When we talk about preparing for pregnancy, the conversation usually centres on folate, ovulation tracking and a healthy weight. All important. But I want to take you deeper, down to the level of the cell, and specifically to the tiny structures that power every single one of them: the mitochondria.
I see your microbiome, and I raise you the cell.
The Maternal Inheritance
Here is something that still amazes me after more than a decade in practice. A child inherits their mitochondria almost entirely from their mother. The sperm contributes its nuclear DNA, but its mitochondria are actively eliminated shortly after fertilisation. The egg, by contrast, arrives carrying hundreds of thousands of copies of mitochondrial DNA.
Those maternal mitochondria power the extraordinary work of early development: cell division, organ formation, and the building of a brain that uses roughly a fifth of the body’s resting energy in adulthood and considerably more during childhood. The health of a woman’s mitochondria is closely tied to egg quality, and it helps lay the energetic foundations her child builds upon.
That is not a burden. It is an opportunity. The months before conception are one of the most powerful windows we have to support these cells.
Why Is The Rate of Autism Still Rising?
In September 2026, researchers from the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics published a study in Pediatrics looking at developmental disabilities in U.S. children aged 3 to 17, using data from the National Health Interview Survey. Between 2019–2020 and 2023–2024, even after adjusting for demographic and socioeconomic factors, they found significant increases across the board.
Any developmental disability rose from 16.7% to 20.5%, meaning roughly one in five American children now has one. ADHD rose from 9.5% to 12.0%. Learning disabilities rose from 7.6% to 8.8%, and other developmental delays from 5.5% to 6.4%. Autism rose from 3.1% to 4.5%, which is roughly 1 in 22 children, an increase of almost 45% in just four years.
These figures are parent-reported, so they sit a little higher than the CDC’s separate surveillance network, which identifies about 1 in 31 eight-year-olds with autism, and around 1 in 20 boys. Two decades ago, that figure was 1 in 150.
The study’s authors suggest the increases could be related to earlier detection and greater awareness, and that is surely part of the picture. But I don’t think awareness alone lets us off the hook. When one in five children is living with a developmental disability, we owe it to the next generation to ask what else is shaping their developing brains, and what we can do before they are even conceived.
The Straw That Broke the Camel’s Back
Many parents describe a clear “before and after” in their child: a vaccine, an illness, a high fever, a period of intense stress. It is completely understandable to look for the single event that changed everything.
But I’d invite a different question. Rather than asking “what caused this?”, we might ask “why was this child’s system so vulnerable to that particular stressor?”
Research has found evidence of mitochondrial dysfunction in a meaningful subset of autistic children. A 2012 meta-analysis estimated that around 5% of children with autism meet criteria for classic mitochondrial disease, far above the general population rate, while about 30% or more show biomarkers of abnormal mitochondrial function. Strikingly, most of the children with mitochondrial disease (79%) had no identifiable genetic abnormality, suggesting their mitochondrial dysfunction may have been acquired rather than inherited as a fixed disorder. Regression was also common in this group, affecting just over half, and has frequently been observed following a fever or other physiological stressor. More recent research has identified a subgroup of autistic children whose mitochondria are unusually sensitive to physiological stress, a pattern linked to regression.
But to truly understand susceptibility, we need to look beyond mitochondria as power plants. Mitochondria are also the cell’s sentinels, constantly sensing the environment for threat. Dr. Robert Naviaux at the University of California, San Diego, describes what happens next as the cell danger response. When a cell detects danger, whether an infection, a toxicant, or physical or emotional stress, its mitochondria shift from energy production into defence. They reduce oxygen use, alter cell membranes, change metabolism, and release ATP outside the cell as an alarm signal that puts neighbouring cells on alert.
This response is protective and designed to be temporary. Once the threat passes, cells are meant to move through a healing cycle and return to normal function. The problem arises when that cycle gets stuck. Naviaux proposes that many chronic conditions, including autism, may reflect a cell danger response that has failed to switch off, leaving cells locked in defence mode rather than growth and connection. In a small pilot trial of ten boys with autism, a single dose of suramin, a drug that blocks this ATP danger signalling, led to temporary improvements in language and social behaviour. It is early research that needs replication, but it points to something important: in at least some children, the brain may be less damaged than it is defended.
So why would a child’s cells be so primed for danger? For some children, the answer begins in the womb. Infection and inflammation during pregnancy, known as maternal immune activation, can alter fetal brain development, fever during pregnancy has been associated with increased autism risk, and prenatal exposure to certain environmental pollutants has also been linked to higher risk.
What If None of These Conditions Apply?
But many mothers had none of these. They had no fever, no infection and no obvious toxic exposure, and yet their child still struggled. Here, I believe we need to look at the mitochondria the mother passes on.
Each of our cells contains many copies of mitochondrial DNA, and these copies are not always identical. A cell can carry a mix of healthy and damaged mitochondrial DNA, and remarkably, it can often tolerate a high proportion of damaged copies, commonly 60 to 80% or more depending on the tissue, before any biochemical problem becomes apparent. This is known as the threshold effect. It means a mother can feel perfectly well while her mitochondria are operating much closer to their edge than she realises.
That margin matters enormously for her child. As eggs form, mitochondrial DNA passes through a genetic “bottleneck,” and the proportion of damaged copies can shift considerably between mother and child. A 2016 study of 903 families compared autistic children with their unaffected siblings and their mothers. The autistic children carried more than twice as many harmful mitochondrial DNA mutations as their siblings, and had inherited more of them from their mothers during the passage of mitochondrial DNA from one generation to the next.
In September 2026, the UK’s National Autistic Society stated for the first time that autism is genetic: that you are born autistic, and autistic for life. For many autistic adults, this was affirming, and it helped move the conversation away from the old, painful idea that parents were to blame. I want to honour that, and to be very clear that nothing I describe here is about blame. But for many families, particularly those who watched their child develop typically and then regress, “autism is genetic” can feel like a door closing. Genes alone cannot explain a rise of almost 45% in just four years. Even the Society acknowledges there is no single autism gene, and no genetic test that can predict whether a child will be autistic. And heritability, a population statistic describing how much variation between people is associated with genetic differences, is not the same as a parent passing a fixed condition to their child.
What a child inherits is better understood as a susceptibility: a set of cellular and mitochondrial conditions that shape how sensitive their system is to stress. And susceptibility is not destiny. Mitochondria produce the very molecules the cell uses to switch genes on and off, which means the energetic state of our cells directly shapes our epigenetics. A child who inherits mitochondria operating near their threshold starts life with less reserve. Their cells are more likely to cross into the cell danger response when a stressor arrives, and may find it harder to complete the healing cycle and return to safety.
Susceptibility Likely Due to Total Load
Put together, susceptibility looks less like a single cause and more like a total load: the mitochondrial reserve a child inherits from their mother, and the accumulated danger signals their cells receive, starting in the womb. A child whose cells begin life close to the edge simply has less room to absorb the next stressor.
The Hannah Poling case is the best-known example of this question. Hannah had an underlying mitochondrial disorder, documented in the medical literature by her own physicians. In 2008, the U.S. government conceded in vaccine court that her vaccinations had significantly aggravated this disorder, which then manifested as a regressive encephalopathy with features of autism.
I want to be transparent about where I stand. I do not advocate for vaccines. Vaccines work by deliberately provoking the immune system, and in my view they represent a significant immune burden, particularly for a young child whose cells may already be operating close to their edge. I don’t believe vaccines are the single cause of autism, and I don’t think framing them that way helps families. What I see, and what the Poling case illustrates, is that a vaccine can be one more demand on an already stretched system. For a child with little mitochondrial reserve, it may be the stressor that tips their cells into a danger response they cannot switch off. The same may be true of a virus or a high fever.
The final straw is rarely the whole story. The question I believe we need to ask is not simply “do vaccines cause autism?” but “how much load can this child’s cells carry, and what are we adding to it?” And the most powerful place to begin answering that is before a child is ever born. When a mother’s internal environment is calm, well nourished, well rested and low in inflammation and toxic burden, her baby’s cells receive a very different message from the very beginning: not danger, but safety.
Modern Life and Mitochondrial Load
Our mitochondria evolved in step with the rhythms of the natural world: bright morning sun, darkness at night, the seasons. In the space of a few generations, we have rewritten almost every one of those signals.
It began with the light bulb. For the first time in human history, night could be as bright as we wished. Electricity followed into every home, and with it came indoor living; Americans now spend close to 90% of their time indoors. Ordinary room lighting in the evening suppresses melatonin and shortens its nightly window, and our melatonin system is especially sensitive to blue wavelengths. Melatonin is far more than a sleep hormone. It is concentrated within mitochondria, where it acts as a powerful antioxidant. It is also present in the fluid surrounding the developing egg, where it helps protect oocytes from oxidative damage, and it plays important roles in the placenta and throughout pregnancy.
Then came screens, and later the phones that now sit on our bedside tables. Wi-Fi, wearables and smart homes mean we are surrounded by wireless signals around the clock.
To understand why this might matter, it helps to remember that our cells are fundamentally electrical. Every cell holds a voltage across its membrane, and mitochondria maintain one of the strongest in the body; that voltage is what drives the production of cellular energy. Bioelectric signals also help guide how an embryo grows and takes shape, telling cells where to go and what to become. Voltage is not a side note in biology. It is part of the blueprint.
One of the leading proposed explanations for how man-made electromagnetic fields (EMFs) may affect cells centres on this electrical system. Biochemist Martin Pall reviewed more than twenty studies in which the biological effects of EMF exposure were blocked or greatly reduced by calcium channel-blocking drugs. He proposed that EMFs act on voltage-gated calcium channels in our cell membranes, allowing excess calcium into the cell and setting off a cascade that leads to oxidative stress. Other researchers have suggested that man-made signals, which are polarised and pulsed in a way natural EMFs are not, may be more biologically active because they force charged ions in and around cell membranes to oscillate.
Water is the other part of this picture. Professor Gerald Pollack has described a layer of highly ordered water that forms next to water-loving surfaces such as cell membranes, known as exclusion zone, or EZ, water. Its existence has since been confirmed by several independent research groups, and infrared light, which is abundant in sunlight, has been shown to expand it. In the structured water model I work from, this ordered water helps hold charge at the surfaces of our cells, much like a battery. I believe a modern environment that is short on sunlight and saturated with artificial EMFs may leave our cells less well hydrated in this deeper sense, and less able to hold their charge.
Research on wireless exposure and fertility is still developing, but a 2024 systematic review of experimental studies found adverse effects of radiofrequency exposure on male fertility markers, including reduced sperm count and lower pregnancy rates in animal studies. Independent scientists have argued that biological effects are seen at exposures below current safety limits, and that those limits should be reassessed, particularly to protect reproductive health.
For me, that is reason enough to take a precautionary approach during the preconception window. Reducing unnecessary exposure costs very little, and it naturally brings more of what our cells were designed for: more sunlight, more time outdoors, deeper sleep, and less time on devices.
The Preconception Window
The good news is that biology gives us a runway. The final stages of egg development take roughly three months, and sperm take around 74 days to develop. The conditions both parents live in during that time shape the quality of the cells that come together at conception.
Yes, both parents. While a child’s mitochondria come from the mother, a father’s health, nutrition and exposures before conception also influence pregnancy and the long-term health of the child. Preconception care is a team effort.
I recommend couples begin preparing at least 6 to 12 months before trying to conceive. This allows time to test, to address imbalances, to replenish nutrient stores, and to give several full cycles of egg and sperm development the benefit of a supportive environment.
Protecting and Restoring Mitochondria
My approach begins with the foundations, because no supplement can outrun a body that is out of rhythm with its environment.
Circadian Alignment
Get outside within the first hour of waking and let natural morning light reach your eyes. Light is the most powerful signal for setting our internal clock, and that clock in turn helps regulate daily rhythms in mitochondrial energy production. Keep a consistent sleep and wake time.
Light Hygiene
After sunset, dim your home, switch to warm, low lighting, and put screens away an hour or two before bed. Make your bedroom truly dark. Protecting melatonin protects your mitochondria, and your eggs.
Reducing Environmental and EMF Exposures
Keep your phone out of the bedroom or on airplane mode overnight, switch off Wi-Fi at night where possible, and avoid carrying your phone in a trouser pocket or resting a laptop on your lap. Reduce your toxic load by filtering your water, choosing glass and stainless steel over plastic, and simplifying your cleaning and personal care products, as many contain endocrine-disrupting chemicals linked to reproductive harm.
Daily Time Outdoors
I ask every client to prioritise time outside every single day, not just at weekends. Go for a walk, get fresh air, and let natural daylight reach your eyes and skin, ideally in the morning and again later in the day. Daily daylight exposure matters: a study of more than 85,000 people found that greater daytime light exposure was associated with better mental health, while more light at night was associated with poorer mental health. Movement matters, too, and a daily walk is one of the simplest ways to get it; higher daily step counts are consistently associated with lower risk of early death. Time spent in green, natural spaces brings its own benefits, with at least two hours a week in nature associated with better health and wellbeing. Many of my clients also enjoy grounding, putting bare feet on the earth, an area of early but interesting research. Think of daily outdoor time not as a luxury, but as a daily nutrient your cells were designed to expect.
Food and Lifestyle Foundations
In the 1930s, the dentist Weston A. Price travelled the world studying traditional communities with remarkable health and fertility. He observed that their diets were rich in animal fats, organ meats, seafood and fermented foods, and that many of these cultures gave special, nutrient-dense foods to young couples before they conceived. Price’s work was observational and of its time, but his central insight has stood up remarkably well: fertility is built on fat-soluble nutrients and nutrient density. Mitochondria are built from, and fuelled by, what we eat, and for both parents, these are my foundations.
Fats Are Foundational for Fertility
In my clinical experience, supporting fat intake is one of the most powerful things we can do for fertility, and I have seen women conceive after years of struggling simply by restoring the fats in their diet. The research points the same way. In a large study of more than 18,000 women, those who ate more full-fat dairy had a lower risk of ovulatory infertility, while those eating more low-fat dairy had a higher risk, and higher intakes of artificial trans fats were associated with a greater risk of ovulatory infertility. Our hormones and our cell membranes are made from fat, and a body that senses scarcity will not prioritise reproduction.
Healthy Fats and Membranes
Every one of our cells, and every mitochondrion within them, is wrapped in membranes built from fats, and the quality of those fats shapes how well they work. Both omega-6 and omega-3 fats are essential, meaning our bodies cannot make them and we must get them from food. Omega-6 fats are often painted as the villain, but the parent omega-6, linoleic acid, is a core building block of cardiolipin, the signature fat of the inner mitochondrial membrane where our energy is made. Arachidonic acid, another omega-6, is essential alongside the omega-3 DHA for a baby’s developing brain. Omega-3 fats are also incorporated into mitochondrial membranes and influence how they function. What matters is balance and quality. The two families work together and compete for the same enzymes, and a ratio of around 4:1 omega-6 to omega-3 has been proposed as far closer to what our biology evolved with than typical modern diets. The real problem is not omega-6 itself but damaged fats: oils that have been heavily refined, reheated or fried, and the ultra-processed foods made with them. And this is why I test before I supplement: a red cell fatty acid test shows the fatty acid makeup of your red blood cell membranes, giving us a window into your cell membranes so we can restore balance rather than guess.
Fish and Seafood for DHA and EPA
Wild oily fish such as sardines, salmon, mackerel and anchovies, eaten two to three times a week, are the richest food sources of the omega-3s DHA and EPA. Shellfish such as oysters and mussels add zinc, selenium and iodine, all important for fertility in both partners. Choose smaller, low-mercury fish most often.
Seeds for ALA and LA
Flax, chia, hemp and pumpkin seeds provide the plant omega-3 ALA alongside the parent omega-6 LA. Our bodies convert only a small fraction of ALA into DHA and EPA, so seeds complement seafood rather than replace it, but they are an easy daily way to bring both parent essential fats into your diet.
Liver, Organs and Red Meat
Organ meats are nature’s multivitamin. Liver is one of the most concentrated sources of vitamin A, vitamin B12, folate and iron, and organ meats such as liver and heart are among the richest sources of CoQ10, a key component of the mitochondrial energy chain. Grass-fed red meat adds highly absorbable iron, zinc and B vitamins. You may have heard that liver should be avoided in pregnancy because of its vitamin A. But the research that raised this concern found increased risk of birth defects in women taking high doses of preformed vitamin A from supplements, not from food, and when researchers compared the two directly, eating liver produced much lower levels of the vitamin A compounds linked to birth defects than supplements at a similar dose. I ate liver regularly throughout my own pregnancy and tested my vitamin A levels along the way. What I recommend is regular portions of liver as part of a nourishing, varied diet, and avoiding high-dose synthetic vitamin A supplements. Eggs round this out with choline, which is essential for fetal brain development, yet the great majority of pregnant women in the U.S. fall short of recommended intakes.
Iodine for the Thyroid and the Developing Brain
Iodine is essential for making thyroid hormone, which drives metabolism in both mother and baby and is critical for fetal brain development. Even mild iodine deficiency in pregnancy has been linked to lower IQ and reading ability in children, and iodine needs rise during pregnancy and breastfeeding. Seafood, shellfish, eggs and dairy are all good sources, and seaweed can be too, though some varieties such as kelp are so concentrated that they are best used sparingly. This is one more reason seafood deserves a regular place on your plate.
Fermented Foods for the Microbiome
Traditional ferments such as sauerkraut, kimchi, kefir and beet kvass have nourished people for generations. In a Stanford study, a diet high in fermented foods increased the diversity of the gut microbiome and lowered markers of inflammation in just ten weeks. Start small, with a forkful of sauerkraut or a few sips of kefir or kvass daily, and build up.
Raw Dairy and Colostrum
Traditional, unprocessed dairy is a Weston Price staple. Large European studies have found that children who drink unprocessed farm milk have lower rates of asthma and allergies, and colostrum, the first milk, is rich in immune factors and growth factors that support the lining of the gut. If you choose raw dairy, source it from a trusted, regularly tested farm. It does carry a risk of foodborne infections such as Listeria, which is especially important to consider once you are pregnant.
Sunbathing, Vitamin D and the Skin-Gut Axis
I want you to sunbathe. Sunlight on bare skin is our main source of vitamin D, and our skin can only make it when UVB rays are strong enough, which in much of the world means around the middle of the day and, at higher latitudes, only in the warmer months. So I encourage regular time in the sun with bare skin and no sunscreen, building up gradually so your skin adapts, but never to the point of burning. Once you’ve had your time, cover up or move into the shade. Vitamin D matters for fertility: women with sufficient vitamin D have been found to have higher live birth rates after fertility treatment, and I always test vitamin D levels rather than guess. Sunlight offers more than vitamin D, too. UVA light on the skin releases nitric oxide, which helps to lower blood pressure, and its effects reach all the way to the gut: in one study, exposing the skin to UVB light increased the diversity of the gut microbiome in women who were low in vitamin D. This is the skin-gut axis at work, and a reminder that the microbiome takes its cues from the whole body and its environment.
Water, Minerals and Cellular Charge
Life is electric, and minerals are what carry the charge. Sodium, potassium, magnesium and calcium are electrically charged ions, and the pumps that move them across our cell membranes create the voltage every cell depends on. Magnesium is needed for virtually every reaction involving ATP, the cell’s energy currency. This is why I pay as much attention to the water my clients drink as to the food they eat. Filtering your water is important, but heavily purified water such as reverse osmosis also strips out its natural minerals, so I always recommend remineralising it, for example with trace minerals or a pinch of good-quality sea salt. Drink your water between meals throughout the day, and remember the ordered EZ water at the surfaces of our cells, which the infrared light in sunlight helps to build. Mineral-rich water, sunlight and healthy membranes all work together to keep our cells charged.
Colour and Variety
Deeply coloured vegetables, berries and herbs provide polyphenols that support mitochondrial function through multiple pathways.
Blood-Sugar Balance
Build meals around protein, healthy fats and fibre, and limit refined sugar. High blood sugar has been shown to impair mitochondrial function in the egg.
Daily Habits
Move your body every day, prioritise deep, consistent sleep, and find real ways to manage stress. Avoid smoking and reduce or eliminate alcohol, for both partners.
Doing Less, Not More
If there is one message I want you to take from this, it is that preconception care is not about doing more. Your cells don’t respond to effort. They respond to safety.
Stress is one of the most powerful danger signals the body receives, and mitochondria are exquisitely sensitive to it. A body under constant pressure is being told it is not safe, and a body that doesn’t feel safe does not prioritise reproduction. In one study of couples trying to conceive, women with the highest levels of a biological stress marker had around twice the risk of infertility.
This is why my clinical motto is “less is more, slow and low.” When the body is already in defence mode, intensive detoxes, extreme diets or handfuls of supplements can simply become another stressor. I always begin with the foundations: circadian rhythm, a calm nervous system, good fats and minerals, and an environment of safety.
Slow breathing is one of the simplest tools we have. Breathing at around six breaths a minute has been shown to calm the nervous system and reduce anxiety, so I ask my clients to practise it twice a day, inhaling for four and exhaling for six.
You don’t need to do everything in this article at once. Choose one or two foundations and build from there. Your body is not a project to be fixed. It is designed to heal and to create life, given the right conditions.
A Closing Thought
We cannot control everything about our children’s health, and no parent should carry guilt for what they didn’t know. But we have more influence than we often realise. By tending to the mitochondria in the months before conception, we give the next generation the strongest possible cellular foundation to grow from.
That is what mothering the mitochondria means to me: caring for the smallest parts of ourselves, so our children can thrive.
About Daniela Lawler FNT BA DipCNM NANP BSEM
Daniela Lawler is a Functional Nutritional Therapist and founder of Foundations of Health. She graduated from the world-renowned College of Naturopathic Medicine (CNM) in London in 2017, later joining the faculty as a lecturer from 2019–2022. Since then, she has built thriving practices in both the UK and Miami, Florida, supporting children and adults with complex, chronic conditions—often when conventional medicine has offered little hope.
Daniela has continued to expand her education with a strong focus on cellular health, immune regulation, and mitochondrial function as the root drivers of modern disease. She trained extensively in Mitochondrial Therapy with Dr. Michael Kucera and Sheri Dixon, shadowing their work in London clinics since 2017. Daniela became the first practitioner to introduce Micro-Immunotherapy to the United States, bringing a therapy with more than 50 years of history in Europe to American families.
Alongside her work in MIT, Daniela has trained with Justine Stenger in cell membrane medicine, is mentored by Dr. Patricia Kane, a pioneer in lipid research and IV phosphatidylcholine therapy, and has studied Dr. Bruce Hoffman’s 7 Stages of Healing Program for complex chronic illness. Daniela also integrates Dr. Jack Kruse’s circadian biology principles, ensuring every client plan addresses light, sleep, and alignment with natural rhythms. You can learn more about her at her website: https://danielalawler.com/
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Resources
Articles
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Listeria (listeriosis): people at risk — pregnant women and newborns. Accessed 21 Oct 2026.
US Food and Drug Administration, Environmental Protection Agency. Advice about eating fish: for those who might become or are pregnant or breastfeeding and children ages 1–11 years. 2021. Accessed 20 Oct 2026.
Books
Price, W.A.. Nutrition and Physical Degeneration. New York: Paul B. Hoeber; 1939.
