20/06/2026
Body Literacy: Why Infant Health Should not be a Forbidden Subject
Funnily enough, I thought that an article intended to improve infant health outcomes could not offend anyone.
Yet here we are!
There appears to be a growing instinct to treat any discussion of infant physiology, birth, microbial inheritance, immune development, environmental burden, or genomic variation as somehow dangerous in itself. The implication is that it is safer to say less: safer not to ask questions, safer not to examine patterns, safer not to discuss how biology and environment interact across the earliest stages of life.
I disagree.
Silence has never protected children. It has protected systems from scrutiny.
The article I shared was not an attempt to blame parents, pathologise divergence, claim that autism is caused by a single exposure, or suggest that anyone can optimise their child into acceptability. It did not present early-life environment as the origin of a child’s identity, worth, or neurological architecture.
It made a much simpler point:
Divergent genomic architecture does not exist outside the body; it exists within a biological context.
Birth physiology, microbial exposure, feeding, inflammation, antibiotic use, immune signalling, sensory burden, connective-tissue variation, metabolic demand, and environmental strain can all shape how a person experiences their body across the lifespan. Acknowledging this is not an attack on autistic people, disabled people, parents, or families. It is an attempt to give people language for what may influence health, symptoms, resilience, vulnerability, and support needs.
That is body literacy.
Body literacy is not “biohacking.”
It is not a promise that every difficulty can be prevented, reversed, or controlled. It is not an invitation for people to spend money on miracle protocols, chase perfection, or blame themselves for biology they did not choose.
It is the opposite of helplessness.
It means understanding that inherited biology, developmental context, environment, systems, nutrition, infection, inflammation, access to care, stress, social conditions, and sensory load do not exist in separate boxes. They overlap, interact and accumulate.
That is complexity, and it makes some people uncomfortable because it cannot be easily managed through binaries and slogans.
A child can be born with a divergent genomic architecture and still be affected by the conditions in which their body develops. Recognising this does not mean that the child should be “fixed.” It means their physiology should be understood.
It means we should care whether an infant’s immune system is under strain. It means we should care about gut health, feeding difficulties, inflammatory burden, birth interventions, maternal health, hospital environments, antibiotic exposure, pain, sensory stress, and access to appropriate support. It means we should care whether certain children are more vulnerable to specific burdens because of their inherited biology.
That should not be controversial. However, it becomes controversial when people have been taught that acknowledging biological complexity is inherently stigmatising.
It is not.
What is stigmatising is leaving families without language. What is stigmatising is dismissing physical symptoms as behavioural problems. What is stigmatising is pretending that a child’s gastrointestinal distress, immune dysregulation, sensory overload, connective-tissue pain, metabolic exhaustion, or inflammatory burden has nothing to do with their lived experience because the topic feels politically difficult.
What is especially concerning is the way legitimate discussion of infant health is sometimes treated as suspicious before it has even been read properly.
There is a difference between caution and avoidance.
Caution means being precise. It means distinguishing associations from causation. It means refusing to blame parents. It means refusing miracle claims. It means being honest about uncertainty and complexity. My work does all of those things.
Avoidance means deciding that a subject should not be discussed because it might upset somebody.
I am not interested in avoidance.
I am not an apologist for systems that have spent decades separating the mind from the body, reducing complex physiology to diagnostic labels, and leaving families to piece together their own understanding with little support, little transparency, and very little meaningful body literacy.
People deserve more than that.
They deserve accurate language. They deserve access to knowledge. They deserve the right to understand their own biology without being dismissed as difficult, alarmist, or irresponsible for asking questions that should have been answered long ago.
Infant health is not a culture-war topic, and it is not an ideological threat.
It is not “biohacking” to want children to have the strongest possible foundation for health, comfort, development, and resilience.
It is care, and I will not apologise for caring enough to talk about the complexity.
Another commenter bites the dust.....
©️ Alexandra Chambers | The Neurotopia Project
https//divergentgenomics.org/
Image: and yes that's an image of me, today
