To make your microbiome healthy avoid unnecessary C-sections

Dr. Marty Makary: "I'd say the other thing to sort of make your microbiome healthy is not just avoid unnecessary antibiotics, avoid pesticides, eat whole foods, but also avoid unnecessary C-sections. So that's an important message.

But here's how the microbiome forms in a child, because when a baby's in utero, their gut is sterile. There's no bacteria in their gut. And this critical organ is formed immediately after childbirth because the bacteria from the vaginal canal is seeding the microbiome.

And those bacteria then are also augmented from bacteria in the classroom, the breast milk, the skin, grandparents kissing the kids, all that stuff, is how the microbiome, millions of different bacteria is formed in this equilibrium that keeps us healthy and trains the immune system and is involved in mood. And so during a C-section, what's happening is you're extracting a sterile baby out of a sterile operative field.

And instead of the microbiome being seeded from the birth canal, it may be seeded by bacteria that normally live in the hospital. And so it's a very different microbiome. And we've known for a long time babies born by C-section have higher rates of asthma, inflammatory bowel disease, because remember a different altered microbiome in different proportions and distributions can cause inflammation.

And a study just came out of one of our big medical journals, JAMA surgery, that the higher rates of colon cancer that we're seeing in young people in their 30s and 40s was associated with having been born by C-section.

So we continue to insult the microbiome. So that's where you wanna get back to whole foods heck at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York. I found out that when a baby's born by C-section, now they have a trial taking some vaginal fluid and swabbing the skin of the baby to try it.

So we're learning about this incredible organ system of the micro-armp that we have been blowing off, telling women, oh, it doesn't matter. How do you wanna deliver C-section? It does matter. Okay, well, that's sad, but good to know in any event."