What we think we know 🤔

about circadian rhythms and pregnancy, birth, and postpartum experiences 🤰

This post kicks off October’s theme: Research! All of this month, we’re going to be focusing on research, asking questions like: what’s the value? what are the limitations?how to find it? how to use it? and how to keep track of it so you don’t just end up with a zillion random links and pdfs cluttering your device? Save your seat in the first workshop here:

Happy October everyone!

We don’t know anything… or do we?

Every once in a while, I find it helpful to get back to the basics.

What are we even talking about with all this scientific mumbo-jumbo and jargon?

Here at Brighter Days, Darker Nights, I’m sharing the joy and power of a healthy relationship with the full electromagnetic spectrum (ie, light of all kinds) while pregnant, birthing and postpartum.

We’re supporting parents, we’re supporting grandparents and other caregivers, and we’re supporting practitioners who serve families through these times.

We also welcome folks without children looking at how their own earlier life experiences now manifest in their health and happiness today.

I know and see all of you in the community and am grateful you are here!

Which describes you?

Does disrupting the connection to the natural circadian rhythms of life cause anything in particular for mamas and their babies?

Trick question! It would be unethical to design a study that proved circadian or quantum disruption caused adverse outcomes for mamas and babies.

So instead, we use passive and hedging language.

What we may know. Is associated with. Correlates. Is linked to.

No matter how compelling the evidence, it’s not allowed to say much of anything definitive here when it comes to cause and effect.

In today’s world, health is either the purview of licensed professionals, or the purview of God.

Regardless of where you sit with your beliefs, I know where I am at with mine.

The warm sun kissed the earth
To consecrate thy birth,
And from his close embrace
Thy radiant face
Sprang into sight,
A blossoming delight.

~ Sarah Orne Jewett
"The Soul of the Sunflower" in Scribner's Magazine, Vol. XXII (October 1881), p. 942

Our life is solar-powered, and I think most modern humans don’t get the solar-power (or matching darkness-rest) they need to thrive.

I explained this to a gardener friend and mentioned the connection to plants.

This is something many in Oregon (ever since the change in the legal status of marijana) capitalize on by changing the light environment (ie, light dep) deliberately to force different rates of cannabis maturation.

Anyways, this connection between how plants depend not only on sunlight but also darkness was the DING! dawning of comprehension for my friend.

If changing a plant’s light/dark cycle affects their health and maturation so drastically, aren’t humans the same? And the truth is, yes, we are.

In fact:

• puberty happens right as childhood levels of the circadian hormone melatonin begin dropping off

• menopause hits when a threshold of lowered melatonin secretion arises

• and senility hits when melatonin secretion becomes negligible

So could artificial light at night (especially in combination with insufficient natural daylight and mistimed eating) cause early puberty, early menopause, or early-onset dementia?

Since we can’t talk about cause & effect in circadian literature, all we can truthfully (and politically correctly) say all these things are surely correlated!

And even more shocking, many of these may be correlated not only to our environments at present, but the environment our mothers were exposed to while we were in the womb.

A robust link exists between circadian rhythm disruption during pregnancy, induced by maternal stressors, and the development of neurodevelopmental disorders (NDDs)¹.

Alachkar, A., et al. (2022).

Notice the passive language here: there’s a “robust link.”

They aren’t saying international travel or shift work or artificial light at night or lack of daytime stimulation or mistimed eating or any of the things that lead to chronodisruption caused an NDD in any particular baby.

They are saying statistically, there’s a strong correlation when you are looking at aggregate human data or when translating findings from animal and in vitro studies.

These links are what makes it so compelling to think about circadian rhythm education becoming a standard part of health education.

What if we could reduce strain on families by helping them stabilize and strengthen their circadian rhythms through this delicate stage of life?

What if doing so helped the entire future of humanity come out less anxious and with less chronic disease?

We did it with getting nutritional counseling into prenatal education… why can’t we begin teaching about the importance of a “light diet” now that we have this inkling light might be playing a such a central role in the lagging maternal-fetal outcome rates in the technologically advanced USA?

Here’s a little snippet from the first scientific review I read that sent me down this research rabbit-hole of light exposure in pregnancy:

Optimal circadian rhythmicity in the mother is important since her circadian clock, either directly or indirectly via the melatonin rhythm, programs the developing master oscillator of the fetus. Experimental studies have shown that disturbed maternal circadian rhythms, referred to as chronodisruption, and perturbed melatonin cycles have negative consequences for the maturing fetal oscillators, which may lead to psychological and behavioral problems in the newborn. To optimize regular circadian rhythms and prevent disturbances of the melatonin cycle during pregnancy, shift work and bright light exposure at night should be avoided, especially during the last trimester of pregnancy².

Source: Reiter, R. J., et al (2014)

In a more recent review highlighting even more research, the authors state:

Given the increasing incidence of shift work, jet travel across time zones, and mistimed eating in our modern society, large numbers of pregnant women are exposed to adverse environmental conditions. These suboptimal maternal conditions have implications for the developing fetus. Maternal chronodisruption affects not only central and peripheral circadian clocks but also a range of endogenous circadian signals including melatonin and glucocorticoid (GC) secretion. Despite most programming effects and reprogramming approaches being examined in animal models, these observations have important translational applications, as they open a new avenue for testing the prevention of adult disease by targeting light and circadian signaling pathways in pregnant women with disrupted circadian rhythms³.

Source: Hsu, C. N., & Tain, Y. L. (2020).

Why I find this so incredibly fascinating and helpful is it fits with my own bias.

I love being in contact with Nature.

I grew up in a highly forested area of Southern Oregon, and spent long hours outside as a child.

Here’s one of my favorite photos of me as a forest-child:

I shared some about this background my recent podcast interview on Quantumly Healthy (including my young self’s commitment to always live a life that allowed me time to barefoot each day).

Quantum recovery from addiction in pregnancy and parenting

When I left home at age 18 to go to university in the city, I forgot my intention to practice Earthing and spend time touching Nature every day.

And I got sick.

My immune system did not handle the city well, and normal doctors couldn’t help me.

What helped me was a return to Nature’s ancient, patient and welcoming arms.

ᛞ Dæg bẏþ drihtnes sond, 
deore mannum,
mære metodes leoht, 
mẏrgþ and tohihteadgum and earmum, 
eallum brice.

Day, the glorious light of the Creator
is sent by the Lord; 
it is beloved of men, 
a source of hope and happiness to rich and poor, 
and of service to all.

This whole circadian and quantum lifestyle is about harmonizing with Nature and has very tangible effects when you try out the practices.

I think it’s really great news the circadian science boils down to some really simple daily habits for pregnancy and raising a young family:

1. Turn the overhead lights off at sunset.

2. Stop eating carbohydrates at sunset.

3. Between dusk and dawn, try not to allow your pupils to constrict… let your pupils and night vision instead open up wide.

4. When you wake up, go outside before turning on any overhead lights or looking at any backlit screens (no matter what clock-time it is).

5. Eat and move your body during day—don’t fast in the morning and don’t sit around inside all day.

6. Touch grass, trees, bare Earth, and natural bodies of water as often as you can.

7. Maintain 18 inches or more of distance between you and manmade electrical devices as much as you can.

Electromagnetic hygiene can be tricky when you get into urban environments (just ask any building biologist!).

And as you progress, you may also start wondering things like: What should you eat for breakfast? Are these particular artificial lights any better or worse than the ones I use now? What should I do about my neighbor’s light? Can red light devices replace sunlight?

These are great questions to ask in our upcoming Lifestyle and Implementation Q&A! Here’s where you can save your seat in the upcoming community events:

But really, the basic question you can use as your light metric is this: is what you are doing right now at this moment moving you closer or farther from the natural thing that is happening outside the window at present? Is there a way you could get closer (without causing yourself harm—obviously we are avoiding extremes of desert noon and polar blizzards)?

When it comes to circadian and quantum health, as long as you are getting closer to mimicking the natural environment surrounding your home—as long as you are getting closer to what your great- great- grandmother’s light and electromagnetic environment was like—you are probably on the right track!

This is primal light. This is paleo light. This is yet another way (of many) to make meaningful connection with Nature, Creator, Spirit, Source, God, and the Divine through the ever-present Living Universe.

1. Alachkar, Amal & Lee, Justine & Asthana, Kalyani & Vakil Monfared, Roudabeh & Chen, Jiaqi & Alhassen, Sammy & Samad, Muntaha & Wood, Marcelo & Mayer, Emeran & Baldi, Pierre. (2022). The hidden link between circadian entropy and mental health disorders. Translational Psychiatry. 12. 281. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41398-022-02028-3

2. Reiter, R. J., Tan, D. X., Korkmaz, A., & Rosales-Corral, S. A. (2014). Melatonin and stable circadian rhythms optimize maternal, placental and fetal physiology. Human reproduction update, 20(2), 293–307. https://doi.org/10.1093/humupd/dmt054

3. Hsu, C. N., & Tain, Y. L. (2020). Light and Circadian Signaling Pathway in Pregnancy: Programming of Adult Health and Disease. International journal of molecular sciences, 21(6), 2232. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijms21062232