Get good guys into your newborn baby's belly

"A mother's gut microbiota may transfer and colonise newborn infants intestines in the first few days after birth, according to new research from Yakult."

Yep, that’s right, so make sure you’re passing on good gut bacteria. That simply means getting your own gut house in order long before you conceive and then maintaining it during your pregnancy. It also means avoiding C-sections and formula feeds, both of which interfere with the appropriate colonisation of your baby’s gut. But if you get your infant's gut health right in that brief window that exists post-natally you’ve given him or her a lifetime of better health. 

Simple equation and it all starts with the right product and the right supporting health-promotion measures. But your partner’s part of this equation too. His gut health can benefit from a tune-up, in fact the general population would benefit from a mouth to rectum overhaul of their insides. If that sounds like an invasive procedure, it can be easily accomplished with a potent probiotic, mixing strains that colonise the whole length of your intestines and taken on a regular and ongoing basis.

Restoring gut health works for the malnourished too

Interesting study published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) shows that in the severely malnourished, it’s a deranged gut population that leads to kwashiorkor. Kwashiorkor is the most debilitating form of malnutrition that manifests as severely distended bellies, spindly arms and legs, organ malfunction and for those who survive, reduced IQ and lifelong impairment. 

It’s always been a bit of a mystery why kwashiorkor affected some but not all malnourished children, now it appears that it’s due to their gut microbiota. The less diverse the population of gut microbes, the greater the likelihood of kwashiorkor. The bacterial mix in the victims’ guts becomes healthier when they are fed “therapeutic food” made from peanut butter fortified with milk powder, oil, sugar and micronutrients, but reverts when the supplement is stopped and the children go back to their usual starchy diets. What is even more interesting is the first part of the study, which shows massively improved survival rates in those children receiving a week’s worth of an antibiotic (amoxicillin or cefdinir) along with their enriched peanut butter supplement. 

Curious juxtaposition of effects here - more diverse gut microbiota seems to be key to surviving malnutrition, while antibiotics, likely to have a deleterious effect on those gut bacteria, improve survival rates. I bet the researchers are scratching their heads too, however the NY Times readers have plenty to offer. But only one or two of the very vocal suggest putting a probiotic into the mix? Meanwhile WHO is likely to issue a standard recommendation of antibiotics for the starving and hang the likelihood of yet more drug-resistant bacterial strains raising their ugly heads. 

Kwashiorkor isn’t a concern in the west, but restoring optimal gut health is! Get your gut microbiota into good shape with the best product for the job.

Get a little dirt on your hands...

Well, I might have finished lambasting poor old David Koch over his misplaced breastfeeding comments, but can’t stop about those good gut microbes. Great advice from Dr. Mercola who suggests that working in your garden and opening your windows to let the fresh air in are simple measures to enhance the health of the gut microbiota. 

Read the article in its entirety, its a goodie and Mercola’s recommendations are absolutely spot on and do-able. Who can say that they consume 30-40 different species of plants in a week??? Now that’s really something to aim for! 

Good place to start would be half a dozen different varieties of leaf lettuce in your backyard garden along with herbs like mint, parsley, coriander, basil, thyme and dill. Then pick them fresh and make them part of as many meals as you possibly can. 

Last night I managed mignonette, butter and cos lettuces (thanks Dave and Pauline), rocket, radicchio, cabbage, cauliflower, capsicum, mushroom, carrot, cucumber, tomato, Spanish onion, mint and parsley. Night before that it was potatoes, kumera, pumpkin, aubergine, fennel, brown onion, capsicum, tomato and rosemary - that’s 22 different ones already. A fruit salad for breakfast tomorrow will bring it close to 30. Then the challenge will be 10 more ... asparagus, broccoli, kale, spinach ...  I’m going very easy on the grains, but they count too ... couscous, quinoa, barley ... getting close to 40! What’s your score? Need some great recipes and the dirt on starting a garden?

Gut health and auto-immune disorders

Early exposure to good gut microbes might protect against these increasingly common disorders, which include diabetes type 1

Sounding like a record stuck in a crack, I know I’m on the “healthy gut microbiota” soapbox at least once a week. But there is good reason! Compelling research is appearing at a great rate, healthy early exposure is key and probiotics during preconception and pregnancy provide a very simple but absolutely fundamental health-promotion measure, so I can’t let the opportunity go by.

This latest study involved putting normal healthy gut bacteria from male mice into females, who are much more likely than males to suffer from an auto-immune disorder such as MS (multiple sclerosis), rheumatoid arthritis, lupus or type 1 diabetes. Establishment of gut microbiota in the females gave them strong protection from the auto-immune disorders, but unexpectedly also increased their levels of the sex-hormone testosterone, which researchers say was instrumental in conferring protection. 

As I’ve said more than once, the gut story is unfolding at an exponential rate, which should put a high potency probiotic at the top of your “must-have daily” list of nutrients at any age or life stage. More to the point however, getting it right in the next generation will have far-reaching and positive consequences! As well as probiotics for the prospective mum, think normal vaginal birth and breastfeeding.

The good guys that grow in your gut

I’m hopping on the “healthy gut” soap box again! The research, expanding at a phenomenal rate, confirms the importance of the gut microbiota. Quite apart from preventing a host of directly, gut-related, health issues, the good gut bacteria go a long way towards establishing and maintaining normal weight, hormone balance and emotional stability!

And relevant to my work, Yale and Harvard researchers have identified a brief window of opportunity postnatally when optimal gut health can be established. Take advantage of that window and you bestow a lifetime of better health on the child. WOW - what an opportunity we have, or conversely, what an opportunity we miss. Caesarean-section means a baby born into a sterile environment, failing to acquire his mother’s bacteria as he passes down the birth canal. Formula feeding presents a similar story, delivering an equally unfortunate impact on the infant's gut health. Those US researchers make a direct link to the extremely high C-sec and formula feeding rates to the epidemics of obesity and depression! 

But no matter how deplorable the statistics, the good news is that probiotics can act as a surrogate with probiotic-containing products of potential benefit to the whole family. But there’s madness in the air! As of December 14 2012 in the EU, the word “probiotic” can no longer be used on product labels since it infers a “health claim.” EU consumers will have to look for the names of specific strains to find what they want - a move that defies logic and will no doubt deter the less well-informed. When will restoring optimal (normal?) status of naturally occurring bacteria, trace elements, vitamins or whatever be the RIGHT OF and made EASY for the health-conscious consumer? Before the madness reaches Australian shores,  get a product with multiple strains and get those good guys growing in your gut!