How The Baby Does Get Its First Dose Of Healthy Gut Microbes

by Dr. Harold Gunatillake

We know now, we need trillions of good micro biota in our gut for good health, immunity and wellbeing. This colonization occurs in utero before the baby is born.

Mother’s placenta which feeds the baby in the womb is not sterile; it is full of beneficial bacteria that feed the baby in utero. Such micro biota colonization is a natural event and is beneficial to the baby for its future health and has an enormous significance for post-natal life. This was revealed by Professor Olivier Goulet from Hospital NeckerEnfants Malades (Paris).

He further said that early implementation or microbial colonization after birth has a considerable impact upon the health of the child and the future adult.

Whilst getting the first dose of micro biota through the mother’s placenta, the passage through the vagina gets further doses of micro biota colonized in the vaginal passage. In addition the baby gets its nature’s antibiotics and the rich in oligosaccharides, nutrients which are beneficial for the health of the micro biota, through breast milk. Work is being done on fermented milk products that mimic human milk for feeding the colonized gut micro biota in babies. Adults benefits by consuming yogurt as a probiotic containing certain bacilli to feed such micro biota in the gut, and it is possible that fermented infant formula may be as beneficial as yogurt is for adults.

What all this means is that a baby born through the natural passage gets its early doses of beneficial bacterial colonization verses the baby born through Caesarian section would bedeprived of such natural immunization.

C section is an inevitable lifesaving procedure to save the baby, but at the same time is deprived of the first colonization of good bacteria for the baby’swellbeing.

Long term follow up of these babies born through the natural way and through C section have revealed that the former babies are less prone to getting noncommunicable diseases, also known as chronic diseases compared to those latter babies born through C section lacking those microbes to have a relevant role in health. A recent study led by Dr. Erika has revealed that probiotic intervention during the perinatal period has been proposed as a way to reduce the risk of some of these
diseases.

Those babies delivered through C section and those babies in affluent families brought up in a sterile environment in homes seem to get asthma much more than those babies brought up in slummy areas, bug infested environments. In most countries, including Sri Lanka the incidence of cesarean delivery has risen to enormous levels. In China the incidence of CD are 50% and some private clinics in Brazil approaching 80%.

The author of this article is aware of situations where the gynecologist frightens the pregnant mother by saying,” Do you want a delivery without pain or lot of pain” The mother would inevitable opt for the painless procedure, off course at an expense to the client to pay big private hospital and doctors’ bills. So, the incidence of CD has risen due to maternal requests without knowing the several risks for the child.

Well known among the risks are neonatal depression due to general anesthesia, fetal injury during hysterotomy, and or delivery, increased likelihood of respiratory distress even at term and breast feeding complications.

Kids delivered through CD are more prone totype 1 diabetes, Crohn’s disease, multiple sclerosis, and allergic diseases, such as asthma, allergic rhinitis, and atopic dermatitis. These diseases are more prevalent in affluent, Western, industrialized countries where hygiene of the environment is much cleaner, and mothers are more obsessed in keeping an ‘abacterial’ environments in the homes.

Brett Finlay, professor in Biochemistry & Molecular Biology and Microbiology and Immunology with a team of researchers at the University of British Columbia in Canada, studied the diapers of over 300 infants and found that they could predict something about the children’s health later in life: a transient disturbance in fecal micro biota within the first 100 days was associated with the development of asthma by age three. It was found that those kids having asthma were found lacking four microbes in their feces. They found specifically a decrease in the relative abundance of the genera Lachnospira, Velillonella, Faecalbacterium and Rothia.

Finlay states: “When we took feces from a three-month-old [who] we know goes on to develop asthma lacked these four bugs. We put these four bugs into [the sample], put it into a germ-free animal… then [induced] asthma; those with the four bugs, they didn’t get asthma,” he explains. “That’s the closest we’ve come to doing causation of
these bugs as opposed to just correlation.”

The future practice of medicine will be revolutionized by giving fecal pellets and fecal cocktails to prevent and cure most diseases influenced by gut microbes. Antibiotic medications and other therapeutic regimes will be something of the past in the near future for wellbeing of the humans.