The Mind-Gut Connection: How the Hidden Conversation Within Our Bodies Impacts Our Mood, Our Choices, and Our Overall Health

by Emeran Mayer

scientists are now studying whether cesarean delivery jeopardizes a newborn’s future brain health. It is amazing that in such countries as Brazil and Italy the rates of C-section delivered babies surpass those who come into this world in the natural way, even though we have no clue about the long-term consequences of “bypassing” the normal vaginally mediated gut microbiome programming on brain development. So far we know that the intestines of cesarean-born infants are colonized not by the mother’s vaginal microbes, but by microbes from the mother’s skin, from midwives, physicians, and nurses, and from other newborns in the maternity ward, and that important beneficial bacteria such as bifidobacteria take longer to colonize their guts than they do the guts of babies born vaginally.