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	Podcast:		UC Science Today
	Episode:		A mother's influence over her child developing asthma or allergies
	Category:		Science & Medicine
	Duration:		00:01:02
	Publish Date:		2016-12-20 18:00:00
	Description:		What causes asthma and allergies? Scientists think it may very well stem from our own mothers. Susan Lynch, a gastroenterologist at the University of California, San Francisco, has been studying the origin of these diseases and says it all starts with a woman's lifestyle when she is pregnant or right after she has given birth. "Some of the risk factors for allergic asthma include very early life exposures, such as a lack of the mother's exposure to livestock or furred pets, while she is pregnant, formula feeding, cesarean section delivery and antibiotic use either during pregnancy or in the very early life postnatal period." All these factors define the types of microbes that form in our bodies and could drive our immune system's dysfunction. "In very early life, the gut microbiome changes very dramatically as it accumulates bacterial and fungal genomes and species from the environment." So changing this environment even before women start thinking of having babies - might be one of the easiest ways to prevent asthma and allergies.
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