Gut microbiome: health and immunity - some reflections (Part II)

Just before I started my maternity leave, I attended an interesting session on synbiotics and their use for babies and children. We learnt that Synbiotics (a combination of pre and probiotics that work synergistically) are now being used (though not routinely!) to help with allergies in children and can help to restore a healthy gut composition following use of antibiotics. I suppose to a certain degree this was a pharma company showing off their products, so they were keen to emphasize the positives, but it did get me thinking about the role of our gut in our key development years.

The slide below was from a virtual talk I attended recently. It highlights the stages of development of our gut bacteria which starts pre-birth stabilising in adulthood. The pharma company were suggesting that babies delivered by c-section would benefit from some kind of pre/probiotic intervention as they would not have been exposed to their mother’s bacteria in the same way as a vaginal delivery. There is ongoing research in this area so it will be interesting to see whether this emerges as official guidance for mothers having c-sections.

So, this leads me onto my question from Part I - how can we be kind to our gut? If you’ve read my published article Gut Health you will know it’s partly to do with gut diversity; fibre, pre and probiotics! Poor fibre intake reduces our gut diversity which in turn affects our immunity (read the article for more detail!).
But where do we get fibre from? Well I’m sure you know that we get a range of different fibres from vegetables, fruit, wholegrains, etc. etc! Therefore, we can be kind to our guts by feeding them a range of different fibre in the form of whole fruits and veg. And when better to start than when our babies are being weaned from milk to solids...yes you can see the link now, and why I’m enjoying this weaning stage so much with Max!