Breeding gut microbes
Right now you are successfully breeding beneficial microbes in your gut. That is good because most people want to live a long life, be strong, fit and healthy and avoid diseases and that needs a healthy gut.
You don’t need to be a post doc in microbiology to breed gut microbes, you are doing it right now, your cat, dog and budgy do it and your great, great grandmother did it without even knowing they were doing it but it really helps you do it much better if you have a basic understanding of ecological balance.
Ecology, cooperation and mutual benefit
An ecological system is when several different species cooperate together for their overall benefit.
In your gut you may have over a thousand different species of microbes and you provide them with the three essentials of life, food, air and water. Without you they would die so they go to great length to keep you alive and well for as long as possible. That is mutual benefit – you and your but microbes both win.
There was a time, not so long ago, when people thought that our gut was just a dull boring organ which helped us digest our food. But then some bright spark invented computers and it suddenly clicked that our gut was just like a computer with trillions of cells communicating with each other and the cells in our head brain to create an intelligent control system.
Our very smart gut brain
We knew we had a ‘conscious’ intelligent control system which enabled us to work the remote control for our TV so we could decide what channel to watch but we had not really appreciated this ‘subconscious’ intelligent control system which controlled so many vital bodily functions – from the itch on our nose, to our body temperature, heart and breathing rates.
But there are two things it controls which are fundamentally important to living a long and healthy life free of disease – our appetite and our immune system.
And it is much smarter than we have given it credit for. We have known for a long time that our gut by controlling our appetite by sensing if we are full or empty and release hormones like ghrelin and leptin to make us hungry so we eat or feel full so stop eating. That it pretty easy for energy food when all we need is an extra burst of sugary fatty food to give us an energy burst.
Not just full or empty
But our gut is much smarter than that – it can detect the types of food that we need and create a complex array of hormones which tell us what sort of food we should be eating. If we are short of some critical mineral calcium, iron, zinc, magnesium or whatever it will send us a message saying ‘look you have plenty of energy food but you need a bit more zinc to get your immune system working – so go out and eat some zincy food’.
Unfortunately it does not send us a nice clear text message on our mobile phone, it just creates a feeling that we need to eat something different.
If you have ever wondered around the kitchen thinking I want to want to eat something but I don’t know quite what, then that is you gut brain sending you messages.
So our gut healthy brain is really important if we want to live a long and healthy life, fit and healthy and free of disease but how do we get a healthy gut brain?
How to get a healthy gut brain
Fortunately we don’t have to build a new gut brain from scratch – that would make a good science fiction thriller for Netflix but we are a long way from having that technology.
We don’t need some wonder new technology – gut microbes and the animals in which they live have been evolving for millions of years and evolution has got it pretty well sorted out – if we are willing to learn.
And it really starts in the soil.
Where do the microbes come from?
Ask a doctor where our gut microbes come from and they may tell your from your mum at birth and during breast feeding. And that is true – but where do they come from in the first place and the answer is from the soil.
You may think that gut biology is complex but it is nothing compared to the complexity of life in the soil which has a bewildering array of tiny microbes of all sorts plus macro creatures, like worms, which have their own guts where yet more microbes are breeding.
Ecological balance
We are not writing a Ph.D thesis so we can make if very simple. Forget about the thousands of species of microbes and just say there are really two types of bugs, there are the good bugs we need for our health and the bad bugs which use our bodies to breed in (and make us sick or even get it wrong and kill us when they have to find a new host to breed in – that’s infection).
The question is how can we breed the beneficial microbes and not be over whelmed by the bad microbes?
You may have heard that Ecology is about survival of the fittest but actually it is about survival of the best breeders. Some creatures, like us have very few children (relative to frogs) but we take great care of them so they survive.
Other creatures, like our gut microbes, breed like crazy with just some surviving.
Some enthusiastic scientist have tried killing of all the bad bugs in the soil with the highly toxic methyl bromide then reintroducing beneficial microbes. This has been a total failure as we really do not know enough about the complexity of microbial systems.
It is important to recognise what we know and what we don’t know and there is still a lot we don’t know about the complex world of microbial systems.
Instead we adopt the simple process of ecological balance – just manage the conditions that favour the beneficial microbes so they out breed and out compete the harmful microbes.
Simple but effective.
The Gbiota system
The Gbiota system is simply a way of breeding the beneficial biology which live in our gut and forms our intelligent control system. We breed this beneficial biology in the soil (and in the guts of the creatures that live in the soil) in organic matter in the soil by controlling the critical moisture level – too dry and the biology wont breed – too wet and the harmful biology will out breed the beneficial biology.
We know how to grow these plants and microbes, they need food, air and water – not too much just right. We can get that from raised beds with drainage and irrigation pipes to flood the base expelling stale air then draining the water to suck in fresh air, then recycle the water so it keeps on moving and is never stagnant
This is really pretty simple and one of our jobs at Gbiota is to provide documentation, training and support on how to set up and run these beds and that has been relatively successful with many home gardeners now setting up and using their own Gbiota beds and breeding their own beneficial microbes.
8 billion and growing
But everyone has a gut, there are some 8 billion (and growing) people in the world with a gut. There has been a mass migration from rural areas to cities with a large number of people living in apartments.
And to make it worse we have climate change, a couple of degrees, in itself is not a big deal, but the cycles of extreme weather from floods and droughts is already causing a threat to our food system. So how can we get a system where people living in cities can have reliable access to gut brain food in this challenging new world we live in?
Gbiota boxes
That is why we developed the Gbiota box.
The Biobox is an extension of the classic Gbiota bed and is simply a scaled down version of a full sized Gbiota bed. The Biobox is loaded with soil (Wickimix) from a Gbiota bed, and planted.
The purpose of the BioBox is that anyone, even without a growing area, space, time and skills can have the advantage of having Gbiota plants growing on their property ready to harvest so the are genuinely fresh.
The Gbiota club
The Biobox can be made and filled by an experienced grower who loads the box with soil from a Gbiota bed (Wickimix) which should be full of worms and organic life and seeded, probably with a range of companion plants.
This is delivered to the customer who simply has to water the box until the plants are ready to harvest or preferably by ‘Tipping’ just cutting of the new shoots as they emerge and letting the plants regrow.
These can be used in salads, as a side dish to a normal meal or for those who just don’t want to think about all these natural food things just make a green smoothy.
Bioboxes are a very cost effective way for people to access Gbiota food.
Hi Mary I am Joe just down the road
This is all a great step forward but there is still one more problem to overcome. All this natural food may be great but it is still living food – not some inert food – so it must be eaten fresh and in reality that means grown local.
Joe, down the road, may be very happy to set up Gbiota beds and earn some extra money by running a side hustle supplying Wickimix and or Gbiota boxes and Mary may be very happy to have a Gbiota box growing genuinely fresh food in her apartments but how does Joe and Mary get together.
That is where the Gbiota club comes into play with a private social media site with Geo location where both Joe and Mary can make their own icons on a map to show they are interest in gut brain food.
This way they can meet up, form groups, exchange information and support each other. Just click on community and join the Gbiota movement.
I am a real person contact me at colin@gbiota.com
