Human Pregnancy Length Controlled By Metabolism Speed, Not Pelvic Shape

alywest

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Unfortunately, it does not matter much how good they are as a person. All of them undergo an extensive "liability reduction" training at the beginning of their residency and even as students, which is then repeated as often as every quarter. The primary purpose of the hospital is NOT your well-being, it is to avoid getting sued. And adhering to FDA regulations is the best way to ensure no suit succeeds as it will be deemed "standard of care" even if it kills you quite reliably. George Bernard Shaw wrote a great piece on this titled "The Doctor's Dilemma":
The Doctor's Dilemma, by George Bernard Shaw : PREFACE ON DOCTORS
"...All that can be said for medical popularity is that until there is a practicable alternative to blind trust in the doctor, the truth about the doctor is so terrible that we dare not face it. Moliere saw through the doctors; but he had to call them in just the same. Napoleon had no illusions about them; but he had to die under their treatment just as much as the most credulous ignoramus that ever paid sixpence for a bottle of strong medicine. In this predicament most people, to save themselves from unbearable mistrust and misery, or from being driven by their conscience into actual conflict with the law, fall back on the old rule that if you cannot have what you believe in you must believe in what you have. When your child is ill or your wife dying, and you happen to be very fond of them, or even when, if you are not fond of them, you are human enough to forget every personal grudge before the spectacle of a fellow creature in pain or peril, what you want is comfort, reassurance, something to clutch at, were it but a straw. This the doctor brings you. You have a wildly urgent feeling that something must be done; and the doctor does something. Sometimes what he does kills the patient; but you do not know that; and the doctor assures you that all that human skill could do has been done. And nobody has the brutality to say to the newly bereft father, mother, husband, wife, brother, or sister, “You have killed your lost darling by your credulity.”"

Such true words. Thank you for sharing that! After my child had open heart surgery and had to stay in the CICU, I can say that this is all so true. You want to believe that the doctors know best and will figure it all out, but it's not one-size-fits-all as much as they seem to want to treat it that way, but I think when you get to such extremes as the CICU the nurses and doctors are so used to not being able to do anything for so many that they almost have an ambiguous attitude. All they seemed to know how to do was pump him with 200 different types of medication, I didn't really know what else they did. Gave me sad looks when his o2 saturation levels weren't increasing from the low 80's. Nothing like spending a week in the CICU to make you question everything about the medical world. Fortunately he turned around and he's perfectly healed.
 
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haidut

haidut

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Such true words. Thank you for sharing that! After my child had open heart surgery and had to stay in the CICU, I can say that this is all so true. You want to believe that the doctors know best and will figure it all out, but it's not one-size-fits-all as much as they seem to want to treat it that way, but I think when you get to such extremes as the CICU the nurses and doctors are so used to not being able to do anything for so many that they almost have an ambiguous attitude. All they seemed to know how to do was pump him with 200 different types of medication, I didn't really know what else they did. Gave me sad looks when his o2 saturation levels weren't increasing from the low 80's. Nothing like spending a week in the CICU to make you question everything about the medical world. Fortunately he turned around and he's perfectly healed.

Now use that experience, and ask yourself - if even doctors mostly do not know what they are doing then what can be said about the rest of the experts in lower-risk fields...
 

dfspcc20

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A woman's metabolism does not need to be at a breaking point, it just means the metabolism can no longer support the baby so the baby comes out. So, metabolism and progesterone/estrogen ratio determine how easy the labor would be.

What do you think is the most reliable way to measure the progesterone/estrogen ratio? IIRC, blood tests are suspect for that.

Still trying to figure out the enigma that is my wife. She carried two kids to term and beyond (42 weeks) without any complications or worries of pre-term labor, which should indicate a positive progesterone balance. But then her labors were both long, which could indicate a negative progesterone balance.
 

alywest

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Now use that experience, and ask yourself - if even doctors mostly do not know what they are doing then what can be said about the rest of the experts in lower-risk fields...
I don't believe or agree with much I read anymore, but I'm sure I still believe too much...
 
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haidut

haidut

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What do you think is the most reliable way to measure the progesterone/estrogen ratio? IIRC, blood tests are suspect for that.

Still trying to figure out the enigma that is my wife. She carried two kids to term and beyond (42 weeks) without any complications or worries of pre-term labor, which should indicate a positive progesterone balance. But then her labors were both long, which could indicate a negative progesterone balance.

Progesterone To Estradiol Ratio (P:E2)
Progesterone To Estradiol Ratio (P:E2)
 

noordinary

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Bovine body temperature drops preceding labour:
"Daily body temperatures were taken vaginally in 24 cows for a total of 54 cycles. The temperatures were found to fluctuate with the estrous cycle, being lowest just before heat, high on the day of heat, low again at the time of ovulation, and high during the luteal phase of the cycle. Observations were made also on nine cows in the terminal stage of pregnancy. In these cows, a precipitous decline in body temperature indicative of the imminence of parturition was noted. In addition, preliminary experiments were conducted in which progestational steroids were administered to spayed cows. The resultant thermogenic responses suggest that endogenous progesterone elaboration is responsible for the cyclic and pregnancy body temperature variations of intact cows. Body temperature observations may provide a useful indicator of corpus luteum activity in the bovine."
http://www.journalofdairyscience.org/article/S0022-0302(58)91053-1/abstract
Dogs progesterone levels and body temperature drops preceding labour:
"In normal pregnant b****, plasma progesterone decreases significantly (below 2 to 3 ng/mL) 18 to 30 hours before parturition. Ten to 14 hours after the progesterone decrease, the body temperature of the b**** falls below 99 to 100 degrees. The rectal temperature therefor can be used as an indicator of impending parturition"
Veterinary Surgery: Small Animal - E-BOOK
Humane research is limited:
This study (body temperature was not tracked) concluded:
"The very rapid rise of CRH in late pregnancy is associated with an E3 surge and critically altered P/E3 and E3/E2 ratios that create an estrogenic environment at the onset of labor. Our evidence provides a rationale for the use of CRH in predicting preterm birth and informs approaches to delaying labor using P supplementation."
CRH - corticotropin-releasing hormone
E3 - estriol
P - progesterone
E2 - estradiol
Patterns of plasma corticotropin-releasing hormone, progesterone, estradiol, and estriol change and the onset of human labor. - PubMed - NCBI
 

grabster

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The mother breast feeds the baby for ~6 months after giving birth. This is the equivalent to metabolically supporting the baby, right? And I would guess the baby would need even more energy than when in utero, because it needs to maintain its body temperature in the outside world.

Maybe its a matter of how much oxygen / CO2 the mother can process.
 

Perry Staltic

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I have read that labor occurs when the quantity of fetal DNA in the mother's plasma reaches a certain threshold, which activates TLR9 generating an autoimmune response to initiate labor and reject the foreign DNA.
 

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