Gut Health Part 3: Pregnancy, Early Years & Your Gut
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A huge welcome back to Broccoli People with the third article in their 4-part Human Microbiota series, so you can understand your body, it's principles and make the best choices for your wellbeing.
There is no doubt that the first years of a child are very important for the development of a healthy system, included the gut microbiota! Researchers have been trying to understand the implications of what happens during those years with the health microbiota later in life. And yes, it seems that those first years of life are especially important to lay the foundations of a future healthy system. So, let’s have an insight into this fascinating topic!
During the first 3 years of your life the growth is faster than in any other moment, building up your system for the future, and the gut microbiota will be established during those years, starting mainly at the moment of birth. As the researcher Joseph Petrosino says: “We know that the first few years of life are important for microbiota establishment. You are born with very few microbes, and microbial communities assemble on and in your body through those first years of your life” [1].
It seems that the alteration of the gut microbiota can be associated with cases like asthma, allergies, IBS, obesity, inflammatory, or autoimmune diseases. And because of this, researchers try to understand if the gut health in children could prevent the later development of these conditions [2].
So, what are actually some of the factors it depends on?
They have observed that vaginal birth is associated with increased of certain types of good bacterias, that breast milk has already probiotics in it, and that antibiotics have a negative impact on the gut microbiota. And that later on, the early dietary habits would continue to contribute for the establishment of a healthy bacterial community.
That means that if you start eating mainly junk food at the age of 4, it doesn’t matter how healthy your mother was while she was pregnant or if you were breastfed, it would not make you very healthy anyways. So, it is also important to include in a child’s diet enough foods that nourish the gut microbiota and give it subtracts to ferment, like fibre and probiotic foods.
As Professor Eline van del Beek from the University of Groningen says: “It’s not that the early development stage can make you healthier or sick, but that the systems that have been established in early life are the ones you will have in later life; a tool-box for dealing with the challenges that come from the environment” [3].
And remember, that in the end, health is a constant process along the years, so even if you didn’t have the best health conditions when you were a child, you can still improve it now!
We leave you here a 4-minute video explaining the discoveries from a study in Canada observing 3500 children across the country, trying to understand how the baby’s gut bacteria influence childhood health.
Video: The CHILD Cohort Study and a baby’s microbiome- by AllerGen NCE
References:
[1] Christopher J. Stewart, Nadim J. Ajami, Jacqueline L O’Brien, “Temporal development of the gut microbiome in early childhood”, Nature magazine, 2018. Doi: 10.1038/s41586-018-0617-x
[2] Masaru Tanaka, Jiro Nakayama,“Development of the gut microbiota in infancy and its impact on health in later life”, Kyushu University, Japan , Aug 2017, doi S1323-8930(17)30111-9
[3] Van der Beek, E,. "Nutritional Programming and Later Life: The role of macronutrient quality during the first 1,000 days.", Sight & Life E-magazine, 2018, 32(1), 46-52.
Written by Broccoli People | Mind Your Life, Mind Your Body
