Month: February 2018

The most interesting thing I’ve learned is that the gut-brain communication can influence the colonization of microbiome of babies. When I was doing the research for the writing exercise #7,  the most information I got was about the usage of antibiotic or the mode of delivery, which I think is widely known. Researchers have done plenty of studies on the “outside” reasons, but it looks like we still need more efforts on the “inner” reasons.

Gut-brain communication occurs via interactions between the gut microbiome and PIN pathways, including cytokines, endocrine, and neural pathways. Powerful inflammatory stimulus such as LPS can go cross the intestinal interface and get the peritoneal cavity. This may stimulate a inflammatory response.

I may start my final essay by doing the research first, then write down the interesting points. After that, I will do the further research on those points.

For infants:

• Mode of delivery

Babies born by C-section transfer less bacteria from their mothers, and they got less diversity of their gut microbiome.

• Feeding patterns

Breast feeding stimulates the growth of Bifidobacterium and Bacteroides.

• Prenatal antibiotic exposure

Prenatal antibiotic exposure lowers the colonization and diversity of gut microbiome of babies.

Reference:

Yang, I., Corwin, E., Brennan, P., Jordan, S., Murphy, J. and Dunlop, A. (2016). The Infant Microbiome. Nursing Research, 65(1), pp.76-88.

 

Taking nutritional supplements is a intentional choice that may have impact on my microbial communities. Supplements such as dietary fiber, may promote the growth of probiotics in our gut.

The choice of food we eat can have non-intentional impact on our microbial communities. More consumption of meat may inhibit the development of probiotics, as we need more time to digest meat and meat may go bad in our intestinal tract. While if we consume more vegetables, the dietary fiber contained may help the colonization of probiotics as dietary fiber is the food of them.

So far, I only took antibiotics for twice. First time I took antibiotics, I was about 2 months old. I got pneumonia after a bad cold. The situation was totally out of control because I had a high fever at the same time. My mom had no choice and took me to the hospital. I took antibiotics for few days and the pneumonia got controlled.

The second time I took antibiotics was due to serious bacterial infection of a wound on my leg.  I had a physical education test two weeks later, I needed to make sure the infection would not affect my final grade so I took antibiotic injection for one week. The infection get cured quickly, and I did not get any side effects after the injection.