Henna-Maria Uusitupa : How the gut microbes you're born with affect your lifelong health

Henna-Maria Uusitupa·TED@DuPont
How the gut microbes you're born with affect your lifelong health
Summary
The speaker works as a researcher and as a technical lead of an infant health platform. One of her big challenges is that all babies get the same shot at lifelong health, no matter how they’re born or what early life events they encounter.
For those, she tells us that there are some things that we have to know.

We think that microbes are bad, though, for infants, microbes need to be programmed correctly. 1)
Requiring checks are not the same between babies born by C-section and babies born vaginally.  C-section is a cesarean section. 2)
And then, there’s a difference whether babies are breastfed or not. They mightn’t have mothers or mothers mightn’t be able to produce milk. 3)

Her study must help a lot of babies. Before babies’ disruption, it’ll be better to be able to monitor the gut microbiota development of babies.

Words in this story
microbiome /mi·cro·bi·ome/ the microorganisms in a particular environment (including the body or a part of the body)
microbe /noun/ microbial /adj/  a microorganism, especially a bacterium causing disease or fermentation.
C-section is a cesarean section. /Ce・sar・e・an/