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Caesarean babies have different gut bacteria, microbiome study finds

theguardian.com

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Re: Caesarean babies have different gut bacteria, microbiome study finds

#81

Post by core-questions »

bitwize wrote: post #43
oneepic wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want to google "crunchy Karen" at work...can someone post a description here?

"Crunchy Karen" is a stock character who advocates dubious medical practices and preaches moralizingly, patronizingly to others to do the same. Where I got the term from is a friend of mine is part of a Facebook support group for women who have particularly unproductive breasts and are tired of being told to risk starving their babies by adopting a breastfeeding-only policy or face moral recriminations.

Yeah, I don't get this. My kids are breast-fed and obviously there's a lot of evidence it's a good idea, but why would I need to shame / bother people who can't do this? It's their loss, if anything.

Re: Caesarean babies have different gut bacteria, microbiome study finds

#82

Post by cperciva »

Syzygies wrote: post #51
irrational wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You joke, and are being downvoted, but I had never ever thought about cunnilingus affecting ones gut biome. Is that ridiculous or even possible?

It certainly affects gut biome, personal observation and what I've read. Michael Douglas also believes this caused his cancer. It's a cliche that the kids from the rich side of town, who didn't put dirt in their mouths growing up, are the ones who get mono in college. Farm kids are healthiest; our immune systems need regular work they can manage.

It's a cliche that the kids from the rich side of town, who didn't put dirt in their mouths growing up, are the ones who get mono in college.

This is true but not necessarily for the reasons you think. Epstein-Barr is largely harmless in younger children, showing up largely as a common cold. It's not that the "farm kids" didn't get infected; it's just that they were infected long before they got to college.

(And to preempt a common question: No, we shouldn't proactively expose kids to Epstein-Barr when they're young. While they wouldn't get mono, Epstein-Barr has other long term effects; for example, it has been implicated as a trigger for autoimmune disorders.)

Re: Caesarean babies have different gut bacteria, microbiome study finds

#83

Post by robbiep »

trhway wrote: post #57
robbiep wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A Caesar mother does get a stat of antibiotics before opening. In crash caesars this would barely have time to distribute; normal operating procedure calls for the dose to occur 30 min to 1 hr before skin incision though. You have a bit of a misunderstanding here - a baby does not have a microbiome in the womb - it is a sterile environment

>You have a bit of a misunderstanding here - a baby does not have a microbiome in the womb - it is a sterile environment no. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4350424/ "The first, and most important, contribution to the genesis of the microbiome is vertical transmission of maternal microbiota. Colonization of mucosa in the digestive, respiratory, urogenital tracts, as well as the skin begins at, or perhaps…

Thanks. This is new knowledge since I was at medical school.

The paper you link however is not at all convincing.

A better paper here: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmicb.2019.0112...

Does a better job of explaining things. Interestingly the species isolated are highly homogenous - https://www.frontiersin.org/files/Articles/454989/fmicb-10-0...

Most samples had only a single species isolated from meconium; Controlling for sources of contamination it looks like out of the sample of 43 there were several that would meet the classification of a sterile environment.

So, I was wrong; but so are you

Re: Caesarean babies have different gut bacteria, microbiome study finds

#84

Post by sxv »

chapium wrote: post #32
erikrothoff wrote: post #5

My twin brother was born by caesarean. He gets asthma attacks from allergies that I don’t have. I’ve wondered for a while what effect a faecal transplant could have...

This is something that his doctor should be concerned with.

The idea that there is some doctor who will employ the latest and greatest of medical research to take care of me is at odds, to say the least, with my experience in the healthcare system.

Re: Caesarean babies have different gut bacteria, microbiome study finds

#85

Post by wdbbdw »

bitwize wrote: post #48
wdbbdw wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Conflating microbiome interests with antivax mania doesn't make any sense to me, and I agree that "crunchy Karen" is a dismissive sexist tropE, especially in this context. Do any of you have even a passing familiarity with modern microbiome research? It's super fascinating and I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss it.

Most of us have heard of it. You can't log into this site and not hear of it. "Gut bacteria" is a square (alongside the likes of "Rust" and "Bitcoin") on my Hackernews bingo card. But there are scientifically validated treatments and then there's folk medicine of unknown safety and effectiveness, and putting gauze swabbed with vagina juice in your baby's mouth sounds a lot like the latter.

I dunno, after having had a front row seat to more than one vaginal birth I'd say that it's implausible to suggest that microbes aren't being transferred (via "vagina juice" and the proverbial "microbial organ", i.e. poop) from mother to baby. Also, having dabbled in microbial ecology in my professional life, I'd say that it's unlikely that said microbial transfer is inconsequential for the gut health of the baby. Doctors don't know everything, and I'd venture that effectively no research on the effects of a cesarian on the baby's gut health was done before the procedure became widespread.

Re: Caesarean babies have different gut bacteria, microbiome study finds

#86

Post by aaron695 »

core-questions wrote: post #81
bitwize wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Crunchy Karen" is a stock character who advocates dubious medical practices and preaches moralizingly, patronizingly to others to do the same. Where I got the term from is a friend of mine is part of a Facebook support group for women who have particularly unproductive breasts and are tired of being told to risk starving their babies by adopting a breastfeeding-only policy or face moral recriminations.

Yeah, I don't get this. My kids are breast-fed and obviously there's a lot of evidence it's a good idea, but why would I need to shame / bother people who can't do this? It's their loss, if anything.

Some mother can't, shaming them doesn't help, but the harsh reality is kids will still come out worse off without breast feeding with current technology, irrelevant if the mother is capable or not.

It's a line between causing hurt for something unavoidable and promoting something important for when it can be avoided.

Public campaigns use shame, the crossover is unavoidable, you can only try to reduce it for when it's not constructive, hence the shame of shaming campaign we are discussing here but it crosses over into the important original shame campaign.

Create baby formula that's better than breast milk and we can tech our way out of the whole issue.

Re: Caesarean babies have different gut bacteria, microbiome study finds

#87

Post by kazinator »

tptacek wrote: post #77
kazinator wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely, that depends on how you frame it? Tossing three coins doesn't increase the odds of any one of them being heads, surely enough. But tossing them at the same time as a single combined trial, instead of just one coin, does increase the odds of at least one heads showing up from 50 to 87.5%. Of course, you're going to have all those vaccines anyway and so the odds are the same overall for those administrations. J…

Once again, the question of whether multiple simultaneous vaccinations increases adverse effects is well studied, and the verdict is that they do not. It doesn't seem to me like trying to reason to the contrary axiomatically is going to get you anywhere.

I do not sense that you've read my comment critically. Because, for one thing, it says nothing about adverse effects increasing. Rather, the idea proposed is that effects can cluster together in time, without increasing in absolute quantity.

When a vaccine is administered, the probability of some reaction follows some kind of curve that initially rises, and then drops off. If two weeks have passed and no reaction has occurred, then the probability has already fallen off to a long tail that is next to zero.

With me so far?

So now if several vaccines are started at the same time, the "payload" parts of respective curves are superimposed now. If any effects occur, they will almost certainly occur within the next few days or couple of weeks of the administration. And that is the same period for all vaccines in the bunch.

It's almost unimaginable that synchronized start does not create a clustering effect of the probability of adverse effects.

However, in most cases that clustering probably desirable. If the adverse effects are boxed to within the same week for all vaccines, then people will experience less overall "down time" like fewer days off work or school.

Thus, don't have three vaccines just before going on a dream vacation booked months in advance. In fact, maybe don't have any vaccines at all (other than something related to the vacation destination!)

Re: Caesarean babies have different gut bacteria, microbiome study finds

#88

Post by Frqy3 »

primroot wrote: post #80

> “In many cases, a caesarean is a life-saving procedure and can be the right choice for a woman and her baby,” And in other cases it is a way to make life easier for medical staff? Here in Panama, babies are disproportionately born through C-section in privately run hospitals. Update: While I can't cite any stats for Panama, there is an article [0] that says "The rates can be even higher in private clinics. For exam…

Joshua Gans (my old economics Prof) did a study of births by day of week, and showed that the fall in weekend births was explainable by the rise in inducement and cesarean section procedures.

https://www.academia.edu/2808187/What_Explains_the_Fall_in_W...

Re: Caesarean babies have different gut bacteria, microbiome study finds

#89

Post by trhway »

robbiep wrote: post #83
trhway wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You have a bit of a misunderstanding here - a baby does not have a microbiome in the womb - it is a sterile environment no. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4350424/ "The first, and most important, contribution to the genesis of the microbiome is vertical transmission of maternal microbiota. Colonization of mucosa in the digestive, respiratory, urogenital tracts, as well as the skin begins at, or perhaps…

Thanks. This is new knowledge since I was at medical school. The paper you link however is not at all convincing. A better paper here: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmicb.2019.0112... Does a better job of explaining things. Interestingly the species isolated are highly homogenous - https://www.frontiersin.org/files/Articles/454989/fmicb-10-0... Most samples had only a single species isolated from mecon…

I'm not insisting on specific source of bacteria. I mentioned it only as illustrative detail/example, and it only distracted (who knew that here would be a medical professional for whom getting such details right is naturally important - the same way like it is very distracting for coders when movies get computers related details wrong :) from the main point that baby coming out of C-section may have antibiotics in him/her which would screw with whatever gut microbiome "priming" scenario pre-/post- delivery he/she would be going through.

Re: Caesarean babies have different gut bacteria, microbiome study finds

#90

Post by samstave »

kazinator wrote: post #87
tptacek wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once again, the question of whether multiple simultaneous vaccinations increases adverse effects is well studied, and the verdict is that they do not. It doesn't seem to me like trying to reason to the contrary axiomatically is going to get you anywhere.

I do not sense that you've read my comment critically. Because, for one thing, it says nothing about adverse effects increasing. Rather, the idea proposed is that effects can cluster together in time, without increasing in absolute quantity. When a vaccine is administered, the probability of some reaction follows some kind of curve that initially rises, and then drops off. If two weeks have passed and no reaction has…

This is exactly correct, with one caveat only:

Aside from my daughter getting the chicken pox from the vaccine which is extremely rare, as a parent you observe your child’s reaction to every dr visit and vaccine (ideally) and if you know and can see that these have such put your child into an uncomfortable state or lethargy, then mellow the fuck out.

The doctors don’t give a crap abt how your child feels after they leave their office.... but you as a parent must.

Also, source: my brother is one of the top doctors in the nation. Head of the entire VA for Alaska, commander of the 10th medical wing for the USAF, for personal flight doctor to the joint chiefs of staff at the pentagon. He agrees with me, so armchair all you want.... but I know what the fuck I am talking about.

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