More on Oligosaccharides

[Polly]

Hi All,

Here is a really fascinating article about oligosaccharides in breast milk and their function in promoting healthy infant gut bacteria:

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/mother-lode

BTW, the illustrator of this article, Todd Churn, is a friend of mine. I just LOVE his clever and colorful depictions of the sugar molecules!

Polly

[tex]

Polly,

Thanks for the link. Yes, I can certainly see how prebiotics should be appropriate for helping to develop infant immune systems as quickly as possible. And I believe that's probably the reason why trying to use prebiotics in adult digestive systems doesn't work — because it's too late — the immune system was already developed decades previously. This parallels the problems associated with including milk in adult diets — milk is clearly food for infants, not adults, so it's no wonder that it causes so many problems when included in the diet of adults.

Did you happen to notice the article about preemies who spend time in NICU ending up with a gut bacteria population determined by the environment in the NICU, rather than being patterned after their mother's gut biome?

Gut bacteria in premature infants don't come from their mothers, but from microbes in the neonatal intensive-care unit (NICU), a new study finds.

Babies typically get their gut bacteria from their mothers during childbirth. Premature infants, however, receive antibiotics during their first week of life to prevent infections, and these antibiotics eliminate many of the microbes the infants receive from their mothers.

As a result, microbes from the NICU colonize the digestive tracts of premature infants, the University of California, Berkeley, researchers found.

Gut Bacteria in Preemies Altered by Hospital Stay, Study Finds

It appears that hospitals may need to upgrade their methods for sterilizing feeding and respirator tubes, and figure out a way to infuse some of each baby's mother's gut bacteria into their respective baby's feeding solution, at least by the time the antibiotic treatment is discontinued.

Love,
Tex

[DJ]

Thank you for the link, Polly. Very interesting!

[gluten]

Hi Polly, Thank you for the site. Jon

[Zizzle]

Great article Polly! I breastfed my kids 12 months and 3 years respectively. Sadly, my milk was not enough to "flush" Shiga Toxin+ eColi out of my daughter when we visited Guatemala. But I suppose she was only nursing twice a day max when she was 2.

Bode’s team has also produced a slew of studies that demonstrate human milk oligosaccharides’ most provocative power — flushing pathogens out of an infant’s body before they get a chance to wreak havoc. The researchers reported on September 16 in the Journal of Pediatric Gastroenterology and Nutrition that the sugars block the attachment of a nasty strain of E. coli to the cells that line the intestine, thwarting the pathogen’s ability to infect neonatal mice. The microbe is responsible for deadly diarrheal diseases that plague infants and children, especially in developing countries where access to clean food and water is lacking.

[Zizzle]

Here's another great blog post from "Cooling Inflammation," this time about breastmilk and dairy products. It seems that trying to develop baby gut flora is not viable for adults.

http://coolinginflammation.blogspot.com/

Some insightful quotes!

milk stops the growth of adult gut bacteria and supports the growth of lactic acid bacteria found in baby diapers and used to make fermented dairy products.

The proteins, fatty acids and carbohydrates in milk kill or inhibit the growth of viruses, bacteria and fungi. Early studies of the bacteria in breastfed babies showed an exclusive group of lactic acid bacteria and an absence of adult gut bacteria. Breast milk was shown to contain a “bifidus factor” that selected for baby gut flora and this special ingredient was later shown to consist of a complex mixture of short chains of sugars, human milk oligosaccharides. Thus, human milk is good for babies, but bad for adult gut flora because most of the protein, fat and carbs are digested and no soluble fiber remains for colon gut flora.

The only reason that babies can survive formula and the growth of adult gut flora in the first weeks of life, is that the disrupted gut flora is highly inflammatory and the inflamed gut provides some protection from infection.

Commercial dairy products are uniform, because they are made from milk using defined mixtures of pure cultures of bacteria and fungi. These dairy probiotics can substitute but not replace gut flora, because they can't grow in a healthy gut. Kefir is a little different, because the kefir grains are biofilms of yeast and bacteria held together by a polysaccharide called kefiran made by a bacterial enzyme that rearranges the glucose and galactose sugar residues of lactose. The point here is that if you grow your own kefir, you may end up with many species of bacteria and some may be able to contribute to your gut flora. Many supermarket "kefirs" are just a blend of common dairy probiotics and maybe some inulin, and have no benefits over commercial yogurt.

[Zizzle]

Vaginal microbes are now being tied to preterm birth! Not sursprising!!

http://www.healthfinder.gov/News/Articl ... ovdelivery

Bacteria in the female reproductive tract during the late second and early third trimester of pregnancy are different in women who will ultimately give birth prematurely than in women with full-term deliveries, new research suggests.

The study is scheduled for presentation Thursday at the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine's annual meeting in New Orleans.

Researchers reached their conclusions after testing the so-called "cervicovaginal microbiota" in vaginal swabs taken from pregnant women in the second trimester (20 to 24 weeks) and early third trimester (24 to 28) of pregnancy. They compared the bacteria from women who would go on to give birth prematurely to those who gave birth at full term.