Nikko Kennedy about melatonin, sunlight, vitamin D, labour physiology, EMF exposure and how modern environments may be disrupting pregnancy and birth. A fascinating discussion on circadian biology, photobiology and reproductive health.

 TIMESTAMPS
02:00 Circadian rhythms and fetal development
05:30 Melatonin and implantation
10:00 Morning sickness and oxidative stress
15:00 Artificial light at night and fertility
18:00 Vitamin D and epigenetic programming
22:00 Infrared light and fetal development
27:00 Sunlight exposure in infants
31:00 Pregnancy complications and circadian disruption
40:00 EMF exposure during pregnancy
46:00 Labour physiology and melatonin
58:00 Oxytocin, labour trance and hospital lighting
01:10:00 Postpartum circadian entrainment
01:16:00 Practical recommendations for families

Nikko Kennedy is the Director of Research at the Institute of Applied Quantum Biology.  Nikko has over two decades studying birth, 15 years as a doula, and ten years as a technical consultant, she helps families, practitioners and organizations integrate the emerging field of quantum biology.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome back to the Regenerative Health Podcast. Today I'm speaking with Nico Kennedy. She is a birth dooler, mother of five, and the research director at the Institute of Applied Quantum Biology. Nico, thank you for joining me.

SPEAKER_04 0:15

Thank you. I'm excited to be here and chat with you today.

SPEAKER_01 0:19

So I wanted you I want to bring you on to discuss the role of life, circadian rhythms, at the different stages of the reproductive and birth and process. And I personally think this is an area massively undiscovered or undiscussed, underdiscussed, a relevance to human health and obviously the future health of our species at large. So perhaps we'll start or we'll framework this discussion by the different stages of pregnancy and birth.

SPEAKER_00 0:55

And I'm very open to letting you guide this about what you think is the most relevant or what you think women and families really need to know.

SPEAKER_04 1:07

Great. It is something I'm very passionate about sharing and communicating because it is an area where we have such a massive potential to have a better experience ourselves as families and also for setting up the health, like you said, of our, you know, species. It's a really big topic. And we are experiencing so much disruption with regard to the light signaling. And not very many people are talking about it yet. But I think it's increasingly really coming into awareness and that it's kind of on the exponential rise. So now if people are hearing about it, they're curious and they want to know what to do. Uh, so I think getting to the practical part is a really helpful thing. A lot of people will already understand that who've been listening to this podcast. That the whole framework of getting natural light signaling and having actual darkness at night is what stabilizes the circadian rhythm. And then this the circadian rhythm is programming babies' circadian rhythm. So all of that circadian apparatus is in development. And that's where the way that it's set up, pregnancy and then postpartum, tends to stick with a person for life. And so I've read some really fascinating studies, particularly in the field of mental health, but also metabolic health, where what's happening in early life seems to be programming that you can see that all the way out into end of life. Um, like a dementia onset, for example, is one of the things that they're potentially able to correlate back to what happened early on. So that's where it's a great thing that it overlays that what you do while you're pregnant makes it better for you as a pregnant woman. Um but then it also like carries forward with your child all the way through the rest of their life. So not that it's ever too late to start if you're already like later on in your uh journey with your children. You can always reprogram the rhythm. But when you're pregnant, that is when all of that stuff is being created in the first place. So it's really the best time to practice circadian health.

SPEAKER_01 3:18

Yeah, amazing. So maybe we'll start off uh in the in pregnancy. And I mean, this discussion could even start even earlier with with fertility and and how our fertility and fecundity is being influenced by uh the circadian guided hormones, how ovulation menses um used to be potentially entrained by by lunar rhythms. But m maybe we'll start with with pregnancy. So what what is going on here with respect to what what moving parts of the uterus, the the placenta, the fetus are influenced by by light?

SPEAKER_04 3:58

Yeah. I mean, it all is really. Um, but it really, like if you think about where does it first start, like with, you know, healthy, presuming the the family has healthy circadian rhythms and healthy overall health, have healthy sperm meets healthy egg. Um, and so the circadian rhythm is immediately involved. Like you can um, you know, look at there have been studies saying that conception is actually more likely if you are um if sperm and egg are meeting in the morning, and like there are people who are like trying to time their rhythms because uh to catch those waves of that morning potential. Um, and moving into the implantation, like that is completely mediated by melatonin and also the endocannabinoid system is highly involved here, which is super fascinating because that's all really tied in with circadian health. Um, so the implantation process is very, very sensitive, and all of the early cellular division is really, really sensitive. And the redox states have to be perfect for that all to flow. And the circadian rhythm is a huge way that that is going to be able to happen in the way that it's meant to. Um so it you can't just force it with um like external exogenous melatonin. Um, it has to be arising from the body. Um, and they've done a lot of studies with like antioxidants, and they'll try to do like, you know, vitamin A, vitamin C, vitamin E, all of these things. And those are important, but you can't get all the way there through the dietary because it's a balance between the positive and negative charges. So the body's own ability to be rhythmic with where they are. Um, because that's how the cellular division and how the tissue differentiation, right? Because you have like it's one cell that's then turning into all of the different types of cells. All of that is redo redox mediated. And so you have to have like the charges just perfect. And that's where the circadian rhythm, um, and then also the other time things that we talk about in terms of the environment and the electromagnetic environment. So um EMF exposure in the first trimester is the most dangerous time for it, um, just based on like correlative studies of women who have high occupational EMF exposure tend to have higher rates of congenital abnormalities. So that's, you know, just kind of a thing to really be careful about in that early, early time because it's just so specific. Um, and then the outcomes are so far reaching in the very early pregnancy state. Um, so that's really the first time. And that's, you know, that's like before a woman even knows that she is pregnant necessarily, that a lot of those changes are happening. So it is really, if possible, to be working before, like you said, we could start in the preconception. I think it's good for the sake of this for people who are pregnant. Like, let's just start there, like you're pregnant and you know you are. Um, so what can you actually do? You're like, oh my goodness, all this cellular division is happening. How do I make it right? And so the first thing is to stabilize with the dark night. That's the thing that's the most disrupted and most difficult to achieve, um, especially for people who live in winter climates, but really anyone who has access to artificial light that you could turn on anytime, day or night, it doesn't seem like that big of a deal until you realize that that melatonin signaling at night is so important. And then also in the daytime to get outdoors in the um the daytime entrainment is also extremely um important, but it has to be balanced by the darker nights because otherwise we just end up with that polarity of just too much, too much lux, too much stimulation. So having that balance um between those and then anchoring rhythms of mealtime is also like what do you when you come up to the first challenge of pregnancy, right? The first part you're like really excited, you found out you're pregnant. Um, and then a couple of weeks later, then morning sickness can come in. Not all women experience morning sickness, but the women who experience it the worst, um, it goes back to that redox question. They have excess oxidative stress, essentially. It's an unbalanced oxidative stress situation, um, which again, the endogenous antioxidants are the best form. And what they find is those women don't actually have higher oxidative stress from the outside. It's that they have impaired antioxidant function on the inside. So that's where stabilizing circadian rhythm and circadian hormones, because then you have the melatonin, you have the glutathione, you have the endocannabinoids, all of these things firing at the right time and in the right amounts. Um especially because nutrition gets difficult the work, the the longer that morning sickness, like if it extends into nausea and vomiting into the second trimester, then nutritional um needs are much higher, much more difficult to be met. So the practical side is anchoring with breakfast is just really, really, really important. Like women who are pregnant, they they always I always get the caffeine question, like, can I keep drinking coffee? And a lot of women are are told like that they should keep drinking coffee because it's better to not interrupt the digestive system. Um, but the important thing is to not let coffee be replacing your nutrients. And that's where you see such a disparity in caffeine research, just like alcohol research or smoking research, where depending on your overall, like they they're like, well, we don't exactly know. But women who some women have a tiny bit and have really poor outcomes, and other women have a moderate amount with no um negative outcomes. So then people are like, well, where does that leave me? And so I'll just like get out there and say, like, where it leaves you is you need to have breakfast before your coffee if you're pregnant. I would I'm pretty firm about that because it stabilizes your circadian rhythm and also makes it so your coffee is less likely to displace those nutrients that become so important for stopping that morning sickness cycle. Um and having the foundational building blocks. You'll also hear a ton about protein. Um, and midwives will always be on women about getting their protein intake, which is so difficult in that morning sickness stage of early pregnancy. Um, so sometimes you'll hear, say, like, you know, 10 grams of protein every waking hour, um, 10 grams of protein um at a time is a very small amount. And if you do that, it can potentially slow that roller coaster ride. And it's um not only is it important the protein for the building blocks, but specifically many of the amino acids also act as antioxidants themselves. So, again, to help manage that redox situation that's happening in the womb with implantation and all of the early development and the placenta forming. So the placenta forming is another type of implantation that's happening through these stages that is so important. The placenta is directly correlated to the heart. So as the placenta is forming and attaching, the baby's heart is also forming. So that's like one of the main causes of congenital, you know, one of the biggest congenital abnormalities are difficulties with the heart, and it's associated with problems with placental implantation. And a lot of the things that come down the line in the third trimester where a woman will suddenly have an unexpected situation arise where she gets labeled high risk. In the third trimester, it often actually relates back to this time of the placental, um, placental formations. So it's really, really important in the early, in the early stages to have all of that cellular division and the creation of the placenta and all of the structures forming. The first trimester is just really amazing for how much is happening under the surface there. And it's just amazing that women will be going through this and a lot of times just trying to go through life as though everything is, you know, normal, like keeping up their normal work schedules. So if possible, I also recommend women to lighten up their work schedule in the first trimester and go back if they are a working woman, um, to really take that time that they need to rest and sleep in the first trimester so that they can kind of sleep through the morning, morning sickness phase and um have all of their melatonin flowing to make sure that all that stuff is happening the way that it's meant to. Um and then you can pick up the pace again in the second trimester. Um, the cool thing about the second trimester is that by the time you get to the second trimester, all of the major structures are formed. So, like after that point, like any major congenital abnormalities that happen happen in the first trimester. Like the second by the second trimester, there's still like, you know, development, obviously. Um, but it's not going to be like a major life-threatening congenital abnormality after that point. It might be like neurological or like eyesight or different things, but it's not like totally not going to look like the way that it should. So that's kind of a cool threshold.

SPEAKER_01 13:11

Yeah, I I want to take you back, take it back to the mil the military in the first trimester and even prior to that. And the interesting thing about this effect on hormonal status is evidenced by the the relationship between artificial light at night exposure and hormonal sensitive cancers. So breast in women and prostate in men. And there's there's evidence I've also seen in the role of melatonin in uh reducing uh endometriosis or inflammation in endometriosis. So uh right now I think uh society wide we're faced with this subfertility, infertility problem. Uh and uh I would hazard a guess that artificial light and night usage is is at all-time highs. So if women are using devices, they're using bright overhead LED down lights, they're not getting the pineal the pineal gland can't dump that antioxidant hormone into the circulation because there's blue wavelength light from devices, from these lights being received, recognized by the retina, by the sky, by the skin too. And it's uh it's delaying the onset of of that melatonin dump. So I think not only are women probably contributing to uh an infertile state or the proliferation of the endometriosis, which if uh happening on an ovary or in and around the philipine juice will will physically prevent um a proper or healthy ovulation so that conception can't even happen. But even after pregnancy, as you've discussed, that can that that lack of melatonin can interfere with the healthy um formation and I guess yeah, trophoblast inflammation implantation and and all the rest. The uh what we do I mean, w women are told from a nutritional point of view to supplement with forms of folate to prevent neurotube defects because again, it's gonna be potentially the formation of this neurotube happens so early that they might not know. Yeah no one is being told the light nutrient importance of keeping darkness for to promote melatonin. So I think there's an interesting analogy there that we can help promote that this is just as important as preserve your your melatonin for optimal circadian health in pregnancy.

SPEAKER_04 15:36

Yeah, I love that you brought that up too, because folate really ties in with the circadian rhythm and that folate is necessary for providing the methyl groups for the DNA changes that are happening for that day and night. So in animal studies with a severely disrupted um restricted folate, will their circadian rhythms will actually flatline. So it's really important for that. But what they don't always tell women about that folate conversation is um, you know, for one, the circadian connections. And then for two, they're told to, they're not really given the full picture of where nutritional folate comes from, um, which is largely microbiome and animal food products, they're always told like the spinach, which has a lot of anti-nutrients and um, you know, so they're like, okay, spinach omelets for breakfast every day, and that's like a great standard. But if you try to meet your folate requirements through food without eating ancestral foods like liver and organ meats, um plus having a disrupted microbiome, and it's also ignoring um environmental pollution where a lot of the neural two defects are in places where there's uh pesticide contamination in the water. Um and women who are getting a lot of antibiotic residue inside of their uh like dairy products from improper dairy farming practices. Um, so I think that's really interesting research there of that impairing the microbiome's ability to supply the natural folate, which then ties back to the circadian rhythm because the health of the gut requires the circadian rhythm to be healthy for the gut lining to regenerate and not be permeable. Um, and we see, you know, all around the world, whether you're living equatorial or polar, you see uh wintertime, summertime variations in what's happening with the microbiome. So that local seasonal diet there ideally is working with your body and with your hormonal cues. Um, because another big issue is the gestational diabetes one that comes in later, but also ties to the circadian rhythm. Um, and the mental health issues later on, too, can kind of be predicted by the quality of first trimester sleep, where I'm always like the first trimester is really overlooked in terms of the early intervention to make sure that uh pregnancy is able to progress full term.

SPEAKER_01 17:58

Yeah, absolutely. And I also was reading a paper prior to our discussion uh about vitamin D. And there's a whole facet of of pregnancy and vitamin D signalling. And obviously, vitamin D with the the major source is UVB sunlight. And um, although in in mainstream circles uh and in mainstream medicine, we essentially whack people on on a purified D3 supplement, um almost I think dismissively or h or optimistically hoping it's going to replicate all the natural sunlight benefits, it absolutely doesn't. But in this paper specifically with and this is Michael Hollick, who I've interviewed pr previously, uh talked about epigenetic imprinting and how vitamin D system affects acetylation of the DNA, meaning um tying back into what you said earlier with respect to what our light choices are in this critical antenatal period will affect the later health of that infant and that child and that adult. And it does that by affecting the epigenetic signature and and how the genes of the of the offspring of the infant are expressed. And it I mean it's a it's a template about the field environment, about the environment and the and it's a it's a survival signal, an adaption signal. So again, it's not only is it important to you know avoid alcohol and uh you know processed foods and and endocrine disrupting compounds that you discussed, but also to set the tone for a for a healthy um life with with the correct light um light signals. And I mean so much to say about vitamin D. I I I consider I think the literature is pretty uh rock solid that this is a master switch for inflammation. And and if yeah, vitamin D signalling is low, then the pro-inflammatory TNF alpha and NF kappa B, all those pro-inflammatory cytokine pathways are activated. And if it's replete because the woman has gotten outside with their full body and full skin exposed to natural sunlight, then we uh see the opposite and uh kind of everything, all these autoimmune uh inflammatory pathways, pre-ecalapsia, uh the metabolic pathways, gestational diabetes, risk, uh it all it all falls. So Yeah, well I mean we're gonna talk about that a lot, I'm guessing. Uh I presume, but a a really important part of the piece.

SPEAKER_04 20:21

Yeah, yeah, it really is the uh UV spectrum. I mean, all of the all of it. Cause like you're talking about like the woman, she's in the full split spectrum sunlight, getting it all the way, like it penetrates all the way through her body and through the womb, um, into the placenta. Like the placenta, once it is formed, is creating a lot of melatonin. Um, women's melatonin is rising all the way across pregnancy. Um, and it'll be a great conversation when we get to the um end and how it plays out in third trimester labor. But there's that also that cellular melatonin being formed when you're getting sunlight um, you know, through that infrared pathway. So you have the infrared. And then the UVA is also really important because the thyroid signaling is also very involved in that epigenetic programming you're talking about to, you know, if you think about it, what the body's trying to do with the baby is set it all up. Like the our core GN, our core DNA structures, like this is all of the potential that we have. And then the epigenetic programming that puts over it is like the body saying, okay, but this is where we are on the planet and this is what's available to us. And so we're gonna tune it in this way to be most optimized for this environment. And you can see in studies like of people who do massive um migrations, right? Who live in a very distant place that the second generation tends to have an easier time than the first generation in that migration and so on, because of the body's ability through especially the process that happens in the womb, that epigenetic signaling there. Um and the light is a really important way that the body. Cues that through thyroid hormones, vitamin D signaling, all those things that you're talking about. So that full spectrum sunlight is really important that you can't like there's the darkness piece, but then there's also the full spectrum piece that if you just start indoors all day, even if you're turning the lights off at the appropriate time of day, there's still another piece to it. And that's another part of that recommendation that I have that if at all possible for a woman to take a lighter schedule with her activities in the first trimester so that she really can take that time to spend a good two hours outside every day and to take the extra rest that she needs in that time.

SPEAKER_01 22:41

Yeah, absolutely. And uh I you know I recently spoke to astrophysicist Bob Fosbury, and he's been a close collaborator of Scott Zimmerman, who uh who is a an optics engineer who turned his hand to understanding what the anatomy of the body was doing with respect to natural light. And uh I I I think what I'm gonna say is is one of the most exciting pieces of photobiology that um isn't being talked about. Um but what Scott discovered, and I'm sure you're you're abreast of this, Nico, is that the uh the human body seems to be uh anatomically optimized to collect near infrared photons. And these near infrared light photons are obviously beyond visible, we c beyond the red spectrum, we can't see them, but they're impacting on the body, they're penetrating into the body and essentially just uh um uh filling our bodies uh until they're weakly absorbed and having this strong antioxidant uh effect. And what uh Zimmerman found was that the amniotic fluid uh surrounding the fetus is optimized to essentially concentrate uh these neurofred photons around the baby. And what that speaks to me is that this is uh an attempt, an evolutionary attempt to uh funnel as many um photons uh and promote as much antioxidant effect into the the baby as as possible. And obviously there's this a similar thing happens in the cerebrospinal fluid in the brain, and I can't help but thinking it's like we're this uh primate that has that has the largest proportional you know brain size of of any uh mammal, and this it it's uh taking enormous metabolic demand to sustain um you know this brain size. So we're gonna do as much as possible to to help that process and to get that redox balance, as you said, correct with you know a massive amount of endogenously generated antioxidants. And to do that and to respect that evolutionary design, we need to be outside and and women need to get their their skin and their abdomen and the um the gravid uterus into natural daylight.

SPEAKER_04 24:54

Yeah. Yeah, and you think about when babies are born and they have that soft spot in their head too. It's like even more open. Like, of course, infrared can penetrate through the bone, but like they have a a real tunnel into the brain. And so it's really, you know, kind of drives me crazy when I, you know, you read academic research and they're like, oh, the babies with the best motor development, immune system development, and so on. Their moms are spending two hours plus outside with them every single day. Um but then you look at like pediatric guidelines and they're like, oh, baby shouldn't be in the sunlight for the first six months of life, and you're like, but that's completely against what the evidence says. But they're like, oh, but it's expert consensus opinion.

SPEAKER_01 25:33

Like, I mean, I I I had a colleague who said that um, you know, babies can't make melanin for the for the first three three months of their life. And um I mean completely unsubstantiated by the by the literature. Obviously, they're they are uh sensitive, they're completely you know newborn, um but by no means do they lack the ability to make cutaneous melanin. They simply we just need to be more more careful and diligent about their exposure. Um I didn't think about the fontanelle um piece, but uh absolutely um the neo infrared spectrum seems to be able to penetrate bone quite easily. But if the the open fontanelles are could could definitely be seen as like a portal, an entry point for natural light. Wow, that's that's a that's a very cool thing.

SPEAKER_04 26:22

Yeah, and that, you know, babies being born without melanin. And additionally, um baby, you know, we're kind of jumping ahead here, but the fuzzy vellus hair on them. I was also reading, you know, they're looking, those are in, you know, studies of the hair, the fuzzy vellus hair, and they think that it absorbs UV light like 250 times as fast as normal hair does. And so babies are born super fuzzy, not very much melanin, um, the open fontanelles. Um and so they're essentially, they can get their vitamin D and all of their light requirements very, very rapidly. Um, they're basically born, designed to absorb and meet their needs super fast without um so that they can get all of the light they need without getting dehydrated or um overheated or anything like that. So it's really kind of a beautiful design there where they don't need a whole lot of sunlight necessarily, um, but that they are primed to be able to get what they need uh very quickly.

SPEAKER_01 27:22

The in 1948, the US government, and this was obviously prior to the discovery of purified vitamin D supplement, issued it was a Bureau of uh Bureau of Economy or there's some some US Bureau post-World War II. And the the pamphlet that they issued was specifically sunbathing babies and it was an attempt to prevent rickets and to prevent uh vitamin D deficiency prior as it and again prior to to the discovery of of the pu purified ab ability, um purified supplementation. And if you read it, it is uh it is a guide to uh to safe uh progressive sun exposure and and and building a solar callus for the baby. And and what they correctly identified is that uh you need full-spectrum UV containing sunlight if this the fetus and the sorry in the infant's um skeletal system and dentition uh is gonna develop properly. And if um and if they are vitamin D deficient, then absolutely they're gonna get um bowing of the lung bones, which is Frank Rick's. But uh you know, that's a spectrum of skeletal and non-skeletal dysfunction, because obviously vitamin D is this pleotropic psychosteroid hormone. It's not simply just related to bone formation, that you're setting the child's um neurodevelopment back, you're setting their immune system function back, you're setting their metabolic health back if you if you deprive them of of full spectrum sunlight. And look, I think that's what's happening right now in America and Australia, um, because we are that averse to UV exposure for uh for babies, children, and infants.

SPEAKER_02 28:54

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_04 28:55

Yeah, it it's a really cool thing uh in my line of work that when I start, you know, I work with families all across, is sometimes people come to me in preconception, sometimes they're, you know, pregnancy. I just had a family that, you know, talked to me two days before their baby was born, um, in like, you know, all across. And then other families are coming to me postpartum. And the postpartum family is one of the things that's really awesome. Uh though, you know, they have toddlers and things. And one of the first things that they report back very often is that they're having an easier time with teething. Um, exactly, you know, bringing to what you're talking about. And people don't realize, and this also, you know, we'll come into the labor conversation. They don't realize that melatonin is um mediates the pain. Um, so it has action in the peripheral and central nervous system to affect how we influence how we perceive the pain that we're experiencing. And, you know, like you know that there's salivary melatonin tests, but it's like the melatonin is in the saliva for a specific reason, and you see those secretions um going up and down across the day because our mouth isn't is like a place where we're meeting the external world and there's a lot of inflammation potentially happening there. So that melatonin has a very important role in the saliva. And that's one of the great things about children and and toddlers having a strong and stable circadian rhythm is that they are then having that full melatonin to have healthy teeth, protect them from cavities, um, but also deal with the the challenge of the teeth cutting through the gums.

SPEAKER_01 30:26

Um now we're way ahead of early pregnancy, but we're we're getting to the cloud. Um talking about some of the major pregnancy complications, I think it's in it's important to touch on that. And the the role, I'm gonna talk again about vitamin D and a reminder, whenever I say vitamin D, I want people to think UVB like. That's how it's made. UVB is a high energy photon, it strikes the skin, it it converts um cholesterol in the skin to to vitamin D and it and then it has uh basically gets uptaken and and in into various vitamin D binding protein and then has this effect throughout the body and gets converted to active vitamin D. But really, it seems like we've got uh it's playing a role in this in fetal skeletal development because it it's mediating the uptake of calcium and phosphate, but it's also um mediating immune tolerance to uh to the fetus. And this is a kind of really interesting part part because even in recurrent pregnancy loss or miscarriage, you really wonder and there's obviously lots of flavors of that, and and we don't necessarily need to go into all of them, but potentially uh this idea that the female body is could be rejecting or um the the composite sounds very sounds very depersonalized, but it's a composite genetic um, you know, vehicle of of someone else's genetic material. And the body's immune system um needs to have some degree of immune tolerance so it doesn't kill that or recognize that as foreign. And we talked about vitamin D is this immune switch. I I personally think that you know there could be a lot of women who are now customers of IVF clinics who are rolling around vitamin D deficient or insufficient because they don't go into natural sunlight during the day. Um and that potentially could be avoided if they um got more what raised this year in vitamin D and their their immune system essentially just put its fist down.

SPEAKER_02 32:28

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_04 32:30

Yeah, I think that is yeah, definitely an interesting way to look at it. And I do see a lot of um family, you know, an increasing number of families really who are coming to me with having had fertility challenges, um, of either miscarriage or of um not being able to conceive at all. And it it is really interesting there because there's um when you're out in the sun, it is one of the things that just feels the best. And so the the safety signaling of a a stable circadian rhythm is something that people don't necessarily expect. Like I know a lot of people that if they hear about it and then they'll like try to do it for a health effect, but then it will actually be something that kind of transforms their entire life altogether. And so I do see that that safe, that bubble of safety that happens when your body is actually getting the light that it needs in the daytime and then getting the rest that it needs in the nighttime. And then when you actually wake up feeling rested and well and whole, then there's like a little bit of that just room where, cause the, you know, when the nervous system and immune system are overactive, then there's just that that body's in that hyper-vigilant state that is, you know, potentially playing out biologically with whether it will hold the pregnancy or not. Um, but it's also kind of like a psychosocial um event that's happening there. And so yeah, couples coming together to sunbathe and feel whole and sleep well and deeply. Um, and then that when that conception happens, because there's also an uh, you know, like from the man's perspective, a lot of the early miscarriages, um, there can be an overwrite because the the sperm is carrying an epigenetic load based on his redox state and all of the things that were going on in his body. And so that's one of the other um causes of early miscarriage that's overlooked is like the conception happens, but then there's an epigenetic overwrite there. And then it, you know, it usually results in a very early um miscarriage. So that recurring early miscarriage pattern is one that I see often that is one that, you know, a few months of stabilizing and strengthening the circadian rhythm for both, you know, for the couple, because there's a lot of occupational hazard where people are, you know, they're just stuck indoors. Um and you must be familiar with it from the medical industry, but some of the people who have the hardest time that reach out to me are actually people who ironically are working in healthcare because they're stuck in indoor buildings that don't even have windows in their offices. And so they're talking about like sneaking in red light panels to shine under their desk and things, like, you know, any way to get a little bit more of a natural um light environment. Um, yeah, there's there's so much that can be done and there's so much mystery to it, just absolutely fascinating. Um but yeah, nature all I think nature is is very wise in thinking of that, you know, that programming. We're just looking for the signals. And if all we're getting are these fluorescent lights and flicker and like all of these things that are confusing to our biology, then it doesn't know what type of epigenetic program to it doesn't know what to do. Um, so then it just kind of ends up uh spun out and confused and not feeling safe and like, oh yeah, this is a good time to um invest a lot of resources into creating a baby. Um if it's not if it's not safe and it doesn't know where and when it is and have confidence that there's going to be the all of the right conditions coming forward, um, then it's just not going to do it.

SPEAKER_01 36:17

Absolutely. And you know, I like to sometimes use engineering analogies. And imagine if I think it I think this isn't isn't hyperbole or a stretch to say that, you know, imagine if there are bridge bridges collapsing and you know the job of the engineer was to, you know, perform the the post-analysis and no one's even thinking about like whether there was any uh reinforcement put in inside the concrete. I think that analogy is to say that the importance of light and circadian signals and the vitamin D system in healthy uh fertility conception pregnancy is that critical, yet it's being uh so ignored by by uh fertility advice, you know, general antenatal advice. I would even say uh a lot of naturopathic and you know holistic uh advice, which uh obviously does emphasize nutrition, rightly so. But even that seems to be uh completely uh ignoring this light story that you and I are discussing. So I think what I guess I'm saying is that the gravity of its or the relevance and gravity to a healthy birth is so disproportionate, or it's disproportionately being um under recognized um right now for some reason.

SPEAKER_04 37:31

Yeah. Yeah, part of it is that it's new. Um, part of it that I'm not exactly sure what, because it's the evidence base is extremely robust. Um, so it's not like it's fringe or speculative. And that's the part that kind of you know has me roam like, okay, well, I guess I'm gonna go out there and be a voice here and where I'm encouraging other people. And I'm like, okay, like you bring this to your community. Um, and so like the women who are in my community, um, we have, you know, like a third are practitioners and about two-thirds are just moms. But even the ones who are just moms, I'm like, you know, you're going to your mom's circle. Um, so you are now an ambassador to um to this wisdom and knowledge. Um we didn't really have to think about it so much before, but now it's so easy to um not only have the disrupting signals, but also just to remain isolated from the positive signals, just by the way of like, you know, following comfort. And um, even for the moms who don't work, like a stay-at-home mom, is very easy to feel like you need to spend all day, every day inside cleaning and keeping up after your home and family. There's always a zillion things to do. So finding ways to like to jump into the more practical side of how does this look in real life, like finding ways to do things outside, like when the weather is nice enough, like taking your children outside for a picnic isn't just like a fun, like novel thing to do, but potentially something that is, you know, really stabilizing um the circadian rhythm and anchoring in their bodies to fully know that it's daytime. Um and yeah, just little ways to move bits and pieces of things outside. And you think about, you know, the homemaker of the past, we had a lot more need to capitalize on the daylight. And so if you're, you know, air drying your clothes outside and um like a lot of these different things that we used to do outside that are now indoor activities, so some of them can still be restored to outdoor activities. Um, otherwise you're like having to like set timers on your phone and like, okay, like everyone is like, you know, like there are there's like ways to embed it into your day-to-day life. So you don't have to feel like a freak, like worrying all the time, but it just becomes a natural part of the flow that um and I find that families just have a really high adoption rate when I talk about these things with them. They're like, oh, that makes so much sense. Like, yeah, it is way easier um to manage my toddler when they're outside, anyways. Um, like all of it, like then it's just really easy to adopt this lifestyle and then really become an evangelist for it because you see how much easier it is to keep um the momentum when everyone actually feels good because they have the circadian programming right. And so their brains are actually getting washed and cleaned each night, and their bodies are being built um to be strong and sturdy and resilient against illness and all these things.

SPEAKER_01 40:31

Yeah, absolutely. I love it. Maybe we can talk really briefly about RF radiation. I mean, you you made the point in the first trimester, and I think uncontroversially, this is the most sensitive time for um exposure to toxins, whether that is endocrine disrupting toxins, whether that's you know, heavy metals, whatever. You n you name it, and the organs are developing and the baby is very susceptible. So I think uh the the the radio frequency radiation being emitted from devices, iPhones, could be the most uh um uh uh important one that people don't know about because they will be sitting there, you know, they've got their fetus, their baby is uh, you know, whatever, 15 centimeters away, and they've got their you know their iPhone on you know 4G 4G or 5G with one bar of reception and it's it's it's radiating out uh down into the into the pregnant uterus and uh you know potentially they're calling someone as well. And we we know from the bunch of mouse studies that that that drives oxidative stress. So yeah, it's still new, but I I really think that's gonna be an important player as well. So yeah, what what's your take on that?

SPEAKER_04 41:51

Yeah. Yeah, like I said, we have the animal studies and then we have the correlative studies, and obviously it's unethical to design studies that would prove this, you know, causation in humans. And so unfortunately, it puts us in a kind of a bind with the data and making um making regulation over it because they kind of have the upper hand here of saying, like, oh, well, it hasn't been proven, um, even though it's the, you know, the the likelihood is there. The mechanisms are proven in animal models. We see correlation in human studies. We don't have human causational studies for that ethical reason, and that we will never have human causation studies there. So that's where like even with circadian health, you don't say like circadian health cause or circadian misalignment causes diabetes. It's like circadian health and diabetes are highly correlated, right? Um, so again, with the congenital abnormalities and all these things. Um it's not, yeah, there's a a big need for conversations. The cool thing about protecting from it is that you can do your own protection, especially if you live away from like the big high power centers, um, like the electrical trans transfer stations. And then when you're looking at the devices around your home, you can get consumer level EMF readers. Um and so, like just to be pragmatic about it, like there was um, there's been one study done on uh preterm babies in who are in the incubator. And is the incubator grounded or not? Um, when you ground the incubator, it's like an immediate reset of their vagal tone, which is like a marker of their sense of well-being. Um, you can see an instant, instant uh change in their charge charge, right? Like when you ground, it happens instantly that you discharge the positive field and it turns into a negative a net negative charge, um, which is like antioxidant, right? Um But in that same study, they also found that just pulling the incubators away from the power. Sources. They moved them 18 inches and had like a 7.5 fold reduction in the EMF burden that was on the little baby. So that getting this the space personally is very, very accessible. Like we can't, it's as an individual, there's not much we can do to say, hey, make these devices better, like put better shielding in my device, like that kind of thing. But we can say, like, um get a mount for your phone so that you're not actually holding it in your hands. Um like get a USB keyboard and like put it farther away from you if you have to use it. Um, you know, the why, like, you know, everyone knows, I think, um, that Wi-Fi will be sending more signals. And so you can have wired routers, or if you are using Wi-Fi to turn it on and off, um, give yourself self space. And then just having that meter to be able to read the charge and say, like, how much, you know, where's the zone? And so when we've had items around our house that we haven't been able to change, or like when we've um rented building spaces like for offices and things. Um, you know, like just putting some like masking tape or like arranging the furniture in such a way that no one is naturally going to be inclined to hang out in the area that's hot um around the Wi-Fi router or a neighbor's box, or like when people have smart meters, um, you know, you can take your trifield meter or whatever kind you have and see where that spot is. So you're like, okay, so if the studies are all overblown and it's not a big deal, like at worst, you've moved some furniture around and like not utilize your space in as good of a way. And at best, like maybe you have um prevented some serious congenital abnormalities down the line. Um, it's like the the effort based on what we think the risks are, making the effort just really makes a lot of sense to me.

SPEAKER_01 45:52

Absolutely. There's a huge risk risk versus effort um payoff, in my opinion. I've been really enjoying uh we've we just use uh ethnet cables and there's no Wi-Fi in our house, and you simply can just get an adapter, a lightning or or USB-C to FNET adapter, and the client sits on aeroplane mode, and you someone can use it, um, but you're not broadcasting a Bluetooth signal, you're not broadcasting cellular or Wi-Fi, so much, much, much safer. Let's let's jump into labor and birth because I think there is so much to say about how the environment around labor and birth is key for triggering and having a healthy and uneventful birth, and also how the status quo, which is hospital you know, birth suite, birth suites are kind of probably unintentionally, but no no matter what they're doing it, um disrupting this process, which is leading to poor intervention, I think.

SPEAKER_04 46:52

Yeah. Um perfect. So what happens in many, many cases is that the first trimester is rushed through, um stress through. Um even women who are getting good nutritional counseling, it's still extremely difficult to actually meet the full needs nutritionally. Um, and then when you add on circadian disruption um plus the nutritional disruption, it's a really big challenge. That impaired signaling messes with the way that the placenta is implanting. So then through the second trimester and then into the third trimester is where a lot of this comes down the line that you start to see um preoclampsia, gestational diabetes are the, you know, really, really big ones there that then women um also liver um issues are really, really increasing. And the, as you know, the livers are extremely circadian. They have their whole own circadian clock um apparatus that's kind of operating, like it's communicating with the rest of the system, but it continues, it is, you know, the liver's really an interesting circadian hub. Um and so then likewise with um the whole anemia, third trimester anemia is another one that um women will go in and get this anemia diagnosis that they then go and get an iron infusion for, which in many cases is um really increasing the oxidative burden on them. So it's kind of a tricky situation there. But anyways, all of these things happen in the third trimester where they then get various risk factors labeled on them. And so even a lot of women who do want to have home births end up in the situation where they are their providers then want to give them extra monitoring, which at this point, that monitoring is, you know, talk about EMF exposure. A lot of people don't realize, like the ultrasound is one thing. Um and another place that we're really blind in the data because ultrasounds were rushed into service. And so now it's essentially impossible to do a study where you compare no ultrasound to ultrasound because it's already the standard of care. Um so instead they can compare more ultrasound to less ultrasound. In every case, the benefits are always higher in the less ultrasound group. But we can't do more ultrasound, less ultrasound, no ultrasound to have a true comparison group because it's it would be considered unethical because it's the standard of care, even though the proper studies weren't actually done for the um for that rollout. So most babies are getting this um ultrasound. The Doppler that you're listening is actually a higher EMF burden on the baby than the ultrasound, um, which a lot of people don't realize that, but the Doppler ultrasound is pulsed. Um, so it's actually more intense. And that is done a lot. And unfortunately, the higher a risk a woman is, the more they're gonna want to monitor her, monitor her and her baby using these EMF technologies. Um in some cases, she might be prescribed bed rest, in which case then her circadian rhythm is really tanked. So they are starting to do some studies with like biodynamic lighting and finding that when a pregnant woman is on bed rest, if they have biodynamic lighting for her, her melatonin profiles are better than if she's in like standard hospital care bed rest. Um so that's all you know very challenging and very stressful. And then, of course, like, you know, it's it's a bi-directional relationship between the endocrine system and the circadian rhythm. So if the circadian rhythm is disrupted, endocrine hormones are disrupted. But then likewise, if a woman's put into a state of fear, her endocrine system is going to override her circadian rhythm anyways and make it harder for her to sleep and get the rest, right? Because she's in vigilance mode. Uh so it does get kind of tricky there with what options women are perceive that they have, uh, which is actually partially starting to like drive uh the unassisted, intentionally unassisted birth or like burdening with non-medical professionals present, where a lot of women feel like, well, because of, you know, the way that care is, they're gonna be poking me and prodding me, they want to take my blood, they want to measure me all the time. And if I say no, then I'm like in defiance of care. Um so like the consideration of how health, if health is disrupted, then your options for care are a lot less compared with if you're robustly healthy and you don't have blood pressure issues and you're not um like spilling protein in your urine, like making everything because the the risks are very severe. Um, like pre-eclampsia can lead to seizures and maternal um death. So like the the providers who are feeling afraid and ordering all of these tests are like working within this paradigm of um, you know, wanting to save lives and perceiving that lives are at risk. Um, but then they're not looking at the underlying light biology that's driving the melatonin the hormones that could be helping correct course. Because again, a lot of these conditions, like pre-eclampsia, particularly, is again an oxidative stress condition where it started in early pregnancy with there being excess oxidative stress around the placental implantation, and then that continues until it builds. So, likewise, with like growth restriction, um, is another big one that's related to the placenta having challenges and not being as robust as it should be. Um, yeah, all kinds of things there where, you know, women's care options um can be restricted. And then that plays out into what labor and delivery looks like because those health conditions then get used to leverage um induction and medicalization of the birth. And so you'll hear, like in the natural birth movement, you know, women saying that birth is not a medical event. Um, right. It's a physiological process that we go through. Um, but because of health conditions and comorbidities, that's where birth can turn into a medical event. Um, so that's one of the great things about working with circadian health and nutrition, um, exercise, time outdoors, lowering stress, all of these things early on in pregnancy, as early as possible, so that by the end of pregnancy, you're still feeling good and robust and um at lower risk for those kinds of uh challenges. Um Absolutely So that's a big, big part. We haven't gotten quite to the point of labor and labor onset yet. I have lots more to say about that, but I just needed to preface that of like what does the moment of labor looks like is like going to be kind of determined by your level of health at that point in your pregnancy.

SPEAKER_01 54:14

Yeah, and I I I I want to really emphasize that point because I I think it's such a powerful one, which is essentially what you're saying is that if you do the hard work early on, even prior to conception, you you align your lifestyle with I guess a human you know, this human metabolic envelope or evolutionary niche, you get the inputs right, whether they be light inputs, nutritional inputs, um, exercise inputs, uh and you and you nail them, then you essentially uh you stack the odds or a lady would stack their odds in her favour for having a low intervention birth. But if perhaps you continue to work or a lady continues to work her high high stress corporate indoor job, um you're getting by on croissants and coffees and uh and you know not going outside, uh then the you're kind of the groundwork is being laid for for pregnancy intervention. And yeah, absolutely. I I empathize with the the sentiment that birth is a natural um f phenomenon that shouldn't be medicalized, but the most dangerous situation is when a woman is high risk, actually high risk, has pathological uh processes going on, whether that's related to gestational diabetes, fetal macrosomia, you know, hypertensive disorders of pregnancy, um and and yet they you know refuse to to engage um in uh care. And that's when you know sometimes we see see the really worse outcomes. And I mean it's no different to uh to someone who's uh you know got got fluoride uh type 2 diabetes and refuses to uh to uh do anything about it. And yeah, okay, you you can choose not to do anything about it, but don't like don't be surprised if something if if you don't want to take the media, but you you know, rolling around with the blood glucose level of 18, then you know don't be too surprised if you have a stroke or a heart attack. So um uh not to not to sound um too too I don't want to uh scare anyone, but I guess that the real essence here is that the more you can understand uh what the body needs from from especially from a light, that's the theme of this discussion point of view, the less likely you're gonna need to be um intervened in.

SPEAKER_04 56:37

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like you look at sunlight and it's generally regulates blood pressure. Um and blood pressure is, you know, that really one of the the main signs, you know, when you go into a go in for your prenatal, like what do they do? They check your blood pressure and they want to check your pee and see like, are you hydrated? Um and are you spilling protein? And like, and the that whole conversation comes up, like the blood volume expansion is so important. And uh so so few women really understand how to eat properly for that blood volume expansion. Um, and then that's also ties into um the circadian rhythm because all of the blood cells are created, like in our bone marrow, right? Where they actually need to be programmed by light. Um, the mitochondria have circadian clocks that are nourishing all of those cells that are creating the new blood cells. Um, so it's really quite amazing when you do get out into the light and see a woman who has that full vitality, like you always hear, like, oh, you're glowing, right? And like literally, uh, you know, the pregnant woman, like her skin is is stretching and she is growing, um and her, you know, body can really be collecting so much light uh during that time. So um when it comes to then labor onset, like this is one of the areas that is so cool that we still don't fully understand it. It's still very mysterious. Uh so when they are doing inductions or forcing uh labor to begin using rather crude tools, like you hear about it in terms of like, you know, they'll do the cervical dilation. Um and they're using prostaglandins, which it turns out what they have been measuring as prossoglandins are actually prostamines from the endocannabinoid system, which again ties back to that circadian regulation. Um, and then they're looking at oxytocin and they have synthetic osteocin and it works to make the uterus contract. So they're like, okay, well, great, you need prostaglandins and you need oxytocin. So they have those things and they force them, and that's how they get the whole labor cascade going or keep it moving when it's not going as they think that it ought to be. Um, but the body's own systems are much more dynamic there. So not only do we have the prostamines relating to the cervical dilation, but when labor onset happens, we also get a huge spike. This is so amazing, in anondamide from the endocannabinoid system, which is the same thing that makes people feel high when they smoke cannabis. Um, so you think about like labor onset is generally like it's an especially early labor, is an exciting kind of euphoric feeling. You know you're gonna meet your baby and it's so exciting. Um, that's completely overlooked if you're just gonna go in and get like prostaglandins um followed by oxytocin. The other thing is that um melatonin is synergizing with that oxytocin to, you know, for the uterine contractile abilities. And as we talked about earlier, the melatonin is also a pain mediator at the peripheral and central nervous system level. So naturally, labor tends to start at peak melatonin onset. So it's really common for women to wake up in the wee hours of the morning, right? You have that 3 a.m. melatonin spike, and then that's a really common time for labor to start, sometimes in the evening with melatonin onset there. So it's not that all babies are born at night, but what time does labor onset tend to happen? It tends to happen at night, and that relationship will be stronger the more of a health, stable, healthy circadian rhythm the woman has. So you have this synergy where the hormones um and also from the uh, you know, neurotransmitter part two, like no one's talking about the neurotransmitters of labor as much. You do hear about endorphins, right? But like all of the neurotransmitters, um, dopamine is involved in like the timing of contractions, right? And so these are all things that are very light mediated. So um when you look at birth art historically and think about the way that birth used to happen, um, there was more of a relationship with the natural world, and including during the time of labor. So I've seen pictures of like women um like in their birthing spaces having outdoors. Some cultures actually would build an outdoor structure so the woman wouldn't give birth inside of the main dwelling, but there would actually be like an outside space that they would construct just for her to give birth. Um, there might be poles, like um a walking staff, right? Something to hold on to so that you can walk around outside. Um and there, you know, there's just countless stories of women spending their laboring time, if they're doing a daytime labor, outside. And when you think about being outside and getting that massive dose of serotonin from the sunlight and dopamine from the sunlight, those things are synergizing to create a labor trance. Um that then, and I've had this labor pattern with um all of my home births actually be wake up and labor, uh, labor across the day, and then uh shortly after sunset, um, baby's born uh quickly. And um that just kind of follows the flow because serotonin is the precursor to melatonin. So you you build it up in the day, and then in the evening you're you know, knuckle down and and get to work and push the baby out. And um and then afterwards, you know, the placenta needs to come and the placenta is born, and then the uterus has to contract, and that process needs to continue with the oxytocin um flowing. And so oxytocin being a social um hormone uh to close up the uterus afterwards and stop the bleeding. When that doesn't happen, again, they'll like add more of that synthetic oxytocin um into it. And part of the challenge with that is that that synthetic oxytocin doesn't cross the blood brain barrier. So it doesn't have the like prosocial effects that the body's own oxytocin uh has. So compare what I described to the hospital scenario, and I've heard from so many women and I describe this, and they're like, oh, now I know what happened. They're laboring at home, they're feeling all flowy, their labor trance is building, it's really picking up, and they're like, oh no, I need to go to the hospital. And then you get in the car and drive, which is like one of the most dangerous things that we do with the highest likelihood of like something going wrong. Um, so you drive, that's dangerous, and then you go into a facility where suddenly you're isolated from the natural environment. There are strangers around, the lights are very bright, um, someone is sticking their hands inside of you, you have to have a vaginal check to check in. I've seen this too, where woman's in her labor trance and then she gets the vaginal check, and then the contractions fade away and everyone's looking around. Like, what happened? It's like, well, what happens if you stick your fingers in an anemone, right? Like it's gonna stop hunting. Like, what do you think just happened? Like, some random person's like, oh, because the clock says this, I'm gonna do this. It's really funny. Like, I've had um, you know, births like with my friends and uh like thinking of like looking over, like, I'm gonna ask my friend to stick her hands in there to see what's going on in labor. Just that would never really occur unless some like it used to be something that you might do if labor was going on and on and on and on, and you're like, okay, well, maybe something's going on. Let's go and like find out what's happening. Um, but it's become a routine intervention. But like a traditional midwife would be like, well, I there's plenty of ways that you can see how labor's progressing without um actually putting your hands in there to see. So um, yeah, with most of mine, I'm always like, Yeah, I don't need any vaginal checks, and like the that idea is just kind of funny to me, but it's part of the whole like routine that happens in there that really gets in the way of the labor trance. Um so a lot of women then experience that stalling, right? The labor stall. And it's super unfortunate that it, you know, like even the dim lights in the hospital a lot of times will still be rather bright, uh, bright enough to suppress melatonin. Um, and then again, like we talked about the Doppler, um, which is another form of light. Like people don't always think about EMFs as being on the spectrum of light. They're like, oh, it's like frequency, right? Like light's a wavelength and and EMFs are a frequency or are different things, but they're, you know, the body is still perceiving those waves in different um in different ways. Our our our you know, our body has a lot of electro sensing um ability. So that then flows that a lot of time, you know, and sometimes it is it is totally possible to have a natural physiological birth in um a hospital setting. Uh I've done And I know a lot of women who have done it without medications and all of that. But it is more difficult in that environment, like I said, because of the hormonal impacts of strangers and the light-based impacts of spiking cortisol. And that also impacts the providers. And that's another thing that people don't think about in terms of the environment, is that not there's a relationship happening between the woman giving birth and the team that's around her, especially in terms of building that oxytocin flow. So they've done studies on different types of lighting in the birth suite. And when you have the super normal, bright clinical white light, the providers feel bright and clinical. They have it's flowing their cortisol. And so they feel timely and they feel chipper and they feel like they need to do things and they're like in a hustle-bustle state. When you turn that light to amber, suddenly they're feeling calmer. They might want to sit down. They're feeling more like supportive, more go with the flow. And when you turn it all the way red, what they found was that the providers and the birthing people family, like everyone was suddenly moving like more sinewy, you know, like snake-like, undulating, um heavy. Everyone's moving slow. You were seeing like the midwives crawling on the floor with the women, right? Just like it's like the same midwifery team, um, you know, like oh, the people in this study, but like the way that the light is completely changes the dynamic of the way that they're relating um to time. And so birth is something that really happens in a kind of like out-of-time liminal space. Um, and it's uh, you know, it's uh autonomic, it's like a you can't make it happen. So I often talk about it like making birth happen is like trying to make falling asleep happen. Like you have to go into it a little bit backwards. And you that like seems like a joke, but like this family that I supported recently, um, you know, she was begging, she's like, I just want to go to sleep. And then she did. And her husband's texting me. I was being a virtual duel, he's texting me, is this okay? And I'm like, Yeah, she that was what she wanted. Um, be patient. Just and then she woke up and she was crowning. And she was like, um, and they were like, I didn't think it was literally like falling asleep, like I was literally gonna fall asleep and wake up and be pushing my baby out, but that was what it happened, and like that exactly fits with like the melatonin flow um there with making everything stronger and smoother and less painful. So there's really so much mystery and dance to the whole thing. It's very exciting, um beautiful, um, amazing thing that happens. Um, so then the next stage between the baby and the placenta, and this is another area that it really gets kind of messed up in that that panic stating, and you know, like there's the if you look at when baby is born, the medical, the medicalized model is kind of building on this time uh they wanted they want to control it. So a lot of women like they'll ask for epidural, not because they can't handle the pain, but because they don't want to vocalize. Um, there's an amazing paper, it's called Midwifery by Ear. I highly recommend reading it. Um But you can tell by the way a woman sounds how deep into her labor trance she is, but it's not necessarily comfortable to do that in front of other people, or if you know that there's you could hear through the walls, right? And so in order to stay calm um and quiet, that's where the desire for medication comes in. Um and the yeah, anyways, after the birth is another moment where what I was saying is that a lot of the babies are coming medicated. And we've gotten safer and safer medications for managing labor pain than we were using in the past. But the whole like super quick cut the umbilical cord, test baby to see if they're alive was happening from the time that they were using a lot of experimental medications. Um so if you look up like Virginia Abgar, you can see pictures of her like holding babies one foot upside down wearing a mask. Like, I would never treat a baby that way. I do not believe a baby should ever be treated that way. Um, and like her model is like this is what the first 30 seconds of baby life should be like measuring them, poking them, prodding them, stimulating them, like all of this very, very rushed um scenario, which then completely like moves the mom out of her labor trance. Um, she should be meeting her baby and smelling her baby and getting a huge rush of oxytocin so that she stops bleeding. Um, but instead, it's like strangers, they turn all the, even if she's laboring in a dim room, turn all the lights on, flood the room with neonatal resuscitation teams and lights, and they're grabbing her baby and doing all these things so that breaks the labor trance. So postpartum hemorrhage is also much more likely there because that her oxytocin system requires her being safe. And like, how can a mom feel safe if no one trusts that her baby's okay? And part of that whole rush is that, you know, for one, those providers have seen the most unhealthy people. Um, and they've seen very, very medicated people, and they're built on a system that um a lot of the like timing and things that they're looking at were from the time that they were using the like the twilight sleep drugs and stuff. And then a lot of those habits have like early cord clamping have just carried through, even though they're no longer necessary because they're not using those drugs. Um so yeah, the whole birth is um kind of like where all of the circadian stuff comes down the line, right? It's like this acute scenario where uh the dance of hormones and light and all of that is very, very immediate. Um very, very immediate.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:08

Yeah, amaz amazing. And and uh uh maybe a couple points and we'll we'll wrap it up. But I I can't help but thinking about m mammals and mammalian birth and the origin of mammals is potentially these we were, you know, once nocturnal creatures during during the the reign of dinosaurs. And it was a survival advantage to be nocturnal, it was probably a survival advantage to um commence the onset of of birth during the nighttime or in a safe dark place. And what we're doing now with uh the bright birth suite lights, I think is uh as you say, it's it's not only stalling birth, it's but it's providing grounds for uh for intervention. And uh if you try and fit a square peg in a round hole with respect to you know shift changes, bed pressure in the birth suite, and it's it's a perfect uh recipe for intervention. And and yeah, the the the bright lights there will turn off the pineal melatonin production. And as you you said, the the link between uterine contractility and uh melatonin signaling and melatonin augmenting the oxytocin effect in in the uterine smooth muscle. I mean, um that is probably the biggest thing that no one's being told when they go to the hospital is that you're potentially gonna uh critically impair or um delay the onset of proper birth because you are sticking a massive uh monkey wrench into the physiological wheels of of proper labour. So um yeah, it's I think that that is a massive thing. And and look, that could be rectified by even just promoting red light use in the birth suite and just getting them out with LED light strips. I think that could be really dim low LED light strips could be a massive, um, massive step in the right direction. Um yeah, I mean I I I'm no expert on ultrasound. I I have seen the M wave, the Doppler wave, obviously. It's a sound wave rather than a light. Um because it is ultras ultrasound potentially linked to cavit creating tissue heating, cavitation, even. So yeah, I think we definitely need to be more rational in our use of of that. Um but you know, women want to know and and women do want to see their babies, so that needs to be an open discussion and and uh education. There's always a bias towards intervention because people the medical practitioners want to uh I guess clip their their medical-legal downside. But um maybe maybe we'll wrap up with just uh kind of some big takeaways because I think we've we've covered so much, but really the uh on-the-ground action that individual women and and uh families and couples can take is is is really simple. So yeah, maybe if you could just just summarize for us, um and it's not yeah, sure.

SPEAKER_04 1:14:52

Um so generally uh you when you want to have your baby and you're trying to have a natural, um you know, smooth birth experience, then working on your circadian rhythm through pregnancy is going to be really important there for making sure that you have all of the signaling in place. Women who go severely um post-dates tend to have lower melatonin there um compared with women who are delivering um and going into labor naturally. Um with regard to interventions, like I think doing your own research is always a good idea. Like with regard to that um the Doppler and especially the continuous monitoring, um like listening in on baby here and there is one thing. The continuous monitoring um tends to lead to it's like before that was introduced, we had a very relatively low C-section rate. And with the adding of that monitoring, um, C-section rate has very much gone up because of the, you know, they hear the fetal heart tones and um and then that is extrapolated to mean fetal distress. Um but we the the data is actually not very good. The outcomes for babies are stronger. Um, it's actually neutral or worse with the continuous fetal monitoring. So if possible to request intermittent monitoring, and again, this is like not advice, like go and do your own research on this and like go and look at it because a lot of providers don't necessarily know either. Like I said, the regulations are based on expert consensus, um, which is not always keeping up to date with what the latest um information is happening uh from people who are studying these kinds of things. Um so always, yeah, doing your own research, being healthy, getting your sunlight in the day and having a dark night, um, really focusing on nutrition and especially anchoring with that morning meal is really, really important. Um and, you know, it's not all that much different in pregnancy and all of that compared with any other time of life, the things that you've learned. Um and then when it comes to choosing your birth team, I always recommend like anyone who's in the room with you when you're birthing, just because of the way the oxytocin is working, that you want to be have people that you're comfortable with that you would feel comfortable hugging, that like if they hug you or touch you, you would feel like a warm hug. And if you feel like an aversion or recoil, that that is massively interrupting your process and that it's within your right to ask that person to leave, even if you previously said you could be there. And there are many women, um, myself included, who have, you know, had labor stall. One of my labors was 49 hours long. Eventually I just kicked everyone out of the room. They're like, how can I help? I was like, leave me alone. Like that's when labor actually starts to go. Um, so like, you know, understanding that birth is a social event and that you need to be comfortable with everyone around if you're trying to have that physiological birth. Um, and then yeah, getting to the postpartum, we don't have a whole lot of time to chat about it, but that postpartum lion is extremely important for establishing breastfeeding. And baby's circadian rhythm is um, so it that's another thing about those flashlights and everything, is that baby's first light that they're getting in many cases in these birth suites with the flashlights, especially if they're born at night, they're maybe getting a daytime signal. So their SCN isn't fully mature, but the light pathways from their eyes in, like they can't see very well, but the light makes it in for that circadian cue. So a lot of babies, their first circadian cue is off by a number of hours. So the work to reset and re-entrain baby's circadian rhythm is a little bit more difficult potentially, um, compared with if a birth birth suite was um, you know, properly lighted based on the time of day. Um but yeah, getting to that postpartum lion, you know, all around the world, it's always like, you know, 40 days or, you know, about six weeks or whatever, over a month of time where the main goal is establishing breast milk. Um, because that's where the initial circadian cues are coming from for baby the strongest. Like their strongest, or their strongest circadian cues are the breast milk, um, which has daytime hormones and nighttime hormone profiles, um, and then the social cues and the light cues. And they're less sensitive to darkness because they're not synthesizing a lot of their own melatonin yet. But the darkness is important for the mom. So a warm, um, dark, cozy space is really important for that skin to skin, establishing breast milk, going, getting through the colostrum. Colostrum is extremely high in melatonin. Um, and then moving towards introducing baby to the sunlight, starting um whenever the mom stops bleeding there. So as the mom's bleeding dries up, that's the time to start getting outside and focusing on moving out of that like polyphasic sleep with the baby day in, you know, days and nights are all kind of a blur for that beginning point. And then once she's ready to start going outside, then that's where like what we were talking about. We did earlier in the podcast about getting that two hours of daylight outside if you can. And obviously, moms always are gonna ask me, Oh, but it's winter, what about this? What about that? And so that's why I have like the programs. So I have group programs that people can come and join and connect with other families who are doing it this way. Um and I also do one-to-one uh support for families there because there's there's nuance to it depending on your climate and um your work schedules and all of those kinds of things. Um, but the basics of it are very much just like sync with nature.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:45

Amazing. Well, thank you so much, Nico. And we'll include your details if people want to work with you, I guess, remotely if they live here in Australia or or elsewhere. Yep. Um and yeah, thank thanks for sharing this. I think yeah, it's hopefully the beginning of more I guess circadian obstetrics or circadian antenatal care. Um because it's as we've discussed and you've highlighted this is such a critical part of the process that that women and and teams really need to know more about. So yeah, thank you for sharing your thoughts and uh yeah, really, really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_04 1:21:24

My pleasure. Thanks for having me.