Eczema in children: Understanding Microbes

You’ve heard about Bare Nuhcessities tagline “For A Healthy Skin Microbiome” – what do you know about these microbes? There’s good and bad microbes, and do you know that it is not healthy to have 100% good microbes but a balanced good and bad microbes are where our body immunity is at it’s optimum?

What would be your answer to this riddle:
Your baby drops his pacifier onto the kitchen floor.
To protect your baby’s health, which is the best way to clean it?

a. Run the pacifier in the hot water or steriliser
b. Pop the pacifier into your mouth, swish it around, and then give back the pacifier to your baby

If you answer ‘a’, who would blame you. In fact, if you’re in public place, you probably will also worry about all the judgemental eyes looking at you. In the last 50 years, we have been brought up in this clean, sanitised environment that although now with more research on “let the kids eat dirt” it is easier said than done as the culturally brought up in us, doesn’t agree with the strong backing of the research.

Well, let’s have some fun facts about microbes and with a better understanding of them, maybe, we will start to slowly let our kids eat dirt.

Fun fact 1 – We are outnumbered

This tiny microbes which can’t be seen with naked eyes outweigh all visible plants and animals on earth by a factor of 100 million. Microbes – includes bacteria, virus and fungi – are everywhere we can’t see (pun intended).

Fun fact 2 – they’re self sustained and experienced

These self sustain microbes grow and adapt all by themselves without the assistants from us human, animals or plants in the last 4.5 billion years. Heard about the super bug – antibiotics resistance – well, these microbes adapt and grow stronger each and every time.

Fun fact 3 – we are minority even in our own skin

Skin is our largest organs with the most cells, and guess what? For every one of our skin cells, there are 1.3 microbial cells in our body! With the 30 trillion cells in our adult body, there is another 40 trillion cells in our body that are microbes.

Fun fact 4 – even though they can’t be seen with our naked eyes, they weigh as much as our brain!

Now, this is scary. They need to be seen under microscope, yet they weigh as much as our brain? Yeaps, it’s true and because of this the saying, the microbes holds our whole system – the digestive and immune system.

Fun fact 5 – the type of microbes you hold in your body, tells your brain what do you need

Heard about the term “you are what you eat”? It holds a lot of truth in it because, if you’re a junk food person, says fast food fanatics, your guts are filled with bad microbes that would send signals to your brain that you’re craving for fast food.

Well, why microbes are something we should focus on and more importantly – why swirling the pacifier is way better than giving a sanitised pacifier?

Our saliva is filled with antimicrobial peptides, which are filled good bacteria that helps fight off the bad bacteria. When we swirl the pacifier in the mouth, it coats these germs fighting peptides, and when a kid pops it back into their mouth, it colonised them with these beneficial bacteria.

The hot water? Well, it is not that it will hurt you, but it is just not beneficial. It depends on your child’s microbes colonisation at that point of time, if it is strong enough to fight off. Our microbes, with the years of experience and stronger immunity, definitely would help to grow your child to be a stronger one!

Do you know that gut microbes is the microbes that you can be in control of your child’s immunity? Would you like to know how to build a strong microbes in your child? Stay tune for the next installation!