Dr. M's Women and Children First Podcast

Dr. M’s Women and Children First Podcast #113: Navaz Habib, DC – Vagal Action and Health

Welcome back to Dr. M’s Women and Children First. Today, we are joined by one of the leading voices in the world of vagus nerve health, functional medicine, and autonomic nervous system regulation, Dr. Navaz Habib. Dr. Habib is a chiropractor, educator, international speaker, and author of the bestselling books *Activate Your Vagus Nerve* and *Upgrade Your Vagus Nerve*. His work has helped bring the science of the vagus nerve from the research world into practical clinical medicine, helping providers and patients better understand the powerful connection between the brain, immune system, gut, metabolism, and overall health. On today's episode, we take a pediatric lens to this fascinating topic. We explore how vagal tone influences inflammation, stress resilience, digestion, sleep, emotional regulation, and neurodevelopment. We discuss what happens when the autonomic nervous system becomes dysregulated, how chronic stress can shape a child's physiology, and why the vagus nerve may be one of the most important communication highways in the body. We'll also dive into practical strategies that families and clinicians can use to support vagal function, including breathing techniques, movement, nutrition, social connection, sleep, and other evidence-informed interventions that can help children build greater resilience in an increasingly stressful world. If you've ever wondered how the nervous system intersects with immune health, behavior, gut function, and chronic disease risk, this conversation is for you. Please join me in welcoming Dr. Navaz Habib. Dr. M

Dr. M’s SPA Newsletter Volume 16 Issue 15 – Virus and Food

Should You Feed A Viral Illness? This Nature news article discusses emerging evidence that eating may acutely enhance immune responsiveness, particularly through effects on T cells, the learning part of the adaptive immune system. The paper centers on the old saying “feed a cold, starve a fever,” suggesting there may actually be biologic truth behind at least the “feed a cold” half of the proverb. The article reviews a new study in mice and humans showing that T cells, key adaptive immune cells responsible for recognizing and attacking pathogens, behave differently depending on recent nutritional status. Researchers found that T cells from recently fed organisms proliferated more rapidly and mounted stronger activation responses compared with those from fasting states. In essence, nutrient availability appears to act as a metabolic “permission signal” for immune activation. .... Enjoy, Dr. M

Dr. M’s SPA Newsletter Volume 16 Issue 14 – The Adult Chair

The Adult Chair, the Adolescent Chair and the Child's Chair The Adult Chair by Michelle Chalfant is a practical framework for emotional maturity, self-awareness, and healing old patterns that unconsciously drive adult behavior. The central premise is that most people move through life reacting not from their grounded adult self, but from unresolved emotional states formed during childhood and adolescence. She organizes this idea into what she calls the “three chairs”: the Child Chair, the Adolescent Chair, and the Adult Chair. The Child Chair represents the emotional self formed in early childhood. This is the place of vulnerability, fear, shame, abandonment, loneliness, and unmet needs. When people react from this chair, they often feel helpless, emotionally flooded, overly dependent on validation, or afraid of rejection. Many adult relationship conflicts, according to Chalfant, are actually wounded children (in adult bodies) interacting with each other while wearing grown-up clothing and carrying iPhones. Same child like nervous system. Better accessories. Think of the statement: lipstick on a pig, you cannot dress up dysfunction and make it disappear. The Adolescent Chair reflects the defensive coping strategies people develop to protect the wounded child. This includes control, perfectionism, blame, avoidance, rebellion, people-pleasing, passive aggression, and emotional shutdown. The adolescent self seeks power and protection but often creates disconnection and conflict. Chalfant argues that many high-achieving adults unknowingly operate from this chair, appearing successful externally while internally driven by fear, insecurity, or the need for approval. The Adult Chair is the goal.... Enjoy, Dr. M

Dr. M’s SPA Newsletter Volume 16 Issue 13 – Birth Order

Birth Order Birth Order Is Biology, Not Birthright - so says a new paper in MedRxIV (Kramer et. al. 2026) Here is a short field guide to how sequence shapes the immune system, and maybe the brain in children. We’ve treated birth order like personality trivia. First-borns are “responsible.” Youngest are “free spirits.” Middle children… well, we forgot them. This paper suggests something more interesting: birth order is a biologic exposure. Not destiny. Not diagnosis. But signal. Across a very large dataset, the researchers mapped birth order against hundreds of diseases. The effects are small for any single child. But the pattern is consistent at a population level. Children are not born into identical biology, even within the same family. Each pregnancy changes the mother. Meaningfully. Immunologically. Successively. Each fetus inherits a slightly different environment. Epigenetics in full swing. It turns out that sequence matters. What Changes Across Pregnancies? Three levers move, quietly, predictably: 1) The Maternal Immune System Learns Pregnancy is not passive. It is negotiation. The first pregnancy = naïve immune system learning tolerance. Subsequent pregnancies = trained, adapted immune responses That training alters: cytokine tone, antibody profiles, placental signaling The fetus is downstream of all of it. 2) The Placenta Is Not a Copy-Paste Organ... Dr. M

Dr. M’s Women and Children First Podcast #112: Mona Delahooke, PhD – Beyond Behaviors

Today on Dr. M’s Women and Children First, we welcome one of the most important voices in modern child development and behavioral science, Mona Delahooke. Dr. Delahooke is a licensed clinical psychologist, internationally recognized speaker, and the author of groundbreaking books including Beyond Behaviors and Brain-Body Parenting. Her work challenges one of the deepest assumptions in modern parenting and education: that difficult behaviors are simply choices to be corrected. Instead, she invites us to ask a radically different question, what is the nervous system trying to communicate? This conversation sits right at the crossroads of neuroscience, attachment theory, polyvagal theory, developmental psychology, and the lived experience of parenting. In many ways, Mona’s work gives language to something clinicians and parents often feel intuitively but struggle to articulate: behavior is not merely compliance or defiance, behavior is biology expressed through the body. We explore how stress physiology, early attachment, sensory processing, trauma, neurodivergence, and autonomic nervous system states shape the way children interact with the world around them. We discuss why punishment-based models often fail vulnerable children, how “bad behavior” may actually represent adaptive survival responses, and why safety and connection are foundational to learning, resilience, and emotional regulation. For me personally, this conversation resonates deeply with the broader themes we often discuss on this podcast, the interaction between environment, physiology, immune health, metabolism, and neurodevelopment. Mona helps bridge the gap between cellular stress and relational stress, between body and mind, between physiology and behavior. If you’ve ever cared for a child with anxiety, ADHD, autism, sensory challenges, explosive behavior, school struggles, or chronic dysregulation, this episode offers both compassion and a fundamentally different framework. One that moves away from blame and toward curiosity. Away from control and toward connection. This is a conversation about seeing children more clearly. And perhaps, seeing ourselves more clearly too. Please enjoy this conversation with Dr. Mona Delahooke. Dr. M