The #3 ingredient in breast milk is a sugar that the human body can’t use.  It is even more abundant in breast milk than protein.  Why would a mother’s body make this in such high concentrations and feed it to her child who can’t use it?  

 

Researchers suspected it was a gut bacterium that could use it.  Obviously, it is a very important bacteria to a baby’s belly if this sugar was made special in such high concentration.  They spent 3 years trying to find this special species of bacteria…but it was nowhere to be found in human guts.  Finally, after 3 years it was discovered that in 3rd world countries where they don’t use antibiotics, a bacterium was found that ate the sugar.  It is now called bifidobacterium Infantis.

 

Baby’s guts are sterile while in the womb, they have no gut bacteria at all.  Only as they come through the birth canal do they gain whatever bacteria their mother has.  If the mother doesn’t have these bacteria in her system, the baby won’t get it either.  Even though the mother will be feeding the baby milk loaded with a sugar meant to feed that bacteria.  

 

It turns out that in third world countries; babies get these bacteria from their mother and then nurse.  The bifidobacterium Infantis thrives and grows to become 70-90% of the baby’s gut bacteria.  This bacterium then lines the intestine of the baby’s gut much like wallpaper.  It prevents things that shouldn’t be crossing the intestine from leaking across.  Mounting evidence suggests it may prevent necrotizing enterocolitis and intestinal inflammation in the baby.  But equally intriguing is the research that is suggesting that there will be lower rates of autoimmune disorders in the adults who had these bacteria as a newborn.  Also, potentially reduced in the adult is eczema, food allergies, asthma, obesity, irritable bowel syndrome and even type 2 diabetes.  

 

Most interesting to me is the possibility of fewer autoimmune diseases in adulthood.  The immune system is strongly influenced in the first months of a newborn baby’s life.  Keeping the wrong things from crossing into the body at the intestine makes sense that it might influence future immune system disorders, maybe lupus and others.

One idea is to have the expectant mother take a probiotic that has these bacteria in it.  Another is to use a probiotic with a liquid dropper to feed the baby immediately after being born.  The dropper approach would be necessary if the baby was born by C section since the baby wouldn’t have traveled through the birth canal and so would not come in contact with the mother’s intestinal bacteria.  

 

Those first 100 days of the babies life are critical for this to be effective.  After 100 days the value of this bacterium in the baby’s gut is much less prominent.

I now carry two products that have this bacterium.  One probiotic for the mother, and another that are drops for the baby.  I suspect either method would be successful at helping to colonize a newborn baby with this important bacteria species.