The Feminine Blueprint: Why Ancestral Cultures May Hold the Key to Modern Women’s Health with Mary Ruddick PT 2

Before we begin, a gentle note. This conversation touches on sexual abuse. It's not graphic, but it is real. If that's a tender thread for you, please listen with care or not at all. Your well-being comes first. Thank you. Welcome, welcome. Last time, Mary shared her perspective on strength, community, and how traditional cultures are redefining modern wellness. In part two, we get into the science of the birth microbiome. What's really behind the rise in infertility and mental illness, and practical ways to reclaim health and reconnect in today's world. Mary Ruddick is a medical nutritionist, global health researcher, and one of the most insightful voices on ancestral wellness, and I consider her a friend. This is Everyday Ancestral. Let's pick up right where we left off.

I think you are more qualified than anyone to answer this. It's like, so what can we do to change the tide? What can we do? You know, the simplest steps that we can start to do to right-side this human journey.

I would say as a family, as a friend, as a person in the community, a great deal more kindness Validation and empathy. So rather than focusing on if someone is right or if you're right, focus on what someone has felt so that it can go. We do a lot of suppression, like, why don't you understand that I feel this way? And then we suppress it to have a relationship. And what I've seen in these cultures is the opposite. Everyone comes in and feels it with them and then it passes. And so it's been validated and now you move on. You don't stick with it. And so I think a great deal more kindness and empathy is very much needed. So if you have someone in your family who's sick, just trust that whatever they're telling you is true and do what you would want, watch a movie with them, hold their hand. It's not always about getting better. For someone who's chronically ill, there's often not a ticket out like there is for a flu for a healthy person. So it can feel invalidating when someone tries to give them advice. So instead, just loving them for who they are, despite the illness, we have, our culture is very much designed, especially in America, in the US, designed around output. Our value is what we give back, right? So our value is what we provide. And that's a very difficult value system for anyone who's not capable, children, ill people, elderly. And so it invalidates a huge portion of our community. And I think the first place that you can start to rewire that is in doing Now, on the other hand, and I have to say this with it because there's so much mental illness now that in addition to, on one hand, I would really extend more kindness and presence with people around you. On the other hand, more discernment, because with this rise in mental illness, I see a lot of very unhealthy relationship dynamics at play. I think we all do. And so you have to discern who you give that time and kindness to. It's not just given. In the tribes and the cultures I go to, it is just given, but we, there's no mental illness there. There's no one purposefully hurting others. Right. So it's, it's a bit different.

And I think that's what kills us sometimes is that we blanket statement like, oh, we're just supposed to be empathetic. And a lot of times that empathy is manipulated in, you know, the marketing around us or politically or whatever it is, right. To not only feel fear, but then to also like feel as though you are responsible for these sick people. And I know that might sound like a contrast when we're talking about like, oh, community and making sure that we take care of humanity. But I, I really do understand what you're saying, that when your community is as sick as ours is, we have to be discerning because it's like that idea of like, put the oxygen on your face first, right? If you're, if you're not taking care of yourself, you're good to nobody.

Yes. And standards. I don't go to a single culture without standards. A lot of having the children go through those hardships at such young ages is to show them that they are required to meet certain standards to be a part of the community. And we have kind of flipped that script to an unhealthy degree. Traditionally, especially before we had this nuclear family structure that was so spread out, right? This is very new for us to be traveling so much for work and all of that. We used to have our grandparents, great-grandparents, aunts and uncles around. And when we had that kind of more static community, it would quickly be someone else that would slap us upside the head if we did something wrong. Right. So now we have a lot of people that aren't getting corrected at all, at all. And so there's no standards and it's like, accept me as I am. And that is equally unhealthy. So there has to be discernment, standards, validation, and empathy almost in that order.

Oh, I love this. I want to go back to Something you were talking about, because I feel like this is an important topic to distinguish and to also explore. You were talking about intimacy and cuddling and just being physically close to people. And I think here in America, we sexualize that immediately. And you see this play out religiously. You see this play out so often that it's like any physical touch is sexual touch.

Yes. Yeah. And it's never been like that. We've become very unhealthy, honestly, in all ways. Touch is incredibly important. Without touch, we don't transfer microbes that we need to transfer for the skin, essential for keeping you healthy, especially in this age of antibiotics. We don't produce most of our feel-good chemicals without touch. Many of us are going about life thinking that we're like sloths or other— I shouldn't have said sloth because there's so much connotation of sleepiness, but you know, animals that live on their own that are not communal and we're communal. So I don't ever go to a culture where people sleep alone, ever. They're usually piled. It might be 2 people, but usually it's like 5 to 10 people in a little cuddle puddle, and that's how they sleep. And it's not sexual at all. Handholding isn't sexual. Snuggling isn't sexual. None of this is. Even now, if you go to many Middle Eastern cultures, they do— grown men hold hands everywhere they go, and that's not sexual. And so, yeah, we've really gotten this idea that, oh, someone touched my shoulder or touched my hip, and then we overreact to saying like, that's molestation and these kinds of things. And It's not like that. Now I realized too that we have enormous amounts of sexual abuse. I had no idea until I was in practice and hearing people's private, private things, how many men are abused as children. I had no idea.

And I think it's like 1 out of 3 humans have been sexually abused.

It's incredible. And that is not happening, at least from what I've seen. And I've been to a lot of cultures. I have not seen that until you bring in modern foods, modern diets, modern lifestyle, modern shifts. I think partially because you would get so condemned. There are serious punishments in these groups, some of them more than others, but yeah, it just would not be allowed. And so I realize that people are often reacting from a response that they had when they were a child or something like that. But yes, this idea that touch is sexual is incredibly to our detriment.

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Now my mind goes, oh, okay, so what are some things that we can do societally or individually to start to shift this, right? And one that immediately comes to my head is just pornography. Like, just stop, just stop with the watching of the porn. And I, and I know that might sound extreme, but I think it is truly detrimental how not only how easy it is for anyone of any age to watch it, which it used to be a lot more challenging, right? And it's also not 2-dimensional anymore. It's like a video and it's like very, you know, feels very realistic and it's not just in a magazine or so there's levels of intensity around it. I don't see how it's helpful in any way. One answer I immediately think of is just like, We just got to stop with the outsourcing and going into our heads around sexuality. But what are some other things that you, you know, you believe would be helpful towards desexualizing? And obviously we don't want to go to androgyny, right? Because it's not, we're not, it's not about going from one extreme to the other. How do we get back to just that human, you know, connection, connection and love and accepting touch as something that's human versus that needs to be sexualized?

It's something people won't want to hear, and I could get really sandered for, but the science does back this up. And I don't want anyone to feel judged because none of us know this, right? Nobody knows this stuff. So please don't feel judged when I tell you this, but honestly, I think things like pornography, drug use abuse, I think these are endemic of needs not being met. Going after the, the reaction is almost fruitless if we don't go after the cause and the cause is a lack of true connection. So where does that start? That really starts in the womb. And it very much is in infancy and toddler years. So when we've looked at the hormonal responses of children that have a mother who is providing for herself, for a mother who is going to work immediately after, if the child is going into daycare, the chemicals that that child is producing are the same of a child who loses their parent. And they produce that every single day when they're brought to daycare. So it's breaking the oxytocin bonds the way that we're raising children. And there's not an easy solution to that because the reality is right now that we don't have societal protection and families do fall apart. There's a lot of divorces and things. So for women to rely on men would be a bit naive. Right now. And it's also not a great solution to just suddenly have a ton of money to be able to stay home with your children. That's not super realistic and you get behind in the work world. So I hate to bring about a problem without a solution. I do realize the myriad of issues here, not only to mention healthcare in our country is job-driven. So if you don't have a job, good luck, right? And so there's all of these factors that come into play. But I think the fact that we do not have family with our children, it's not aunts or uncles or siblings, it's not our grandparents, it's strangers with our children is a huge problem unquestionably for the hormones of the child. And while those systems can be rewritten, it is a hard thing to rewrite. Just like it was hard for me to rewrite that stress signal coming out of the illness. It is serious work. It can be done. We're very resilient beings. I think that's causing more problem because from very early ages, we don't have our, our typical bonding hormones. And even if we take daycare and those kinds of systems out of it, if we look at divorce rates, not having a dad in the house, it's disastrous. It's disastrous for children. They need both the nurturing from the mother and the discipline of the father and the playfulness of the father. A baby, when a baby's being played with, by a mom and a dad, it produces oxytocin when the mom nurtures it, zero when the mom plays with it. When the dad plays with it, all the oxytocin. When the dad nurtures it, zero. It needs both. These traditional societies that I used to go to accounted for that. If something happened to the dad, the uncles stepped in, you know, the grandparents stepped in. So there was always a man in the, in the baby's life. So I think really having a solid look at our problems. I think whether we're looking at an illness or a financial issue or a cultural issue, we have to be very groundingly honest about the situation and what we're seeing. The illness rates in our country and our culture are the worst we've ever seen in all of humanity. And it is not from diagnosing better. So we have mass illness. We have incredible mental illness. We have over 25% of our culture, of our people on mood stabilizing medications. So we have to look at why our relationships are so broken. Why have we not felt what you felt while we were talking? And a lot of that goes down to childhood years in addition to the whole structure, because that's where we learn our bonding and all of that, our reference points. So I think that's pretty important.

I have to think that one of the things that you discovered in your health journey Is a key and it's the mindfulness. Because I think about as a father, this is in a sense for that parent who might be listening, who's like, well, I don't know what to do. You know, we both have to work or I'm a single parent and it's like, I have to put them in childcare. And I have to think that life is life. You know, we, and obviously there's a lot of work to do and we have to meet people where they are initially to eventually get through those layers, right? As you already articulated. But that the thing that we can do is try to offset these things. And how do we offset the illness? For you, how did you offset the illness? You were mindful. How do we offset the child that is feeling abandoned because they're at childcare? You mindfully be present with them when they are there. You're not on your phone. You're not doing other things. You're really with them and being as human as you can with them in those moments.

I think that's exactly it. The real difference that I see in our culture versus the cultures I visit is that in our culture, we have a tendency to assume nothing matters. Nothing matters, right? How we do this, it doesn't matter. How we eat, it doesn't matter. How we speak, how we stand, how our posture is, it doesn't matter. And in these cultures, everything has reference. Everything. A bird flies across the sky and that's a message. Everything has reverence and everything matters. And so you're present to what's going on. I think that unquestionably humans can withstand horrific things, right? I always think back to Pocahontas leading the Europeans across America and how she was pregnant that whole time and how she had a healthy pregnancy and a healthy birth. And that was always my refute to, well, if stress was a problem, you know, but the humans can handle stress, but they can't handle is isolation. I think most of the trauma comes not from the actual act of what happened, but either malicious intent or not having a support system. Those 2 things, right? You can have 5 humans go through the exact same horrific thing. Only one of them is traumatized. There's a reason, or say 4 out of 5 are traumatized. There's a reason that not everyone is. And very often that comes to the mindset going in and throughout it, which can be cultivated like these cultures do for their children, or the support system, that they were validated and not gaslit into thinking that something was wrong with them, that it's their fault that this has happened. So having supports, and then also of course the non-malicious intent. I don't know how you get around being tortured on purpose. That's a different thing. It's a different thing.

Right.

Yeah. But I think going to everything matters, not in a neurotic way, not in an anxious way. I would hate for anyone to leave this and go live in a bubble. That's unhealthy. Being flexible is healthy, but being present to notice the change in our loved ones, to notice the change in the weather, the change in the room, the change in the air, what birds are outside, be present to hear. And so with the children that are going to daycare, be present with them. If you're a female, please don't feel guilty for wanting to nurture rather than play. I hear moms feel guilty about that all the time. And conversely, I hear dads feel guilty for not nurturing, for just wanting to play with the kids. And that's actually your hormones rewarding you correctly. That's what nature wants you to do as well. So following those kinds of things and not feeling guilty or stressed or judging yourself for what can't be changed. It's very realistic that many people can't pull their kids out of daycare and can't quit their jobs, but instead keep doing that and change the time that you can, that you can impact.

I want to cover just 2 topics before we end. Of course, we, I could talk about 50,000 more, but I want to go back to something you started with, which was intuition. Dr. Bill Schindler talks about this, how we are the only species in the world that looks to someone else to tell us what to eat. I love that quote, but obviously ancestrally, we did know, we followed our intuition around what would nourish us or kill us. Right. And these intuitive senses were kind of passed down as well, right? They were passed down generationally. And in many ways we have lost so much of that. And I think you articulated already one of the ways we've lost it in that we're not necessarily just living our lives and letting life happen, like being still long enough or being in community long enough where we let intuition just kind of materialize. You know, where it's like, oh, well, let me just follow this because I just got a hit. Like, let me just go there. And then we also don't really listen to our bodies around what we put in it. I'm just kind of curious, like, how do you think we can kind of reconnect with that intuition? Is it a spiritual practice? And maybe where does religion and spirituality fit into intuition? Or is it simply like a— Just chill out, like stop planning so much and actually create space in your life where things can happen.

We do need to do less planning, but men are rewarded from planning and then ticking things off lists. So you are, but our culture is just that. That is what we applaud. And so I think it's also burnout for men as well, because there's no balance, but as far as food goes, When your microbiome is healthy, that's when I tell people to follow their intuition with food. When it's imbalanced, I would not, because we have 3 main families of bacteria. We have parasites, viruses in us as well that are us and do good things for us. But most people today, if not all, are flooded with overgrowth of bacteria, which can only eat starch and sugar. And so when your microbiome is healthy, you can actually tell, like when I work with someone and it shifted to a point, they have very different interests in food and desires. And so if a craving is for like chips or crunchy things or starch or sugar, not to say that starch is unhealthy for you, there's many cultures that eat starch and are in perfect health. But when your microbiome is imbalanced, it's going to feed the overgrowth. It's not going to feed your good bacteria. It definitely doesn't feed your human cells. Human cells can only use protein and fat. So typically no one knows that their cravings are coming from their own disease instead of their human cells. And you have to be healthy to a degree to be able to feel what your human cells need instead of the disease. You have to be healthy enough to where there's more of a tipping point towards health than towards disease. And so this movement for like intuitive eating in the eating disorder centers and things like that is really misguided. I just see people eating pizza and popcorn and milkshakes and being rewarded, and that destabilizes their health further. It creates more deficiencies leading to more eating disorders. So— I think you have to restabilize first, and then you get that gift of intuition. As far as religion and spirituality go, it's infused into everything of everywhere I go. The spirit world is our world, and it's not separate, and it is beautiful and unique in each place that I go. So it's fully infused into everything. And I think that's why there's so much depth of true gratitude to a degree that we don't even see.

And I have to imagine that it's also what you've observed in the tribes as well, in those cultures, of that there's a resonance, there's a humbleness around things outside of themselves, that there's a bigger picture and it's not just about what I feel, right?

Always. There's almost not a me, honestly. Things are very communal. So like, if you, if, when I bring a gift, it's immediately given to someone else. And that's immediately given to someone else. Nothing is yours. There's not as much of a division between you and I at all. It's actually shocking.

Yeah. So I also want to just touch on the birth microbiome.

Yeah. I think it's going to be the most important thing that we stumble on because as we have been scrambling and people's health has been just falling apart in society as well, the thing that has been not even known about was what our babies were getting from our mothers. And with our current birth practices, really since the 1980s, it has radically shifted. We have about a 55% C-section rate now. The problem with that is, well, there's myriad, but these birth microbes that we give our children, you don't get them from food. You don't get them from touch. You can't get them Except from being born vaginally. That's it. And these things are what protect you from all the pathogens that we see kill people in the hospitals, all the endemics. It protects you from things like not being able to process estrogen, you know, so you don't get estrogen-based cancers. These are what make most of your feel-good chemicals. It used to be thought that dopamine was just made in the brain. It turns out We have a microbiome of our brain. We have a different microbiome of our nervous system, of our eyes, of our lungs, of our womb. Every piece has a microbiome. And as we've been taking antibiotics, and as we have gone away from our traditional foods that feed some of those microbes and keep them alive, because you don't just need to plant them, you have to, you have to grow them, these cultures that are us. As we've gotten away from that, we have all these children that don't have access to it. And then we have mothers who have been put through the trauma of a C-section, IV antibiotics. And now we're getting children 2 generations deep into these C-sections and working with them in a practice with health conditions is wildly different than working with someone like myself who was born naturally and nursed and all of those things. So we're coming up against something that I think people have not prepared for yet, but we have time. to flip the script. I don't think it's a doomsday thing if we can be present and recognize it enough, because at the same time of our C-section rate going up to 55%, our infertility rate is hovering around 40 to 45% right now. That's a lot, and it's going to get higher really fast. So I really don't see with my microbial research and what I'm seeing in the shifting tide, And what people are not getting, I really don't see how we're going to be fertile for another 2 generations. I don't see it. Not unless we immediately change our birthing practices and start figuring out how to cultivate these birth microbes outside of the vaginal canal. Because many of them, we have figured out some of them. I've been collecting them. I have this massive chart so that I can get people ones from whichever ones they need Of the ones that we can get, but many of them are anaerobes. So the second they touch oxygen, they're dead. You can't put that into a supplement.

Because that's going to be my question is like, how does the child that is, you know, C-section get that? And I, it's so fascinating to talk about this because I have heard about this actually. You know, obviously we're talking about when the child goes through the canal, they're getting this protection that is a lifetime of protection really. And so what can the parent of the child who didn't get to do that, how can we support that child?

You know, I don't have an answer right now. Now what I'm doing with people in my practice, and I'm working to get this to everyone because frankly every household needs this knowledge like now. So I'm working really hard to get the sourcing for these things and to try to figure out how to get these anaerobes to last outside of a glass box with gloves. But some of them are incredibly important. Like take some of the skin microbes that we should be giving to our children that used to be so abundant that you will never see these in a supplement because no one thinks these are important. Right? So like one of them I've been hunting for a year and trying to get, and this one controls things like preventing kind of benign uncomfortable things, but like psoriasis, eczema, these kinds of things. But more importantly, it prevents the overgrowth of melasma, this fungus. Right now, if anyone out there has Parkinson's, Parkinson's folks can be smelled. You can smell them. And it's because of the change in sebum that they get from the melasma shift. When that occurs, when the melasma overgrows, you can't make your dopamine. So Parkinson's sets in. So, you know, Parkinson's used to be very rare. Now it's becoming very common because again, we don't have This very basic skin microbiome bacteria that we absolutely need. So I'm working on it, but I would say in the meantime, tell your friends and don't take C-sections lightly. I know no one ever goes in, not typically goes in wanting one, but you have to have like a team of advocates around you that if it is not life-threatening, you do not do it, which should only be about 1% of the births even today, not 55%. A woman can't advocate for herself, frankly, even.

And it's really hard in that condition.

No, no, no. And even if the family is all united, it's still really hard to argue with a white coat. It's like, it's very difficult, but it is important.

It's so interesting too, because I've always heard of it in 2 ways. So one is yes, the microbiome, but the other is that people can then do like the kids that were C-section can then go through like birthing sessions. So there's the actual struggle of going through energetically that is missed. And then of course the microbiome, it sounds like you're mostly focusing on the microbiome, but do you think there's something as well, you know, that these kids missed out going through and feeling the pressure of that canal? You know?

In general, nature isn't lazy. It does important things. The thing that I would think would be the bigger problem Rather than the pressure, and I could be wrong on this, would be the timing. When we mess with the timing of birth, we cause a lot of problems. That's true for food too. If we take food off the tree too soon, it causes problems. If we eat eggs in the winter rather than in the summer, that's very different nutritionally, right? There, there's real differences to timing. And with C-sections, the trend has not been— of course, there's lots of cases of the emergency C-section where someone is going into labor and then it can't finish. But there's a lot of timed C-sections as well, which are just, okay, well, it's been enough time. The babe is ready. Let's, let's pull this guy out kind of thing. If it was ready, it would be coming. Same thing with the umbilical cord. We cut it way too soon. In the cultures, it falls off. You don't—

It falls off?

Sometimes they'll cut it.

They keep them connected until it falls off?

Very often. Yeah. Wow. If they do cut it, it's after it's been on for a long time so that nutrition has gone in. So the timing I think is pretty important.

Wow, Mary, I want to respect your time. It's been such a pleasure and I hope we can even do it again at another time to just dig into— there's so many topics, right? I mean, if we could just articulate in these last, this last minute, you know, really like almost elevator pitch, because this is something that's really important to me, you know, specifically given the name of this, this podcast, but The concept of Everyday Ancestral is like taking from the past, the best from the past that we can make sure is coming into our modern, you know, day. Is there just kind of like 1 to 3 things that listeners or watchers of this podcast can just immediately start incorporating? I know you mentioned some already around empathy and opening your heart to people and not just sitting in judgment and whatnot, but like maybe some very practical things that people can just start incorporate that are ancestral, but that fit modern life?

Yes. I would say timing is incredibly important. So time your wake-up so that you have time to yourself or with your family and time to watch the sunrise. If you're in a place where the sun rises, if it's cloudy, you know, free pass. Also timing with your meals. These are the things that make the human body feel safe, eating at the same time, getting outside and having community. So I think if you just focus on timing alone, timing your meals, timing, scheduling in your family and friends as a priority over your work actually, or as equal to, if not, and scheduling your meals at the same time, the body will relax. It will feel safe, even if you're going through a crisis. So I would say that's probably the most important.

Oh, I love that. One thing I noticed, I've been on this really specific protocol. Like I wake up the same time every day. I go to bed relatively at the same time, but even on days like 2 days ago, I, I just had to go to bed later because I had some work that didn't get done I needed to get done. And yet I still pounced up the next morning at the same time. And, and I, and it's because I've been so regular that, and I love the way you just articulated it. It's like, I think that in many ways my body does feel safe. And so it's giving me more permission and more room and more resilience than I've had historically when I went to bed at all these different random chaotic times.

Yeah. That's it exactly. Yeah. It gives you resilience and flexibility.

Oh, that's so beautiful. Well, thank you so much, Mary. How can people find out about you more? How can people work with you?

Well, my practice is closed to new clients right now, but I have a waitlist for when I open it and I do programs and things like that. So right now I'm heavily working on the birth chart and getting that information to everyone, but I'll reopen my groups. So please jump on maryreddick.com. From there, you can see my YouTube, Instagram, any new podcasts. Like I'll post this one and new blogs, things like that. I try to write a lot so I can get the information to the public as much as, as much as I can.

Well, thank you. The nonfictional Indiana Jones, Mary Ruddick. Thank you for continuing to be curious. I love how you said I enter with curiosity and I don't necessarily enter with agenda. And I think that's a beautiful model for what's not only possible, but what maybe what we should all be doing is being a bit more curious when we interact with each other instead of coming in with presumptions.

A+. I so agree. Plus curiosity is so much more fun.

That's so true. So true. Thank you, Mary.

Thank you. Thank you so much.

Thank you so much for joining me on Everyday Ancestral. If you enjoyed this episode, hit subscribe so you don't miss the next one. You can find the show notes, Links and resources mentioned at eatpluck.com. That's E A T P L U C K dot com. And hey, if you know someone who'd get something out of this, share it with them too. Stay curious, live well, and keep it ancestral.