What you eat and your experiences in life, whether bad or good, can affect your gut microbiome, and ultimately could be passed on to your children. That’s an over-simplistic explanation of research at the University of Saskatchewan which is investigating links between obesity and diabetes in Indigenous children and intergenerational trauma.

Dr. Wendie Marks, a Tier 2 Canada Research Chair, says her goal is to identify and address potential barriers to wellness that may be passed from generation to generation. Canada’s colonization policies, including residential schools, exposed Indigenous people to chronic stress and malnutrition during important developmental periods. Marks explains that traumas can alter brain-gut responses that regulate the gut microbiome, which is the micro-organisms in the gastrointestinal tract. “Those alterations then can be passed through the generations. So, what we are finding, especially in the animal models, is that things such as stress or trauma can be passed down as many as four generations.”

The research begins with studying animal models. This research project will also look at treatment or preventative strategies. Marks says she and her team are just at the beginning of this research project