The Microbiome Starts in the Dirt Literally
00:00:00.000 | Getting dirty is not only good, it's essential. We're all focused on the screens and the kids
00:00:05.500 | are on computers too much of the time, and that's all true. But the bigger issue is they're not
00:00:09.340 | outside getting dirty, interacting with nature. Because after our initial journey through the
00:00:15.920 | birth canal, those of us who are lucky enough to be born vaginally, that's when we get colonized
00:00:20.560 | with a mother's good bacteria. And that forms the beginnings of our foundational microbiome.
00:00:26.420 | So after that, we then need to get those microbes from nature, from food, ideally that's grown in
00:00:32.540 | dirt, and from getting dirty ourselves, from being out there with grass and trees and all of it. And
00:00:38.220 | we see that kids who are born in the hospital via C-section, who don't get the benefit of coming
00:00:44.400 | through the birth canal, they are colonized with hospital-acquired staph instead of the mother's
00:00:49.620 | healthy bifidobacterium lactobacillus. And interestingly, Chris, for years after birth,
00:00:55.060 | they have higher rates of allergies, of asthma, of autoimmune disease, and of obesity.