Pregnancy

Introduction

Pregnancy is fundamentally a state of heightened metabolic activity in which the mother's body must sustain not only her own needs but also the rapidly developing fetus. The quality of this gestation depends on the interplay of nutrition, hormones, and energy production.

Progesterone is the most protective hormone the body produces, and the large amounts that are produced during pregnancy result from the developing baby's need for protection from the stressful environment. During healthy pregnancy, progesterone rises steadily, often reaching levels far above non-pregnant concentrations, providing anti-inflammatory and pro-metabolic support for both mother and child.

Thyroid and pregnenolone and vitamin E are as important for male fertility as thyroid and progesterone and vitamin E are for female fertility. The metabolic demands of pregnancy require robust thyroid function to convert cholesterol into the protective steroids (progesterone, pregnenolone, DHEA) that maintain a healthy pregnancy.

A good high thyroid metabolism, keeping your blood sugar steady, letting you keep the progesterone increasing, not letting the estrogen get out of proportion is essential because estrogen dominance triggers cortisol production, cortisol triggers premature delivery. Thus, sugar intake should remain high enough to prevent cortisol from rising and potentially terminating the pregnancy.

The sugar is the primary limiting factor for brain growth. Experiments showed that if a little bit of insulin was given, lowering the mother's blood sugar, the cell division in the fetus's brain came to a stop. If estrogen was added, the same thing happened: blood sugar dipped, the brain stopped growing.

The ratio of progesterone to estrogen is critical. Some fertility clinics found that women whose progesterone was not 50 times or more higher than the estrogen were the ones who didn't get pregnant. If they had 50 to 100 times as much progesterone as estrogen, they were the ones that would get pregnant.

Nutrition

(should be sorted by importance)

Protein

"Toxemia of pregnancy, or preeclampsia, is a state of generalized inflammation... it was caused by malnutrition, and could be cured by adequate protein, salt, and calcium." - Ray Peat, citing Tom Brewer's work

It's essential to get at least 100 grams of protein per day, and plenty of calcium, for example at least two quarts of milk.

Gelatin/glycine

Gelatin lacks the excitatory amino acids (tryptophan, cysteine, methionine) that promote overgrowth, inflammation, and tumor growth when consumed in excess. It provides glycine and proline, protective, stabilizing amino acids. People selling "collagen" are really selling gelatin, which serves to balance muscle meat protein and prevent unnecessary tissue stimulation.

For pregnant women eating adequate protein from muscle meat, balancing with gelatin is particularly important since the goal is controlled fetal development, not inflammatory overgrowth.

See Tryptophan:Glycine ratio

Gelatin also helps to stabilize the skin and can help prevent discomfort and stretchmarks on the belly.

Vitamin A

Vitamin A is essential for making pregnenolone, progesterone, DHEA, and their derivatives. The brain is probably the most powerful steroid-forming organ when it's working right, and vitamin A is essential for making those.

Stretch marks https://x.com/i/status/2038981137633292400

Vitamin D

We need probably 5,000 IUs/day for adults. If a person is overweight, it might take more. The research using 500 units instead of 5,000 units concluded vitamin D didn't do anything, but you have to actually get serum vitamin D up.

Keeping serum vitamin D around 50 ng/ml, along with adequate vitamin A, calcium, trace minerals, and other nutrients while avoiding polyunsaturated fats, greatly reduces the risk of viral infections.

Vitamin D, Sunlight also helps set the baby's sleep schedule and reduces endotoxin. Time in the sun greatly effects reduction of all negative symptoms of pregnancy. Vit D plays role in management of thyroid hormone

Vitamin K is an important companion to vitamin D for calcium metabolism

Magnesium

Cells need good thyroid function to retain magnesium because it exists in cells combined with the ATP molecule. You need thyroid to make ATP, which retains magnesium. If thyroid is low, cell ATP goes down, magnesium is released, calcium goes into the cell causing cramps and excitability.

A woman with uterine cramps could relieve the pain and cramps in just 5-10 minutes after taking magnesium carbonate. Magnesium glycinate has the fewest complaints regarding allergic reactions.

Magnesium, should be also used often to assist in chromosomal stability. Can be used to help prevent twins or possibly lowered to create them. Also helps in prevention of birth defects. Assists in maintaining low estrogen/liver function ect by promoting good bowel movements

Salt

"Salt is often the most important thing for pregnancy nausea. Two quarts of milk daily, cheese, eggs, and orange juice, but with anything salty, even sips of salty water first thing in the morning, should stop it." - Ray Peat

The old medical advice to restrict salt during pregnancy was devastating, causing reduced blood volume, stressed pregnancies, and damaged babies.

Blood sugar and brain development

"The amount of brain development in the case of a chicken isn't developmental, it's environmental... if your glucose is limited after the six months of pregnancy, the brain stops developing." - Ray Peat

Ray cited experiments where lowering the mother's blood sugar with insulin or estrogen caused fetal brain cell division to stop completely. Deficiency acts as a stressor, so adequate sugar intake supports the high progesterone and prevents the cortisol spikes that trigger premature delivery.

Coffee

During pregnancy generally considered protective in reasonable amounts

What to avoid

PUFA

Maternal PUFA consumption causes serious problems in offspring including:

• Early puberty (a major chronic disease risk factor)
• Hyper-estrogenism
• Increased aggressiveness
• Even alcoholism in animal studies

PUFA is fundamentally estrogenic, which is precisely what you want to avoid during pregnancy.

Fish oil

In a French study, pregnant women given PUFA supplements had babies who learned more slowly in utero and were born with smaller brains. This had already been shown in the 1960s and 70s in animals, mothers fed diets high in unsaturated fat had babies born small-brained and slow learners, while those fed saturated fat had bigger brains and learned faster.

Studies comparing prenatal exposure to corn oil versus coconut oil found babies exposed to corn oil had smaller brains and weren't very smart, while those exposed to coconut oil had bigger brains and were more intelligent.

Antibiotics

"Antibiotics generally shouldn't be used during pregnancy. Sulfur (precipitated or sublimed) can be mixed into a slurry with water and patted onto the area. Dissolved aspirin used with it increases the antiseptic effect." - Ray Peat

Paracetamol

Prenatal paracetamol has been showed to prevent masculinization of the brain, instead use aspirin.

Endocrine disruptors

Avoiding endocrine disruptors (phthalates in cosmetics, BPA/BPS in plastics) is important, as they lower progesterone and allopregnanolone, contributing to premature birth and postpartum depression.

Smoke exposure is another significant disruptor worth mentioning.

Hormones

The metabolism-gestation connection

Human pregnancy is controlled primarily by the amounts of progesterone produced by the mother while pregnant. When the baby reaches a size that the metabolism of the mother and hence the production of progesterone cannot maintain any longer, labor occurs. This connects the thyroid-progesterone-metabolism triad elegantly.

Thyroid function

(primary fertility hormone, prevents toxemia)

Ray considered thyroid more important than progesterone for fertility itself:

"Even before getting pregnant... thyroid hormone for both men and women is the most important single fertility hormone there is. I've known dozens of men and women who were unable to get pregnant. Usually the very first month they supplement thyroid, they're pregnant. Some of them after 10 or 15 years of trying." - Ray Peat

Broda Barnes delivered over 2,000 babies and never had a case of preeclampsia simply by prescribing thyroid as needed, where statistically 100 cases would have been expected.

Cynomel baby

"Just delivered first cytomel baby, healthy 8lb girl." (1956)

The offsprings of mothers who used thyroid supplementation (Cynomel/Cytomel is a brand of T3, triiodothyronine) during pregnancy. These children have been observed to have superior development.

Because thyroid hormone supports progesterone production and glucose utilization, thyroid supplementation during pregnancy works synergistically with progesterone to optimize fetal brain development. The carbon dioxide that should be produced under the influence of thyroid has a relaxing sedative effect on the uterus, helping to prevent premature labor while also ensuring adequate oxygen and glucose delivery to the developing brain.

Zamenhof's studies suggested that these hormones probably have their effects largely through their actions on glucose, though they also affect the availability of oxygen in the same way, and have a variety of direct effects on brain cells that would operate toward the same end.

Thyroid, CO2 and respiration

People have less dementia, heart disease, and cancer at very high altitudes and live longer, likely mostly due to retaining the proper amount of carbon dioxide. Lower oxygen tension at altitude allows more CO2 retention, which stabilizes cellular function and suppresses lactic acid production.

Pregnant women with low thyroid are effectively hyperventilating, low thyroid people hyperventilate and blow away the carbon dioxide they should be keeping in their cells. The supplement of baking soda imitates normal thyroid function by keeping cells more charged with CO2. This has implications for pregnancy outcomes.

Progesterone

All of the animal studies say that the best pregnancies turn out when progesterone has continued to rise steadily right up to the last days of pregnancy.

Link to Progesterone#Natural production

Progesterone helps tissue flexibility for easier birth and to prevent tissue damage while pregnant

Cortisol-progesterone antagonism in preterm birth

Progesterone maintains pregnancy by both increasing metabolism and blocking the effects of cortisol. Before onset of labor, progesterone levels rapidly drop and cortisol levels rise. Stress (cortisol) causes pre-term birth by blocking progesterone receptor function in the uterus.

Cortisol is highly antagonistic to progesterone, it both directly inhibits synthesis of progesterone and activates aromatase, so elevated cortisol results both in deficiency of progesterone and excess of estrogen.

Women with fertility issues had elevated cortisol levels, and lowering cortisol improved chances of conception.

Progesterone and brain development

"Both animal and human studies have shown that providing larger than average amounts of progesterone during fetal development results in larger than average brains and superior abilities in the offspring." - Ray Peat

Progesterone's brain-protective effects antagonize estrogen, cortisol, and aldosterone - hormones that interfere with glucose oxidation.

"It seems likely that a basic part of progesterone's ability to protect the brain against stress is its support for the high energy mitochondrial oxidation of glucose to carbon dioxide." - Ray Peat, Progesterone in Orthomolecular Medicine

Stephen Zamenhof's experiments also showed glucose and progesterone increase brain size in chicken embryo

Progesterone babies

Progesterone babies are those exposed to supplemented progesterone during pregnancy, distinct from natural placental production.

• First wave (early 1900s): Desiccated corpus luteum used for fertility, as with Ray Peat's mother; linked to maternal well-being but limited child data.
• Second wave (1960s): Katharina Dalton's work with British students, including gypsies; associated with high IQ (e.g., 162 in a gypsy girl and traits like independence, sensitivity, self-assurance; estrogen-exposed subjects were more group-oriented
• Third wave: Anecdotal online reports of children with IQ 148, advanced development (early walking/talking at 10 months, large head circumference, strong-willed nature).

Katharina Dalton, treating women for PMS with progesterone, found that their babies were averaging about 130 IQ compared to 96 IQs in their older siblings who were untreated - a 34-point improvement just from progesterone supplementation during pregnancy with a later follow-up study showing that more progesterone children stayed in school past 16, had higher rates of O-level and A-level passes and even more university admissions, with the best academic results in those whose mothers had received over 5 grams of prenatal progesterone with administration commencing before the sixteenth week and treatment lasted longer than eight. (comparing 34 progesterone-exposed children, 37 normal controls,12 toxemia controls)

The pups from dogs treated with oral progesterone not only prevented miscarriage, but had bigger brains and were trainable, Afghan dogs, typically considered untrainable.

Progesterone exposure fosters individualistic traits, contrasting estrogen's group focus.

Such babies are rare, understudied, and culturally marginalized.

Cholesterol requirements

Progesterone production depends directly on cholesterol availability. In one experiment, the amount of progesterone coming out of an ovary corresponded directly to the amount of cholesterol going in. Artificially low cholesterol (via statins or poor diet) impairs protective hormone production. This is especially relevant given mainstream advice to lower cholesterol.

Pregnenolone

The prenatal environment can imprint a pattern of hormone balance that tends to persist, and with a good balance of nutrients and thyroid function, the protective progesterone, pregnenolone, and DHEA are produced sufficiently.

Estrogen

Estrogen is the real danger, excess estrogen during pregnancy leads to fetal death, retardation, and subsequent health problems including breast cancer. The whole DES tragedy exemplified this (diethylstilbestrol being sold to "prevent miscarriage", an important cautionary tale about trusting medical authority during pregnancy), yet medicine pushed synthetic estrogens on pregnant women for decades.

Even the tiniest bit of extra estrogen caused embryos not to implant in the first week; the second week when implanted, it took just a little more estrogen to kill the embryo and cause miscarriage. Each week of advanced development required progressively more estrogen to cause miscarriage. This was known in the 1930s, yet the estrogen industry managed to convince the world that estrogen was not only the female hormone but was helpful for pregnancy and preventing miscarriages.

"Estrogen by creating inflammation and inefficient metabolism in the uterus causes reduced... the estrogen is wasting both glucose and oxygen and so it's starving the tissues and will cause miscarriage because it kills the embryo and causes inflammation and contraction of the uterus so that both damages the embryo and tends to expel it prematurely." - Ray Peat

The dissertation advisor showed that at each stage of pregnancy, increasing doses of estrogen would cause miscarriage, from preventing implantation to aborting at any stage. Even a tiny bit of extra estrogen could prevent implantation in the first week.

Woman's estrogen balance during pregnancy strongly corresponds to the risk of autism

Serotonin

"High serotonin during pregnancy and neonatal development seems like a terrible recipe for autism and stress-related diseases later in life." - Ray Peat

Serotonin causes "uterine contractions, intestinal contractions, and inflammation" and "if there's too much serotonin, causes miscarriages in pregnancy or premature delivery." Anti-serotonin substances are protective. This connects to avoiding tryptophan-heavy foods like whey protein.

Hazards and disease

Toxemia/Preeclampsia

Toxemia of pregnancy, or preeclampsia, is a state of generalized inflammation that was historically understood to be caused by malnutrition and could be cured by adequate protein, salt, and calcium.

Causes

In outline, we can visualize a chain of causality beginning with a diet deficient in protein, impairing liver function, producing inability to store glycogen, to inactivate estrogen and insulin, and to activate thyroid. Low protein and high estrogen cause increased tendency of the blood to clot. High estrogen destroys the liver's ability to produce albumin.

Low thyroid causes sodium to be lost. The loss of sodium albuminate causes tissue edema, while the blood volume is decreased. Decreased blood volume and hemoconcentration impair the circulation. Blood pressure increases. Blood sugar becomes unstable, cortisol rises, increasing the likelihood of premature labor.

The nutritional problem is usually worse than a simple protein deficiency. B vitamin deficiencies alone are enough to cause the liver's underactivity, and to cause estrogen dominance, and a simple vitamin A deficiency causes an inability to use protein efficiently or to make progesterone, and in itself mimics some of the effects of estrogen. Anything that causes a thyroid deficiency will make the problem worse.

In a group of preeclamptics, plasma volume was 39% below that of normal pregnant women.

Cures

• Protein: Tom Brewer showed that a protein deficiency was the main historical cause of eclampsia in pregnancy. Just making sure that they were getting at least 100 grams a day of good protein, 130 grams would be good, but lots of pregnant women were having only 30 grams a day of protein, far too little.
• Salt: Shanklin and Houghton's book reported two experiments in Australia in which women with signs of developing toxemia were given supplementary salt. One group got six grams of extra sodium per day. The other one, 20 grams of extra salt per day. And in both cases, they were immediately relieved of the toxemic symptoms just by the salt.
  • The way the salt works is to allow the albumin in your blood to bind water and keep it in your bloodstream. Low thyroid, poorly nourished women lose sodium easily in the urine. Thyroid causes a proper level of sodium retention. And the sodium associated with the albumin binds water, keeping the blood volume up.
• Thyroid: Thyroid therapy alone has had spectacular success in treating and preventing eclampsia. Broda Barnes, who prescribed thyroid as needed, delivered more than 2,000 babies and never had a case of pre-eclampsia, though statistically 100 would have been expected.
• Progesterone: Researchers found that a single injection of progesterone could sometimes eliminate the signs of toxemia for the remainder of the pregnancy.
• Aspirin: Aspirin seems to protect the fetus against intrauterine growth retardation, an effect that relates to aspirin's ability to protect in several ways against excesses of unsaturated fatty acids and of estrogen.

Pesticides

Multiple studies and reviews show that exposure to certain pesticides (especially organochlorines and endocrine-disrupting ones) is linked to reduced female fertility, menstrual irregularities, hormonal disruption, and higher risk of miscarriage or infertility.

Endotoxin

Activates serotonin and inflammatory cascades, increasing estrogen. Saturated fats (coconut oil, butter) help restore gut barrier and reduce endotoxin load. This ties together several existing sections (serotonin, PUFA, nutrition) into a coherent mechanism.

Link to Managing endotoxin

Postpartum depression

"Happens in women with a history of stress, difficult pregnancy, difficult birth... the burden of going through the pregnancy and birth when you're building the baby's body and brain if you don't have enough calcium available in your diet for example you increase your parathyroid hormone and take calcium out of your bones." - Ray Peat

The same conditions that produce PMS, if not corrected by the placenta's progesterone production, will produce preeclampsia, toxemia of pregnancy, eclampsia, and postpartum depression.

Low food contributes significantly.

Treatment plan

The treatment from the book "Depression After Childbirth: How to Recognise, Treat, and Prevent Postnatal Depression" by Katharina Dalton and Wendy Holton schedule advises that from the completion of labour the patient is given 100 mg of progesterone by injection daily for seven days, followed by a 400-mg progesterone suppository twice daily until the return of menstruation. As the women have all previously experienced symptoms of PND, they are advised that, should there be any suggestion of a return of mild early symptoms, they may increase their daily dose of suppositories to four or six daily, or even return to daily injections if preferred.

All women are different and so too are their early warning signs, but each woman will recognize her own constellation of symptoms.

While Katharina Dalton's information is very helpful, the wax suppository doses are inferior in absorption to Ray Peat's Progest-E.

Dosing based off her recommendations are difficult to determine as a result.

She also has recommendations for progesterone as a contraceptive. Same dosage issues if using Progest-E apply:

Progesterone as a contraceptive

Progesterone can be used as a contraceptive quite safely for women who have severe PMS or are at risk of PND following delivery. The contraceptive dose is half a 200-mg progesterone suppository daily from Day 8 until Day 14, when it should be increased to the patient's usual dose: 400 mg two, three, or four times daily until menstruation. This is specially useful for those women who cannot tolerate the oral contraceptive pill and are considering what form of contraception to use in the postnatal months (see Box). The efficacy of progesterone as a contraceptive is equal to that of the progestogen-only pill; Dr Mark Steward and I have reported on this in the British Journal of Family Planning in 1995. Progesterone can be used for contraception if 100-mg suppository given daily from Day 8, increased on Day 14 to usual dose needed for PMS, and continued until menstruation.

Protective supplements

(vitamin E, vitamin K, aspirin's safety record)

Aspirin

"Aspirin has a good record of safety in pregnancy, paracetamol doesn't. It became the most commonly used analgesic, displacing aspirin, because of advertising, not science" - Ray Peat

Aspirin has been studied in women with miscarriage tendency or preeclampsia risk and improved the health of their babies. Aspirin has a track record in pregnancy safety, paracetamol doesn't. It became the most commonly used analgesic, displacing aspirin, because of advertising, not science. Aspirin has been studied mainly in women with a tendency to miscarry or to develop preeclampsia, and it improved the health of their babies.

It is helpful but in lower doses, but should be avoided around labor because it could cause excess bleeding. Doses should not exceed 325mg and balanced with adequate Vitamin K.

Vitamin E

Vitamin E was historically known as "the fertility vitamin" and prevents:

• Miscarriage (by increasing oxygen delivery to the embryo)
• Clotting disorders in pregnancy
• The damage caused by accumulated PUFAs

Ray's mentor Arnold Soderwall showed that increasing vitamin E progressively could maintain fertility into middle age.

Niacinamide

Helps me significantly with any swelling that salt, thyroid, and progesterone can't touch. Very protective for all the usual reasons

Bowel health and cascara

Regular bowel movements are essential to keep the baby free of stress and endotoxin also to avoid swelling. Movement of the baby out of the pelvis as it grows and significant positional changes due to size or preparation for delivery cause signicifcant stress to the intestines.

Cascara has structural analogies to vitamin K, coenzyme Q, and progesterone, and "reinforces all of the good processes" rather than supporting inflammatory ones It is "anti-inflammatory, anti-carcinogenic, helps to reduce anxiety... increases energy production the way thyroid and progesterone do". Thyroid should motivate bowel movements, but cascara can be helpful when constipation persists.

Baking soda

Baking soda imitates normal thyroid function by keeping cells more charged with CO2

More in Thyroid and CO2 and respiration

Symptoms and defficiencies

Scalp hair diameter increases during pregnancy due to progesterone increase.

Light & sleep

Importance of light exposure during pregnancy.

Sunlight

Vitamin D and sunlight also helps set the baby's sleep schedule and reduces endotoxin. Time in the sun greatly effects reduction of all negative symptoms of pregnancy. Vit D plays role in management of thyroid hormone

Red light

Red light's good effects come from restoring oxidative metabolism even in just short exposure, reduces inflammation and can improve sleep quality.

Chinese study found that red light after 14 days of nightly exposure "not only improved the depth of the sleep but it improved the athletic performance the next day after the good sleep following the red light treatment." Red light quenches excited electrons and free radicals, with experiments showing frogs survived lethal gamma ray doses when given red light immediately after.

The stress of darkness

Night and winter are where most aging degeneration takes place. Things that maintain glucose supply and prevent blocking hormones from rising will prevent deterioration of mitochondria during the night.

"During the night, the lack of light causes a developing stress... The parathyroid hormone rises during the night and it exacerbates things because it inhibits energy production... The combination of parathyroid hormone and cortisol rising very steeply during the night takes your energy down and breaks down your bones." - Ray Peat

Milk at bedtime was found to greatly lower night stress and reduce the surge of these stress hormones.

Likelihood of male or female offspring

The sex of offspring is not simply a random genetic lottery. Environmental conditions, hormonal milieu, and stress levels during conception and early pregnancy can influence whether more males or females are born.

To concieve more sons:

• High-salt diet (high sodium/potassium, low calcium/magnesium).
• Intercourse close to ovulation (Shettles method, 80-85% claimed success).
• Alkaline vaginal douche (baking soda solution).
• Abundant glucose (e.g., pregestational diabetes increases male ratio).
• Low-stress conditions (males more stress-sensitive).
• High sodium/potassium mineral intake (Stolkowski et al., 75-80% success).

To concieve more daughters:

• Low-salt diet (low sodium, high calcium/magnesium).
• Intercourse 3-4 days before ovulation (Noorlander et al., ~58% success).
• Acidic vaginal douche (vinegar solution).
• High-stress conditions (e.g., disasters, hypothyroidism raise female ratio).
  • High maternal TSH in first trimester linked to lowered sex ratio at birth
  • Schizophrenic women had offspring sex ratio of 0.8 males:1 female
• Low glucose availability (e.g., type 1 diabetes lowers male ratio).
• High calcium/magnesium diet (Stolkowski et al., 75-80% success).

• Y-sperm faster but fragile (favor alkaline/fast timing); X-sperm slower/hardier (favor acidic/early timing).

• Stress, poor health, depletion favor daughters (female fetuses/resilient X-sperm survive better).

Temperature and environmental stress

In non-mammalian species, the relationship between environment and offspring sex is more obvious, "temperature, hormones, stress hormones, in fish and reptiles, birds even, the temperature is very essential to developing the ratio."

In alligators and birds, warmer conditions tend to shift the sex ratio in specific directions. Chickens show similar temperature-dependent patterns early in the season. While mammals have genetic sex determination (XX/XY), environmental factors can still influence which embryos survive and develop.

Estrogen, etress, and the female bias

When asked about the recent statistics showing more girls being born worldwide, Ray affirmed that aside from endocrine disruptors that are known to be estrogenic, "it could also be a sign that the conditions are deteriorating in our environment and the human race basically is producing more women in order to have a higher chance of survival. That sounds very reasonable."

This makes evolutionary sense: "If the environment is not good, it's better to have more females than males because one male can essentially ensure the continuation, but if you have equal amount or more males it becomes more difficult to reproduce."

Radiation and male survival

Ernest Sternglass studied the effects of radiation on miscarriages and the ratio of boys surviving. He showed that at the peak of atmosperic contamination from the 1963 atmospheric testing of nuclear bombs, there were significant effects on the ratio of males to females surviving to birth, with males being more vulnerable.

Radiation damage to the developing embryo and fetus affects males more severely, as male development requires more precise hormonal signaling and is more energy-intensive.

Practical implications

Given that stress, estrogenic environmental pollutants, and suboptimal metabolic conditions favor female offspring:

1. Reducing stress through adequate nutrition, sleep, and lifestyle factors may help normalize sex ratios
2. Avoiding endocrine disruptors (plastics, pesticides, industrial chemicals) may reduce environmental estrogen exposure
3. Optimizing metabolism with adequate thyroid function, progesterone, and blood sugar regulation creates conditions associated with more balanced offspring ratios
4. Adequate protein and nutrients support the more energetically demanding male developmental pathway

The shift toward more female births in modern populations may be an adaptive response to deteriorating environmental conditions, reflecting widespread exposure to stress, radiation, and estrogenic compounds.

Heredity

The conventional view of heredity as rigidly determined by genes has been challenged by research into epigenetics and imprinting.

Recent work in several areas of biology is showing that heredity is not rigidly deterministic, in the way implied by traditional genetics, and it is opening the way for the development of therapies for incurable, chronic, or congenital problems, in natural and holistic ways that don't involve the mechanistic interventions of "gene therapy" or "genetic engineering."

Genomic and hormonal imprinting

"Genetic imprinting" is being studied mainly in terms of the covering of regions of DNA with methyl groups. Sections of DNA that have been methylated can be passed on to offspring in that form, and they can be traced as a pattern of gene activity or inactivity. The maternal genes function in a manner identifiably different from the paternal genes. Having passed through the mother's body, the genes have been modified.

"Hormonal imprinting" refers to the great changes in sensitivity to hormones (and related substances) that persist after exposure to that substance early in life. When the mother's hormones are imbalanced during pregnancy or nursing, the baby is "imprinted" with an altered sensitivity to hormones.

Prenatal environment shapes the offspring

We might think of the "optimal brain development" of a person, or a rat, or a chicken, as something which is clearly limited by "the genes." But if rats are given a stimulating environment, each generation gets a slightly bigger, slightly more intelligent brain. If rats are treated during pregnancy to increase the amount of progesterone, the offspring have bigger brains and learn more efficiently.

The ratio of the person's brain to body and their longevity, life expectancy, and the amount of energy they have at any stage of life is pretty much set by the intrauterine condition.

The prenatal environment can imprint a pattern of hormone balance, especially hypothyroidism, that tends to persist until new patterns can be formed, and that usually requires prolonged supplementation and a very good diet.

Breaking the chain

Leonell Strong, a cancer researcher, demonstrated something remarkable: Strong found that a single treatment, or a series of treatments, with an extract of liver, or with certain nucleosides (the units for constructing DNA), could reverse the course of generations of breeding, and eliminate the susceptibility to cancer.

We are "imprinted" by our mothers' hormonal and nutritional conditions, but we can intervene to correct these "inherited" conditions, by maintaining optimal hormonal and nutritional balances.

More in Epigenetics

Breastfeeding

Breast milk provides not just nutrition but also hormones essential for the infant's development. Based on the baby's saliva the mother adjucts the nutritional content and even "medicine" based on the baby's state and requirements.

Thyroid in breast milk

Milk contains some thyroid. So babies who otherwise would be cretins, as long as they're breastfed, they don't need a thyroid gland. They get enough thyroid in their mother's milk.

After Three Mile Island, a lot of babies were born without thyroid glands, but no one noticed the breastfed babies didn't have a thyroid until they were weaned and then they became hypothyroid drastically.

Milk quality depends on the mother

Cow milk is the next best thing to human milk, and sometimes it's better because cow's milk is built on nutrients that have passed through the fermenting rumen and cleaned up, detoxified of lots of things such as unnecessary polyunsaturated fatty acids. The woman has no rumen, and so everything in her diet tends to go into the formation of milk. And that means that if the mother is not eating well, her milk can be worse than cow's milk. Breast milk is naturally sweet, so when transitioning babies to cow milk, adding sugar and a touch of salt can help mimic the composition. Babies often self-wean to sweetened milk once they've reached a certain growth threshold.

Breastfeeding women often have the experience that if they eat certain foods, the baby becomes constipated or develops related symptoms because the allergens go right into the milk.

History of anti-nreastfeeding sentiment

From 1930 to 1960s the medical profession was heavily discouraging breastfeeding, prescribing even heavy doses of estrogen to dry up lactation to cause premature atrophy of the breast, and lots of women died from blood clots and strokes in the time when they should have been lactating because of treating them with such high doses of estrogen.

Finally in the 1950s and 60s studies were being done showing that breastfeeding produces better development of the face. The shape of the mouth and jaws is altered when a bottle is substituted for breastfeeding.

Problems with formula

The defenders of the formulas have created their own nutritional standards incorporating all of this mystical stuff about the essentiality of PUFA and analysis of many baby formulas has found that naturally when they put polyunsaturated fats in a dehydrated formula everything that's dehydrated is going to be degraded by oxidation and so if there's PUFA in the powdered formula it is highly oxidized and toxic.

Supporting milk production

To increase milk production: drinking orange juice and milk. I've seen non-producers get their normal milk production up if they drank a quart of orange juice for a day or two.