Ideas worth spreading

How the gut microbes you're born with affect your lifelong health

2,560,504 views |

Henna-Maria Uusitupa |

TED@DuPont

• September 2019

Your lifelong health may have been decided the day you were born, says microbiome researcher Henna-Maria Uusitupa. In this fascinating talk, she shows how the gut microbes you acquire during birth and as an infant impact your health into adulthood -- and discusses new microbiome research that could help tackle problems like obesity and diabetes.

Your lifelong health may have been decided the day you were born, says microbiome researcher Henna-Maria Uusitupa. In this fascinating talk, she shows how the gut microbes you acquire during birth and as an infant impact your health into adulthood -- and discusses new microbiome research that could help tackle problems like obesity and diabetes.

About the speaker

Henna-Maria Uusitupa

Henna-Maria Uusitupa

Microbiome researcher

See speaker profile

Henna-Maria Uusitupa investigates innovative solutions to minimize health risks that infants might have due to disruptions in microbiota development.

Lars Bode | Glycobiology, 2012 | Article

"Human milk oligosaccharides: every baby needs a sugar mama."

For anyone with background in biology or chemistry, I strongly recommend this article. It thoroughly and clearly opens your eyes to understand the interesting glycobiology behind human infant nutrition. Every baby indeed needs a sugar mama — or at least those sugars from a bottle.

Bryan Zabel et al. | Scientific Reports, 2019 | Article

"Novel Genes and Metabolite Trends in Bifidobacterium longum subsp. infantis Bi-26 Metabolism of Human Milk Oligosaccharide 2′-fucosyllactose"

Are you wondering how can it be that only the "good" bacteria are able to utilize HMO's and not the "bad" pathogenic ones? Read this article, it helps you to understand what happens when an HMO-utilizer eats the most common HMO in human milk, 2'-FL, and gives a nice peek into the metabolism of this bacteria. Via understanding better what it means that a bacteria is "HMO-utilizer," it is easier to realize why other bacteria cannot utilize HMOs. This is the basis behind the benefits that HMOs can offer to health, and also it's just so fascinating to have that sneak peak into bacterial metabolism!

Kristin Wickens et al. | Clinical and Experimental Allergy, 2013 | Article

"Early supplementation with Lactobacillus rhamnosus HN001 reduces eczema prevalence to 6 years: does it also reduce atopic sensitization?"

If you want to know more about the benefits that probiotic supplementation can offer for the later health, I recommend reading this article. It gives so much hope! It's way easier to believe in that future pre-emptive health care system when you know that we already have probiotic strains on market that can reduce the risk of certain adverse conditions years after the supplementation. This article also nicely demonstrates that effects of probiotics are species specific, highlighting that we need to avoid one-size-fits-all way of thinking and really understand that each probiotic strain has its own properties and health effects.

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