Modern Medicine May Not Be Doing Your Microbiome Any Favors

I subscribe to NPR's Fresh Air podcast, and an episode came up recently that really rang all of my bells.

Since autism invaded our life, I've been doing an insane amount of research. Much of what I've learned has pointed back to gut flora, and how crucial it is that we have healthy and diverse good bacteria in our guts.

Just for a very basic introduction, we all have good bacteria and bad bacteria in our guts (known collectively as our microbiome). Many things affect what bacteria is in our guts and which of those strains thrive inside us, including our mother's gut flora, how we were born, whether we were breastfed and for how long, our diet, our hormones, and the medicines we take. Unfortunately, the bad bacteria is stronger and more aggressive than the good stuff, so it tends to take over easily.

So much of Terry's interview with Martin Blaser, author of Missing Microbes: How the Overuse of Antibiotics Is Fueling Our Modern Plagues (affiliate link), reinforced what I'd already learned about the gut. I was blown away, though, when he started talking about how babies born via c-section had different (and poorer) gut flora, because they don't get exposed to the good bacteria that other babies get when they pass through the birth canal. He said his wife is researching something that I've only every heard extreme hippies talk about, which is the importance of, in a c-section birth, swabbing the mother and transferring that good bacteria to the baby manually. I was just so excited to hear that a real scientist is studying it! If you are pregnant or ever hope to be pregnant, you really don't want to miss this interview!

My one critique of this interview is that he doesn't mention diet as a factor in our gut health. As a doctor who is an expert on the human microbiome, I have to assume that he is aware of this, but his focus for this book and interview was limited.

Regardless, another interview from NPR, this time on Science Friday, makes a good companion piece to the Blaser interview. If you are interested in learning more about how diet affects your microbiome, I'd highly recommend reading or listening to this interview with Michael Pollan about his new book, Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation (affiliate link). I heard this interview several months ago and it has really stuck with me.

I'm so encouraged by the things that we are learning about the gut microbiome and its importance for health. I'm so eager for this information to make its way through the medical community and through the population at large. There is so much that needs to change about the average American (or any developed country, really) lifestyle if we are going to be healthy people and have healthy children and grandchildren.

If you are interested in a really beautifully made and easy-to-understand introduction to all of this, then you may enjoy this video below. I've watched it probably a dozen times now, and I still enjoy it every time.

Shoes Transmit Disease... YUCK!

I grew up in a home where we did not leave the rug by the door if we had on shoes.  There was always a pile of shoes by the door.

Now that I have a baby, I am even more careful about not wearing shoes in the house than my mom!  I was just having a discussion online about how gross it is to bring all of the germs and nasties from outside into your house on your shoes, when I found this article: Shoes Transmit Disease, Leave Them By the Door.

From the article:

“The common occurrence (96 percent) of coliform and E. coli bacteria on the outside of the shoes indicates frequent contact with fecal material, which most likely originates from floors in public restrooms or contact with animal fecal material outdoors,” said Gerba. “Our study also indicated that bacteria can be tracked by shoes over a long distance into your home or personal space after the shoes were contaminated with bacteria.

Any germs picked up by bare feet, knees and hands will then be transported to the crib at naptime."

Yuck!  So, for the health of your family, please think twice before tromping through your house with your shoes on!

Fifth Disease

Jude's had it this week.  It's not as bad as it sounds, really... he just seemed like he had a cold for a few days, and then just as he seemed to have gotten better, he got this awful red rash on his face:

I took this just last night, but this morning he woke up and it was gone!

You  can learn more about Fifth Disease here.

Moldovan Culture and Health

Moldovans have some ideas about health that seem, to Americans, to be very outdated.

One of the most amusing things we have encountered is that the Moldovans are afraid of wind getting in their ears because that is, of course, how a person gets sick.  They would rather sweat to death in a hot car, house, or classroom than open a window.  Many women wear scarves over their heads not out of religious modesty convictions, but because they tie the scarf over their ears and it keeps the wind out.  And what happens if you do get wind in your ear?  You draw it out by putting the mouth end of a lit cigarette in your ear… of course.

It was actually a team from our home church who rode, in the blazing July heat, in a van with no air conditioning from our northern camp to our central camp.  The Moldovan who rode with them, knowing that the Americans would want the windows down, sat in the backseat with a winter coat and toboggan on, afraid of getting sick from the wind.

Moldovans also do not generally eat or drink cold things, and especially don’t give them to children, because they believe it will make them sick.  If they get some juice out of the fridge for a child, they will warm it up in the microwave.  At camp, there is a night where they give out ice cream, and we are told that one mother asked her kids to be sure and let it warm up before they ate it.

Children here are generally dressed very warmly.  The first few times we took Jude to the market, it was very hot and we had him in his usual t-shirt, shorts, and no shoes.  It seemed like half of the people there stopped us and would talk to us in Romanian, motioning toward Jude.  I don’t know what they were saying, but I’m pretty sure it was something along the lines of, “Your kid is going to die because you don’t have enough clothes on him.”  Similarly, Josh has been chastised twice already in grocery stores for getting Jude too close to the refrigerator section.   Josh summed it up well when I mentioned needing to get Jude some warm winter clothes and he said, “I don’t think there is much of a difference between warm winter clothes and warm summer clothes for babies here.”

Breastfeeding Reduces Risk of Breast and Other Cancers

Just in case all of the other benefits of breastfeeding weren't enough, it also reduces a woman's risk of developing breast, uterine, ovarian, and endometrial cancers.

The total amount of time that a woman spends breastfeeding over her lifetime is inversely proportional to her risk of breast cancer.

Not only that, but women who were breastfed as infants, even if only for a short time, showed an approximate 25% lower risk of developing breast cancer, compared to women who were bottle-fed as an infant.

Is it any coincidence that the US breast cancer rates are finally plateauing just as the US breastfeeding rates hit a record high?  I think not.  (Sadly, only 11% of those women are still breastfeeding at 6 months, but that's a whole 'nother post for another day.)

See these articles for more information about how breastfeeding benefits mothers:

NY Times: Breast-Feeding Benefits Mothers

Dr. Sears: 7 Ways Breastfeeding Benefits Mothers

American Cancer Society: Breastfeeding Can Reduce a Woman's Risk of Breast Cancer

Breastfeeding.com: You Will Have Less Chance of Breast Cancer and Other Cancers

AAP: Keep Carseat Rear-Facing Until Age 2

The standard rule for turning a carseat from rear to forward facing has traditionally been when your child is at least 1 year old and 20 pounds (so if they are under 1 year but over 20 pounds, or over 1 year but under 20 pounds, you should wait until they meet both criteria).

But in light of new safety research the AAP is now saying that children should ride rear-facing until they reach the maximum height and weight recommended for your carseat model, or at least the age of 2. The AAP's research shows that toddlers are more than 5 times safer riding rear-facing than forward-facing.

See the AAP article here.

Click here for an article more fully explaining the "why" behind the new recommendation.

Reflections on Reflux

J was diagnosed with silent reflux yesterday at the pediatrician's.  We got a prescription for a baby dose of antacid and he has been a happier, more comfortable baby ever since we got home and gave him his first dose.

I was thinking about the whole thing a bit later.  Silent reflux isn't like regular reflux.  It doesn't have the obvious excessive spitting up that is typical of regular reflux.  Instead, babies swallow the spit up again, so it does double damage to their esophagus- both on the way up and the way back down.  You can imagine how that would feel... ouch!

He didn't have really obvious symptoms... just a gurgle to his grunts sometimes and would choke out of nowhere on seemingly nothing.  But the biggest symptom was that he would fuss when he was laying down and wanted to nurse constantly.  He had all but completely stopped sleeping at night because he just fussed and nursed the whole time... talk about exhausting!  As soon as I would pick him up or nurse him, he was fine, and it seemed like he could nurse forever (I later learned that breastmilk is a natural antacid, so babies will nurse constantly to relieve the burning pain, and of course sitting upright is better at keeping the stomach acids down).

Then I thought about how many loving, well-meaning parents there are out there who buy into the whole "you'll spoil him if you hold him too much" (or worse, the "he's just crying to manipulate you") mentality.  And how if we had bought into that mentality toward his fussing and crying and endless nursing, we probably would have completely missed that he was fussing and crying because he was really hurting... anybody who has had bad heartburn (which is the same thing as reflux, just the adult name for it) knows that.

I guess I just felt like writing about this as a reminder to all of us with babies to check our attitudes toward our children's cries.  Fussing and crying is their only way of communicating their needs, and it breaks my heart to think about the pain that J would have had to endure if we'd assumed that he was fake crying to manipulate us.  :(