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"Birth is not a disease. It's not something begging for medical intervention," says Dr. Nathan Riley, an OB-GYN who joins the Quantum Biology Collective podcast to challenge conventional obstetrics and advocate for a more holistic approach to childbirth. After being fired from his hospital job for removing his mask while caring for a dying patient, Dr. Riley found his true calling in supporting home births and empowering women through their pregnancy journeys.

In this eye-opening episode, Dr. Riley discusses the stark differences between the obstetrics model and the midwifery model of care, emphasizing the importance of relationship-building and intuition in childbirth. He explains how quantum biology concepts like circadian rhythms and melatonin receptors in the uterus can influence labor progression, and why putting blue light blockers on laboring women at night might enhance their birthing experience.

Dr. Riley also delves into the transformative power of home births, the potential dangers of over-medicalizing pregnancy, and why curiosity and embracing the unknown are crucial in both medicine and life. He shares his unique approach to fertility and pregnancy support, which combines cutting-edge science with ancient wisdom and a deep respect for the magical aspects of bringing new life into the world.

Tune in to today's episode to discover why Dr. Riley believes that changing our approach to childbirth could be the key to changing the world, and learn how embracing uncertainty and wonder in medicine might lead to better outcomes for mothers and babies alike.

5 Key Takeaways

1. Embrace curiosity and be willing to question established medical practices. As Dr. Riley notes, "If we are going to bring back science, not scientism, not the cult of medicine, but science - the scientific way of looking at the world - all that means is I'm curious, and I want to see if my hypothesis is correct."

2. Focus on relationship-building and understanding each patient's unique story when providing care. Dr. Riley emphasizes spending time to "understand your story, do a whole biographical sketch. And once I know that story, then I can say, okay, what would be the most impactful thing we can do right now?"

3. Consider incorporating holistic practices into prenatal and birth care, such as optimizing circadian rhythms. Dr. Riley suggests "when I do that in people's homes, it seems to work really well. I just did this for my best friend who had a breech baby in Florida. And we just had red lights everywhere."

4. Empower patients to trust their intuition and bodily wisdom during birth. As Dr. Riley describes, asking "What does your body want to do?" can lead to more positive birth experiences.

5. Be open to not having all the answers. Dr. Riley advises: "I want people to feel okay not having the answers...life is much richer when you don't know." Embracing uncertainty can lead to more curiosity and discovery.

Memorable Quotes

"Birth and death are really quite similar when you get down to it. I say that through the lens of not like this informed consent thing, but more about the relationship building that's required for a practitioner to really support somebody."

"What quantum biology has really done for me, the greatest gift has been that it has opened up my mind and made me uncertain of what I thought I knew about human biology. And that is a real gift to the entire construct we have around human biology and human health."

"Even if we knew everything about the mechanics of childbirth, would that really change how you have a baby? Many people who don't worry at all about the mechanics actually have the easiest births. I want to encourage people to not get so consumed with this material, reductive means of understanding human beingness and to actually possibly rest in the surrender to the unknown.

Connect with Nathan

Beloved Holistics: https://www.belovedholistics.com/

Born Free Method: https://www.bornfreemethod.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nathanrileyobgyn/

Resources Mentioned

The Dancing Wu Li Masters by Gary Zukav - https://amzn.to/48iuh78

Williams Obstetrics by F. Gary Cunningham, Kenneth J. Leveno, Jodi S. Dashe, Barbara L. Hoffman, Catherine Y. Spong, Brian M. Casey - https://amzn.to/3KuS61I

The Magic Castle in Los Angeles - https://www.magiccastle.com/

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Meredith Oke: 00:06:01

Doctor Nathan Riley, welcome to the QPC podcast.

Meredith Oke: 00:06:03

This is going to be fun.

Nathan Riley: 00:06:05

Thanks for having me. It's good to be here.

Meredith Oke: 00:06:08

All right, so as we were, we were just discussing

Meredith Oke: 00:06:11

before I, before I hit record, it seems to me,

Meredith Oke: 00:06:14

anecdotally anyway, that the migration of ob GYN

Meredith Oke: 00:06:19

physicians into the integrative medicine,

Meredith Oke: 00:06:22

holistic medicine, is, is a very narrow path.

Meredith Oke: 00:06:26

Like when I think of integrative physicians, a

Meredith Oke: 00:06:28

lot of them have come from family medicine,

Meredith Oke: 00:06:30

internal medicine, and the obs are just for the

Meredith Oke: 00:06:34

most part anyway, seems to be like really locked

Meredith Oke: 00:06:37

into their system. So how'd you, how'd you break

Meredith Oke: 00:06:39

out?

Nathan Riley: 00:06:42

Well, thanks for having me. First off, that's a

Nathan Riley: 00:06:46

really good question. I probably give a slightly

Nathan Riley: 00:06:48

different answer and I don't want to go into my

Nathan Riley: 00:06:49

whole story, but yes, I was trained

Nathan Riley: 00:06:51

conventionally. I went to the med school, the

Nathan Riley: 00:06:53

residency, I did fellowship and end of life care,

Nathan Riley: 00:06:55

which is actually informs how I care for women in

Nathan Riley: 00:06:59

families, in childbirth and. Because birth and

Nathan Riley: 00:07:02

death are really, really quite similar when you

Nathan Riley: 00:07:04

get down, really down to it. And I say that

Nathan Riley: 00:07:08

through the lens of not like this informed

Nathan Riley: 00:07:11

consent thing, but more about the relationship

Nathan Riley: 00:07:13

building that's required for a practitioner to

Nathan Riley: 00:07:16

really support somebody. You know, if you're

Nathan Riley: 00:07:17

going to be dying, there's no right way to die.

Nathan Riley: 00:07:20

But if you have cancer, the oncologist is

Nathan Riley: 00:07:22

automatically going to say, if you're in my

Nathan Riley: 00:07:23

office, you're here for either cutting it out,

Nathan Riley: 00:07:25

burning it out or you know, giving you chemical

Nathan Riley: 00:07:29

stuff in order to try to get your, your cancer

Nathan Riley: 00:07:32

at, you know, at bay. And that isn't necessarily

Nathan Riley: 00:07:36

the best option for everybody. You know, a 95

Nathan Riley: 00:07:38

year old with skin cancer versus a 25 year old

Nathan Riley: 00:07:41

with skin cancer or something like that, like

Nathan Riley: 00:07:43

that's a very different conversation. And it's

Nathan Riley: 00:07:45

not just one option for every single person who

Nathan Riley: 00:07:48

comes in the door. So, so anyways, I did that. I

Nathan Riley: 00:07:52

got recruited out right before COVID We didn't

Nathan Riley: 00:07:55

know Covid was going to happen, but I got

Nathan Riley: 00:07:56

recruited to do inpatient pallia care and

Nathan Riley: 00:07:58

inpatient obstetrics work as a laborist, which is

Nathan Riley: 00:08:02

obstetrics and gynecology. When you're a

Nathan Riley: 00:08:04

laborist, basically you're on call for anything

Nathan Riley: 00:08:06

that comes into the hospital that doesn't have an

Nathan Riley: 00:08:08

assigned practitioner. So let's say, Meredith,

Nathan Riley: 00:08:10

let's say you, you have your, your OB GYN you've

Nathan Riley: 00:08:13

seen for 40 years, or let's say, let's say

Nathan Riley: 00:08:15

you're, let's say you're 20 and you're going to

Nathan Riley: 00:08:17

Try to have a baby. And you've seen this doctor

Nathan Riley: 00:08:20

for five years. You get pregnant at 25 and you

Nathan Riley: 00:08:25

know, you go back to your OB GYN and they're

Nathan Riley: 00:08:27

like, oh, congrats. And you go through the whole

Nathan Riley: 00:08:28

pregnancy thing. Well, they may not be the doctor

Nathan Riley: 00:08:30

that's necessarily there at your birth. There

Nathan Riley: 00:08:32

could be a group of doctors and let's say, let's

Nathan Riley: 00:08:35

say you just moved to a new city and you haven't

Nathan Riley: 00:08:37

ever actually established care, but you show up

Nathan Riley: 00:08:39

in labor, they don't know who to call, there

Nathan Riley: 00:08:41

isn't anybody to call. So they have somebody on

Nathan Riley: 00:08:43

staff who's at the hospital, employed, contracted

Nathan Riley: 00:08:46

with the hospital to take care of all of the

Nathan Riley: 00:08:48

quote, emergencies that come in. And really

Nathan Riley: 00:08:51

everything is seen in, emerge as an emergency in

Nathan Riley: 00:08:53

childbirth, which is kind of the crux of my life.

Nathan Riley: 00:08:56

Is it really an emergency? Is this really a

Nathan Riley: 00:08:58

disease? Is this something really begging for

Nathan Riley: 00:09:00

medical intervention? Probably not, but if it is,

Nathan Riley: 00:09:04

then I'm here with my tools in order to help fix

Nathan Riley: 00:09:07

it. So I did that for a little bit. We had our

Nathan Riley: 00:09:11

first daughter in the hospital in February. It

Nathan Riley: 00:09:13

was February 23, 2020. And we all know what

Nathan Riley: 00:09:16

happened in March 2020, where the lockdowns

Nathan Riley: 00:09:19

happened and the masking and the swabbing and the

Nathan Riley: 00:09:22

vaccines and all of this. And I immediately kind

Nathan Riley: 00:09:24

of put pause. You know, I, I actually had

Nathan Riley: 00:09:26

resigned from my position cause I wanted to be

Nathan Riley: 00:09:28

able to spend more time at home. Those long 24

Nathan Riley: 00:09:31

hour calls are just brutal. It's like two days to

Nathan Riley: 00:09:34

recover and then there's a 24 hour shift itself

Nathan Riley: 00:09:37

where my wife would be left at home.

Meredith Oke: 00:09:38

The shift is 24 hours long usually.

Nathan Riley: 00:09:41

Yeah, usually you start at 7am, go home the next

Nathan Riley: 00:09:44

day at 6:59am and that whole time you might do

Nathan Riley: 00:09:49

several C sections, you might do a, several, you

Nathan Riley: 00:09:52

know, vaginal bursts, you might be in the ER

Nathan Riley: 00:09:53

doing some ectopic, you know, surgeries, removal

Nathan Riley: 00:09:57

of a fallopian tubes or draining a Bartholin's

Nathan Riley: 00:09:59

gland cyst or whatever. There can be all kinds of

Nathan Riley: 00:10:02

stuff that happens when you're the guy who's

Nathan Riley: 00:10:04

responding to everything that comes in without an

Nathan Riley: 00:10:07

assigned practitioner. So you're, you're managing

Nathan Riley: 00:10:09

the, the emergency room and labor and delivery

Nathan Riley: 00:10:11

and the triage, meaning you're helping people

Nathan Riley: 00:10:13

come in or out based on where they are in their

Nathan Riley: 00:10:16

process. So if you're in early labor but you're

Nathan Riley: 00:10:17

not ready to be admitted, you know, you might

Nathan Riley: 00:10:19

just give some recommendations on, on, you know,

Nathan Riley: 00:10:21

an easeful early transition through that early

Nathan Riley: 00:10:24

labor process, but they're going to go home to do

Nathan Riley: 00:10:26

that and come back later. But, you know, you've

Nathan Riley: 00:10:28

got your ultrasounds, you've got your scalpels,

Nathan Riley: 00:10:30

you got your pharmacy on site, you're there and

Nathan Riley: 00:10:32

they come into this facility and you help decide,

Nathan Riley: 00:10:36

you know, who. You're the gatekeeper,

Nathan Riley: 00:10:38

essentially. And that's 24 hours. That's really

Nathan Riley: 00:10:40

hard work. And not to mention, you're now in a

Nathan Riley: 00:10:43

room in a building that's just buzzing with

Nathan Riley: 00:10:46

electricity. You've got lots of sitting and lots

Nathan Riley: 00:10:50

of looking at computer screens. The hospital food

Nathan Riley: 00:10:53

is terrible, so you have to bring all of your own

Nathan Riley: 00:10:55

food in if you want to eat healthy. It's just. It

Nathan Riley: 00:10:57

just wrecks you. I mean, it really, really does

Nathan Riley: 00:10:59

quite a number on the individual who's doing

Nathan Riley: 00:11:01

that. And so I resigned from that position and

Nathan Riley: 00:11:05

that was already kind of in the works. From early

Nathan Riley: 00:11:07

on in my training, I knew that this was going to

Nathan Riley: 00:11:10

be hard because it was so out of alignment with

Nathan Riley: 00:11:13

how I saw birth as a, as a sort of a, an ideal,

Nathan Riley: 00:11:20

you know. And I had attended some home births

Nathan Riley: 00:11:23

before that with Dr. Stu Fishbein out in LA and

Nathan Riley: 00:11:27

some midwives at the time. And I was like, wow,

Nathan Riley: 00:11:30

this is really different doing this outside the

Nathan Riley: 00:11:31

hospital. So I always had dreamt like, oh, maybe

Nathan Riley: 00:11:34

I would do that. But I also have these surgical

Nathan Riley: 00:11:36

skills and I have this kind of reasonable way of,

Nathan Riley: 00:11:41

of approaching childbirth. I can bring that into

Nathan Riley: 00:11:43

the hospital and still do that and, and just do

Nathan Riley: 00:11:45

it better than I was trained. But I resigned

Nathan Riley: 00:11:48

because it was like, this is too much work. It's

Nathan Riley: 00:11:50

just 24 hours of hard labor twice a week. I mean,

Nathan Riley: 00:11:54

it was sometimes Friday into Saturday and then

Nathan Riley: 00:11:56

Sunday into Monday. So I'm doing like, I get like

Nathan Riley: 00:11:58

a little break in between. It was just, it was

Nathan Riley: 00:12:00

just hard. And then to be doing my regular 9 to 5

Nathan Riley: 00:12:03

Monday through Friday with hard stuff around end

Nathan Riley: 00:12:05

of life care and pout of, you know, symptomatic.

Meredith Oke: 00:12:08

So you were doing this on top of a nine to five.

Meredith Oke: 00:12:11

Good Lord. Nathan. I just. Side note, I think

Meredith Oke: 00:12:14

it's important. I just want to acknowledge,

Meredith Oke: 00:12:16

because I know a lot of times when we, we start

Meredith Oke: 00:12:19

to understand how the medical system works, we

Meredith Oke: 00:12:21

get really mad at doctors.

Nathan Riley: 00:12:23

Yeah.

Meredith Oke: 00:12:23

And I just want to take a moment to acknowledge.

Nathan Riley: 00:12:25

Thank you.

Meredith Oke: 00:12:26

The hellscape that it can be to work in that

Meredith Oke: 00:12:31

system. And like, when are you supposed to be

Meredith Oke: 00:12:33

researching new things and understanding.

Nathan Riley: 00:12:35

Yeah. And that's exactly right. Yeah. Like, what

Nathan Riley: 00:12:39

time does a person have to really start reading

Nathan Riley: 00:12:41

about the mitochondria and maybe reimagining, you

Nathan Riley: 00:12:45

know what, you know the importance of, of being

Nathan Riley: 00:12:47

outside in the sunshine. You're never seeing

Nathan Riley: 00:12:49

sunshine. So why, you know, why would I read a

Nathan Riley: 00:12:52

book that is convincing me that my entire

Nathan Riley: 00:12:54

livelihood is putting my own health at risk?

Nathan Riley: 00:12:56

Like, it's almost nice to just be ignorantly

Nathan Riley: 00:12:58

blissful about that. Which goes into your. One of

Nathan Riley: 00:13:00

your questions, which is, why don't B.G. wayans

Nathan Riley: 00:13:03

do this? But we'll get to that. Get to that

Nathan Riley: 00:13:05

later. So I was doing the palliative care thing.

Nathan Riley: 00:13:08

Covid happens. I try to go back to that job. They

Nathan Riley: 00:13:10

don't want me back. I'm the California kid with a

Nathan Riley: 00:13:11

nose ring, tattoos. I wear colorful outfits, I

Nathan Riley: 00:13:15

ride a Harley. Like, I don't know, I just had a

Nathan Riley: 00:13:17

totally different look about me. And this is

Nathan Riley: 00:13:19

Kentucky. I live in Kentucky. It's an old boys

Nathan Riley: 00:13:22

club. You know, I'm not, not a member of a

Nathan Riley: 00:13:23

country club. I don't even know what the name of

Nathan Riley: 00:13:25

a country club is. I've never picked up a golf

Nathan Riley: 00:13:27

club except to smash a ball in the wrong

Nathan Riley: 00:13:30

direction at a driving range, you know, and so I

Nathan Riley: 00:13:33

don't really fit in. I'm not one of those guys.

Nathan Riley: 00:13:35

But I figured I'm an md and when I started seeing

Nathan Riley: 00:13:38

problems happen, like I'm a big bad doctor here

Nathan Riley: 00:13:40

at this big beautiful hospital system and I

Nathan Riley: 00:13:45

started pointing out some things that were, you

Nathan Riley: 00:13:46

know, inconsistencies, you know, like, this is

Nathan Riley: 00:13:49

kind of strange. We're going to cut off this

Nathan Riley: 00:13:50

lady's leg. For what reason? Like, well, she has

Nathan Riley: 00:13:54

cellulitis, okay, but she's also got a stroke.

Nathan Riley: 00:13:56

She has no family members to help consent for

Nathan Riley: 00:13:58

this. And she's going to go back to this facility

Nathan Riley: 00:14:01

to rehab. She can't even follow my finger, like,

Nathan Riley: 00:14:03

who's rehabbing here? Like, what is going on

Nathan Riley: 00:14:04

here? And I started just finding these little

Nathan Riley: 00:14:06

things and, and I won't say more about that

Nathan Riley: 00:14:08

because I did sign an NDA. But the point is that

Nathan Riley: 00:14:11

you start to see these things happening on the,

Nathan Riley: 00:14:14

the administration of medicine. And when you

Nathan Riley: 00:14:17

start questioning those things, people don't

Nathan Riley: 00:14:18

really like it. So my team was like. And I was

Nathan Riley: 00:14:20

also like, hey, I need a real office. I'm in like

Nathan Riley: 00:14:22

a closet with dirty hospital beds out outside

Nathan Riley: 00:14:25

that I have to push through to get to my

Nathan Riley: 00:14:26

patients. You know, the palliative care teams

Nathan Riley: 00:14:28

aren't always very well respected and. And so

Nathan Riley: 00:14:32

they didn't want me back. And so I said, well, I

Nathan Riley: 00:14:34

have to go back. This is my job. And I tried for

Nathan Riley: 00:14:37

a little bit, but it was in the middle of COVID

Nathan Riley: 00:14:38

2N 95S. And by the way, at the very beginning, I

Nathan Riley: 00:14:41

was quite. It was like, there's Humvees parked

Nathan Riley: 00:14:43

out front. The National Guard is involved. Like,

Nathan Riley: 00:14:45

this did sound very scary, but right away I was.

Nathan Riley: 00:14:48

I remember actually I'd reached into, like, grab

Nathan Riley: 00:14:50

some nuts. And I was eating while I was

Nathan Riley: 00:14:52

documenting, while I was back in the hospital and

Nathan Riley: 00:14:54

I hadn't washed my hands, and I was like, oh, my

Nathan Riley: 00:14:57

God, like, I'm getting the plague or something.

Nathan Riley: 00:15:00

And very, very quickly, early on, it was like,

Nathan Riley: 00:15:03

okay, there's something up here. And then, of

Nathan Riley: 00:15:05

course, ACOG, the American College of OB GYNs,

Nathan Riley: 00:15:08

wants us to start promoting and recommending the

Nathan Riley: 00:15:11

vaccines. And I obviously was. Was like, well,

Nathan Riley: 00:15:14

where's the safety data? We haven't even had a

Nathan Riley: 00:15:16

vaccine for longer than a minute. And now we're

Nathan Riley: 00:15:19

pushing this on pregnant women who we've also

Nathan Riley: 00:15:21

been shaming for everything from sex in pregnancy

Nathan Riley: 00:15:24

to wine in pregnancy to sushi in pregnanc. Get

Nathan Riley: 00:15:28

rid of your cats. It was like, now we're going to

Nathan Riley: 00:15:31

inject this new thing. I don't know. So in the

Nathan Riley: 00:15:34

sort of interim, I started also kind of exploring

Nathan Riley: 00:15:38

that. And I was like, gosh, there's a lot wrong

Nathan Riley: 00:15:39

with this. And. And so eventually I said, I'm

Nathan Riley: 00:15:44

going to leave the hospital. I'm going to go to

Nathan Riley: 00:15:46

work for hospice, and there's a beautiful hospice

Nathan Riley: 00:15:48

agency here in town. But then I got fired on the

Nathan Riley: 00:15:51

spot because I took my mask off taking care of a

Nathan Riley: 00:15:53

dying older guy. My grandfather had died during

Nathan Riley: 00:15:55

COVID at age 100 alone, waving to us in bubble

Nathan Riley: 00:15:59

wrap from his window in his room. And I was like,

Nathan Riley: 00:16:01

I'm not going to let that happen with this guy.

Nathan Riley: 00:16:03

Like, of course I'll take my mask off. Like, I

Nathan Riley: 00:16:04

wasn't opposed to wearing it, like, if that's a

Nathan Riley: 00:16:06

policy, but, like, this guy deserves dignity. And

Nathan Riley: 00:16:09

it was the next day, they were like, come in.

Nathan Riley: 00:16:11

We're not. You don't have patience. Today we have

Nathan Riley: 00:16:12

had a meeting, and HR is there with a little

Nathan Riley: 00:16:14

envelope. And that was the end. That was the end

Nathan Riley: 00:16:16

of the conventional route for me.

Meredith Oke: 00:16:18

Just to clarify, you were fired for removing your

Meredith Oke: 00:16:21

mask, alone in a room with somebody who's dying

Meredith Oke: 00:16:25

their dying breath?

Nathan Riley: 00:16:26

Yeah, yeah. And that's a part of the story that

Nathan Riley: 00:16:30

I've had to do quite a bit of healing from. But

Nathan Riley: 00:16:32

really, in retrospect, it was the greatest gift

Nathan Riley: 00:16:35

that. I mean, I got to end that career clipping

Nathan Riley: 00:16:38

an old man's toenails, rubbing lotion on his

Nathan Riley: 00:16:40

skin, making him a bowl of soup, and hearing

Nathan Riley: 00:16:42

about the many wars he had participated in as a

Nathan Riley: 00:16:44

part of a, you know, his. His background and his

Nathan Riley: 00:16:48

amateur baseball career. Like, all of the

Nathan Riley: 00:16:49

dignity, the dignifying things that we would all

Nathan Riley: 00:16:52

like. So I felt like I did the right thing. I got

Nathan Riley: 00:16:54

fired. It's okay. And I should still be sending

Nathan Riley: 00:16:56

them floral bouquets on September 3rd just

Nathan Riley: 00:16:59

passed. I should have sent them a floral bouquet

Nathan Riley: 00:17:01

every year because it. It really propelled me and

Nathan Riley: 00:17:04

compelled me to do what I really wanted to do.

Nathan Riley: 00:17:07

And that started with home birth. I was doing

Nathan Riley: 00:17:09

home birth for quite a bit, and then I found a

Nathan Riley: 00:17:11

niche supporting midwives in. And really in

Nathan Riley: 00:17:15

honoring what traditionally midwifery brought to

Nathan Riley: 00:17:18

maternity care that OBGYNs could never even catch

Nathan Riley: 00:17:21

a whisper of. And in part of helping people with

Nathan Riley: 00:17:26

the preconception through postpartum space, we

Nathan Riley: 00:17:29

can now utilize some supplements maybe here,

Nathan Riley: 00:17:31

some. Some integration of some environmental

Nathan Riley: 00:17:34

modification here. And then, of course, the

Nathan Riley: 00:17:36

sunlight, the grounding, all of this other stuff

Nathan Riley: 00:17:38

really helps throughout that continuum, including

Nathan Riley: 00:17:40

in the birth itself. So that's what I get to do

Nathan Riley: 00:17:43

now. And I make. I make way more money now than I

Nathan Riley: 00:17:46

would have in the past. And I don't. I have all

Nathan Riley: 00:17:48

the time in the world to raise two little girls,

Nathan Riley: 00:17:50

five and three. My second, by the way, was born

Nathan Riley: 00:17:52

during. In our bedroom right across the way here.

Nathan Riley: 00:17:55

And all of this stuff is heresy to OB gyns, which

Nathan Riley: 00:17:58

leads us to, why don't more OB gyns do this?

Nathan Riley: 00:18:01

Because it just sounds like heresy to them. It

Nathan Riley: 00:18:03

sounds like, this is how we do it. Why would we

Nathan Riley: 00:18:06

do it those other ways? Even if they had that

Nathan Riley: 00:18:09

information or access? I mean, they have access,

Nathan Riley: 00:18:11

but even if they were to pursue it, it's really

Nathan Riley: 00:18:14

confronting to what we were taught to do in our

Nathan Riley: 00:18:16

residency training and in our career. And what

Nathan Riley: 00:18:18

would. What would my colleagues think? And all

Nathan Riley: 00:18:20

this other stuff comes up and the inner child

Nathan Riley: 00:18:21

starts to. To. To. To. With. Because you work so

Nathan Riley: 00:18:25

hard to get here and you don't want to rattle,

Nathan Riley: 00:18:27

you know, rock the boat. But I've been rocking

Nathan Riley: 00:18:28

the boat since I was little. My mom will tell you

Nathan Riley: 00:18:30

that.

Meredith Oke: 00:18:32

Born boat rocker.

Nathan Riley: 00:18:34

Yeah, it's true.

Meredith Oke: 00:18:36

I had my middle child at home, and I even

Meredith Oke: 00:18:41

remember telling certain people there was a woman

Meredith Oke: 00:18:43

I knew who was a nurse. And I remember. I don't

Meredith Oke: 00:18:47

know why I felt I needed to let her know I was

Meredith Oke: 00:18:49

doing that, but I did. And, you know, the look on

Meredith Oke: 00:18:52

her face. And she Just immediately went to, you

Meredith Oke: 00:18:55

know, well, what if you bleed out and what if

Meredith Oke: 00:18:57

this happens and what if that happens? And, you

Meredith Oke: 00:19:01

know, and I remember saying, like, they don't.

Meredith Oke: 00:19:02

They don't just, like, show up. They have. They

Meredith Oke: 00:19:06

have, you know, access to medicine and things

Meredith Oke: 00:19:09

that might be needed in the moment. But, you

Meredith Oke: 00:19:12

know, even just in that personal conversation, I

Meredith Oke: 00:19:15

felt that. Yeah, that judgment, which is the same

Meredith Oke: 00:19:20

judgment we all felt during COVID Right. Which is

Meredith Oke: 00:19:23

like, how dare you be so selfish? How dare you

Meredith Oke: 00:19:26

take such a risk when.

Nathan Riley: 00:19:28

Yeah.

Meredith Oke: 00:19:28

So this is the correct way to do it. And we all

Meredith Oke: 00:19:31

know that. What's wrong with you?

Nathan Riley: 00:19:34

And to their credit, they're right in the sense

Nathan Riley: 00:19:38

that every. Many, many, many, many, many. Almost.

Nathan Riley: 00:19:41

Almost everybody feels that way. So even the act

Nathan Riley: 00:19:45

of you having a home birth or even a free birth,

Nathan Riley: 00:19:47

which is a very different conversation, is truly

Nathan Riley: 00:19:52

an act of civil disobedience. It really is

Nathan Riley: 00:19:54

confronting to people. And if you're a doctor

Nathan Riley: 00:19:58

advocating for that, you are seen as a part of

Nathan Riley: 00:20:01

the problem. And so that's something I've had to

Nathan Riley: 00:20:03

work through, and it's no longer impacts me at

Nathan Riley: 00:20:07

all. But there's a lot of pressure, you know, for

Nathan Riley: 00:20:09

moms to do it. Right. And who knows how that

Nathan Riley: 00:20:11

conversation around the Thanksgiving dinner, you

Nathan Riley: 00:20:13

know, table goes. You had a vaginal breech birth

Nathan Riley: 00:20:16

at home. Like, you put our little nephew in

Nathan Riley: 00:20:19

danger. How could you be so irresponsible? You

Nathan Riley: 00:20:22

know, there's. There's this side eye thing that

Nathan Riley: 00:20:24

people do, even in families around you, just

Nathan Riley: 00:20:27

honoring your own autonomy and not wanting to

Nathan Riley: 00:20:29

have a C section or interventions. It's very

Nathan Riley: 00:20:32

confronting for people. So I want to give people

Nathan Riley: 00:20:33

permission to say, like, yeah, that sounds good,

Nathan Riley: 00:20:35

but it just wouldn't work for me. That's okay.

Nathan Riley: 00:20:37

Yeah, it's okay to have babies in hospitals, but

Nathan Riley: 00:20:39

whenever you have a home birth like you did, it

Nathan Riley: 00:20:42

is a very different experience. And it's actually

Nathan Riley: 00:20:44

very nourishing and can be very empowering for so

Nathan Riley: 00:20:46

many women, too, and their partners, I should say

Nathan Riley: 00:20:48

their families.

Meredith Oke: 00:20:50

Absolutely. I. And I had that experience because

Meredith Oke: 00:20:52

I had, you know, I read all the. I was reading

Meredith Oke: 00:20:56

all the holistic books and. And lived out of that

Meredith Oke: 00:20:59

mindset. But where I had my first two children in

Meredith Oke: 00:21:03

Toronto, Ontario, and they. Ontario is actually

Meredith Oke: 00:21:06

set up to have home births with a midwife under

Meredith Oke: 00:21:08

your insurance. But you have to get in there the

Meredith Oke: 00:21:11

second you're pregnant or it's full. Like, it's.

Meredith Oke: 00:21:13

It's a very. It's really hard to get in. But it.

Meredith Oke: 00:21:16

It does exist. So my first one, I, I totally

Meredith Oke: 00:21:19

missed the window. So I, I was in my heart with a

Meredith Oke: 00:21:23

midwife, but in. But in reality, I was with the

Meredith Oke: 00:21:27

obgyn, who had a vacancy was the only. There was

Meredith Oke: 00:21:30

like, I. The whole city was booked up. And yeah,

Meredith Oke: 00:21:34

socialized medicine, you have to just go with

Meredith Oke: 00:21:36

what. What's available.

Nathan Riley: 00:21:38

There's pros and cons, of course. Yeah, yeah,

Nathan Riley: 00:21:40

yeah. The fact that you're midw care is covered

Nathan Riley: 00:21:42

by insurance is already a pro.

Meredith Oke: 00:21:44

Yeah, no, it was. It's huge. And yeah, it's.

Meredith Oke: 00:21:48

It's. It's pretty amazing. Anyway, yeah, so I

Meredith Oke: 00:21:54

was, you know, I had read all of these, all of

Meredith Oke: 00:21:57

this literature, and I've heard of all these

Meredith Oke: 00:21:59

experience of birth being this really empowering

Meredith Oke: 00:22:02

experience. And I was like, it was

Meredith Oke: 00:22:05

transformative, but I'm not sure I would call it

Meredith Oke: 00:22:07

empowering. And then I. A couple years later, I

Meredith Oke: 00:22:10

had a home birth.

Nathan Riley: 00:22:11

Yeah.

Meredith Oke: 00:22:12

And you know, with these midwives in my bedroom

Meredith Oke: 00:22:15

and they needed an extra person because one was

Meredith Oke: 00:22:18

still under training. So there is like a very

Meredith Oke: 00:22:20

experienced woman, but. But she was kind of like

Meredith Oke: 00:22:23

napping in the corner because she just got off a

Meredith Oke: 00:22:25

flight from India. I remember being like, how

Meredith Oke: 00:22:29

dare you sleep during all of this? And then I

Meredith Oke: 00:22:31

thought, well, if she's resting, clearly

Meredith Oke: 00:22:33

everything's going well. But they were, you know,

Meredith Oke: 00:22:36

in the hospital, it was like, do this, do this.

Meredith Oke: 00:22:37

Lie down. And then I remember, like, as the labor

Meredith Oke: 00:22:40

got going in the home birth, I was like, okay,

Meredith Oke: 00:22:42

now what do I do? And they were like, I don't

Meredith Oke: 00:22:44

know. What is your body? What does your body want

Meredith Oke: 00:22:46

to do? I was like, oh, you know, and I just. So I

Meredith Oke: 00:22:52

just went with what my body wanted to do. And I

Meredith Oke: 00:22:55

just. That was my mom. Like, oh, this is what

Meredith Oke: 00:22:57

everyone's talking about.

Nathan Riley: 00:22:59

Yeah. So that's the empowerment. Yeah. That

Nathan Riley: 00:23:02

little switch is. What does. It is. What do you

Nathan Riley: 00:23:05

want to do? Are you talking to me? I mean, that's

Nathan Riley: 00:23:09

very. That can be very empowering for somebody to

Nathan Riley: 00:23:13

finally say, hey, don't outsource your power to

Nathan Riley: 00:23:15

me. What do you want to do? I'll be here to help

Nathan Riley: 00:23:16

guide you or to give you recommendations or some

Nathan Riley: 00:23:20

data or whatever. But you're the captain of this

Nathan Riley: 00:23:22

ship. That right there is the flip in the

Nathan Riley: 00:23:25

paradigm from the obstetrics model to midwifery.

Nathan Riley: 00:23:28

For the most part, not all midwives are. Do that,

Nathan Riley: 00:23:30

doing that, but when they're doing it, well, I

Nathan Riley: 00:23:33

think that's. That's the start of it right there.

Meredith Oke: 00:23:37

You mentioned earlier the, the midwife Approach

Meredith Oke: 00:23:41

versus the obstetric approach. Could you say more

Meredith Oke: 00:23:43

about that? Like how you see the what the role of

Meredith Oke: 00:23:48

the midwife as it's sort of quote unquote, meant,

Meredith Oke: 00:23:51

meant to be.

Nathan Riley: 00:23:53

Yeah. And I want to be careful with that language

Nathan Riley: 00:23:56

because I don't, I don't like the should, would,

Nathan Riley: 00:23:58

could language. Uh, so I don't think that there's

Nathan Riley: 00:24:01

any right way to do midwifery in its fullest

Nathan Riley: 00:24:03

expression. Of course, yeah. In its fullest

Nathan Riley: 00:24:06

expression. Midwifery starts with relationship

Nathan Riley: 00:24:09

building. And most of the time, and this is too

Nathan Riley: 00:24:13

sort of in defense of the obstetrics model, you

Nathan Riley: 00:24:17

are a part of a massive business operation and in

Nathan Riley: 00:24:20

order to meet their, their bottom end or their,

Nathan Riley: 00:24:24

to make their, their, their ends meet, but also

Nathan Riley: 00:24:26

then to make a profit, you need to see so many

Nathan Riley: 00:24:29

people in a day. So they might expect you to see,

Nathan Riley: 00:24:32

I don't know, up to 12. One of my colleagues out

Nathan Riley: 00:24:34

in LA, she was like, man, I'm like, really

Nathan Riley: 00:24:36

struggling with this because now they want me to

Nathan Riley: 00:24:38

see like 12 people in a morning. And the problem

Nathan Riley: 00:24:41

is, as you get better at this and faster at this,

Nathan Riley: 00:24:45

even that rapport building, you might do it

Nathan Riley: 00:24:47

really, really quickly and efficiently, but

Nathan Riley: 00:24:49

you're going to be rewarded with more work. This

Nathan Riley: 00:24:51

is that productivity model. And people blame

Nathan Riley: 00:24:54

capitalism and all that, and, yeah, sure, I guess

Nathan Riley: 00:24:56

that's a part of it, but the reality is they want

Nathan Riley: 00:24:58

to squeeze out as much of your energy as they

Nathan Riley: 00:25:00

can. And in the clinic, sometimes that's the

Nathan Riley: 00:25:03

hardest part of an OB GYN's life, is I have to go

Nathan Riley: 00:25:06

in, get out. And I know that this lady wants to

Nathan Riley: 00:25:08

talk more because she has a history of a

Nathan Riley: 00:25:09

stillbirth, but I'm only given 15 minutes with

Nathan Riley: 00:25:12

her. So we measure the funnel height, we check

Nathan Riley: 00:25:14

the fetal heart tones, maybe. I mean, everybody's

Nathan Riley: 00:25:16

doing ultrasound now. There's a, there's a

Nathan Riley: 00:25:18

potential problem with ultrasound, but we're

Nathan Riley: 00:25:21

going to do all those things, collect your urine,

Nathan Riley: 00:25:22

look at your chart, make sure that we're not

Nathan Riley: 00:25:24

missing anything, and then we have a couple

Nathan Riley: 00:25:25

minutes maybe to, to chat so that you can trust

Nathan Riley: 00:25:27

me. And that's just not done. But in the

Nathan Riley: 00:25:30

midwifery model, you might meet with your midwife

Nathan Riley: 00:25:32

three hours, you know, I mean, it could be a long

Nathan Riley: 00:25:35

visit. Now, I don't know what it's like in

Nathan Riley: 00:25:36

Canada, but most midwives here in the States who

Nathan Riley: 00:25:41

are not certified nurse midwives, there's a big

Nathan Riley: 00:25:43

distinction there. Most certified professional

Nathan Riley: 00:25:45

midwives and most traditional or classical

Nathan Riley: 00:25:47

midwives who are not certified Certified

Nathan Riley: 00:25:49

professional midwives through an organization

Nathan Riley: 00:25:50

called narm. They're really just doing this

Nathan Riley: 00:25:53

because they learn through an apprenticeship

Nathan Riley: 00:25:54

based model and they know what they're doing and

Nathan Riley: 00:25:56

some of them are better than everybody, including

Nathan Riley: 00:25:58

myself. They might go to your house and spend the

Nathan Riley: 00:26:02

entire morning, they might have a whole pot of

Nathan Riley: 00:26:04

coffee with you, you know, or you know, have some

Nathan Riley: 00:26:08

quiche that you've heated up and you actually

Nathan Riley: 00:26:10

have this person coming into your home, taking

Nathan Riley: 00:26:12

off their shoes and respectfully finding where

Nathan Riley: 00:26:15

they fit in the room so that you can be on your

Nathan Riley: 00:26:17

labor ball or doing this, or you might have your

Nathan Riley: 00:26:19

kids and your dog running around. They're on your

Nathan Riley: 00:26:22

turf. And, and they, they, they, they have a

Nathan Riley: 00:26:26

unique appreciation for the honor that it is to

Nathan Riley: 00:26:30

come into your space versus you going into the

Nathan Riley: 00:26:32

assembly line. You know, wait in the clinic room,

Nathan Riley: 00:26:35

get your vitals, they ask you about domestic

Nathan Riley: 00:26:37

violence, they ask you about depression. You go

Nathan Riley: 00:26:39

into the office, you sit on the crinkly paper,

Nathan Riley: 00:26:41

maybe you have your pants off, they have the

Nathan Riley: 00:26:42

swabs already ready for GBS screening, they go in

Nathan Riley: 00:26:44

and bam, bam, bam, bam, bam. And you're gone. And

Nathan Riley: 00:26:46

you never even really got to ask like about, you

Nathan Riley: 00:26:50

know, I'm afraid, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm really

Nathan Riley: 00:26:52

scared about what might happen because this

Nathan Riley: 00:26:54

happened to my family member, you know. Oh, I

Nathan Riley: 00:26:56

wouldn't worry about that. That's low risk. You

Nathan Riley: 00:26:57

may just, you just don't get into that dialogue.

Nathan Riley: 00:27:00

So home birth midwives work very hard. They're

Nathan Riley: 00:27:02

basically on a 24 hour call schedule at all

Nathan Riley: 00:27:05

times. And that deserves some respect. Just like

Nathan Riley: 00:27:08

the obs that are in the hospital just racking

Nathan Riley: 00:27:10

their brains, trying to stay alive while doing,

Nathan Riley: 00:27:13

you know, life saving surgeries or whatever. And

Nathan Riley: 00:27:16

so that is really the distinction now, the, the

Nathan Riley: 00:27:22

I'll say traditional because I mean like way back

Nathan Riley: 00:27:24

before we had modern obstetrics, traditionally

Nathan Riley: 00:27:25

midwifery didn't use a lot of interventions. They

Nathan Riley: 00:27:29

didn't use ripening agents for the cervix or

Nathan Riley: 00:27:33

many, many rounds of labs or they didn't do non

Nathan Riley: 00:27:38

stress tests, they didn't do a lot of that stuff.

Nathan Riley: 00:27:40

There was a lot of intuitive sort of

Nathan Riley: 00:27:41

understanding of, and also asking you what does

Nathan Riley: 00:27:44

your intuition say? And, and there's a part of

Nathan Riley: 00:27:46

that little piece where it's like, hey, what do

Nathan Riley: 00:27:48

you think? And if you say I don't, I think

Nathan Riley: 00:27:51

something's not going well right now. It doesn't

Nathan Riley: 00:27:54

matter what the labs and everything else say.

Nathan Riley: 00:27:55

Like we need to address that. We need to really

Nathan Riley: 00:27:57

sit with this and figure out what are we going to

Nathan Riley: 00:27:58

do? That was what women caring for women used to

Nathan Riley: 00:28:02

look like. And unfortunately, midwifery is being

Nathan Riley: 00:28:04

perverse more towards the obstetric side because

Nathan Riley: 00:28:06

of our litigious sort of environment here. States

Nathan Riley: 00:28:10

and even the federal government mandating that

Nathan Riley: 00:28:13

midwives do it a certain way. Licensing is

Nathan Riley: 00:28:15

putting restrictions on what you can and can't

Nathan Riley: 00:28:16

do. A license is merely a permission slip from

Nathan Riley: 00:28:20

the public agency that says you can do this job.

Nathan Riley: 00:28:24

And even my barber struggles with this. He's

Nathan Riley: 00:28:26

like, man, during COVID I couldn't cut hair

Nathan Riley: 00:28:27

because I couldn't open my shop. And if you came

Nathan Riley: 00:28:30

to my house and the board of barbers found out I

Nathan Riley: 00:28:33

was doing haircuts outside of an accredited

Nathan Riley: 00:28:35

facility, I could lose my license. I would lose

Nathan Riley: 00:28:38

my livelihood. So these, the. Even this licensing

Nathan Riley: 00:28:41

procedure, what this used to be, which is, hey,

Nathan Riley: 00:28:44

Meredith, you need something? Let me hear what

Nathan Riley: 00:28:47

you need and let me like, really understand where

Nathan Riley: 00:28:50

you are coming from and where you want to go. And

Nathan Riley: 00:28:53

then let me see if I can rally my resources

Nathan Riley: 00:28:54

around you and if I can't, let me help find

Nathan Riley: 00:28:56

somebody who can. This is a community effort as

Nathan Riley: 00:28:59

opposed to you tiptoeing into this machine. And

Nathan Riley: 00:29:04

there's a good reason to have the machine. But if

Nathan Riley: 00:29:07

we started with this default relationship

Nathan Riley: 00:29:10

building, trust building environment, I really

Nathan Riley: 00:29:12

think birth would go a lot better. And I actually

Nathan Riley: 00:29:14

think this is how we change the world. It's a,

Nathan Riley: 00:29:16

it's a, it's a far. Maybe it's a stretch, but I

Nathan Riley: 00:29:19

really think that if we can kind of operate

Nathan Riley: 00:29:21

around with some reverence for, for how

Nathan Riley: 00:29:25

transformative this experience is and how this

Nathan Riley: 00:29:27

relationship building is needs to be our

Nathan Riley: 00:29:29

priority, single priority. I really think we

Nathan Riley: 00:29:31

would change the world because the way that

Nathan Riley: 00:29:33

babies come into the world really matters and the

Nathan Riley: 00:29:36

way that women go through that transformation

Nathan Riley: 00:29:37

really matters.

Meredith Oke: 00:29:39

Absolutely. And yeah, I mean, there's. There's a

Meredith Oke: 00:29:44

certain level of trauma that. That comes out of

Meredith Oke: 00:29:46

that experience that I think overlays onto your

Meredith Oke: 00:29:51

experience of motherhood for. For quite a long

Meredith Oke: 00:29:53

time. And if we could, yeah. Soften that or

Meredith Oke: 00:30:01

create a way where, yeah, it felt normal and

Meredith Oke: 00:30:06

natural and wasn't associated with so much

Meredith Oke: 00:30:12

trauma, I think that would really. I agree. I

Meredith Oke: 00:30:15

think it would completely change the world. I

Meredith Oke: 00:30:17

think we totally underestimate the effect that

Meredith Oke: 00:30:20

all of this has on all of the humans who are born

Meredith Oke: 00:30:23

in that system.

Nathan Riley: 00:30:25

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And there's also this growing

Nathan Riley: 00:30:30

distrust between people and the, the people at

Nathan Riley: 00:30:34

large and our medical institutions for, For a

Nathan Riley: 00:30:38

complicated set of reasons, not least of which is

Nathan Riley: 00:30:41

the stuff that happened during the COVID moment.

Nathan Riley: 00:30:44

And I don't like to harp on it because I actually

Nathan Riley: 00:30:46

was not a person who was. Who was putting.

Nathan Riley: 00:30:50

Changing my profile picture that was like, all

Nathan Riley: 00:30:52

about, you know, health, freedom and all that.

Nathan Riley: 00:30:54

Like, I wasn't that guy. I did feel that inside.

Nathan Riley: 00:30:56

Like, oh, my gosh, like, we have a lot that we're

Nathan Riley: 00:30:58

going to lose here if we don't push back. But at

Nathan Riley: 00:31:01

the same time, it's my job as a physician for

Nathan Riley: 00:31:03

everybody to feel safe. And I don't think anybody

Nathan Riley: 00:31:06

who takes a firm hard line against anything is

Nathan Riley: 00:31:11

necessarily doing us much good, because we, as a,

Nathan Riley: 00:31:14

As a. An institution, let's say, the medical

Nathan Riley: 00:31:16

profession, what we've lost is trust. And so you

Nathan Riley: 00:31:20

use the word softening. I, even during COVID

Nathan Riley: 00:31:23

started getting so riled up that I found that I

Nathan Riley: 00:31:25

lost a softening. I needed to actually soften in

Nathan Riley: 00:31:28

order to, like, sit back and start to receiving

Nathan Riley: 00:31:30

and listening again. And there are certain

Nathan Riley: 00:31:34

individuals, even in the field of quantum

Nathan Riley: 00:31:38

biology, who have a very harsh tone. And you're

Nathan Riley: 00:31:43

not going to convince everybody by bullying them

Nathan Riley: 00:31:46

into believing what you believe. It doesn't work

Nathan Riley: 00:31:48

like that. And so when OB GYNs want to start

Nathan Riley: 00:31:52

bullying people and making them feel silly or

Nathan Riley: 00:31:54

stupid or incompetent or irresponsible for

Nathan Riley: 00:31:57

wanting to just have a little more autonomy in

Nathan Riley: 00:31:59

their birth, the. The use of, Of. Of. Of bullying

Nathan Riley: 00:32:03

behavior and language is furthering the divide

Nathan Riley: 00:32:07

between the consumers and the people that we've

Nathan Riley: 00:32:09

actually taken an oath to care for. So we have to

Nathan Riley: 00:32:11

be very, very aware of our language and very

Nathan Riley: 00:32:14

discerning with how we approach various topics

Nathan Riley: 00:32:17

that are very divisive, naturally, given the

Nathan Riley: 00:32:19

state of North America. And we want to draw

Nathan Riley: 00:32:22

people in, we actually want to be curious as

Nathan Riley: 00:32:24

opposed to reactive. And that's like any obgyn

Nathan Riley: 00:32:27

who's listening. I just want you to be curious

Nathan Riley: 00:32:29

about why people aren't going into hospitals to

Nathan Riley: 00:32:31

have births. Why? Is it. Is it because they're

Nathan Riley: 00:32:33

irresponsible, or is it because they don't feel

Nathan Riley: 00:32:35

that they can trust you? And if we can start to

Nathan Riley: 00:32:38

just slowly put those Lego blocks together to

Nathan Riley: 00:32:41

build a tower of trust where we can both meet in

Nathan Riley: 00:32:44

mutual agreement around curiosity, I think it's

Nathan Riley: 00:32:47

going to do quite a bit of good. And it actually

Nathan Riley: 00:32:48

might be very healing for women who have had

Nathan Riley: 00:32:50

traumatic births. But, yeah, I'll just leave it

Nathan Riley: 00:32:54

at that.

Meredith Oke: 00:32:56

Yes. No, because, I mean, I agree that I think

Meredith Oke: 00:32:59

the medical system absolutely has its place and

Meredith Oke: 00:33:02

it's very, very good at, particularly crises,

Meredith Oke: 00:33:05

whether it's a accident or major infection or,

Meredith Oke: 00:33:10

you know, but when birth becomes medicalized,

Meredith Oke: 00:33:15

we're de facto then saying that birth is a crisis.

Nathan Riley: 00:33:19

Right.

Meredith Oke: 00:33:20

When it. That's not the default nature of it. It

Meredith Oke: 00:33:24

can. There can be a crisis that occurs. But we

Meredith Oke: 00:33:27

take that. It's sort of like as the starting

Meredith Oke: 00:33:30

point.

Nathan Riley: 00:33:31

Right.

Meredith Oke: 00:33:31

This natural, you know, process that we've been

Meredith Oke: 00:33:36

engaged in since the dawn of our existence is

Meredith Oke: 00:33:40

somehow a crisis that must be managed by a crisis

Meredith Oke: 00:33:43

management system.

Nathan Riley: 00:33:45

Yeah, yeah. And. And this is probably a good

Nathan Riley: 00:33:49

opportunity to talk about what's. What's really

Nathan Riley: 00:33:52

lacking in the purview of a conventional. I don't

Nathan Riley: 00:33:56

use traditional because traditional would predate

Nathan Riley: 00:33:58

conventional. Tradition would be like way before

Nathan Riley: 00:34:01

we had Rockefeller medicine, what were people

Nathan Riley: 00:34:03

doing to care for one another? And there are

Nathan Riley: 00:34:06

going to be principles there that we can apply to

Nathan Riley: 00:34:08

this beautiful technologically advanced society

Nathan Riley: 00:34:12

that would make a beautiful marriage in order to

Nathan Riley: 00:34:14

help us move forward and budge that needle. So

Nathan Riley: 00:34:17

you, you mentioned crises. Pathology is what ob

Nathan Riley: 00:34:20

gyns are good at. We're good at surgery and

Nathan Riley: 00:34:22

pathology. We are way better than anybody else at

Nathan Riley: 00:34:25

managing pathology. And specifically with the

Nathan Riley: 00:34:29

need for surgery in childbirth. There's no

Nathan Riley: 00:34:31

question about that. But when we see the

Nathan Riley: 00:34:34

consequence as the cause, meaning certain bad

Nathan Riley: 00:34:39

things can happen in pregnancies and with our

Nathan Riley: 00:34:41

chronically ill society here in the United

Nathan Riley: 00:34:44

States, yes, we have a lot of good reasons to

Nathan Riley: 00:34:47

have obgyns, but nobody's really talking about,

Nathan Riley: 00:34:52

what if we didn't think of pregnancy as a

Nathan Riley: 00:34:55

disease? And what if we. Instead of focusing on

Nathan Riley: 00:34:57

the bad things that happen? This is a lesson from

Nathan Riley: 00:34:59

Michel Odon, who's a Parisian general surgeon who

Nathan Riley: 00:35:02

wrote so many books. I don't. 20 books or

Nathan Riley: 00:35:04

something. He said we're asking the wrong

Nathan Riley: 00:35:07

question. We're not. We shouldn't be asking, why

Nathan Riley: 00:35:09

do these bursts go wrong? You know, why do these

Nathan Riley: 00:35:12

bad things happen? We should be asking, what

Nathan Riley: 00:35:13

about, you know, Stephanie riley, who had two

Nathan Riley: 00:35:16

perfect pregnancies? Why did she have an hour, 46

Nathan Riley: 00:35:20

minutes of labor and have a baby breathed out

Nathan Riley: 00:35:22

with some somatic breathwork in her bed, on her

Nathan Riley: 00:35:25

chest, without any reason to even have any

Nathan Riley: 00:35:27

medical personnel there? We had midwives there,

Nathan Riley: 00:35:29

but they didn't do anything. Why did that happen

Nathan Riley: 00:35:33

for her? We should be focusing on that. And that

Nathan Riley: 00:35:35

gets us into, okay, maybe the years and

Nathan Riley: 00:35:39

especially, let's say, the months. But. But even

Nathan Riley: 00:35:42

the years preceding pregnancy. What could all of

Nathan Riley: 00:35:45

this environmental modification do in order to

Nathan Riley: 00:35:49

make sure that more women are having that

Nathan Riley: 00:35:51

beautiful quote, easy birth versus it becoming a

Nathan Riley: 00:35:55

pathology, which is the reality for many

Nathan Riley: 00:35:57

families. It does become a pathology. And now you

Nathan Riley: 00:36:00

don't really have any choice. If you want a

Nathan Riley: 00:36:01

living baby, we have to go to the operating room.

Nathan Riley: 00:36:04

And nobody's asking that question. And part of it

Nathan Riley: 00:36:07

is that we don't learn anything about this in

Nathan Riley: 00:36:09

medical training. The other part is that we're so

Nathan Riley: 00:36:13

consumed with the hospital environment and the

Nathan Riley: 00:36:16

technology and this myriad of interventions that

Nathan Riley: 00:36:19

we can't even see outside of the box in order to

Nathan Riley: 00:36:23

improve our practice, which is not, hey, let's.

Nathan Riley: 00:36:26

Let's do some complementary medicine. The

Nathan Riley: 00:36:28

sunlight, the grounding, the nutrition, the

Nathan Riley: 00:36:31

sleep, stress management, interpersonal

Nathan Riley: 00:36:34

relationships, the quality of your water, all of

Nathan Riley: 00:36:37

that should precede pregnancy. And then you have

Nathan Riley: 00:36:42

a chance that's way below average of those bad

Nathan Riley: 00:36:44

things happening. And those are the people that

Nathan Riley: 00:36:48

I've studied. That is where my. That's how I got

Nathan Riley: 00:36:51

into this quantum biology space. It's like, where

Nathan Riley: 00:36:54

can I further address some environmental poison?

Nathan Riley: 00:36:58

And I'm using poison, generally speaking here. It

Nathan Riley: 00:37:00

could be mental, it could be physical, it could

Nathan Riley: 00:37:02

be whatever. Where are these poisons disrupting

Nathan Riley: 00:37:05

the natural process that could unfold and has

Nathan Riley: 00:37:08

always unfolded until we're being bombarded with

Nathan Riley: 00:37:12

all of this other noise that is rattling our cage

Nathan Riley: 00:37:17

such that pregnancy does become a disease more

Nathan Riley: 00:37:20

than it should and leads to C sections nearly 40%

Nathan Riley: 00:37:23

of the time and inductions about a third of the

Nathan Riley: 00:37:25

time. How can we get ahead of that to prevent

Nathan Riley: 00:37:29

those things from happening? And when you haven't

Nathan Riley: 00:37:33

learned it, you haven't lived it, and you haven't

Nathan Riley: 00:37:35

been incentivized to do that. It makes it very

Nathan Riley: 00:37:37

hard for any practitioner. It doesn't matter how

Nathan Riley: 00:37:39

old they are, how experienced they are, where

Nathan Riley: 00:37:40

they are in their training. It makes it very. It

Nathan Riley: 00:37:42

makes it very, very hard for you to say, you know

Nathan Riley: 00:37:44

what? Maybe I was wrong and I'm gonna start

Nathan Riley: 00:37:47

trying something new. Nobody's giving them that

Nathan Riley: 00:37:49

incentive. So me being free of that, I was. I was

Nathan Riley: 00:37:53

able to do everything. I was able to say, let's

Nathan Riley: 00:37:54

just go off full overhaul, not even using

Nathan Riley: 00:37:57

expensive technology here. We don't need $150

Nathan Riley: 00:38:00

blue light blockers. We'll talk about blue light

Nathan Riley: 00:38:02

in a second. But we don't need $150 blue light

Nathan Riley: 00:38:04

blockers and an $8,000 sauna and a $4,000 house

Nathan Riley: 00:38:08

filtration system. How about we just get you a $4

Nathan Riley: 00:38:11

can of oysters and you have that three days per

Nathan Riley: 00:38:13

week because it's electrically Charged. It's very

Nathan Riley: 00:38:16

nourishing. And you know what? Let's throw in the

Nathan Riley: 00:38:17

cheapest part of the cow in North America, the

Nathan Riley: 00:38:20

liver and the heart. Let's throw that in there.

Nathan Riley: 00:38:22

And then let's also, you know that chicken

Nathan Riley: 00:38:24

carcass that you got from the farm down the

Nathan Riley: 00:38:26

street? Let's make some bone broth out of that. I

Nathan Riley: 00:38:27

haven't. You have. It hasn't cost you anything.

Nathan Riley: 00:38:29

Maybe more than 30 bucks a month. We start with

Nathan Riley: 00:38:33

those foundational principles and then we start

Nathan Riley: 00:38:35

fine tuning from there. And lo and behold, again,

Nathan Riley: 00:38:39

I can't say I have zero. Problems occur in the

Nathan Riley: 00:38:42

pregnancies that I take care of. And I'm caring

Nathan Riley: 00:38:43

for everybody through born free method, remotely

Nathan Riley: 00:38:45

pregnancy preconception, through postpartum

Nathan Riley: 00:38:48

support. And I have people, you know, in person.

Nathan Riley: 00:38:50

But when we start laying that healthy foundation,

Nathan Riley: 00:38:54

the goal I tell everybody, is I can't get you to

Nathan Riley: 00:38:56

zero risk. There's no guarantee in pregnancy you

Nathan Riley: 00:38:59

could be the healthiest person ever and have a

Nathan Riley: 00:39:00

stillbirth, that can still happen. But if the

Nathan Riley: 00:39:03

average risk is, let's say, 1 in 10 of something

Nathan Riley: 00:39:07

bad happening, I don't know, it doesn't really

Nathan Riley: 00:39:09

matter. Why don't we try to drop that in half?

Nathan Riley: 00:39:11

Why don't we make it 1 in 20? And now your

Nathan Riley: 00:39:14

chances of that happening are less than the

Nathan Riley: 00:39:15

average. And that's the best that I can promise

Nathan Riley: 00:39:17

you. But that's a pretty big promise. And that

Nathan Riley: 00:39:21

does pan out over time and it has now for five

Nathan Riley: 00:39:24

years for me.

Meredith Oke: 00:39:26

Wow. And yeah, that it is sort of the inverse of

Meredith Oke: 00:39:31

what the medical system does with birth and with

Meredith Oke: 00:39:34

everything where we're like, where's all the

Meredith Oke: 00:39:36

preventative care? And it's like, that's not the

Meredith Oke: 00:39:38

model. So I love what you're doing because you

Meredith Oke: 00:39:42

are not only providing this level of care to the

Meredith Oke: 00:39:47

people in your community, but you are creating a

Meredith Oke: 00:39:50

model for how to do it that's got the kind of the

Meredith Oke: 00:39:55

best of both worlds. And I think that is what is

Meredith Oke: 00:39:58

so, so, so needed right now. We have, we have

Meredith Oke: 00:40:02

people. I mean, yes, most, most doctors are

Meredith Oke: 00:40:06

locked in the conventional system and appreciate

Meredith Oke: 00:40:08

that word choice, but there are so many people

Meredith Oke: 00:40:11

with so much knowledge, whether it's a coach or

Meredith Oke: 00:40:15

an MD or. But there's no structure in place for

Meredith Oke: 00:40:22

them to deliver that.

Nathan Riley: 00:40:25

Yeah.

Meredith Oke: 00:40:25

Their service. So, yeah, tell us a little more

Meredith Oke: 00:40:28

about how you did that and then we'll get into a

Meredith Oke: 00:40:31

bit more about quantum biology.

Nathan Riley: 00:40:33

So how I actually developed my sort of operating

Nathan Riley: 00:40:36

procedures.

Meredith Oke: 00:40:37

Yeah. Because, I mean, there's so many people who

Meredith Oke: 00:40:39

are, you know, I see them all the time. Like I

Meredith Oke: 00:40:41

have all these things, certifications, I know all

Meredith Oke: 00:40:43

this stuff. But like, how do I. How, what do I do

Meredith Oke: 00:40:45

with it? And, well, you know, licensure comes

Meredith Oke: 00:40:50

into play for certain people or, you know,

Meredith Oke: 00:40:53

whatever it is, keeping their accreditations,

Meredith Oke: 00:40:56

building a model that doesn't require them to

Meredith Oke: 00:40:58

have an MBA or a digital media, digital marketing

Meredith Oke: 00:41:04

expertise. There's so much, so much going on.

Nathan Riley: 00:41:08

Okay, so now we're talking about like business

Nathan Riley: 00:41:10

strategy.

Meredith Oke: 00:41:12

Yeah. And we can keep it high level, but I just

Meredith Oke: 00:41:15

love that you've, you've found a way to spread

Meredith Oke: 00:41:19

out what you'd have to a lot of people and take

Meredith Oke: 00:41:22

care of yourself and have a lifestyle that is

Meredith Oke: 00:41:25

sustainable.

Nathan Riley: 00:41:26

Right, right. Okay. The first thing I would say

Nathan Riley: 00:41:30

to people, because the first. So what I'm doing

Nathan Riley: 00:41:32

is I'm putting myself in the seat of somebody who

Nathan Riley: 00:41:34

might, who might be like doubtful or something,

Nathan Riley: 00:41:39

that we could scale this or whatever else. The

Nathan Riley: 00:41:42

first thing people have to shake themselves free

Nathan Riley: 00:41:44

from is there is some job security in working in

Nathan Riley: 00:41:49

the conventional model. There's no doubt about

Nathan Riley: 00:41:51

that. But there's some big costs that you pay for

Nathan Riley: 00:41:56

that, which is really what we've talked about. So

Nathan Riley: 00:41:59

if you can say, hey, do you think I could survive

Nathan Riley: 00:42:02

without an accountant and a practice manager and

Nathan Riley: 00:42:06

a CEO suite and everybody just doing all the

Nathan Riley: 00:42:09

background stuff so you can do your job, could

Nathan Riley: 00:42:10

you survive without that? Most people would say

Nathan Riley: 00:42:13

probably, but I don't know. So that's a leap of

Nathan Riley: 00:42:15

faith. The second thing is I stopped working with

Nathan Riley: 00:42:18

insurance companies altogether. I don't send

Nathan Riley: 00:42:21

bills. I don't send super bills. I don't have any

Nathan Riley: 00:42:23

relationship whatsoever with any insurance

Nathan Riley: 00:42:25

company. And the reason for that is that there's

Nathan Riley: 00:42:27

a fee schedule that determines how much I would

Nathan Riley: 00:42:29

be paid for doing this, this, this, this, this

Nathan Riley: 00:42:32

based on specific CPT codes. And that's where

Nathan Riley: 00:42:35

documentation. That's why if you ask for your

Nathan Riley: 00:42:37

medical records from your doctor, it's like 700

Nathan Riley: 00:42:40

pages for maybe like a year's worth of your time

Nathan Riley: 00:42:43

seeing a doctor. You know, presuming you go back

Nathan Riley: 00:42:45

and forth many, many times, like pregnancy care,

Nathan Riley: 00:42:48

it might be like a 700 page PDF they send you.

Nathan Riley: 00:42:51

Great. Where do I find the stuff I actually need

Nathan Riley: 00:42:54

in there? Well, the reason you can't see it is

Nathan Riley: 00:42:56

because they want to document everything in order

Nathan Riley: 00:42:58

to maximize billing from the insurance companies.

Nathan Riley: 00:43:00

And what I do and what many practitioners who are

Nathan Riley: 00:43:03

doing this type of work do is not billable to

Nathan Riley: 00:43:06

insurance. I can't charge and get paid for three

Nathan Riley: 00:43:09

hours of what might be called lifestyle coaching

Nathan Riley: 00:43:12

or health coaching or whatever as a person or as

Nathan Riley: 00:43:15

a couple is trying to get pregnant. I can't get

Nathan Riley: 00:43:16

paid for that. They might give me like 150 bucks,

Nathan Riley: 00:43:20

but I could also make $500 an hour if I charge

Nathan Riley: 00:43:23

for it on my own. And the way to see through this

Nathan Riley: 00:43:27

is that in all of those co payments and hitting

Nathan Riley: 00:43:30

your deductible and the premiums you're paying,

Nathan Riley: 00:43:32

how much have you actually utilized your health

Nathan Riley: 00:43:34

insurance? It's great as an emergency response

Nathan Riley: 00:43:38

vehicle, like, oh my gosh, catastrophic, $50,000.

Nathan Riley: 00:43:42

I can't afford that out of pocket. So the

Nathan Riley: 00:43:43

insurance company is going to have that or

Nathan Riley: 00:43:45

something, right? Cancer, chronic illness, those

Nathan Riley: 00:43:48

types of things. So when I, when you start to

Nathan Riley: 00:43:51

illustrate for people what a scam, it's a racket.

Nathan Riley: 00:43:54

It really is. I think health insurance in general

Nathan Riley: 00:43:56

is a racket, except for in catastrophic claims,

Nathan Riley: 00:43:59

if you're gonna have a home birth in the states,

Nathan Riley: 00:44:00

usually you're not getting all of the midwifery

Nathan Riley: 00:44:02

support paid for anyways. You're paying out of

Nathan Riley: 00:44:03

pocket. And it might be like 5,500 bucks, which

Nathan Riley: 00:44:06

is a lot of money. But in the grand scheme of how

Nathan Riley: 00:44:08

much you've paid for insurance, you would expect

Nathan Riley: 00:44:10

that they would just nip that right off the bill.

Nathan Riley: 00:44:12

And they don't. Not necessarily. So when you

Nathan Riley: 00:44:15

actually consider how much you've paid for health

Nathan Riley: 00:44:17

insurance and people are like, how could you not

Nathan Riley: 00:44:18

accept insurance? You're, you're disqualifying

Nathan Riley: 00:44:21

people from working with you. No, I just do it

Nathan Riley: 00:44:22

for free. You can't afford anything. Tell me what

Nathan Riley: 00:44:25

you need, I'll help you. And because I, I can

Nathan Riley: 00:44:28

make so much money charging people that have

Nathan Riley: 00:44:31

resources, it also allows me to distribute that

Nathan Riley: 00:44:33

in whatever way I want. And I do a lot of free

Nathan Riley: 00:44:35

care. A friend of a friend is having a crisis.

Nathan Riley: 00:44:38

They just lost their job. Let me help you out.

Nathan Riley: 00:44:40

Like this is what I trained to do is help people

Nathan Riley: 00:44:42

not make money. And so you have to meet your

Nathan Riley: 00:44:45

bottom line. You can't be overly charitable. But

Nathan Riley: 00:44:47

you also, you know, you know, have a sliding

Nathan Riley: 00:44:49

scale or something like that, and people pay you

Nathan Riley: 00:44:51

what they can. Mine's all donation based and the

Nathan Riley: 00:44:53

average is 500. That's why I use that, that

Nathan Riley: 00:44:55

amount. But sometimes people pay me a hundred

Nathan Riley: 00:44:57

bucks, sometimes people pay me 700 bucks. And it,

Nathan Riley: 00:44:59

you know, it works out in the middle there. Then

Nathan Riley: 00:45:02

the other option is, well, what if you could

Nathan Riley: 00:45:04

recreate yourself and do all of that groundwork

Nathan Riley: 00:45:09

through A book or a webinar series or a massive

Nathan Riley: 00:45:12

online video library where there's also a private

Nathan Riley: 00:45:15

community where people can share and, you know,

Nathan Riley: 00:45:17

birth workers and people alike and share

Nathan Riley: 00:45:19

suggestions, ask questions. And the meeting every

Nathan Riley: 00:45:22

other week on Zoom. How much time am I then

Nathan Riley: 00:45:23

putting in? Well, it's a week. It's two hours per

Nathan Riley: 00:45:27

month. If my business partner's doing two of

Nathan Riley: 00:45:28

those calls, it's. Or one of those calls every

Nathan Riley: 00:45:32

month, and that's an hour plus of my time that

Nathan Riley: 00:45:34

I'm actually doing a live Q and A. So I had to

Nathan Riley: 00:45:37

find a way to save myself time, maximize my

Nathan Riley: 00:45:40

return on investment, and feel like anybody who

Nathan Riley: 00:45:44

wants this help can get it. And so you get

Nathan Riley: 00:45:47

creative there. But the insurance companies never

Nathan Riley: 00:45:49

get involved. I never have a boss from above

Nathan Riley: 00:45:51

telling me what to do. I don't have. I'm. I work

Nathan Riley: 00:45:53

out of my home, so I don't have all the overhead

Nathan Riley: 00:45:55

of a brick and mortar. People think that it, you

Nathan Riley: 00:45:57

know, demands respect. When you have a big sign

Nathan Riley: 00:46:02

out on a main road or something like, sure, you

Nathan Riley: 00:46:04

can pay for that. That's expensive. And now

Nathan Riley: 00:46:06

you've just thrust yourself. You've now just

Nathan Riley: 00:46:08

become house broke on your practice. Now I have

Nathan Riley: 00:46:10

to see so many people. I have to charge so much

Nathan Riley: 00:46:12

money in order to just pay my bills before I even

Nathan Riley: 00:46:14

pay myself. Like, I don't like any of that. I

Nathan Riley: 00:46:16

don't like any of that. Because now if my girls

Nathan Riley: 00:46:18

need me, I could say, meredith, I'm sorry, I

Nathan Riley: 00:46:20

gotta pause. Can we pick this up in 10 minutes?

Nathan Riley: 00:46:22

I'm not gonna do that because they're at school.

Nathan Riley: 00:46:23

But, you know, the kids might need me and I can

Nathan Riley: 00:46:26

run down in there and be with them. Because

Nathan Riley: 00:46:28

really, at the end of the day, I don't care about

Nathan Riley: 00:46:29

what I do in medicine. I mean, I do care about

Nathan Riley: 00:46:31

it, but that's not my number one priority. My

Nathan Riley: 00:46:33

priority is these little girls need a responsible

Nathan Riley: 00:46:35

male figure who's going to show them how to

Nathan Riley: 00:46:37

laugh, love, cry, and sing all day, every day.

Nathan Riley: 00:46:42

And that is my only job. And of course, making

Nathan Riley: 00:46:44

love to my wife and developing intimacy there so

Nathan Riley: 00:46:47

she feels, well, you know, well head and

Nathan Riley: 00:46:49

emotionally balanced by her male partner. But if

Nathan Riley: 00:46:54

I was in the hospital system doing that and

Nathan Riley: 00:46:56

making lots of money, I can make lots of money.

Nathan Riley: 00:46:57

Sure, I could do that, but I wouldn't have any of

Nathan Riley: 00:46:59

this other stuff. So a pros cons list helped me

Nathan Riley: 00:47:03

kind of figure out. And also, I was fired,

Nathan Riley: 00:47:05

remember? So it was sort of like, well, shit, I

Nathan Riley: 00:47:07

gotta figure this out.

Meredith Oke: 00:47:09

There's that decision made?

Nathan Riley: 00:47:11

Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, I, I, I have a lot of

Nathan Riley: 00:47:14

compassion for people that want to break out, but

Nathan Riley: 00:47:16

you actually have to have a little bit of trust

Nathan Riley: 00:47:18

in the process if you're really good at what you,

Nathan Riley: 00:47:20

you do. And by the way, stop doing

Nathan Riley: 00:47:22

certifications. And I'm not telling people, don't

Nathan Riley: 00:47:24

go to QVC and get this certific certification. I

Nathan Riley: 00:47:26

didn't do it because I honestly just didn't have

Nathan Riley: 00:47:29

the time to go through extra work. But I got some

Nathan Riley: 00:47:32

principles there that I can bring into my

Nathan Riley: 00:47:33

practice, and I might go back to it and get

Nathan Riley: 00:47:35

certified later. But people are so focused on

Nathan Riley: 00:47:38

getting these letters after their names, and

Nathan Riley: 00:47:40

compulsory education can be blamed for that. You

Nathan Riley: 00:47:42

know, the more titles you have, the more years of

Nathan Riley: 00:47:43

school, the more valuable you are in society. I

Nathan Riley: 00:47:45

get that. And it's easy for me to say because I'm

Nathan Riley: 00:47:47

at the top of the ladder as an md. Like, I get

Nathan Riley: 00:47:49

that there's certain privileges that come with

Nathan Riley: 00:47:51

having these certain credentials. However, it's

Nathan Riley: 00:47:54

like reading a book on meditation but never

Nathan Riley: 00:47:56

practicing meditation. At some point, you have to

Nathan Riley: 00:47:58

start practicing and actually getting experience

Nathan Riley: 00:48:00

with people. The books, the data that is, that is

Nathan Riley: 00:48:03

a small part of why I'm so good at what I do. I

Nathan Riley: 00:48:07

put this stuff into practice immediately, and

Nathan Riley: 00:48:09

that sometimes detracts from my ability to

Nathan Riley: 00:48:11

continue studying because I need to figure this

Nathan Riley: 00:48:13

thing out. How does this work? What the hell are

Nathan Riley: 00:48:16

they talking about with blue light? The

Nathan Riley: 00:48:18

mitochondria. Like, I have to go back and review

Nathan Riley: 00:48:20

that in my textbooks. Like, I have to really,

Nathan Riley: 00:48:22

really do it. I can't just take orders from

Nathan Riley: 00:48:24

somebody else to say, this is the protocol.

Nathan Riley: 00:48:26

Because then I'm doing the same thing that every

Nathan Riley: 00:48:28

other doctor in the world is doing. And a lot of

Nathan Riley: 00:48:30

integrative practitioners or whatever are doing

Nathan Riley: 00:48:33

that. They're making that mistake. Like, there is

Nathan Riley: 00:48:34

no protocol. There is no protocol that works for

Nathan Riley: 00:48:38

every single person. You have to figure out what

Nathan Riley: 00:48:41

Meredith needs, and that's going to take this

Nathan Riley: 00:48:43

rapport building. It's going to take time for me

Nathan Riley: 00:48:45

to understand your story. The longest I ever met

Nathan Riley: 00:48:47

with somebody was 4 hours and 45 minutes in our

Nathan Riley: 00:48:51

first visit. Because it was like, whoa, there's

Nathan Riley: 00:48:53

so much going on here, and I can't just throw

Nathan Riley: 00:48:56

supplements at this. I actually need to

Nathan Riley: 00:48:58

understand your story, do a whole biographical

Nathan Riley: 00:49:00

sketch. And once I know that story, then I can

Nathan Riley: 00:49:03

say, okay, what would be the most impactful thing

Nathan Riley: 00:49:07

we can do right now? And then what do we do in

Nathan Riley: 00:49:10

the long term? And that does require quite a bit

Nathan Riley: 00:49:12

of time. If I was doing more certificate training

Nathan Riley: 00:49:15

and more functional medicine training and all

Nathan Riley: 00:49:16

that, I've done all of that. But now I have to

Nathan Riley: 00:49:19

actually sit here and work with people and throw

Nathan Riley: 00:49:22

the security blanket of. Of quote, education off.

Nathan Riley: 00:49:26

So that's my advice, I guess, for people that

Nathan Riley: 00:49:28

want to try something new.

Meredith Oke: 00:49:30

Yes. And I think that's. That's such an important

Meredith Oke: 00:49:33

point about. About the integration. And we do

Meredith Oke: 00:49:38

collect education as a way. As a way to feel

Meredith Oke: 00:49:41

better, as a way to buffer. And I find that

Meredith Oke: 00:49:44

people use it as a bu. To not do the thing that

Meredith Oke: 00:49:48

scares them, which, for the most part, is

Meredith Oke: 00:49:51

reaching out to people they might be able to help

Meredith Oke: 00:49:53

and starting conversations and putting themselves

Meredith Oke: 00:49:55

out there a little. And I, you know, I. I have

Meredith Oke: 00:49:57

it, too. I'm not. It's. It's normal.

Nathan Riley: 00:50:00

We all have it. I still love it. I do. It's like,

Nathan Riley: 00:50:03

oh, man, I really want to learn from Nico in the

Nathan Riley: 00:50:06

qvc, so I'm gonna sign up for that. And then when

Nathan Riley: 00:50:07

I did it, I was like, oh, I really need to start

Nathan Riley: 00:50:10

putting this into practice. I can't work on my

Nathan Riley: 00:50:12

research project. You know, it's. It's all of

Nathan Riley: 00:50:13

that, like, I'm just reflecting so that people

Nathan Riley: 00:50:15

appreciate, like, you're not a failure if you

Nathan Riley: 00:50:18

just go into practice and make some mistakes,

Nathan Riley: 00:50:20

like, that's okay. And then you come back to the

Nathan Riley: 00:50:22

drawing board and you're like, how did I get this

Nathan Riley: 00:50:23

wrong? Where's my mentors at? You know, and then

Nathan Riley: 00:50:25

you go back and you practice.

Meredith Oke: 00:50:26

Yeah, let's review. And what was going on with

Meredith Oke: 00:50:28

this person? And things don't. And that's. I

Meredith Oke: 00:50:30

think, you know, where, you know, what our

Meredith Oke: 00:50:34

mission is, is to really bring this idea of

Meredith Oke: 00:50:38

translational medicine and of translational

Meredith Oke: 00:50:40

education. And we. There's all of this stuff

Meredith Oke: 00:50:43

happening in labs that's giving us all this

Meredith Oke: 00:50:45

incredible scientific insight. But what does that

Meredith Oke: 00:50:49

mean in reality with a living human?

Nathan Riley: 00:50:52

Yeah.

Meredith Oke: 00:50:54

And, you know, everyone gets put on their own

Meredith Oke: 00:50:57

trajectory, and you get better, and then your

Meredith Oke: 00:51:00

body's like, oh, I feel so safe. I'm so

Meredith Oke: 00:51:02

stabilized. And then all your trauma comes up

Meredith Oke: 00:51:04

because your body's finally feels safe, you know,

Meredith Oke: 00:51:06

like, you just never know where things are

Meredith Oke: 00:51:10

headed. And we've been so trained. Well, what

Meredith Oke: 00:51:12

does the study say? Well, how many times? How

Meredith Oke: 00:51:14

many days in a row and how many. You know, and I.

Meredith Oke: 00:51:17

I'm totally with you. I think it's. It's getting

Meredith Oke: 00:51:20

into that living, breathing relationship with

Meredith Oke: 00:51:24

people and then. And that empowerment that we

Meredith Oke: 00:51:27

talked about earlier, helping them to understand

Meredith Oke: 00:51:30

what they need and having the. The knowledge to

Meredith Oke: 00:51:33

make. To make such helpful suggestions and see

Meredith Oke: 00:51:37

where it goes. Like, let's see where it goes.

Meredith Oke: 00:51:40

Okay, so we talked a little about quantum

Meredith Oke: 00:51:43

biology. Tell me, sort of you were mentioning

Meredith Oke: 00:51:45

you, like, you asked every single faculty, like,

Meredith Oke: 00:51:48

to define it. And I do want to say, I fully

Meredith Oke: 00:51:51

acknowledge we're just, like, putting labels on

Meredith Oke: 00:51:54

things to have some way to navigate the world and

Meredith Oke: 00:51:59

navigate, you know, what we're trying to

Meredith Oke: 00:52:01

understand here. And I think quantum biology is a

Meredith Oke: 00:52:05

fun way, fun thing to call it. And I Bless John

Meredith Oke: 00:52:11

Jo McFadden and Jamel Khalili for coming up with

Meredith Oke: 00:52:15

it. But, yeah, it's a loose term. So where. Where

Meredith Oke: 00:52:20

are you at with it?

Nathan Riley: 00:52:23

You know, my initial interest in the term, when I

Nathan Riley: 00:52:27

saw it coming up, I was like, whoa. So I used to

Nathan Riley: 00:52:29

be a really, really dedicated physics student,

Nathan Riley: 00:52:32

and when I saw the word quantum coming up, it

Nathan Riley: 00:52:34

brought me back to, like, Gary Zukovs, the

Nathan Riley: 00:52:36

Dancing Woolly Masters, and the Amsterdam. What

Nathan Riley: 00:52:40

was it called, these meetings in the early 20th

Nathan Riley: 00:52:43

century whereby the physicists were all meeting

Nathan Riley: 00:52:46

around this material mechanical Newtonian physics

Nathan Riley: 00:52:49

versus what Max Planck was starting to describe

Nathan Riley: 00:52:53

as quantum entanglement. It was like, whoa, this

Nathan Riley: 00:52:55

is psych. This is really interesting stuff. And

Nathan Riley: 00:52:58

even Einstein was like, this is spooky action at

Nathan Riley: 00:53:00

a distance. So I was thinking, oh, I was thinking

Nathan Riley: 00:53:03

quantum. And then we got into it and I was like,

Nathan Riley: 00:53:05

what's quantum about this? But then, you know,

Nathan Riley: 00:53:08

then I actually put my, like, sort of

Nathan Riley: 00:53:11

apprehensions aside and was like, okay, we're

Nathan Riley: 00:53:13

just talking about particles here. We're just

Nathan Riley: 00:53:15

talking about the quantum. We're talking about

Nathan Riley: 00:53:17

electrons. We're talking about that. And then it

Nathan Riley: 00:53:19

started to make sense why we'd use that term. But

Nathan Riley: 00:53:22

I was honestly confused by it. It actually kind

Nathan Riley: 00:53:24

of has a branding issue, in my opinion. So that's

Nathan Riley: 00:53:27

just my. That's just my, my, my two cents.

Nathan Riley: 00:53:29

Because it actually took me a little bit of time

Nathan Riley: 00:53:31

to get past my original apprehensions. And once I

Nathan Riley: 00:53:34

did, I was like, okay, we're talking about a part

Nathan Riley: 00:53:36

of a cell that I really know very little about,

Nathan Riley: 00:53:39

which is the mitochondria and, and how melatonin

Nathan Riley: 00:53:44

and all these different receptors throughout the

Nathan Riley: 00:53:47

body are starting to bring together a more

Nathan Riley: 00:53:50

holistic view of, let's say, hormone medicine or

Nathan Riley: 00:53:55

something like that. I mean, you could take so

Nathan Riley: 00:53:57

many different approaches to this floral bouquet,

Nathan Riley: 00:54:00

and until you've walked all the way around and

Nathan Riley: 00:54:02

studied every facet of the human body, you're not

Nathan Riley: 00:54:05

going to appreciate the complexities of the human

Nathan Riley: 00:54:08

being. And so I guess that was my, that was my

Nathan Riley: 00:54:13

initial holdup. And then when I really started to

Nathan Riley: 00:54:16

appreciate what was being said, I realized I

Nathan Riley: 00:54:18

don't really know much about the mitochondria.

Nathan Riley: 00:54:20

And I'm not sure anybody does, to be frank. You

Nathan Riley: 00:54:23

know, one of my criticisms, I, I, I'll just, I'll

Nathan Riley: 00:54:26

just share this with you because I, I want people

Nathan Riley: 00:54:28

to appreciate if you get into this, it, it's very

Nathan Riley: 00:54:30

confronting. So you have to like, really be

Nathan Riley: 00:54:32

thoughtful about what do we know and what, where

Nathan Riley: 00:54:35

is there more for us to explore? And one of those

Nathan Riley: 00:54:38

things is like, I've never seen a picture of this

Nathan Riley: 00:54:42

electron transport chain. It's always these

Nathan Riley: 00:54:44

illustrations and there's this bio, you know,

Nathan Riley: 00:54:46

this, this, this, this, this bilayer, this, this

Nathan Riley: 00:54:49

two membranes, and then there's these protons

Nathan Riley: 00:54:52

laid in there. And when the, the mitochondria

Nathan Riley: 00:54:55

swells, they become out of order. And I'm like,

Nathan Riley: 00:54:58

how do we know that? Like, it makes sense

Nathan Riley: 00:55:01

logically, but I don't see a picture of it. And

Nathan Riley: 00:55:03

even if you go into. What's his name? Ling.

Nathan Riley: 00:55:07

Gilbert. Gilbert Ling. Is he, no, he, Is he the

Nathan Riley: 00:55:09

one that wrote that book? It might be Ling's

Nathan Riley: 00:55:11

book. It's a, it's another book and it really,

Nathan Riley: 00:55:14

it's a guy who, who was a, an electron

Nathan Riley: 00:55:16

microscopist and he was looking at the organelles

Nathan Riley: 00:55:19

within the sound. He's like, I think most of this

Nathan Riley: 00:55:21

is artifact. I can't remember who wrote that

Nathan Riley: 00:55:22

book. Maybe it was Ling. Anyways, it's not Ling.

Nathan Riley: 00:55:27

It's a green cover book. It's like, hang on, I

Nathan Riley: 00:55:31

gotta do this. Now. Where is the book?

Meredith Oke: 00:55:33

Yeah, well, which one you mean?

Nathan Riley: 00:55:36

It's one everybody in our classes talks about,

Nathan Riley: 00:55:40

but I don't know where it is at the moment. Geez,

Nathan Riley: 00:55:46

I have so many books. Well, anyways, I'll send a,

Nathan Riley: 00:55:49

I'll send it to you later in an email. But, but

Nathan Riley: 00:55:52

anyways, he was like, you know, I'm not certain

Nathan Riley: 00:55:53

that we are, you know, that we know for sure that

Nathan Riley: 00:55:56

the cell works in the way that it does. Like the

Nathan Riley: 00:55:59

Golgi apparatus, the ribosomes, all of this

Nathan Riley: 00:56:02

stuff. Like, how do we know that that works, that

Nathan Riley: 00:56:04

that's the structure of the, the within the

Nathan Riley: 00:56:06

cytoplasm of the cell. When I'm suspicious that

Nathan Riley: 00:56:12

of these little organelles actually popping up as

Nathan Riley: 00:56:14

little bubbles and artifacts in our images. Now

Nathan Riley: 00:56:18

empirically, when we apply these principles from,

Nathan Riley: 00:56:21

from the lens of quantum biology, they do seem to

Nathan Riley: 00:56:23

work. But just like with COVID or vaccines in

Nathan Riley: 00:56:30

general, just because we saw a drop around the

Nathan Riley: 00:56:33

time, let's say polio around the time that this

Nathan Riley: 00:56:36

vaccine was introduced, that doesn't actually

Nathan Riley: 00:56:38

mean that you understood what you were treating

Nathan Riley: 00:56:40

to begin with. We just saw a drop. Was it the

Nathan Riley: 00:56:42

vaccine? Was it hygiene? Was it the terrain

Nathan Riley: 00:56:45

theory? Like, all this stuff that's been swirling

Nathan Riley: 00:56:47

and that is a. It is a fallacy without.

Nathan Riley: 00:56:49

Throughout medicine where we say, well, this

Nathan Riley: 00:56:51

works. An SSRI makes Meredith feel better. She

Nathan Riley: 00:56:54

was depressed and she doesn't feel depressed

Nathan Riley: 00:56:56

anymore. Is it because she was deficient in

Nathan Riley: 00:56:59

serotonin? Or was there something else about

Nathan Riley: 00:57:01

this? Or was it a placebo? It doesn't really

Nathan Riley: 00:57:03

matter. The point is that we say, see, we were

Nathan Riley: 00:57:05

right. And it's like, well, not everybody

Nathan Riley: 00:57:07

improved with the ssri, so it can't be just that.

Nathan Riley: 00:57:09

We need to actually be curious and expand the

Nathan Riley: 00:57:12

conversation. This is more fodder for good

Nathan Riley: 00:57:14

conversation. And nobody's really willing to have

Nathan Riley: 00:57:17

conversation anymore. It's very, very dogmatic, I

Nathan Riley: 00:57:20

think, throughout every, every aspect.

Meredith Oke: 00:57:21

Well, it's almost like if you don't claim that

Meredith Oke: 00:57:24

certainty, no one's going to listen to you. So

Meredith Oke: 00:57:26

you claim, like a false certainty in order to get

Meredith Oke: 00:57:29

people to listen to you, and then you have to

Meredith Oke: 00:57:32

hold that position because you claimed it with

Meredith Oke: 00:57:34

such certainty.

Nathan Riley: 00:57:36

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, like, you know, fertility

Nathan Riley: 00:57:39

is a real. This is a really great example. And I

Nathan Riley: 00:57:41

think that there's something here within the

Nathan Riley: 00:57:42

quantum biology world for us to appreciate the,

Nathan Riley: 00:57:46

the, the. The role of voltage. And we'll just say

Nathan Riley: 00:57:53

electric gradients, but voltage in the merging

Nathan Riley: 00:57:57

of, like, sperm and egg. There's this explosion

Nathan Riley: 00:58:00

that happens. It's zinc, magnesium mediated. This

Nathan Riley: 00:58:02

explosion happens. And when people hear zinc and

Nathan Riley: 00:58:05

magnesium, then they say, we should supplement

Nathan Riley: 00:58:07

with the zinc and magnesium. But is that enough?

Nathan Riley: 00:58:09

Without actually understanding what the hell is

Nathan Riley: 00:58:11

going on here? And you can see it. You can see it

Nathan Riley: 00:58:14

in like a, you know, if they use different, you

Nathan Riley: 00:58:16

know, colored lenses on cameras, you can actually

Nathan Riley: 00:58:19

see this explosion happen. It happens for a

Nathan Riley: 00:58:21

moment. It's like the green flash. If you watch

Nathan Riley: 00:58:23

the sunset in the west off the coast of

Nathan Riley: 00:58:25

California and you get that right, like just the

Nathan Riley: 00:58:28

right angle, the sun will go green for a second.

Nathan Riley: 00:58:30

Like, wow, how magical. But instead of saying

Nathan Riley: 00:58:33

it's because of this and this and this, and we

Nathan Riley: 00:58:34

have the data to prove it, why not just be

Nathan Riley: 00:58:36

curious? Like, wow, maybe there's an alien whose

Nathan Riley: 00:58:39

head exploded just over the rise. I'm like, I

Nathan Riley: 00:58:42

don't know. It could be anything. So what quantum

Nathan Riley: 00:58:45

biology has really done for me, the greatest gift

Nathan Riley: 00:58:49

has been that has really opened up my mind and

Nathan Riley: 00:58:53

made me uncertain of what I thought I knew about

Nathan Riley: 00:58:56

human biology. And that is a real gift to the

Nathan Riley: 00:58:59

entire construct we have around human biology and

Nathan Riley: 00:59:02

human health. And without those questions being

Nathan Riley: 00:59:05

seated, we just halt our progress. It's arrested

Nathan Riley: 00:59:10

development altogether. And that, you know, comes

Nathan Riley: 00:59:13

at the cost of the health and the fertility and

Nathan Riley: 00:59:17

the really well being of the masses. So I can

Nathan Riley: 00:59:20

really thank you guys for helping me get through

Nathan Riley: 00:59:23

some of those early apprehensions in order to

Nathan Riley: 00:59:25

open up more questions. And I'm okay not having

Nathan Riley: 00:59:27

the answer that that puts me in a unique

Nathan Riley: 00:59:29

category. But for now I have some answers that at

Nathan Riley: 00:59:32

least I can say, well, let me try to show

Nathan Riley: 00:59:35

examples in which that might not be true. And

Nathan Riley: 00:59:37

that's where you learn the most, is whenever you

Nathan Riley: 00:59:39

earnestly are willing to be wrong. And that

Nathan Riley: 00:59:41

actually is the scientific method asking the

Nathan Riley: 00:59:44

right question and being really, really honest

Nathan Riley: 00:59:46

with yourself with regards to what the answer is,

Nathan Riley: 00:59:49

instead of just not publishing that, like, hey, I

Nathan Riley: 00:59:51

found this. And this seems to confront what I

Nathan Riley: 00:59:53

thought I knew about childbirth. We don't do that

Nathan Riley: 00:59:56

anymore. Now it's a matter of getting your

Nathan Riley: 00:59:58

published research out there and showing that

Nathan Riley: 01:00:01

you're the boss. And I will never be the boss

Nathan Riley: 01:00:04

because I just don't have that approach about

Nathan Riley: 01:00:07

anything, I guess.

Meredith Oke: 01:00:09

Yeah, we've got enough bosses. Yeah, we need

Meredith Oke: 01:00:13

more. We need more curious cats.

Nathan Riley: 01:00:15

Yeah.

Meredith Oke: 01:00:16

And yeah, I love that framing of it. And I think

Meredith Oke: 01:00:21

that's all, you know, the end of the day, I think

Meredith Oke: 01:00:24

that's all we're all trying to do here is to open

Meredith Oke: 01:00:28

up the conversation and saying, well, what if

Meredith Oke: 01:00:31

it's like this? Or what if it's like this? And

Meredith Oke: 01:00:32

we're at the beginning of the beginning of the

Meredith Oke: 01:00:34

beginning of trying to understand, you know, and

Meredith Oke: 01:00:38

putting, putting labels on things and trying to

Meredith Oke: 01:00:41

come up with definitions. And, you know, there's

Meredith Oke: 01:00:43

people doing research and calling it structured

Meredith Oke: 01:00:45

water and people doing research and calling it

Meredith Oke: 01:00:47

exclusion zone water.

Nathan Riley: 01:00:49

Oh, yeah.

Meredith Oke: 01:00:50

You know, like, it just goes on and on. Like

Meredith Oke: 01:00:51

we're, it's. But that's kind of like the glorious

Meredith Oke: 01:00:55

creative chaos of all of it. And then we come in

Meredith Oke: 01:00:57

and try to make some sense of it. And as you say,

Meredith Oke: 01:00:59

it's like, okay, well. And you know, bringing it

Meredith Oke: 01:01:02

back to the practical and the personally

Meredith Oke: 01:01:04

empowering ourselves personally, it's like, okay,

Meredith Oke: 01:01:07

well, what happens if I take this model to be

Meredith Oke: 01:01:12

true for now and do the things it recommends? How

Meredith Oke: 01:01:16

do I feel how do people feel? You know, and, and

Meredith Oke: 01:01:20

take it from there.

Nathan Riley: 01:01:22

Yeah, I think we, we really do. Meredith, need

Nathan Riley: 01:01:24

more empiricists that are like, huh, Nathan said

Nathan Riley: 01:01:28

this, Let me go and actually experiment with that

Nathan Riley: 01:01:30

and see if it helps. And it helps some of these

Nathan Riley: 01:01:33

people, but it didn't help these other people.

Nathan Riley: 01:01:34

Why did it not help those other people? And why

Nathan Riley: 01:01:36

did it help these people? Like, we really need to

Nathan Riley: 01:01:40

get back to like a real scientific approach to

Nathan Riley: 01:01:43

everything. Instead of working on our next of 15

Nathan Riley: 01:01:46

books, maybe actually spend some time writing

Nathan Riley: 01:01:48

your masterpiece. And that might require your

Nathan Riley: 01:01:50

entire life to ask one question and to really

Nathan Riley: 01:01:53

explore that question. And that's actually what,

Nathan Riley: 01:01:55

what, you know, some of these, these scholars

Nathan Riley: 01:01:59

that have done so much, this is really what they

Nathan Riley: 01:02:01

did. And I'll bring Jack Cruz up for a second

Nathan Riley: 01:02:04

because everybody knows, you know, Jack Cruz. I

Nathan Riley: 01:02:07

think Jack Cruz does not have a very kind way of

Nathan Riley: 01:02:09

speaking to people. And I don't like that. It

Nathan Riley: 01:02:11

goes back to that not making me feel safe to ask

Nathan Riley: 01:02:13

questions thing. It reminds me of residency, and

Nathan Riley: 01:02:15

I know where that came from for Jack. I'm sure

Nathan Riley: 01:02:17

he's a good guy, but he feels like he has a lot

Nathan Riley: 01:02:19

to prove and, and it's not enough that he's a

Nathan Riley: 01:02:23

neurosurgeon and he's done his whole life's work

Nathan Riley: 01:02:25

trying to understand the leptin signaling

Nathan Riley: 01:02:27

pathways and all that. That's all great. And to

Nathan Riley: 01:02:30

his credit, he became so fascinated and obsessed

Nathan Riley: 01:02:33

with this one topic that he went deeper and

Nathan Riley: 01:02:36

deeper and deeper and deeper until he was like,

Nathan Riley: 01:02:38

pretty darn sure into that. I have to give

Nathan Riley: 01:02:41

anybody credit, like, you've really dedicated

Nathan Riley: 01:02:43

your task to. You dedicated yourself to a task to

Nathan Riley: 01:02:47

like, really try to see where is it that you

Nathan Riley: 01:02:49

don't understand this prism. Like, have you

Nathan Riley: 01:02:52

looked at it from every angle and seeing how the

Nathan Riley: 01:02:55

light refracts and reflects and, and once you

Nathan Riley: 01:02:57

find something that's, that's like, huh, Sparks

Nathan Riley: 01:02:59

your curiosity like a child. My, my daughters

Nathan Riley: 01:03:02

will look at these gemstones in the sun and

Nathan Riley: 01:03:04

they're like, if I turn it this way, it's blue.

Nathan Riley: 01:03:05

And if I turn it this way, it's white. That is

Nathan Riley: 01:03:07

more scientific than the way most people are

Nathan Riley: 01:03:09

operating in the world right now. And to me, it's

Nathan Riley: 01:03:11

so refreshing to have little kids who just teach

Nathan Riley: 01:03:13

you to be curious again without having, without

Nathan Riley: 01:03:17

necessarily feeling like your value is based on

Nathan Riley: 01:03:20

how certain you are about the world. Because if

Nathan Riley: 01:03:23

we are going to be an actual bring back science,

Nathan Riley: 01:03:26

not scientism, not the cult of medicine, but

Nathan Riley: 01:03:28

science the scientific way of looking at the

Nathan Riley: 01:03:30

world. All that that means is I'm curious, and I

Nathan Riley: 01:03:34

want to see if my hypothesis is correct. And if

Nathan Riley: 01:03:37

you're willing to be wrong, you learn way more

Nathan Riley: 01:03:40

than having your internal bias. Biases, I should

Nathan Riley: 01:03:43

say confirmed. And so I guess I've had that gift.

Nathan Riley: 01:03:48

I've had parents that have, like, really allowed

Nathan Riley: 01:03:49

me to ask questions. But when I find teachers

Nathan Riley: 01:03:51

that are not willing to respect. Respond to

Nathan Riley: 01:03:52

questions, I move on. And I move on, and I move

Nathan Riley: 01:03:55

on. And. And that's also okay. It's also okay if

Nathan Riley: 01:03:59

that. Your hero says something that you're like,

Nathan Riley: 01:04:01

that doesn't sound right. And then you experiment

Nathan Riley: 01:04:03

and it's not right. It's okay. That should be

Nathan Riley: 01:04:04

contributory. But right now we're being scorning

Nathan Riley: 01:04:06

people, and I want people to have permission to,

Nathan Riley: 01:04:09

like, lean into being wrong instead of, you know,

Nathan Riley: 01:04:12

trying to argue that you're right.

Meredith Oke: 01:04:15

Yes. If we, you know, if we could reward that a

Meredith Oke: 01:04:20

little bit, even, you know, like, tell me about

Meredith Oke: 01:04:23

all of your hypotheses that didn't turn out. And

Meredith Oke: 01:04:26

you get a gold star for each one. Because it led

Meredith Oke: 01:04:29

somewhere. It led somewhere, and it's teaching us

Meredith Oke: 01:04:32

and it's giving us the safety and the freedom to

Meredith Oke: 01:04:35

do that in our own lives, for our own selves.

Nathan Riley: 01:04:38

Yeah.

Meredith Oke: 01:04:39

And to find others and connect with them. Well,

Meredith Oke: 01:04:43

Nathan, thanks so much for your time. And so

Meredith Oke: 01:04:46

sharing your. Your experience and your insights,

Meredith Oke: 01:04:49

like, what a crazy ride. What a ride we are all

Meredith Oke: 01:04:52

on. Let. Could you let our audience know how to

Meredith Oke: 01:04:57

find you or where to connect with you?

Nathan Riley: 01:05:00

Yeah. Born Free methods, really what I'm focused

Nathan Riley: 01:05:03

on right now, that's where I provide this

Nathan Riley: 01:05:06

extraordinary opportunity to, like, lean into all

Nathan Riley: 01:05:09

things pertaining to childbirth. But it's not

Nathan Riley: 01:05:12

like, let me dilute Williams Obstetrics for you,

Nathan Riley: 01:05:15

or let me just pull these papers for you and show

Nathan Riley: 01:05:17

you how to do things. It's really a matter first

Nathan Riley: 01:05:19

of starting off with who you are. What is the

Nathan Riley: 01:05:22

mission you and your partner have in bringing a

Nathan Riley: 01:05:24

child in? And we can even conceive or we can even

Nathan Riley: 01:05:27

talk about this through the lens of conscious

Nathan Riley: 01:05:28

conception. Like, there's so much happening that

Nathan Riley: 01:05:30

isn't measurable, and that doesn't make it any

Nathan Riley: 01:05:32

less valuable. And, Meredith, just to go back to

Nathan Riley: 01:05:35

your birth, when you felt what it was like to

Nathan Riley: 01:05:37

have a home birthday, it wasn't because your

Nathan Riley: 01:05:39

blood pressure and your blood loss and then your

Nathan Riley: 01:05:42

white count was all these things, you know, when

Nathan Riley: 01:05:44

you. When you take a sample of blood out of

Nathan Riley: 01:05:45

somebody, removing it from the living organism

Nathan Riley: 01:05:47

that already is a, is a misstep in our part in

Nathan Riley: 01:05:49

the functional medicine world, Blood matters

Nathan Riley: 01:05:52

little to me when it's outside of the body. And

Nathan Riley: 01:05:55

while you might get some value in that, I'm not

Nathan Riley: 01:05:58

going to understand the value of having a home

Nathan Riley: 01:06:00

birth to you by looking at your blood or your

Nathan Riley: 01:06:02

vital signs. I need to know what that is. And so

Nathan Riley: 01:06:05

just because something's not measurable doesn't

Nathan Riley: 01:06:07

mean, or that we can't take a picture of it,

Nathan Riley: 01:06:09

doesn't mean it's not, it's not true for an

Nathan Riley: 01:06:12

individual or for the collective. So really

Nathan Riley: 01:06:16

starting to transcend obstetrics. And to help

Nathan Riley: 01:06:20

appreciate that the measurable, immeasurable,

Nathan Riley: 01:06:23

dare I say, spiritual, sacred aspects of the

Nathan Riley: 01:06:26

birthing experience are just as valuable as what

Nathan Riley: 01:06:30

the objective outcome is ended up being, I've had

Nathan Riley: 01:06:33

people who have spiritual transformative bursts

Nathan Riley: 01:06:36

through an elective C section. You know, I mean,

Nathan Riley: 01:06:38

there's ways of talking about this and moving the

Nathan Riley: 01:06:41

needle just a couple degrees off north that might

Nathan Riley: 01:06:45

get us out of this quagmire of, of whatever it is

Nathan Riley: 01:06:50

that people, you know, label it with. And I get

Nathan Riley: 01:06:53

the, you know, the, you know, the privilege of

Nathan Riley: 01:06:56

doing that for couples around the world. And we

Nathan Riley: 01:06:58

have a fertility deep dive there. We also have

Nathan Riley: 01:07:01

free pregnancy loss course for people who were

Nathan Riley: 01:07:03

struggling with the recurrent loss or they had a

Nathan Riley: 01:07:05

stillbirth, or somebody had to interrupt a

Nathan Riley: 01:07:07

pregnancy for anomalies found on ultrasound. We

Nathan Riley: 01:07:11

also talked quite a bit about some of these

Nathan Riley: 01:07:12

quantum concepts I had recommended. I had. We

Nathan Riley: 01:07:14

didn't even talk about this, but I had

Nathan Riley: 01:07:16

recommended because I started studying this stuff

Nathan Riley: 01:07:18

actually way long time ago. And I had realized

Nathan Riley: 01:07:21

there's melatonin receptors everywhere, including

Nathan Riley: 01:07:23

the myometrium, the muscular part of the uterus

Nathan Riley: 01:07:26

and the endometrium. And the placenta can produce

Nathan Riley: 01:07:29

and respond to melatonin. And there's a 24 hour

Nathan Riley: 01:07:32

circadian rhythm with regards to the strength of

Nathan Riley: 01:07:34

uterine contractility. So what if a woman comes

Nathan Riley: 01:07:38

in and it's nighttime? We put blue light blockers

Nathan Riley: 01:07:40

on her and see how her labor progresses. And they

Nathan Riley: 01:07:43

kind of laughed at me in residency. I was like, I

Nathan Riley: 01:07:44

wanted to do this study, and I never did because

Nathan Riley: 01:07:47

I didn't have any support for it. And even now

Nathan Riley: 01:07:49

it's like, I want to put red lights in all the

Nathan Riley: 01:07:51

rooms. And, and when I do that in people's homes,

Nathan Riley: 01:07:53

it seems to work really well. I just did this for

Nathan Riley: 01:07:55

my best friend who had a breech baby in Florida.

Nathan Riley: 01:07:58

And we just had red lights everywhere, like Full

Nathan Riley: 01:08:01

spectrum red, near and far in, you know, infrared

Nathan Riley: 01:08:06

that are. That are. That are just being

Nathan Riley: 01:08:07

broadcast. This is how I'm seeing everything. And

Nathan Riley: 01:08:10

then when the. The daytime comes, we turn those

Nathan Riley: 01:08:11

lights off and we have sunlight coming in the

Nathan Riley: 01:08:13

room. Like, this stuff matters. There's plenty of

Nathan Riley: 01:08:15

research that is also done in the 90s, mostly,

Nathan Riley: 01:08:17

that actually said, hey, there's something to

Nathan Riley: 01:08:20

this circadian rhythm of also childbirth, of

Nathan Riley: 01:08:23

reproductive health. And so I bring some of that

Nathan Riley: 01:08:27

in there too. But also rituals and mythology and

Nathan Riley: 01:08:30

storytelling, like, there's a real cultural shift

Nathan Riley: 01:08:32

that has to happen. And also, like, forget about

Nathan Riley: 01:08:35

credentials. Who is the person that makes you

Nathan Riley: 01:08:37

feel safe? And we help you select a birth worker.

Nathan Riley: 01:08:39

We help you, you know, figure out where you want

Nathan Riley: 01:08:41

to have your baby. And that's all the born free

Nathan Riley: 01:08:43

method. So there's plenty there for people who

Nathan Riley: 01:08:45

want to. To. To talk, to be appreciated for how

Nathan Riley: 01:08:51

important childbirth is. And you get lifetime

Nathan Riley: 01:08:55

access and you get me in your back pocket. So I

Nathan Riley: 01:08:57

become your concierge doc and support person and

Nathan Riley: 01:09:00

health coach and all of that. Whenever you're in

Nathan Riley: 01:09:01

the program, that's the best way to find me. And

Nathan Riley: 01:09:04

then beloved holistics is my private practice.

Nathan Riley: 01:09:06

Nathan Riley Objuann on Instagram, if people have

Nathan Riley: 01:09:09

questions, and I just want to say, like, thank

Nathan Riley: 01:09:12

you. If you're listening to this episode, you're

Nathan Riley: 01:09:14

probably one of those curious people. You're okay

Nathan Riley: 01:09:16

with maybe not having all the answers. And if you

Nathan Riley: 01:09:18

don't have the answers, neither do I. And I would

Nathan Riley: 01:09:21

love to meet you and to chat with you and to try

Nathan Riley: 01:09:24

to expand our understanding of this human

Nathan Riley: 01:09:26

beingness on its physical, mental, emotional, and

Nathan Riley: 01:09:30

spiritual levels. And so I welcome everybody to

Nathan Riley: 01:09:32

reach out. I'm a very, very easygoing guy to talk

Nathan Riley: 01:09:34

to, and I love meeting people from these

Nathan Riley: 01:09:36

conversations. And Meredith, thank you for having

Nathan Riley: 01:09:39

me and for spending some time with me and letting

Nathan Riley: 01:09:41

me do this thing, which I get very passionate

Nathan Riley: 01:09:45

about. So thank you so much for the opportunity

Nathan Riley: 01:09:47

as well.

Meredith Oke: 01:09:48

Oh, thank you for being here, Nathan, and for the

Meredith Oke: 01:09:50

work that you do. It is transformative on many

Meredith Oke: 01:09:54

levels. And that is I. The word quantum is

Meredith Oke: 01:09:58

criticized because it's like, what does it mean?

Meredith Oke: 01:09:59

It doesn't mean everything. It means everything.

Meredith Oke: 01:10:01

Right. And. But it is like an accordion, and it

Meredith Oke: 01:10:03

does. It can expand to encompass all that you

Meredith Oke: 01:10:06

have just said, and then we can drop words

Meredith Oke: 01:10:09

entirely and just absolutely be in that

Meredith Oke: 01:10:12

experience.

Nathan Riley: 01:10:14

Yeah, be. Just be and ask. But why? Like, just

Nathan Riley: 01:10:18

ask. How did you come to that conclusion? And

Nathan Riley: 01:10:19

that opens up conversation around all of this

Nathan Riley: 01:10:21

stuff, even in Its like nuanced complexity. Like

Nathan Riley: 01:10:24

it's just so much fun when we can just have a

Nathan Riley: 01:10:26

free flowing, curious conversation. Even if terms

Nathan Riley: 01:10:32

are hard to agree on, like that's, that's

Nathan Riley: 01:10:34

actually irrelevant. It really is, totally

Nathan Riley: 01:10:36

irrelevant of it really.

Meredith Oke: 01:10:37

And that's what your work is so, is so profound

Meredith Oke: 01:10:40

because you are, you are transcending that in, in

Meredith Oke: 01:10:43

what you do. You can break down the melatonin

Meredith Oke: 01:10:46

receptors in the placenta, but also understand

Meredith Oke: 01:10:50

the, the spiritual moment that's occurring.

Nathan Riley: 01:10:53

So yeah, yeah, yeah. One last little thing about

Nathan Riley: 01:10:55

that is, is like if we can understand everything

Nathan Riley: 01:10:59

about childbirth by becoming, you know,

Nathan Riley: 01:11:01

mechanistic with it, I feel like we've already

Nathan Riley: 01:11:04

missed the boat because, you know, even if it was

Nathan Riley: 01:11:07

like, oh, the mitochondria were like this and we

Nathan Riley: 01:11:09

can prove it and we can demonstrate, like, I'm

Nathan Riley: 01:11:11

just, I'm just picking on the mitochondria

Nathan Riley: 01:11:12

because that's such a fascination right now. But

Nathan Riley: 01:11:15

even if we knew that, would that really change

Nathan Riley: 01:11:19

how you have a baby? And it may not. In fact,

Nathan Riley: 01:11:22

many people who don't worry at all about the

Nathan Riley: 01:11:24

mechanics, they actually have the easiest births.

Nathan Riley: 01:11:26

So I just want to encourage people to not get so,

Nathan Riley: 01:11:28

so consumed with this material, reductive means

Nathan Riley: 01:11:32

of understanding human beingness and to actually

Nathan Riley: 01:11:35

possibly rest in the surrender to the like, the

Nathan Riley: 01:11:38

unknown and just be maybe okay with not knowing

Nathan Riley: 01:11:41

the answer. Like, there's also some magic there.

Nathan Riley: 01:11:43

So I just want to, like, that would, that's what

Nathan Riley: 01:11:45

I would put on a billboard. And I want people to

Nathan Riley: 01:11:47

feel okay not having the answers to like, life is

Nathan Riley: 01:11:50

much richer when you don't know why your little

Nathan Riley: 01:11:52

five year old suddenly is able to pronounce five

Nathan Riley: 01:11:55

syllable words. Like, you could talk about the

Nathan Riley: 01:11:56

hippocampus or whatever. It's magic that this

Nathan Riley: 01:12:00

little girl adores me and calls me, she calls me

Nathan Riley: 01:12:02

Big Daddy Muscle man. And like, hanging out with

Nathan Riley: 01:12:06

a five year old is, is the best time ever spent.

Nathan Riley: 01:12:10

And it reminds you, like, I don't have any idea

Nathan Riley: 01:12:12

why the turtle has those spots on their back. I

Nathan Riley: 01:12:15

don't know if I ever will know. And maybe, maybe

Nathan Riley: 01:12:17

it's better that I don't know. I don't know where

Nathan Riley: 01:12:19

babies come from. I'm working on it and they ask

Nathan Riley: 01:12:22

me, like, where do babies, how do the babies come

Nathan Riley: 01:12:23

out of bellies? And it's like, frankly honey, I

Nathan Riley: 01:12:25

really don't know where babies come from. But

Nathan Riley: 01:12:28

it's pretty magical, isn't it? And they're like,

Nathan Riley: 01:12:31

it's like, where do plants come from? And I'm

Nathan Riley: 01:12:33

Like, I don't know that either. I really don't

Nathan Riley: 01:12:35

know fairies, for all I care. And Steiner's work.

Nathan Riley: 01:12:39

I'm heavy into Steiner and anthroposophic

Nathan Riley: 01:12:42

medicine and Waldorf. They say the elemental

Nathan Riley: 01:12:44

beings pull the plants up, and there's some below

Nathan Riley: 01:12:46

that pull them, push them up. Why would that be

Nathan Riley: 01:12:48

any less probable than some biologist spotness

Nathan Riley: 01:12:51

way of looking at plants? Like, it's okay for us

Nathan Riley: 01:12:53

to just be like, I don't know. Let me dream about

Nathan Riley: 01:12:56

that and see what I can come up with you. You

Nathan Riley: 01:12:58

know, come up with for you. So, yeah. Embrace the

Nathan Riley: 01:13:02

magic.

Meredith Oke: 01:13:03

Yeah. And the how, you know, how would we have

Meredith Oke: 01:13:05

been in the world before we invented all this

Meredith Oke: 01:13:07

stuff?

Nathan Riley: 01:13:08

I know, right?

Meredith Oke: 01:13:09

Like, we didn't need to know about melatonin

Meredith Oke: 01:13:11

receptors in the womb because we just had fire

Meredith Oke: 01:13:14

and darkness.

Nathan Riley: 01:13:17

Yeah. There was no reason for us to understand

Nathan Riley: 01:13:19

it. So going back to those principles, like, hey,

Nathan Riley: 01:13:21

do some fire gazing if you're looking to get

Nathan Riley: 01:13:23

pregnant. Do some fire gazing and see what comes

Nathan Riley: 01:13:26

up for you. There's a little hummingbird that I.

Nathan Riley: 01:13:29

Comes by my window. It did while we were

Nathan Riley: 01:13:30

recording. And I have a hummingbird feeder over

Nathan Riley: 01:13:33

there, But I did it to see, like, how long would

Nathan Riley: 01:13:35

it take hummingbirds to trust this feeder? I

Nathan Riley: 01:13:37

mean, this is just the way my whole life works.

Nathan Riley: 01:13:39

And this hummingbird comes up and almost is,

Nathan Riley: 01:13:41

like, thanking me, and then goes over to the

Nathan Riley: 01:13:43

thing, like, they know I'm in here. It's weird.

Nathan Riley: 01:13:45

And I was recently getting a massage from a

Nathan Riley: 01:13:46

friend who's deep into Native American medicine,

Nathan Riley: 01:13:48

and he has this little book on, like, spirit

Nathan Riley: 01:13:50

animals. And I was like, ken, wait one second.

Nathan Riley: 01:13:52

Let me just see what a hummingbird means. And the

Nathan Riley: 01:13:54

hummingbird came to me. And the meaning of a

Nathan Riley: 01:13:57

hummingbird visiting you, a visitation, is that

Nathan Riley: 01:14:00

you may to be. May need to be. There he is again.

Nathan Riley: 01:14:02

He just came by the window. Oh, he's joining us.

Nathan Riley: 01:14:05

You may need to be more flexible in the days to

Nathan Riley: 01:14:08

come. And I first saw this hummingbird before my

Nathan Riley: 01:14:10

wife left on a trip, and I had to be solo

Nathan Riley: 01:14:12

parenting for a week. And I had an oracle

Nathan Riley: 01:14:15

reading, which I'm always like, okay, go do the

Nathan Riley: 01:14:17

oracle reading. And the card that came up was

Nathan Riley: 01:14:18

flexibility. It was like, like, maybe there's

Nathan Riley: 01:14:21

magic here. Maybe there's some magic.

Meredith Oke: 01:14:23

I hear you.

Nathan Riley: 01:14:24

Yeah, yeah, I'm hearing. I. I don't know what the

Nathan Riley: 01:14:26

message is, but I'm. I'm at least receiving

Nathan Riley: 01:14:28

something here. So anyways, I. I don't want to

Nathan Riley: 01:14:32

take us out too overboard, but thank you so much.

Meredith Oke: 01:14:34

But it's fun. And life is so much more fun if

Meredith Oke: 01:14:36

you. If you let it be magic. Like, why not? Why

Meredith Oke: 01:14:39

not?

Nathan Riley: 01:14:40

I don't know. I don't know.

Meredith Oke: 01:14:41

I. I mean, you're not gonna get in trouble, right?

Nathan Riley: 01:14:44

And there's a difference. I don't know. Yeah. The

Nathan Riley: 01:14:47

magic that you and I are using. This is a little

Nathan Riley: 01:14:49

funny aside. M A G I, C K is actually the magic

Nathan Riley: 01:14:53

that we're talking about, which has been

Nathan Riley: 01:14:55

considered a cult. Black magic, all of that. But

Nathan Riley: 01:14:57

there is something different between that and a

Nathan Riley: 01:14:59

card trick. But a card trick, M A G, I C, which

Nathan Riley: 01:15:03

I'm also fascinated with, a card trick can also

Nathan Riley: 01:15:05

give you that sense of awe where. Where you may

Nathan Riley: 01:15:09

never actually find out the answer to how the

Nathan Riley: 01:15:11

card trick was done. And there's actually some

Nathan Riley: 01:15:13

medicine in that for people. It's okay if you

Nathan Riley: 01:15:16

don't know how the trick was done. You were

Nathan Riley: 01:15:17

tricked. And. Sorry, one more short little story.

Nathan Riley: 01:15:19

I was in the Magic Castle in LA years ago, and

Nathan Riley: 01:15:22

this guy, he called everybody over to a card

Nathan Riley: 01:15:24

table, and he did this trick. And he. And he. He

Nathan Riley: 01:15:26

dealt everybody a hand in poker. And while he was

Nathan Riley: 01:15:29

doing it, he had other people, you know,

Nathan Riley: 01:15:31

shuffling, cutting, dealing. And he was like,

Nathan Riley: 01:15:33

okay. So he said what every person had, and he

Nathan Riley: 01:15:36

was like, okay, now remember, I'm. I'm. I'm the.

Nathan Riley: 01:15:39

I'm the trickster here. I'm here to trick you.

Nathan Riley: 01:15:41

And even though you guys all got really good

Nathan Riley: 01:15:44

hands, I. I dealt myself a royal flush. And he

Nathan Riley: 01:15:46

has somebody else turn the cards over. I don't

Nathan Riley: 01:15:47

ever remember seeing him touch any of the cards,

Nathan Riley: 01:15:50

but he did it. And he was like, okay, we're gonna

Nathan Riley: 01:15:52

do it again. I'm gonna slow it down. And he did

Nathan Riley: 01:15:54

it again. Royal flush. He's like, it's a 1 in

Nathan Riley: 01:15:56

a350,000 chance that I would get this on. On. On,

Nathan Riley: 01:16:00

you know, by coincidence. So let's do one more.

Nathan Riley: 01:16:02

He's like, I'm going to slow this down even

Nathan Riley: 01:16:05

further. Watch everything that is happening. And

Nathan Riley: 01:16:09

he does it like they deal the cards that shuffle

Nathan Riley: 01:16:12

and then cut the deck. And he's. He's an

Nathan Riley: 01:16:13

entertainer. So there's all this stuff happening,

Nathan Riley: 01:16:15

this flourish of activity. And he does it again.

Nathan Riley: 01:16:19

He does it, like, four times in a row. Meredith

Nathan Riley: 01:16:21

and I left feeling, like, inspired again about

Nathan Riley: 01:16:24

childbirth, because it was like, I actually don't

Nathan Riley: 01:16:27

want to go and look up how he did the trick. I'm

Nathan Riley: 01:16:29

sure somebody would be able to tell me. I have

Nathan Riley: 01:16:30

friends who are magicians, but I'm okay not

Nathan Riley: 01:16:33

knowing. And there was some medicine there for me

Nathan Riley: 01:16:35

to just be okay sitting with the. Wow. Like, I

Nathan Riley: 01:16:38

was just tricked. And he even tried to give me an

Nathan Riley: 01:16:40

advantage by slowing it down. He's like, I'm

Nathan Riley: 01:16:43

gonna try to not trick you here, but remember,

Nathan Riley: 01:16:44

I'm a magician. And he did it four times in a row

Nathan Riley: 01:16:47

with new decks of cards. And it's okay to go into

Nathan Riley: 01:16:52

the magic shop and for them to do a trick for you

Nathan Riley: 01:16:55

and for you to walk away just feeling like, I'm

Nathan Riley: 01:16:57

never going to know how they did that trick. And

Nathan Riley: 01:16:59

that is actually a kind of a foundational thing

Nathan Riley: 01:17:01

for me. It's okay that there's tricks, and it's

Nathan Riley: 01:17:04

okay that there seems to be real magic out there.

Nathan Riley: 01:17:06

And it's okay that we don't have the answers to

Nathan Riley: 01:17:08

everything. And even if we did have the answers,

Nathan Riley: 01:17:10

would it really change how you live your life?

Nathan Riley: 01:17:13

And maybe not. But this is what life is all

Nathan Riley: 01:17:15

about, is just embracing the magic. And

Nathan Riley: 01:17:18

childbirth is definitely magic.

Meredith Oke: 01:17:20

Yeah. I. Yes. It's like there's like a little

Meredith Oke: 01:17:25

portal into awe. We don't have to shut it down by

Meredith Oke: 01:17:28

figuring it out.

Nathan Riley: 01:17:29

We can just go through. Right. And see what

Nathan Riley: 01:17:32

happens to see where we end up in Oz or whatever.

Meredith Oke: 01:17:40

Thank you so much, Nathan.

Nathan Riley: 01:17:42

My pleasure.