Like how parents never forget the first moment with their babies, I still remember the first

moment I met my baby niece, Katherine. I was expecting to see a crying baby (like how most
babies react when they see me) but surprisingly she was smiling at me like she knew that I was
her aunt from our first eye contact. At that moment, I fell in love with my niece like how all
mothers fall in love with their children.
About a month ago, my sister and I were invited to a dinner gathering of one for my sisters
friends baby shower. When my sister called her friend to confirm the restaurant location, they
asked us to bring Katherine with us since they were going to bring their baby named Olivia who
was about two months older than my niece. We decided to bring Katherine to dinner as well to
let her hang out with Olivia at the restaurant. While we were having dinner, both Katherine and
Olivia wanted to walk around the restaurant and touch everything they could reach. Therefore,
both parents had to stay alert because Katherine and Olivia would grab dishes and bowls down
from table. When Olivia began walking and touching things around her, her mom started chasing
after her with a bundle of baby wipes to clean everything around her and her hands, while my
sister wiped my nieces hands only once after we all finished our dinner.
On our way back home, I asked my sister about what I saw at the dinner, Why did Olivias mom
wipe her babys hands so many times? I think she is kind of overdramatic. Then, my sister said,
I dont know why. But, I think she believes that keeping her baby clean is the best way to
prevent infectious diseases. She paused and continued talking with a whispering tone, Guess
what? Her baby gets sick really easily even though her mom has been taking care of her baby
like that since she was born. Katherine got hand, food and mouth disease from Olivia last month.
Luckily, Katherines case was not too severe, but Olivia was in the hospital for a week.
As a student who is studying immunology, I really wanted tell my sister the true reason why
Olivia gets sick more often than Katherine: It is all because Olivia never had a single chance to
establish disease resistance since her mom wiped off all of the microbes that can help her
immunity mature.
Are All Microbes Bad For Humans In General?
The simple answer is No, because not all microbes are harmful for humans.
Most parents believe that their keeping baby clean is the best way to make them stay away from
infectious diseases. Yet, unlike how most parents think of microbes, microbes are not as bad as
people think. There are plenty of beneficial microbes out there that help the human body to
maintain stable body function; moreover, some microbes reside inside of the human body and
strengthen the immune system. Of course, parents must avoid exposing their babies to infectious
microbes, since their immune systems have not yet fully developed. Although many microbes
potentially become a cause of diseases, not all microbes are harmful for human body. The human
body is initially composed of microbial species that help our digestive system, immune system,
and even dermatologic stability. Then, when and where people could get their beneficial
microbes that they need for their lives?

When and Where Do We Get Our Microbes Throughout Our Lives?

Usually, people cannot imagine that microbial exposure actually can have an important role in
the human development. When they imagine microbes, they only imagine those infectious
viruses or other pathogens that cause diseases. Here, I am going discuss some approaches to
human microbial development, so that people especially parents will no longer consider all
microbes as harmful things to the human body.

How We Met Our Basic Microbes

At first, humans get their microbes from their mothers microbes since there are no other factor
to obtain microbes from the embryo. Babies in the embryo sometimes get microbes from food
that their mothers consume and develop their body functions. Once babies mature and are ready
to come out of mothers wombs, they get to confront and obtain another microbial
exposure. The fist distinctive factor that
Figure 1
can provide different microbial
exposure to babies are delivery
methods: Vaginal and Cesarean (aka, CSection) delivery.
According to Neu and Rushing (2011),
those two delivery methods can give
significant different microbial exposure
for babies. They said that babies who
were born through vaginal delivery
were able to colonize pure bacteria that
are normally found in the mouth and
skin that are beneficial for health. By
contrast, babies who were born through
the C-Section cannot colonize pure
beneficial bacteria in their body because
they get to expose themselves to other
type of microbes such as microbes from
clinical environment that will interfere other microbes to colonize and mature as a pure bacterial
colonization. Additionally, skipping microbial exposure through the vaginal pathway can result
in their lack of vaginal microbes that can delay microbial being matured. In Figure 1 shown
above, babies who had vaginal delivery process has mature colonized microbes (almost same
color as their mothers microbes), compare to the C-Section baby who does not have mature
colonized microbes (lighter colored microbes compare to his mothers). Moreover, vaginal

delivery babies fulfilled microbial maturity at four months, while the C-Section reached their
microbial mature stage at his ninth month.
Microbes For Later Life Stages
Figure 2

Figure 2

Microbes in the human body get

matured as the early human body
stage proceeds to become an adult
stage. At the early stage of the
human body, the body microbes
have not yet formed and established
thoroughly. So, people still need to
gather more microbes to stabilize
their microbes in their bodies. Then,
how do children get their microbes
to stabilize their body systems?
There are several ways to get
microbes from the outside
environment in order to stabilize
human body microbes: Air, food,
and direct contact with microbes
outside of the body. As Figure 2
shows, basically, everything humans
contact with will reinforce more
microbes in the human body so that
later stage will be able to establish

more stable microbial inner body environment.

Does Microbial Exposure Result In Huge Differences?
Indeed, there were many studies done on how microbes can have beneficial effects on the human
body. In 2012, Olszak et al. studied how microbial exposure at the early life stage results in the
immune system by using T-Cells (disease fight cells) and mouses that were exposed to different
amount of microbes. Through this experiment, they proved that different microbial exposure
during the early life stage has direct influence on the humans immune system to become more
resistance to many diseases caused by lack of immunological ability such as Inflammatory
Bowel Disease (aka, IBD), asthma, and allergies.
Hence, microbial exposure during the early life stage can actually help the human body to
function better immunity, and healthier body systems. Still, the human body needs to prevent
itself from getting many harmful infectious microbes, yet expose itself to microbes that can

actually reinforce the immune system to have more resistance to those diseases, which solves
fundamental cause of diseases.
So, Are You Going to Let Your Children Be Best Friends With Good Microbes?
Without doubt, every parents love their children, so parents want them to stay away from
diseases. We still see many parents who bring a huge bag of baby wipes and clean everything
they see in order to keep surroundings as clean as they can. Without doubt, clean surroundings
are good for everyone in the world, and everyone likes to keep themselves clean. However, as
parents, they need to step back little bit and let their children to be friends with good microbes
because those microbes will ultimately strengthen their childrens bodies to become more mature
and healthier.
There are still parents out there who are afraid to let their babies stay little dirtier. Yet, Parents,
please do not be too afraid of letting your children play with soils or dirts, because we now know
that there must be good microbes friends waiting for the children.