Capacity for love and labor + invitation to class exploring synergy between melatonin and oxytocin
Early life experiences can facilitate (or impede) love and labor through circadian regulatory functions
Oxytocin, the “hug” hormone, and melatonin, the “sleep” hormone, are similarly involved in many processes of growth, resilience, and healing across the entire lifespan.
Though essential to wellbeing, oxytocin remains mysterious to us in many ways. It is a facilitator of most forms of social activity as well as health and wellness. In the context of the perinatal period, we might first think of oxytocin in terms of labor. Oxytocin is vital to the labor process.
Oxytocin has also been explored as a possible panacea for many forms of human woe1. It is a core hormone for all mammals—and the first of the peptide hormones to be synthesized by humans in a lab. While the molecule of oxytocin itself is relatively simple, significant complications stop us from being…