Boosting your baby’s gut health

Have you seen the Netflix documentary ‘Hack Your Health: The Secrets of Your Gut’? 📺

If not, I highly recommend it. In fact, I think it should be compulsory viewing for everyone!

The main focus of the documentary is how our microbiome (the bacteria in our gut) controls all aspects of our health - both physical and mental. Gut specialist Dr Giulia Enders sums it up well by saying “the microbiome is very central to being obese, being depressed, having allergies or how stressed or relaxed you feel”.

The part about how a baby’s microbiome develops struck a chord with me and made me stop and think about my own kids 🤔

Many children these days have reduced microbial diversity and this contributes to problems with immunity, digestive function, metabolic health and mood. It has even been linked to autism spectrum disorders and ADHD.

Several factors contribute to reduced microbial diversity in children:

👉 Mode of birth - caesarean section deliveries are associated with lower microbial diversity compared to vaginal births, with reduced levels of bifidobacterium and bacteroides.

👉 Premature birth - premature birth increases the likelihood of reduced microbial diversity and higher levels of potentially pathogenic bacteria compared with full-term infants

👉 Feeding practices - breastfeeding promotes a more diverse microbiome compared to formula feeding.

👉 Antibiotic use - early and frequent use of antibiotics can significantly reduce microbial diversity.

👉 Diet - diets low in fibre, fruit and vegetables and high in processed foods can negatively impact microbial diversity.

👉 Environmental exposure - limited exposure to diverse environmental microbes, such as reduced outdoor play or over-sanitised environments, can also reduce microbiome diversity.

For reasons out of my control, all of my children were born via c-section. I was also given antibiotics for strep prior to their births and my twins were premature so it certainly wasn’t the ideal situation in terms of fostering a healthy gut microbiome 🤷‍♀️

Despite being breastfed, my children all had issues with their gut health in their early years, manifesting as symptoms like reflux, food intolerances, eczema and IBS.

So, what can you do to support your baby's gut health if they had a similar start to mine?

Studies have shown that the following strategies may be helpful in increasing an infant's microbial diversity:

✅ Breastfeeding allows for the transfer of beneficial bacteria, prebiotics, and immune-boosting compounds from mother to baby via the breastmilk.

✅ Skin-to-skin contact can transfer maternal skin bacteria to the baby, helping to diversify their microbiome.

✅ Microbial seeding (swabbing the baby with vaginal fluids immediately after birth) enables beneficial bacteria to be transferred from mother to baby. Note: this practice is still under research and should only be considered in consultation with a healthcare professional due to potential risks.

✅ Delaying the baby’s first bath for at least 24 hours can allow more time for the initial colonisation of beneficial bacteria from the mother’s skin and environment.

✅ Probiotic supplements specially formulated for infants can be helpful, particularly for exclusively formula-fed babies, however it is best to discuss this with a healthcare professional.

✅ If breastfeeding, the mother's diet can include probiotic-rich foods like yogurt, kefir, and fermented vegetables, which may indirectly benefit the baby.

✅ Avoiding overuse of antibiotics helps preserve the baby's gut microbiome diversity.

✅ Allowing your baby to be in contact with various environments, including natural settings like parks and gardens, to expose them to a wide range of microbes.

✅ Having pets at home can introduce beneficial microbes into the baby's environment.

✅ Breastfeeding mothers should be consuming a healthy, balanced diet rich in fruits, vegetables, whole grains and fermented foods to support both her own and her baby’s microbiome.

✅ Avoiding exposure to harmful substances that could negatively impact the microbiome, such as medications, processed foods and artificial additives

Being premature, formula fed or born via c-section doesn’t have to mean that a child is destined for a life of gut issues but these kids do generally need a bit more support in order to develop a healthy microbiome 🧡

If your child is past the baby stage and has poor gut health, one of the best (and easiest) things you can do to boost their microbiome is to increase their intake of fibre and plant foods.

To quote genetic epidemiologist Tim Spector, “whether you have meat on your plate or not; you can be vegan, non-vegan, doesn’t matter. The key is getting the diversity of plants in all their forms, as many as you can on your plate, to feed your microbes”.

Ideally, we should all be eating 20 to 30 different fruits, vegetables or whole grains every week 🍎🥑🥦

(click here for a printable plant food recording sheet)

If your child is struggling with gut issues, I encourage you to book in for a discovery call and find out how I can help 😊

References

Hack Your Health: The Secrets of Your Gut, 2024, Directed by Anjali Nayar, Netflix, accessed 13 May 2024.

Hechtman L, 2020, Advanced Clinical Naturopathic Medicine, Elsevier Australia, Chatswood.

Hourigan SK, Dominguez-Bello MG & Mueller NT, 2022, ‘Can maternal-child microbial seeding interventions improve the health of infants delivered by caesarean section?’, Cell Host Microbe, vol 30 no 5, pp.607-611.

Mueller NT et al, 2021, ‘Caesarean delivery is associated with decreased beneficial gut microbes and increased pathobionts and butyrate excretion: a longitudinal study over the first year of life’, BJOG, vol 128 no 8, 1293-1303.