Post-Birth Probiotics Crucial for Activating Child’s Immune Response

(Editor’s note: This is a portion of an article found on NaturalNews.com.)

According to a recent study by New York University, babies born by C-section should be swabbed with their mother’s germs; doctors think this procedure can replace “missing” bacteria that babies are normally exposed to during vaginal birth.

Sharing bacteria during surgery is normally something doctors would actively try to avoid, however the experiment involved giving babies born by C-section a dose of protective germs from mom’s birth canal.

It is thought that C-section babies have a greater risk of developing asthma, allergies and other health conditions, and this lack of exposure to microbes could explain why.

Scientists suspect that babies who haven’t been exposed to particular bugs during a natural vaginal birth will suffer consequences later in life. This study shows that it might be possible to at least partially expose C-section babies to the missing microbes by simply swabbing them with vaginal fluid from their mother within two minutes of birth.

This particular study was very small, comparing only seven babies born vaginally with 11 born by C-section, four of whom were given a dose of their mother’s bacteria. Over the following month, researchers took samples from all over their bodies to examine how the microbiomes were developing. They found that the four babies who were exposed to their mother’s microbes were more similar to those babies born via vaginal birth than to the other babies born by C-section.

Two particular bacteria species are thought to play a huge role in training the immune systems of babies – Lactobacillus and Bacteroides. These were almost completely absent in the untreated C-section babies, however were found in those that had been exposed to the mothers’ vaginal fluids.

To read the full article on Natural News, click here.