The story of our gut brain

Our gut brain, made up from trillions of cells and thousands of species, which communicate with each other and has real intelligence, is one of the truly amazing systems on this earth. Yet we have, unknowingly, set out to destroy it – why? Now here is a story that needs to be told.

What is our intelligent control system?

We know we have an intelligent control system which automatically and often unconsciously manages how our bodies work. For example, it controls our body temperature to very precise levels by controlling how much fuel (food) we burn and we never think about it.

This intelligent control system manages our appetite and how much and what sort of food we want to eat – hence our weight. It manages our immune system – in the recent epidemic there were people who just never got sick – and it also produces hormones which control our mood, so we are grumpy or happy.

This intelligent control system is made by a combination of our head and gut brains with trillions of cells communicating with each other to form our internal super computer.

Our head brain is determined by our genetics and the epigenetics which turn specific genes on or off. We can’t do much to change that. However, we can change our gut brain by what we eat. Changing our gut brain can be truly dramatic, making fat people skinny and skinny people fat. We have no idea of how the code works that drives the supercomputer in our gut but we can obtain empirical correlations with various species, although we still have no idea of the code or mechanisms.

Evolution

Our gut brain is the result of millions of years of evolution – there were microbes on this earth before any other living creature.

They paved the way for larger creatures to evolve by digesting food and so led to the bewildering range of creatures from tiny shrimps to the giant dinosaurs.

But they really began to evolve into brains with the first tiny shrew-like warm blooded creatures. We may like to support the underdog but there is really no match between a tiny shrew and a giant dinosaur, yet the shrew survived by hiding in the day and going out to forage at night.

They survived as warm blooded creatures which could operate at night when the cold blooded creatures had no power to operate. Then a meteorite hit the earth making it too cold for the cold blooded creatures, so the warm blooded creatures became dominant.

One of these creatures learned to control fire and cook, which gave them an enhanced supply of readily digestible food and they developed big brains and their stomachs shrunk.

That’s us.

Hunter gatherers

There were very few people, around a million over the entire globe, all those thousands of years ago so people could move around to where the soil and climate were good.

We do know that modern hunter gatherers and particularly people in the blue zones where they are fit and healthy to a ripe old age have much more diverse gut biota than people eating a modern inert diet.

The key was eating fresh plants grown in soil teaming with microbes and nutrients and this went on for hundreds of thousands of years with little change.

Agriculture

Then we developed agriculture and cities and things really began to change. We may have had a more secure food supply but in the crowded unhygienic conditions we were ready victims for disease and epidemics which would dramatically reduce the population which was still in the millions rather than billions.

I may be old (83) and was not alive then but have a pretty good feel what it was like from my grandparents. They had a well in the backyard and a bucket toilet which they emptied on the garden veggie patch.

Death was common, but not the way the statistics portray. The average age at death was 32 but very few people died at 32. The death rate among kids was horrendous – some three in five babies would die before reaching the age of 5 and another would die in their teens.

But if you lived to thirty you were likely to live a long life into the classic three score year and ten.

Then there were the epidemics like the black death which would wipe out a significant proportion of the population.

They were the good old days – baa humbug.

Control of infections

Then around 1850, when my grandparents were alive, we began to get on top of infections. We built sewage systems, improved the water supply and general hygiene and the global population began to increase and went through the billion mark.

When I was born infection was still a major issue. As a kid I can remember the parties we were taken to so we caught whatever the infection of the day was – chicken pox, mumps, measles etc.

I look on 1950 as a turning point, antibiotics became available together with widespread vaccinations and generally better health control.

In my lifetime the global population has trebled – which is pretty staggering when you think about it.

The real and fake food crisis

For good reasons this population explosion was seen as a coming food crisis – how were we going to feed all these people?

Throughout the history of agriculture we have faced various crises largely from the degradation of the soil. Some civilisations just moved to areas which still had good soil, other civilisations just disappeared (the history books are full of ex-civilisations that are no more) and some managed to develop a system of sustained agriculture by recycling anything and everything – which was fine as long as you did not mind a bit of shit.

Western technology focused on technologies like fertilisers, irrigation and genetics which undoubtedly have been supremely successful in producing abundant calories – the food industry seem obsessed by calories.

The success cannot be doubted, we are producing enough energy food or calories to feed the entire world for years to come (as long as we solve the distribution and equity issues).

But what we forgot was our poor old gut bugs which form part of our intelligent control system, which has led to a new set of problems which really stem from our intelligent control system not working as it should and largely stemmed from the excess storage of fat.

This is purely the result of millions of years of evolution with our intelligent control system, our head and gut brain trying to protect us by saying there is something missing in your food – go out and eat.

Our gut microbes are just being protective by flooding our bloodstream with hormones which make us hungry and it is pretty difficult to resist these hormones for any length of time.

Four years ago I could have confidently said that we have swapped infectious disease for non-infectious disease. The current epidemic has shown that some people are relatively unaffected and this is associated with gut health. We know that the bulk of our immune system lies in our gut which just increases the urgency of improving gut health.

But how?

This is a combination of technology and social change.

What my granddad knew about the gut micro-biome

Actually my granddad knew nothing about the gut micro-biome but what he was doing was working well. But can we apply the same technology to modern society?

Nothing surprises me in this modern world – but the idea of someone on the fifteenth floor of an up-market block of flats in the centre of Sydney collecting all his shit in a bucket, then carrying it down in the lift to dig into the token garden bed at the front to grow some beetroot to boost his immune system seems a little bit over the top.

Maybe in some permaculture village hidden away in some mountain slopes – but not in the city centre.

So why not just take a few pro-biotic pills? That seems to be duplicating the mistake we made with our current food system. Fifty years ago we had little understanding of the gut micro-biome and went ahead developing a food system of chemical industrial agriculture which led to the deficit in our gut biome.

With modern DNA sequencing we have learned a lot about the gut biome and found correlations between certain species of microbes and weight loss. But we really have no understanding of the code that drives our supercomputer, let alone how all the thousands of species work together to give a healthy functioning gut brain.

Maybe we will one day, but at this moment it is just a hunch it may work and the tests to date are not that promising.

Surely the better approach is to see what we can learn from the thousands of years of evolution and try and implement that in a system appropriate to a modern society.

Breeding and growing

We may initially get our gut micro-biome from our mum when we are born – but where did she get her micro biome from? The answer is from the soil.

This is a two-step process (although it may appear to be one at first sight). The first step is breeding the beneficial microbes in the soil. The second step is growing plants in that soil when the microbes enter the plants which we eat and act as natural pre and pro biotics.

This is a system which has been working successfully for hundred of thousands of years but how can we apply this to modern society?

Breeding the microbes in the soil is not a difficult process – microbes are randy little creatures and will breed up at super high speed given any opportunity – they make modern teenagers look like ageing nuns by comparison.

But it is not simply the microbes breeding in the soil; a healthy soil is full of macrobes – the larger creatures like worms – which have guts like us and where it seems that much of the microbes that will end up in our gut start their life.

The issue is that there are also harmful microbes which are equally keen to breed.

Which group (the goodies or the baddies) are the successful breeders depends on the conditions – obviously food and inoculants are important but moisture is the key critical issue.

We need that magic Goldilocks moisture – not too dry and not too wet – just right.

We know how to do that – this is the whole point of the Gbiota in-ground beds – to breed the beneficial microbes by controlling the moisture levels.

Back to the flat

Let us get back to the flat but not necessarily to some upmarket block in the centre of a major city but where the majority of people now live.

Let us think about a single mum with three kids, working two jobs to pay the exorbitant rents that seem to be a feature of modern life.

She is no more able to breed beneficial microbes in her flat than the trendy (but dedicated) young man in the city centre.

We can break this deadlock by splitting the process into two stages with two groups of people. We have one group of people with a bit of land and the time and skills to breed the beneficial microbes in the ground in raised garden beds to produce the growing medium we call Wickimix which can be placed into Gbiota Wicking boxes.

This is full of beneficial microbes and essential trace minerals which are often lacking in our modern diet.

This can then be placed into Gbiota Wicking beds which provide genuinely fresh food full of microbes.

People in the city can then be eating fresh plants growing in their flat which they can pick and eat directly.

This is important as these microbes not only breed incredibly fast but they also die incredibly fast so people need to be able to pick and eat without the delay involved in our current food system.

The aim of the Gbiota project is to breed these beneficial microbes in the soil, grow plants then eat while genuinely fresh.

Developing the technology

I have been developing this technology for many years and have a manageable number of dedicated home growers using this technology.

However, for the majority of the population, this is simply not viable so I developed a system where dedicated growers can grow the soil (called Wickimix) which can be put into Gbiota wicking boxes so people living in apartments or without time or space can have plants growing at home which they can eat fresh.

This does require consumers to link up with the dedicated growers. I have started to promote this idea and I now have responses from thousands of people who want the Gbiota wicking boxes at home.

Last time I looked in the mirror there was just one of me, a fit and healthy 83 year old but still 83. I simply cannot manage to link up consumers and growers when we are looking at thousands of people but I can provide the technical support for the growers to set up the in-ground beds to breed the beneficial microbes.

I do this because I see how, in our modern society, the negative health outcomes of a lack of good gut health – diabetes, overweight, heart attacks, dementia etc. – which are largely avoidable. I believe we need to change this – but the harsh fact is there is still just one of me and as yet I have not developed the technology of cloning or reversing ageing.

The community site

I have set up a community site for growers and consumers to link up and participate in local forums but this still needs a lot of work to make it refined to the level I would like – but I am busy working on it.

I suspect that many people who have signed up for the project were expecting that everything would be handed to them on a plate – that is just not the case. They will need to put the time and energy in building up their local gut food community.

Just to explain there are really separate sites. Gbiota.com is the parent site which is essentially for exchange of information. Gbiota.club is where growers and consumers can find each other and form groups and forums to exchange information, ideas and products.

I have been growing for many years and either end up with surpluses or shortages and would often want to swap some of my surpluses with other growers’ surpluses. It just makes practical sense.

The third area is pickandeat.shop which is a site where growers and consumers can buy and sell.

I am suggesting that people who are already registered on gbiota.com (the technical site) also join the community site which is where the social action is.

Thank you for your cooperation.

Colin