Third module: Reducing excessive blood cell turnover by nurturing strong maternal circadian rhythms
Third module: Reducing excessive blood cell turnover by nurturing strong maternal circadian rhythms
Learn how the circadian rhythm controls timing during pregnancy and early infancy, and what the strength of the mother's circadian timing can do for baby
Circadian science is new(ish) frontier that may have the answers to pregnancy problems that have puzzled scientists for decades (such as preeclampsia, genetic expression, hormonal cycles, and more). The circadian rhythm is how our bodies know what to do, when. It controls things like the sleep/wake cycle, but also things like cell creation/destruction timing.
The current paradigm says babies don’t have a circadian rhythm of their own.
It says babies grow using their mother’s circadian rhythm in the womb, and then are born without a rhythm of their own at all. After birth, they are thought to slowly entrain to their environment.
Yet, earlier research shows that babies do have a circadian rhythm that begins to develop in the womb. For example, preterm infants as early as 31 weeks respond visually to the light/dark cycle. The problem is this fragile fetal rhythm might be getting obliterated by the maternal circadian disruption so universal due to inappropriate lighting choices and lack of time outside.
What causes maternal chronodisruption?
Light is the primary driver of circadian rhythms, so based nighttime light pollution alone, we could predict that about 99% of mothers in the US are experiencing some level of circadian disruption. This nighttime light factor doesn’t account for the more individual lifestyle choices, such as lack of sunshine or mistimed eating patterns.
So, who knows, it could be that bad that today’s babies don’t just not have a circadian rhythm, but have an obliterated circadian rhythm. This is nothing to dismiss, as we are learning that maternal chronodisruption has lifelong consequences for babies.
How does a newborn’s circadian rhythm work?
In the conventional model it takes about 5 weeks for a baby to begin showing markers of the beginning of circadian entrainment. Yet a case study of a newborn who was only exposed to natural light began showing those same markers at 1 week of age!
The circadian rhythm controls the timing of all major processes in the body.
With newborn jaundice, we have all these babies coming in with their blood cell production/destruction going out of whack. Isn't this suspicious in the era of pervasive unrecognized circadian disruption? After all, the circadian rhythm is what is suppost to be controlling that timing.
Conventional narratives just say, yeah, some babies turn their blood over faster than their bodies can handle. We don’t know why, but we have these phototherapy lights that can help clean up the aftermath.
Or, in the case of the doctors who use wet-cupping, they say, oh, well, if we just take some blood out, the baby won’t have so much turnover to deal with.
Both perspectives avoid looking at the root cause of excessive turnover of blood cells in the baby.
This is just one of many reasons we need to be looking more closely at the circadian entrainment of babies, even while they are in the womb. We could all be preparing babies—while in the womb—so they are more ready to adapt and get their circadian rhythms synchronized as soon as possible after birth. We’ll get into the specific pro-circadian choices families can make before and after the birth later in this course. (And, this helps the whole family sleep better and avoid postpartum depression and other adverse outcomes, too.)
For now, here are some foundational papers to read about how the circadian rhythm controls the body, how lifestyle choices affect the circadian rhythm, and how this relates to pregnancy and newborns.
Reading for Module 3:
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