When my daughter was in kindergarten, she had stomachaches all the time. We were constantly getting calls from school because her tummy hurt. We thought maybe it was emotional, or that she was hungry. We tried different things—more snacks, resting in the nurse’s office—and sometimes she felt better, sometimes she didn’t. The occasional stomachaches persisted and became more frequent. She started to complain of occasional headaches. Then, her third-grade teachers noticed her poor focus. We wondered whether she might have a learning disability. It took the principal asking, “Do you think she has a food allergy?” to awaken me to that possibility. (Talk about the shoemaker’s kids going barefoot!)
We removed dairy and gluten—common allergenic foods—for a couple of weeks, and the tummy complaints stopped. To confirm our hypothesis that she was reacting to food, we reintroduced gluten. After a “hard-core” gluten day—bagel for breakfast, pasta for lunch, pizza for dinner—she felt like she had the flu for about 24 hours. But my husband still wasn’t convinced. So we tried again—removing and then reintroducing those foods. Sure enough, she got sick again. Dairy seemed to be less of a problem for her, but we removed gluten for good. Her performance in school skyrocketed to straight As; focus and learning became non-issues. But every once in a while, she’d come home from school and I’d see her nose twitching like a little rabbit. “What’d you eat today?” I’d ask. “Oh, someone gave me a cookie,” she’d say. Or “I ate pretzels at snack.” The days she had this tic were always the days she’d eaten gluten, and we never saw it as long as she adhered to her gluten-free diet.
But the questions remained:
• How did something that simply gave her a stomachache morph into something that affected her focus and cognition, and eventually triggered tics, a neurological dysfunction?
• Is it possible that food affects the body from the digestive system to the immune system to the nervous system?
• If food affects the nervous system, does that mean that problems we once thought were just “brain problems” really stem from something else going on elsewhere in the body?
Buckle your seat belt; we’re about to turn things upside down.
YOUR BODY’S OWN TERRAIN: THE GUT
The gut doesn’t get a lot of glory. It’s mostly associated with a certain amount of embarrassment compared to more glamorous organs like the brain. But your gut produces three quarters of your body’s neurotransmitters and holds two thirds of your immune system to boot. Yep, your stomach acid, your tonsils, your appendix, your spleen, and all the lymph nodes that line the wall of your intestines make up the huge immune system of the gut.
The gut is one of the most complex and important parts of the body. In a sense, it acts as the soil from which everything else in the body is nourished. And like rich soil, our guts house abundant nutrients and diverse microbes for our bodies to be healthy. Open at both ends (mouth and anus), our intestinal tract is uniquely part of both the external and internal terrain of the body. As a result, almost anything can get in—the gut is awash in food, microbes, toxins, dirt . . . you name it! But it’s also largely concealed inside the body, communicating intimately with organs and even the brain. The gut is the interface between our inner and outer world.
Let’s explore some of what’s inside. Here’s stomach acid, which isn’t as malevolent as those antacid commercials would have you believe; quite the opposite. Along with saliva and bile, stomach acid disables harmful pathogens, neutralizes some toxins, and helps to break down large molecules of food into smaller, more easily absorbable forms. In fact, protein can only be broken down by stomach acid.
Next, there’s a microscopic universe of a hundred trillion microbes—including mostly viruses, as well as bacteria, fungi, and yeast. These two to four pounds of organisms living in the gut compose our microbiome, which supports digestion, especially of carbohydrates, regulates immunity, aids in flushing toxins, and manufactures nutrients like vitamin K and the range of B vitamins.1 The gut microbiome is all about balance and tolerance. Like a rich soil, our gut is healthiest when bathed in abundant nutrients and diverse microbes—the more biodiverse, the better. Fewer types of microbes in the gut makes it more likely that one type of organism will dominate improperly, which can lead to gas, bloating, inability to absorb nutrients, and even severe gastrointestinal infections.
Then there’s the specialized “skin” that is the gut wall, which acts as a bouncer that guards the very exclusive club that is our insides. These epithelial cells decide what can enter the bloodstream and what can’t, ideally allowing in what nourishes us and protecting us from entities ranging from unwanted microbes to toxic agents.
For reasons we’ll explore later, sometimes the gut can become more permeable or “leaky,” allowing foreign molecules, microbes, and toxins to enter circulation. These immunological triggers float through the bloodstream, activate the immune system,2 and make kids vulnerable to allergies, sensitivities, and—in some cases—autoimmune diseases like celiac disease and type 1 diabetes.3
My child eats healthy food and still has health problems. Why?
Good question. No matter how nourishing the food, if your child’s gut can’t absorb nutrients, he or she won’t benefit from that food. Soothe the gut with the inner gel of aloe vera (not whole leaf), deglycyrrhizinated licorice powder, and bone broths. Add prebiotics to feed the microbiome by way of burdock, chicory, and garlic, and natural probiotics through yogurt, kefir, and fermented vegetables like sauerkraut, pickles, and dilly beans. Avoid nutritionally empty processed foods and additives like polysorbate 804 and carrageenan5 that actively damage the gut.
THE IMMUNE SYSTEM BEGINS IN THE GUT
Beyond digestion, our intestinal tract also has a built-in information-processing team housed in organs throughout the gut. Yep, your tonsils, stomach acid, appendix, spleen, and all the lymph nodes that line your intestinal wall make up the huge immune system of the gut. Even the appendix, long thought to be a useless remnant, performs diverse immune functions, including safe-housing critical gut microorganisms to replenish our supply when needed.6,7Together, this gut-associated lymphoid tissue (GALT) comprises more than 70 percent of the body’s immune system.8
Our digestive police force constantly samples gut contents and patrols for “suspicious characters”—everything from potentially damaging microbes to toxins. Millions of immune cells act as sentinels to detect whether anything untoward is going on at any moment. The immune system acts as one unit with the gut and its microbiome: any disruption—by foods, additives, pesticides, toxins, problematic microbes, even antibiotics, steroids, or other meds—impacts the whole body.
Take colic. Numerous studies suggest that colicky babies—those that cry incessantly for periods of time (or all the time) for no known reason—improve considerably with the administration of the probiotic Lactobacillus reuteri.9For anyone who has had to contend with a colicky baby, consider how powerful the organisms in our gut are to improve such tremendous distress!
MICROBIAL BIODIVERSITY
The “hygiene hypothesis,” which proposes that kids today live in overly sanitized environments thanks to things like bleach and Purell, has been long used to explain the rise in children’s allergies. The thought was that urban immune systems do not get exposed to enough bacteria and other microbes that prime the immune system to be healthy. This hypothesis is partly based on studies showing that children raised on farms have fewer allergies and asthma attacks.10 Playing outside, digging for worms, planting vegetables, and essentially coming into contact with plenty of dirt and livestock are actually good things. Not just good—essential!
Bacteria, viruses, parasites, and fungi play a critical role in developing and maintaining a healthy gut and immune system. Another explanation for the rise in allergies has been called the “old friends hypothesis,”11 because allergic children lack a diversity of these friendly microbes in their guts. To evaluate these theories, scientists compared microbial samples from an urban apartment to those from a rural farm. Shockingly, they found that the two environments actually had similar numbers of microbes. What differed, however, was the diversity of bacteria.12 The microbial sample from the urban apartment was limited, while the microbial sample from the farm was rich with varied microbes. A study of an Amazonian indigenous tribe free of chronic illness—isolated entirely from modern life—revealed the most diverse number of microbes ever documented in humans.13 A healthy gut is filled with diverse microbes: the more kinds, the better. Biodiversity makes the difference between balance and dysregulation.
A Bit on Bugs
We all know that infections following exposures to microbes can be deadly. But can they also be beneficial? How could bacteria, viruses, and parasites—the stuff of dirt, things that we meticulously avoid—actually make our kids healthy? Consider this: Strains of Clostridia, a gut bacterium that can make you sick under certain circumstances, may reverse peanut allergy in mice.14 That’s right: Bacteria in the gut had the power to stop a severe—even fatal—immunogenic reaction. In an August 2014 study, scientists decimated the gut bacteria in the mice and then exposed them to peanut allergens, which triggered a strong immune response. These mice produced peanut-targeting antibodies at significantly higher levels than mice with normal levels of gut bacteria. But when Clostridia were introduced, these mice’s immune cells generated high levels of a protective signaling molecule called interleukin 22 (IL-22), which suppressed the allergic response. In other words, the immune system partnered with certain strains of bacteria to quiet a severe allergic response.
Similarly, H. pylori—the villainized bacterium associated with increased risk of ulcers and stomach cancer—once was found in the stomachs of almost everyone. By the turn of the twenty-first century, however, only 6 percent of the population carried H. pylori. Yet paradoxically, its eradication has seen increases in reflux, Barrett’s esophagus, and esophageal cancer.15 Without H. pylori, the balance of appetite-regulating hormones leptin and ghrelin changes, and the risk of childhood hay fever, allergies, and asthma increases.16 Chances are that something about us has changed rather than these bacteria being good or bad. Microbial balance and biodiversity are key.
Certain parasites may also be beneficial. A recent study actually showed that parasites communicate with bacteria in the gut to regulate immunity. A colleague of mine who works with immigrants has seen many children from Ethiopia who tested positive for parasites. Though they were asymptomatic, he treated their “infections.” To his surprise, many promptly developed asthma, eczema, and other allergic conditions. He decided to stop treating for parasites in asymptomatic patients, and he stopped seeing these problems. Science backs up his observations.17 People who live in areas highly endemic for parasite infections have a lower risk of developing types 1 and 2 diabetes.18,19 Scientists are even investigating parasite eggs as a treatment for multiple sclerosis, inflammatory bowel disease, celiac disease, type 1 diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, and asthma.20 Our bodies evolved with these “old friends.”
Even viruses play a beneficial role as part of the “microvirome.”21 A 2014 landmark study in the journal Nature has revealed that some viruses can step up to take over immune-regulating roles of the microbiome when our gut bacteria is dysregulated—precluding any of the normal gut and immune disruption typically seen after antibiotics.22 Another Nature paper showed that latent infection following certain common viruses similar to cytomegalovirus or Epstein-Barr virus (which causes mononucleosis) protected mice from dying from deadly infections like bubonic plague.23 And it gets weirder. People who have had mumps as children may halve the risk of developing ovarian cancer later in life, possibly because the immune system patrols for those cells better.24 Measles virus, too, is being explored as an unexpected darling of the oncology world as an oncolytic25—cancer killer—for difficult-to-treat cancers like osteosarcoma, leukemia, glioblastoma, and others.26,27,28,29 Infection with measles and mumps in childhood has also been associated with lower risk of cardiovascular disease in adulthood.30 Ultimately, our bodies are part of a superorganism in which the immune system is not a killer, but a balancing force that shapes homeostasis.31
Believe it or not, even stool is proving an effective treatment for some conditions. Academic hospitals across the country are using Fecal Microbial Transplant (FMT)—yes, enemas infused with donor stool—as a treatment for recurrent Clostridium difficile, an opportunistic infection arising from antibiotic overuse, with great success.32 The benefits of microbial biodiversity in stool—as with soil—cannot be easily imitated by synthetic pharmaceuticals.
Ultimately, we share our bodies, including genomic information, with our organisms. They really become “part of us.” We want neither too much of any one organism, nor too few; the key is balance. We are in constant relationship with the diverse microbial world around us and within us. That rich microbial diversity is a defining ingredient of our children’s health.
THE BRAIN IN THE GUT, THE GUT IN THE BRAIN
The gut actually functions like a brain in your body along with the brain in your head. That’s right, the gut and brain work together as one nervous system. So it makes sense that food and digestive imbalance can cause problems in the brain. The gut and its microbes release more neurotransmitters than the entire central nervous system. Just like neurons in the brain, the gut even has its own “entero-neurons” that communicate with the rest of the nervous system—and ultimately the brain.
It makes sense. Think about a “gut-wrenching” experience—an emotional response that you feel deep in your belly. What about gut reactions or “butterflies in your stomach”? Consider this: People with significant concussions or brain injuries experience a breakdown of gut health, leading to the development of conditions like ulcers—even without direct trauma to their digestive systems.33 Other studies show that the brain plays a role in changing the bacteria in the gut. For example, mice that were subjected to a social stressor for six days had altered gut flora composition compared to unstressed mice.34 Even food choices change your gut microbiome: For example, people who ate a high-fat/low-fiber diet transformed their disordered gut microbiome within ten days of switching to a low-fat/high-fiber diet.35
What about the other way around? Indeed, the gut also influences the brain.
FROM FOOD TO THOUGHT: THE GUT-IMMUNE-BRAIN CONNECTION
Gut and brain are in constant communication with each other, thanks to our internal messaging systems. The vagus nerve originates deep within the gut and pelvis, innervating diaphragm, lungs, and heart all the way up to the brain stem. This complex electrical web connects the gut to the internal organs to the brain, and the brain to the gut and organs. In a sense, this is like a (very rapid) gut-brain dial-up connection. The vagus nerve modulates crucial functions like digestion, steady heart and respiratory rate, even inflammation, and transmits information up and down the body. So, for example, cells in the gut send all manner of messages to the brain via the vagus nerve regarding what microbes and other entities of interest are detected in the gut, and whether there is distress that must be addressed.
Immune cells in the gut (and elsewhere) release cytokines to communicate with other immune cells. In a sense, immune cells act as the body’s “police,” stationed throughout the gut, looking for signs of danger. These cells patrol the digestive system, casing suspicious food proteins, microbes, and toxins. An immune cell that encounters something amiss sounds the wireless alarm by releasing cytokines that warn other immune cells all over the body, activating them and releasing cytokines in turn. These messages cross the blood-brain barrier to activate the brain’s immune system. Why do cytokines have this privilege? Survival. Imagine you accidentally eat something rancid. Your brain must be made aware immediately so that it can quickly react—stop eating the food, drink water, vomit, or otherwise detoxify. Cytokines can even act as neurotransmitters at times. The system is so sensitive that even one abnormal bacterium entering the gut has the potential to change the way the brain fires within a couple of hours.36
So neurotransmitters (from the gut’s entero-neurons) or cytokines (from immune cells) that originate in the gut influence other systems in our body, including the central nervous system (CNS). And when you influence the CNS, you’re affecting learning and memory, clear thinking and focus, sleep patterns and mood. A major message being transmitted in this conversation between gut, immune, brain, and microbes is TOLERANCE. If they lose tolerance to each other, we lose tolerance to ourselves, which can lead to allergies and autoimmune disease.
Normally, all this communication is a really good, healthy thing. It means all our parts and systems are working together to ward off potentially harmful invaders of all kinds. But when the gut is repeatedly calling the brain with emergencies, the brain doesn’t just listen, it changes. In a 2011 study, researchers sterilized the guts of living mice to be free of organisms.37 Over time, these animals showed significantly diminished brain function; their learning, cognition, and memory plummeted.38 So did the production of brain growth factors necessary for plasticity. The mice’s behavior changed, too: They started exhibiting anxiety behaviors. But when the researchers added back the bacterium lactobacillus, all those factors normalized except the anxious behavior. They added back another bacteria, bifidobacterium, and anxiety behaviors also improved. Throughout, researchers had done nothing to the brain directly—only the gut.
This study has since been repeated several times in several different ways. All point to the same conclusion: Housing diverse bacteria—in balance—is the difference between a healthy body and a dysregulated one.39 Moreover, a thriving microbiome promotes learning, memory, and good mood. Conversely, bad news in the gut can mean bad news for the brain. We see parallel reactions in kids. Anxiety, aggression, depression, insomnia, trouble focusing or learning, even tics and seizures can be traced back to an unhealthy gut.
What happens when the gut doesn’t do what it’s supposed to do? When it’s out of balance—due to reduced stomach acid (sometimes from H2 blockers) or improper microbiome (often disrupted by antibiotics or steroids)—pathogenic microbes or improperly digested proteins may activate the immune system. This “riffraff” triggers an inflammatory response from immune cells, creating a war zone in the gut. The inflammation damages the gut wall “protectors”—epithelial cells linked by tight junctions—so the lining becomes leaky, or vulnerable to permeability.40 All this disrupts your child’s ability to effectively digest and absorb nutrients. As a result, your child may suffer from belly pain, gas, bloating, constipation, diarrhea, or even failure to thrive.
That means that some toxins, bacteria, and harmful microbes can now enter into circulation with impunity. So what begins as a gut issue can involve the body and brain, too. The increased permeability, or leakiness, of the gut barrier allows unrecognized entities to enter systemic circulation.41 The immune system then releases cytokines that instigate inflammation throughout the body and CNS. Inflammation isn’t always a bad thing; it’s necessary to fight invaders so that they don’t overwhelm the body and even helps to prune away connections in the brain that are no longer needed. But when the immune system is constantly signaling SOS and the whole body—gut, lungs, tonsils, skin, and even ear canals—is in a constant state of alert with inflammation everywhere? That’s when it becomes a problem. And with excessive systemic inflammation come all sorts of symptoms, including but not limited to irritable bowel syndrome or inflammatory bowel disease, asthma, enlarged tonsils and adenoids, eczema, and ear infections.
Can inflammation that starts in the gut really affect your ears? Yes. Children’s tympanic canals have a diameter narrower than a strand of hair, and the smallest amount of inflammation causes it to swell, blocking the normal flow of fluids and leading to infection due to stasis.42 Chronic ear infections reflect inflammation elsewhere.
But that’s not all. Cytokines that travel to the brain trigger the brain’s own protectors—the microglia—to go on alert. These specialized immune cells, which outnumber neurons in the brain three to one, normally function in a restorative way—from pruning unused connections producing proteins that nourish neurons to releasing growth factors that stimulate new connections to form. But cytokines activate the microglia from “restorative mode” to “warrior mode.”43 They attack the perceived enemy, but in the process damage the very neurons they normally protect.
Such episodes may be tolerated for a limited period. Sometimes, though, the body chronically releases cytokines as an ongoing response to gut microbial imbalances, inflammatory food additives and chemicals, toxins, immunogenic foods, or even inoculations that trigger temporary inflammatory reactions. And sometimes, these microglia can become “stuck” as warriors—a state called microglial activation—and can’t return to restorative mode. This process can even begin in utero if a mother has an infection or chronic inflammation herself.44,45 Chronically activated microglia have been implicated in neurological disorders46 ranging from sensory integration disorder, autism,47 seizures,48,49 ADHD, and Tourette’s50 early in life to schizophrenia, glaucoma, chronic pain syndromes,51 Alzheimer’s, and Parkinson’s disease later in life.52 Understanding what can trigger microglial activation, why cells get stuck in warrior mode, and what can turn it off, appears to hold badly needed answers to chronic intractable brain disorders.
All health begins in the gut. Most people think of the brain as the top of the totem pole, but in many ways, it’s downstream from other organs. The gut—the body’s soil—calls many of the shots. An unhealthy gut—or depleted soil—leads to an unhealthy immune system, endocrine system, and nervous system. These lead to disordered focus, cognition, behavior, sleep, and mood, among other symptoms. It’s why, if not addressed, a child’s disrupted gut can trigger an allergy or reactivity and eventually present as stomachaches, asthma, ear infections or croup, and later morph into troubling neurological dysfunction.
Many of the children who come to see me aren’t there to discuss their digestive symptoms. In fact, most parents don’t understand why I’m asking questions about poop when they want to tell me about their kid’s intractable seizures or asthma or ADHD or autism. But once I explain how it’s all connected, they have “Aha!” moments. “You mean to tell me that her asthma is related to her gas and bloating?” or “His constant night-waking could be related to his constipation?”
When Anika came to my practice, she had attention issues and asthma so severe it had landed her in the hospital on several occasions. She was teeny for her age, but her parents had been told that was “her pattern.” One of my first questions was whether she had ever been tested for celiac disease, an autoimmune reaction to gluten that damages the small intestine lining that prevents the absorption of food nutrients. Children who have ADHD, seizures, or even autism symptoms test positive for celiac significantly more often than children without neurological issues.53,54 And these children may present with only neurological issues and no gastrointestinal issues.55 In this case, Anika’s numbers were off the charts. The lab couldn’t even measure them. Her parents were stunned to learn that the key to all of her neurological, lung, and growth issues had all begun in her gut, probably much earlier in her life.
THE SCOOP ON POOP
You know how you can tell a lot about a person by what they throw away? Poop is no different. It’s a window into your body.
I ask every child about their stool: how often they go, if it hurts, if it’s easy to clean afterward, if they have a lot of gas or stomachaches or bloating. One kid I treated said he went to the bathroom as seldom as possible. I asked him why. His response: “It takes too long to wipe. I hate it.” It took him nearly an entire roll of toilet paper just to clean himself because his stools were so pasty. He’d never had a solid, formed stool! But he was coming in to see me for severe OCD, tics, and anxiety. In his case—as with many kids whom I see—his gut flora was out of balance from a highly processed diet and many rounds of antibiotics.
A critical element in this very anxious boy was a need to balance his autonomic nervous system. Digestion is modulated by the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems and is influenced by the “fight or flight” response. When a perceived threat activates the sympathetic nervous system, digestion shuts down because you don’t have time to sit and poop if you’re running away from a lion. When the threat passes and the “calming” parasympathetic nervous system kicks in, normal digestion should resume. But chronic stress or anxiety—an issue for many kids—plays havoc with gut motility. Constipation, diarrhea (or both) ensues.
Some parents say, “What’s the big deal if my kid goes every third day? That’s just his pattern.” First, even in the absence of explicit complaints, children are uncomfortable walking around full of stool all the time. Second, children rarely withhold stool for no reason. Holding stool means something is awry in the gut. Third, poop is the body’s waste. We have to take out the garbage! Countless families relate stories of their children having increased seizures, more tantrums, worse behavior, or heightened anxiety when they’re constipated. Regulated bowels—which includes passing formed stool easily one or two times daily—is a key component of regulated brain and behavior.
Our waste exits through our colon. The colon is thrifty; it inspects outgoing material to make sure nothing leaves that shouldn’t. The small intestine has already absorbed minerals, fats, sugars, and so on. But the colon asks, “What about these water molecules? Or this magnesium? Let’s keep it.” Great. But this inspection can quickly turn into an episode of Hoarders. If poop sits at this final outpost for longer than usual, the colon reabsorbs things that aren’t good for the body, like lead, mercury, arsenic, pesticides, or other rejected odds and ends. When you don’t take out the garbage regularly, it creates an unpleasant environment in your home by emitting unpleasant smells and attracting vermin. In the gut, retaining stool leads to flatulence, bad breath, disrupted microbes, and increased toxicity. So rule number one: Take out the garbage every day.
LET’S STOP BUGGING OUR BUGS
Building a healthy internal terrain starts early. In order to understand why so many children have less diverse bacteria than they should, let’s look at the biggest offenders to gut health:
• Antibiotics: These powerhouse pills can wipe out some infections in the short term, but they can also wipe out microbial communities in the gut (and elsewhere) with impunity. Particularly when overused, antibiotics damage the gut microbiome and disrupt the immune system. Some antibiotics can cause significant toxicity to the energy makers of the cell called the mitochondria.56
• Toxicants: By definition, toxic substances hurt our bodies in ways large and small, impairing digestive, immune, endocrine, reproductive, and neurological health. A recent study from Harvard School of Public Health and New York’s Mount Sinai Medical Center reports that the increase in neurobehavioral disorders such as ADHD, autism, oppositional defiant disorder (ODD), sensory processing disorder, and dyslexia can be attributed to a host of toxicants.57 These can appear in processed food as allergens, dyes, artificial ingredients, nanoparticles, BPA, and countless other additives; chemicals like pesticides and herbicides; heavy metals in the water and soil; pollution and mold in the air; and even stress. We’ll be talking about these things in more detail in chapters to come.
• C-section deliveries and formula: Both of these can be lifesaving under certain circumstances. That said, children born via C-section and/or not breast-fed have different microbiomes and immune health than their vaginally born, breast-fed peers. Studies comparing gut flora of babies born vaginally to those delivered by C-section show that the former appropriately have vaginal flora healthfully colonizing their guts—that’s the way babies normally seed their intestinal tracts, folks!—whereas C-section babies’ guts are colonized primarily by skin flora.58 During a C-section, mothers are given a dose of peri-surgical antibiotics, which further impacts the diversity of bacteria that might be transmitted.
On average, children who are breast-fed have lower rates of colds, ear infections (particularly recurrent), gastroenteritis, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) (a 75 percent reduced risk), allergies, celiac disease, obesity, types 1 and 2 diabetes, and cancer, and they have better cognition and development.59 Breast milk infuses the gut with a “glycobiome”—prebiotics that promote Bifidobacter longum, desirable gut bacteria that coat the gut and powerfully protect against harmful bacteria.60 Babies are born with an inherently “leaky gut,” but B. longum acts to make the gut wall impermeable.61 But it exists only in the guts of breast-feeding infants,62 and only for as long as they are drinking breast milk.63 Breast milk also enhances immune function by transmitting fragments of maternal microRNA (miRNA), which talk directly to the baby’s genes that promote immunity.64 Formula-fed babies don’t receive these and other benefits.
• Parents’ gut health: That’s right. If either you or your partner suffer from ongoing digestive issues such as heartburn or reflux, burping, gas, constipation, diarrhea, irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), food sensitivities, or allergies, or if you have been treated with repeated antibiotics, even as children, your gut microbiome may be disrupted. You may have transmitted this to your child at birth, but remember that it doesn’t end there. You continuously share flora with your child because you live together. That goes for adoptive parents, too! Consider this an incentive to improve your own gut health.
None of these factors alone is the cause of allergy, inflammation, or other illness. It’s not “or,” it’s “and, and, and.” Many factors build the gut, immune system, and brain. Obviously, many children born by C-section and fed formula have immune systems that develop normally and grow up to be healthy. Their bodies may have to work harder to get there, though, and along the way, they may be more vulnerable to whatever stressors they encounter. Conversely, children born vaginally and fed breast milk may encounter stressors great enough to overcome these benefits. Either way, knowing this information is necessary as you seek solutions for improving—or simply maintaining—your child’s health. And you’ll see that our bodies have the amazing ability to adapt, regenerate, and heal.
Just as the body can change for the worse, it can also change for the better. A body given the tools to reverse damage will mend and become more resilient than before. These tools can include fermented foods or bacteria-friendly probiotics that bring the gut back into balance as well as nutrients that boost your own detoxifying powers. And as a result, we can transform our children’s bodies and brains.
Health is a function of a healthy terrain. A healthy terrain is dirty, messy, complex, and doesn’t come in a pill or package. It’s a process that begins with eating and living in alignment with the natural world. It’s the very messiness of the natural world that makes us resilient, which is the key to robust health.