How a Woman’s Microbiome Changes During Pregnancy
I’m always talking about the microbiome. I’m obsessed with it. I’ve talked about the adult microbiome, and how it’s connected to the brain and more. But today I want to talk about the microbiome during pregnancy—and the effect that it can have on having a healthy baby (while also protecting mom).
Over the course of the 9 months of pregnancy, a shift will occur in mom’s microbiome. Here’s what happens:
When mom’s pregnant, she’s producing more estrogen and progesterone than normal—which have an impact on the microbiome, particularly slowing down gut motility.
The question is… why would the body want to slow things down? The theory is the slower motility gives the body more of an opportunity to harvest energy from the food mom is eating.
As the pregnancy progresses into the second trimester, you’ll start to see more changes to the gut bacteria, and the microbiome will look different from the way it did before. During this time, our goal is to optimize mom’s microbiome to protect mom and baby.
If mom must take antibiotics while pregnant, we need to be very cautious and make sure that it’s absolutely necessary for us to be using them. This is because we know that just a few days of antibiotics can cause significant changes to the gut microbiome, and that could potentially have an effect on pregnancy. (Keep in mind that antibiotics won’t necessarily cause a profound effect, but they could have an effect.)
The flip side of that equation is that we want to do everything we can to foster a healthy microbiome in mom. Believe it or not, the food mom eats even before she becomes pregnant has an effect on her gut microbiome during pregnancy.
It’s important for mom to eat well BEFORE pregnancy and it’s important for mom to eat well DURING pregnancy, too.
I recommend maximizing diversity of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, seeds and nuts. A diversity of plants during pregnancy so mom can get all the benefits from all the polyphenols, vitamins, minerals, fiber, and other phytochemicals—there’s a lot of nutritional value there!
But there are a lot of other things we can do to help!
We know from studies that probiotics provide benefit to mom during pregnancy. Specifically, what we’re talking about is supporting her blood sugar balance and healthy blood pressure† during pregnancy.
What we need is a mix of lactobacillus and bifidobacteria. These are two of the different families of bacteria that you want included in your probiotic.
And guess what? You can find all those things in Genuine Health’s advanced gut health probiotic women’s daily, or advanced gut health probiotic 50 billion.
Both probiotics have 15 different strains, of which are lactobacillus and bifidobacteria.
advanced gut health probiotics are encapsulated in a delayed-release capsule, which is designed to get from your mouth, past your stomach acid, and to your colon, where you actually want to deliver the bacteria.
These probiotics also include hearty strains that are triple-cleaned. Basically this means that they’ve cleaned up the bacteria and they’re picking out the strong ones to include in each capsule.
In closing, taking probiotics before and during pregnancy is something that you should talk to your OB-GYN about—but considering the impact that the gut microbiome has on a healthy pregnancy, I would consider taking a probiotic like advanced gut health probiotic daily.
Over the course of the 9 months of pregnancy, a shift will occur in mom’s microbiome. Here’s what happens:
What Happens in the First Trimester
When mom’s pregnant, she’s producing more estrogen and progesterone than normal—which have an impact on the microbiome, particularly slowing down gut motility.
The question is… why would the body want to slow things down? The theory is the slower motility gives the body more of an opportunity to harvest energy from the food mom is eating.
What Happens in the Second & Third Trimester
As the pregnancy progresses into the second trimester, you’ll start to see more changes to the gut bacteria, and the microbiome will look different from the way it did before. During this time, our goal is to optimize mom’s microbiome to protect mom and baby.
If mom must take antibiotics while pregnant, we need to be very cautious and make sure that it’s absolutely necessary for us to be using them. This is because we know that just a few days of antibiotics can cause significant changes to the gut microbiome, and that could potentially have an effect on pregnancy. (Keep in mind that antibiotics won’t necessarily cause a profound effect, but they could have an effect.)
The flip side of that equation is that we want to do everything we can to foster a healthy microbiome in mom. Believe it or not, the food mom eats even before she becomes pregnant has an effect on her gut microbiome during pregnancy.
It’s important for mom to eat well BEFORE pregnancy and it’s important for mom to eat well DURING pregnancy, too.
I recommend maximizing diversity of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, seeds and nuts. A diversity of plants during pregnancy so mom can get all the benefits from all the polyphenols, vitamins, minerals, fiber, and other phytochemicals—there’s a lot of nutritional value there!
But there are a lot of other things we can do to help!
We know from studies that probiotics provide benefit to mom during pregnancy. Specifically, what we’re talking about is supporting her blood sugar balance and healthy blood pressure† during pregnancy.
What we need is a mix of lactobacillus and bifidobacteria. These are two of the different families of bacteria that you want included in your probiotic.
And guess what? You can find all those things in Genuine Health’s advanced gut health probiotic women’s daily, or advanced gut health probiotic 50 billion.
Both probiotics have 15 different strains, of which are lactobacillus and bifidobacteria.
advanced gut health probiotics are encapsulated in a delayed-release capsule, which is designed to get from your mouth, past your stomach acid, and to your colon, where you actually want to deliver the bacteria.
These probiotics also include hearty strains that are triple-cleaned. Basically this means that they’ve cleaned up the bacteria and they’re picking out the strong ones to include in each capsule.
In closing, taking probiotics before and during pregnancy is something that you should talk to your OB-GYN about—but considering the impact that the gut microbiome has on a healthy pregnancy, I would consider taking a probiotic like advanced gut health probiotic daily.
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