Why your Microbiome can Shape your Baby's Health

How friendly bacteria, shapes both your and your baby's health, and what you can do to protect and improve your microbiome.

My husband Victor and I complement each other beautifully - with our allergies. Between the two of us, we suffer from pretty much every chronic condition you can imagine: Various food, dust, and pollen allergies, asthma, eczema, and autoimmune issues.

I had studied Nutrition at the Irish Institute of Nutrition & Health, and Victor had a background as a scientist - so when we decided to try for a baby, we poured ourselves into researching what we could do to lower our baby’s risk of these chronic illnesses. And this is what we found after reading through literally thousands of medical studies: By making relatively simple changes to your diet and lifestyle, you can reduce your child’s risk of these conditions by as much as 80-90 percent! 

So - what can you do to set your baby on a path to lifelong good health? The key lies in your gut: Your microbiome!

The Microbiome

You have some 40 trillion bacteria living in and on your body. In all, you carry around between two to six pounds of bacteria of more than 10,000 different species, and they vastly outnumber your own body’s cells. Collectively, these bacteria are called your microbiome.

Our microbiome is involved in almost every aspect of our health, from acne and dental cavities to diabetes, obesity, ulcers, and cancer, to psychological states like anxiety and depression—as well as allergies, asthma, and eczema. Perhaps this is less surprising when you discover that 70 percent of all of our immune cells live in the gut, where they interact with, and are regulated by, our gut microbiome.

Your microbiome even influences your baby's genes! You may think of genes as something that is set in stone when you’re born, and you have either won the “genetic lottery” or you haven’t. But we now know that this isn’t entirely true: Your genes may give you a better chance of good health or a higher risk for certain illnesses, but those outcomes aren’t fixed. Your odds for health or illness are fluctuating constantly during your lifetime because the activity of your genes is changed by your diet and lifestyle, and those changes can be inherited by your kids. This process is called epigenetics. Epigenetics influence your children’s health, and possibly even your grandchildren’s, long before they are born.

What does the microbiome have to do with epigenetics? As it turns out, our gut bacteria are one of the main drivers of epigenetic changes in our DNA via the substances they release in our guts. For example, they ferment dietary fibre into anti-inflammatory short-chain fatty acids which turn down the activity of genes linked to the development of allergies, inflammatory bowel disease, obesity, and cancers.

Your microbiome is passed on to your baby via birth and breastfeeding. Early contact with friendly bacteria like Lactobacilli and Bifidobacteria balances and trains your baby's immune system. These bacteria help your baby fend off harmful microbes, strengthen the gut lining, suppress allergic responses, and stimulate the growth of the thymus gland (a sort of "police academy" for immune cells). All of this is crucial for preventing both acute infections and long-term allergic and autoimmune conditions.

The question thus becomes: How do you create a healthy and diverse microbiome? These are the three key steps.

1. Avoid antibiotics unless truly necessary.

The biggest threat to your microbiome is antibiotics. Broad-spectrum antibiotics can reduce the diversity of bacteria in your gut by 30 percent, wiping out thousands of beneficial species - and it can take years for your microbiome to recover.

You can protect your microbiome, and thus your child’s, by only taking antibiotics when they are deemed absolutely necessary by your doctor or healthcare provider. Antibiotics can be lifesavers, but using them during pregnancy and in early life can triple your child's risk of asthma, and also significantly increase the risk of eczema and allergies.

When your doctor prescribes you antibiotics, check to make sure that it is not just a precautionary prescription. If there is any doubt whether you have a viral or bacterial infection, try to get a test that can differentiate between the two. If you do have a bacterial infection, discuss with your doctor whether you can wait to see if the symptoms clear up on their own or whether there are alternative treatment options. For example, as we discuss in the book, probiotic capsules with friendly bacteria have been proven more effective than antibiotics in treating mastitis (an inflammation of breast tissue that affects a third of all breastfeeding mothers) and bacterial vaginosis (a bacterial imbalance in the vagina, a common condition during pregnancy).

2. Feed your good bacteria.

The microbiome is fundamental to our health - and it's amazing how quickly we can alter it by changing our diet! In one Harvard study, healthy volunteers followed an animal-based diet (meat, eggs, and cheeses) or a plant-based diet (grains, legumes, fruits, and vegetables). Both diets significantly changed the composition of bacteria in the gut within five days!

Which foods, then, are best for nourishing the beneficial bacteria in your gut? As Michael Pollan put it: "Eat food, not too much, mostly plants”. Which means: Eat whole foods and try to cook with fresh ingredients. Ideally, follow a mostly plant-based diet with lots of fibre and healthy fats like olive oil, avocados, nuts, and fish. Fibre and healthy fats feed your microbiome.

Likewise, eat fermented foods with live probiotic bacteria - like yoghurt, sauerkraut, kimchi, kombucha, and kefir. Make sure to introduce fermented foods, especially yoghurt, to your child’s diet as early as possible during their first year of life. These steps can lower your child’s risk of asthma, eczema, and allergies by up to 85 percent, meaning that nearly nine out of ten cases could be prevented!

3. Get out into nature and get dirty.

In our Western societies, we are spending roughly 70 percent of our time in our own homes and 90 percent in urban areas. The COVID-19 lockdowns have certainly not helped matters!

What we need to do, whenever we can, is to get out more. Besides its beauty and stress-busting benefits, nature is also the place to meet our “old friends”: The friendly bacteria our immune system co-evolved with. One Finnish study discovered that the closer people live to farms or forests, the more diverse the composition of bacteria on their skin, and the less prone to allergies they are. Contact with farm animals and pets during pregnancy or in the first few months of life can also reduce your child's risk of asthma, eczema, and allergies by nearly 40 percent.

Thanks to the efforts of researchers around the world, we know of many other things which will improve your baby's chances of lifelong good health. In a forthcoming guest post, we'll share why environmental factors and certain household products can trigger chronic disease, and how to choose healthier alternatives for your family.

If you're curious, you can already head over to our website and read free sample chapters on the microbiome and how going organic benefits your baby. See you soon!

Words by MICHELLE HENNING

Michelle Henning is a certified Nutrition & Health Coach, writer, and graduate of the Irish Institute of Nutrition & Health. Her articles on food, nutrition, parenting and health have been featured in WIRED Magazine, Pathways to Family Wellness, BabyCenter, and many other outlets. Her husband and co-author Dr. Victor Henning is an award-winning scientist, Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, and founder of Mendeley, a leading scientific collaboration platform. Grow Healthy Babies: The Evidence-Based Guide to a Healthy Pregnancy is available as paperback, e-book, and audiobook from Amazon & others