Protect the Microbiota: Have a Healthy Baby Who Grows into a Healthy Kid, Adult
You’ve likely heard the term — microbiota — but did you know that it is essentially an organ with vital functions for our health? In an adult, its trillions of bacterial cells weigh in at about three pounds
But it’s not a given like our heart, liver, lungs, or brain, in fact, it can only be acquired through our exposure to bacteria—specifically, through vaginal childbirth and breast milk. Because the microbiota has been measured and studied only recently, we have missed its vital role in our long-term health for several generations.
Many autoimmune conditions, like food allergies, environmental allergies, asthma, and atopies of the skin— which have risen steeply in recent decades—likely originate in the first year or two of life with an overactive immune system that has not been properly tuned by a protective microbiota.
The Newly Discovered Microbiota Evidence
The most current research suggests that when we subvert the processes of childbirth and breast-feeding, we sabotage its development. A compromised microbiota also seems to promote inflammation, which begins in the gut and then spreads throughout the body, whether in the arteries or heart, the joints, or the brain.
These discoveries thoroughly change the way we view diet-related diseases like diabetes, heart disease, arthritis, cancers, and even neurodegenerative diseases like autism and Alzheimer’s—as at least partially linked to an inappropriate inflammatory response that began in the gut in infancy.
Because we have ignored the importance of the bacterial transfer from mother to baby during the vaginal birth process and during breast-feeding and have indiscriminately used antibiotics for decades, we have caused one crucially important and protective strain of bacteria normally found in the baby’s gut to go extinct in the Western world.
A woman of child-bearing age who was born by C-section, fed formula, or received antibiotics at any point in her life—or if this is true of her mother or grandmother— does not have the important bacterial species B. infantis.
Let me reiterate this point because it is so important: if any one of those scenarios applies to you, your mother, or your grandmother— which is nearly everyone in the Western world—you no longer harbor B. infantis in your body and are therefore unable to pass it on to your children.
“We’ve realized just in the last five years that antibiotics, infant formula, C-section, and ruthless hygiene have basically taken these bacteria out of the Western world, and actually most babies don’t get it,” said Bruce German, a chemist and professor of food science and technology at UC Davis.
He then added this crucial point: “The demise of the bacterium coincides most eerily with the perplexing increase in all of these diseases of autoimmune origin, like atopic dermatitis, food allergies, environmental allergies, colic, asthma, et cetera, et cetera.”
Indeed, atopic dermatitis in babies born between 1960 and 2000 has risen fivefold, and type 1 diabetes incidence in children has also increased fivefold.
According to German and his team’s research, without B. infantis, a baby’s microbiota is compromised from day one with lifelong ill effects. “The central benefits of having a microbiota dominated by B. infantis is that it crowds all the other guys out and especially the [pathogenic, or bad] bacteria,” German said.
Therefore, the development of our immune system, which begins immediately at birth, is entirely dependent on the components of breast milk and the transfer of B. infantis from mother to baby, in German’s view. “I think this is what evolution invested in— making sure that [bad bacteria] wouldn’t bloom in a baby,” he said.
But we’ve missed this for a really long time. “The truth is, the world should have understood the importance of breast milk a long time ago,” German said. “We study mothers and babies and breast milk for a lot of reasons. One of them is that they are the most important subjects for relevant health research, full stop.”
“We’ve realized just in the last five years that antibiotics, infant formula, C-section, and ruthless hygiene have basically taken these bacteria out of the Western world, and actually most babies don’t get it.”
He refers to breast milk as the Rosetta Stone for nutrition—it provides the blueprint for what human beings need not only to survive but to grow and thrive in sometimes harsh conditions. The biological process of lactation, which has been shaped by two hundred million years of evolution, provides “a complete, comprehensive, nourishing, protective, and preventative diet to mammalian infants,” German said. And, he added, since mother’s milk is (or, rather, was) the only thing that infant mammals ate, its safety was ruthlessly tested throughout those two hundred million years.
German emphasized how lactation is, therefore, the model for how to nourish humans completely, comprehensively, preventatively, and safely, as well as sustainably and deliciously.
The Truth About B.infantis
I was confused when I first heard about B. infantis for two reasons.
First, much of the research on the microbiota suggests that a healthy microbiota is a diverse one—meaning that the more bacterial strains and species you have in your gut, the better. But what German and his team found is that a healthy baby’s gut is populated almost exclusively by B. infantis; it dominates his entire lower intestine, crowding out nearly all the other bacterial strains.
Second, I mistakenly assumed that someone who eats a healthy whole foods diet, especially one full of fermented foods like yogurt or sauerkraut, would have a gut populated with all the beneficial bacteria a person needs. But because B. infantis has been rendered extinct in the Western world, the only way to get it, or pass it on, is to be inoculated with the specific strain.
Was German saying that women in the Western world—even those who eat a nutritious whole foods diet, give birth to their babies vaginally, and breast-feed exclusively—are now incapable of giving their babies these all-important bacteria? “
That’s exactly right,” he said. “In order to have a particular organism in an ecosystem, and we’ll take the intestine as an example, you have to be explicitly inoculated with at least a few of those bacteria alive, so they can grow; and if you don’t acquire those by inoculation, they can’t grow.” He used the analogy of a rose garden to illustrate this point: “If you want to have a rose garden in your backyard and you never plant roses, you can put all the water, fertilizer, and sunlight into that garden you want, but you are going to be very frustrated with the lack of roses.”
Indeed, according to German’s research, 97 percent of American babies do not have B. infantis in their gut. On the other hand, the majority of infants in less industrialized countries have a gut dominated by Bifidobacteria. Research across countries worldwide has shown that children without bifidobacteria are six times more likely to have allergies and type 1 diabetes, and they tend to have unhealthy body weight.
An added benefit, not only for babies but for new parents, is that when B. infantis flourishes in the baby’s gut, the baby has fewer and better formed (read: less messy) stool. German and his team found that babies who were inoculated with the bacteria and fed breast milk went from six messy diapers a day down to one diaper.
What does this say about gut health? “The immune system is working better, there is less inflammation, there is better integrity in barrier function [the lining of the gut], which means less irritation by pathogens and endotoxins in the first year of life,” German said.
Not only does this mean a less fussy, healthier, and more robust baby, but down the line, the implications are profound for preventing chronic diseases like cancer, especially those in the gastrointestinal tract. Bear in mind that the United States has seen an alarming rise in the incidence of colon and rectal cancers in people in their twenties and thirties, something previously unheard of.
So What’s a Parent To Do?
So what can expectant and new parents do?
First, work with your health care practitioners to ensure a vaginal childbirth unless a cesarean section is medically necessary.
Second, breast-feed your baby. This is sometimes easier said than done in a culture that undermines a woman’s ability to breast-feed at every turn (I’ll write more about this soon). Before your baby is born, it is important to set-up both birth support and postpartum support to help you initiate (and maintain) breast-feeding.
Finally, B. infantis is currently available as a supplement and it is made by Bruce German and his team at UC Davis. German hopes that this bacteria will be made widely available for free for all new babies in the near future.
Protect and support your baby’s microbiota from day one.
Want to learn more? Week one of a new four-week online class is on March 10, 1 PM EST, 10 AM PST. Our focus: The Microbiota. Click here to learn more and register.
