Breast milk contains beneficial bacteria like Bifidobacterium, but the amount varies between mothers. Some infants may not get enough, so testing your baby's gut can help determine if a probiotic supplement would help.
So big Is breast milk probiotic enough for my baby? This is kind of tough because sometimes it is, sometimes it's not. Breast milk's pretty magical stuff. It has a lot of great things in it, asides from the nutrients that are helping baby grow. It has HMOs which help feed the bacteria in baby's gut as well as bacteria itself that's transferring like Bifidobacterium. Unfortunately, not all mom's breast milk is the same, which means sometimes it is varying amount of those HMOs, and sometimes it doesn't have necessarily those good bacteria that are transferring. In those cases, we don't necessarily see them colonizing baby's gut. So you might be exclusively breastfeeding your baby, but sometimes they're not getting the right bacteria from you. In these cases, it's helpful to potentially supplement with a Bifidobacterium probiotic. Then you're giving baby that bifidobacteria that their gut needs, and you're giving them the HMOs from your breast milk to help feed that and help that bifidobacteria really establish itself. So you really can't tell until you measure.
Tiny Health Raises $33M Series B to Establish Microbiome Intelligence as the Standard of Care
