How breast milk is a natural vaccine

Breast milk changes all the time

Dr. Sabrina Bakeera Kitaka, a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Pediatrics at Makerere University School of Medicine says breast milk changes as the baby grows to cater for particular nutrition and immunity needs at particular stages of growth.

“The first milk after birth, colostrum, contains antibodies specifically designed to protect the newborn against disease. One of the antibodies in colostrum, called IgA, doesn’t let bacteria and pathogens get in through the digestive system. It protects your baby from the inside out.”

Colostrum only lasts about 48 hours after birth. Its purpose is to supercharge the baby’s immune system for the first twos after which it changes composition.

Breast-feeding and baby’s immunity

Pediatricians have found a very strong connection between breast feeding and a baby’s immunity. It is a well-known fact in the medical world that infants who are breast-fed contract fewer infections compared to those that are given formula or animal milk (cow, goat, etc.).

For long, it was presumed that the reason behind this was because milk suckled directly from the breast is free of bacteria. The argument was that other forms of feeding encounter pathogens in bottles and can generally become contaminated easily. But that argument falls flat when you learn that even the babies that feed on sterilized formula suffer from more infections than those that are breast-fed. This points to the curative nature of breast milk and how breast-feeding is superior to any other option.

But it gets even more interesting.

Studies show that breast milk is tailor-made every minute of every hour, everyday, to fight disease on behalf the fragile bundle of joy, it appears. According to researchers at Milkgenomics a US-based non-profit organization that researches on general mammalian milk, the human mother’s body has the ability to detect pathogens in the baby’s mouth through the nipple so that by the next feeding, the breast milk contains the antibodies against that pathogen.

The studies suggest that the antibodies delivered to the baby through breast-feeding is precisely targeted against specific pathogens in that child’s immediate surroundings. That means that the breast milk of a mother in the rice paddies of Kibimba in Eastern Uganda is completely different from that of a mother in a cattle ranch in Ssanga in Western Uganda.

Why do babies love to eat dirt?

Could this then explain why children eat all sorts of dirt? Don’t we all wonder why children love dirt, sometimes more than they love food? Are they really exploring the world like we are likely to assume? Maybe. But why the mouth? They can see, smell, hear, and touch. There is evidence that strongly suggests that eating dirt is good for the baby.

“The experience in the medical world proves that children who live in a not-so-clean environment, where they are prone to get exposed to dirt are likely to have better immunity than those who live in a super-clean environment. But there is a line you can’t cross. If you allow your child to eat near a pit latrine, chances are he will die of cholera or dysentery,” says Dr. Sabrina Kitaka.

She adds that a sterilized environment is not good for a child. “Sterilizing your home like a hospital could lead your child to have a severely hyper sensitive immune system, leaving them open to allergies and asthma,” she says.

Why Dirt is Good

There is a book called “Why Dirt Is Good” written by an immunologist called Mary Ruebush that makes a strong point about why children eat dirt.

She writes, “What a child is doing when he puts things in his mouth is allowing his immune response to explore his environment. Not only does this allow for ‘practice’ of immune responses, which will be necessary for protection, but it also plays a critical role in teaching the immature immune response what is best ignored.”

Dr. Margaret Kabahenda, a nutrition expert at the Food Science and Technology department of Makerere University says that there are cells in our bodies called memory cells whose job is to remember the pathogens the body has already encountered.

“This helps the body to produce a much faster and stronger immune response for the future. These memory cells will stay in the body even after the child heals. That is why for some diseases such as chicken pox, only one exposure is needed for the body to develop a resistance to the disease no matter how many times they are exposed to the same pathogen after that.”

Mother’s collect samples

The breast-feeding mother is also exposed to the same dirt and germs as the baby, although she doesn’t go about eating chicken droppings like her baby. So how does the mother sample the pathogens herself?

According to Kellymom, a UK parenting website, the mother synthesizes antibodies when she inhales, touches, ingests or otherwise comes in contact with a disease-causing agent. “Because the mother makes antibodies only to pathogens in her environment, the baby receives the protection it most needs, against the infectious agents it is most likely to encounter,” an article on the website reads.

We can deduce from this argument that if a breast-feeding mother relocates from one place to another, her milk will completely changes. This happens because the mother’s immune system has to deal with the pathogens in the new area which might be drastically different from those in the previous residence. All this is done on autopilot. Or should we say, by God himself.