Dave Asprey explains how high cortisol during pregnancy, especially the first trimester, shrinks the fetal amygdala and programs babies for fear-based responses. Embryos with the short 5-HTTLPR allele are most vulnerable. He links this to a surge in unplanned pregnancies during COVID and urges mothers to manage stress through breathing and relaxation.
Those moms that are pregnant, especially within their first trimester, if they are not handling the stresses that again everyone else is faced with right now and their cortisol levels are up, beyond which they were when they were pregnant with little Johnny, the first pregnancy or Susan, their second pregnancy, and now they're pregnant and they've got these elevated cortisol levels, elevated cortisol levels in the mum, the expecting mother, during early brain development in the developing embryo. If that embryo carries the S, another indel, another non SNP phenomena of the SLC684, the 5HTLPR. This is the gene. Well, you are the perfect 5 HTLPR. You're double L. So that's excellent. It's perfect as in susceptible or not susceptible. No, perfect as in you are better. You are more likely to be optimal in your serotonin release and reabsorption. So you are optimal in a healthy, that is the L or lung allele. So you are lung. Dave, if you had the S allele or the short allele, the short version. That's dangerous. Now if you were an embryo, that is an S embryo in the womb of a mother who has elevated cortisol levels, chronically elevated, like right now, the amygdala, Dave, the amygdala of that embryo develops smaller and more compact. The amygdala of that developing baby, that baby is born with brain activity that has a fine here trigger a megdolic response. In other words, they've got more of that reptilian fear based response, dramatically well established. This is so important right now because in la, the businesses that got a lot of extra business right now that are still open are cannabis dispensaries and gun stores. So this is a California thing now. You go up to Canada and the businesses that got a big boom were sex toy sellers. This is not a joke that actually happened. So people are selling out of lube up here in Canada. Now I'm not the first person to forecast that there will be corona boomers about 20 years from now. There are an amazing number of people getting pregnant right now who might not even know it and probably aren't planning it. Most people don't plan to get pregnant in the middle of a pandemic. They just get bored and then, well, hey, you know, one thing leads to another. So if you are pregnant and you're listening to this show, you better start doing some deep breathing. Like right now there is stress in the world and you can put a bubble around your baby energetically. There's all sorts of stuff, but if you don't do that, you're learning on the show right now from a guy who really understands what it does to a baby's brain. 20 years from now, and it's only three months of just, like, seriously just chilling and just taking an hour or two a day and doing whatever it takes. And if you're the guy who got her pregnant, now's the time you just learn these two words that you're going to have to know anyway. They're genetically active, and the two words are yes, dear.
