Invitation to medical researchers

Every eight seconds someone has a limb amputated from diabetes.  We know how to save peoples feet but we need to make this technology go main stream.  This is an invite to medical researches to join in a project to save peoples feet from the knife.

Infectious and non infectious diseases

From when humanoids first appeared infectious diseases were the number one threat. As a kid (a long time ago) if some other kid developed a child hood disease there would be a chicken pox party for all the local kids so we caught it and developed immunity.

The young were particularly prone with many dying but if you made it to 30 then there was a good chance that you would live to a ripe old age.

Then there were amazing development in medical research, particularly vaccines and antibiotics so it looked as though we had won the battle but non infectious diseases increased dramatically.

Specifically people were getting fatter and diseases, like diabetes which is associated with excess storage of fat in the pancreas, became the fastest growing of these modern diseases.

The battle of the bulge

This excess storage of fat was largely blamed on our modern diet which could, it was optimistically thought, simply be resolved by diet, particularly the restriction of calories.

The harsh reality is that this simply has not worked and populations across the globe continue to get fatter and suffer from the related diseases. This is probably the biggest health issue facing modern humans.

Calorie restriction simply does not work and actually seems to make it worse as the body reacts by storing more fat and the resultant cravings eventually lead to even more fat being stored.

So what is going on?

Intelligent control systems

I am an engineer, I am not a medical doctor and have no formal qualifications in microbiology or biochemistry. Engineers make machines and every machine has some form of control system, even if it is a simple on off switch.

Learning how control systems work is an everyday job for engineers.

With the advent of computers we were able to device really sophisticated controllers that were given various names, adaptive control, fuzzy logic, self learning software, predictor corrector and more recently as a sub branch of artificial intelligence.

But they all work on the same principle, make a very small change to the system and monitor what happens. If it is good make a larger calculated change and again see what happens and keep on doing this until the computer has learned with a very good understanding of how to control the machine.

Intelligent control is my preferred name for this.

The human body – the master intelligent control system

There is no doubt that this is exactly the way the human body works. Don’t believe me – think of a three year old kid learning to ride a bike.

I can remember at university learning about rotational inertia and gyroscopic couples which explains exactly how a bicycle works. The gyroscopic forces twist the handlebars so we steer in the direction the bike is falling.

I come from a family of engineers and have engineering friends who like me are a bit OCDish about their profession but I have yet to see an engineer putting his three year old kid on his lap and explain the theory of gyroscopic couples to teach his kid how to ride a bike.

No – the kid sees other kids riding bicycles, gets on and falls off and keeps on doing that until he magically masters the art.

It takes less than an hour and a few cut knees.

Engineers and intelligent control systems

I understand this process of how intelligent control systems work, I used to write software to do precisely this. As a pioneer in the use of computers to solve engineering problems I was recognised by the Institute of Engineers as one of the top one hundred Australian innovators.

Our bodies have an intelligent control system to manage our bodies, it works in exactly the same way as adaptive control systems work but is far more sophisticated then anything I ,or any other engineer, could write and is way beyond our understanding – but it is the way we work.

We don’t control the speed of a car by how much fuel we put in the tank but we use an intelligent controller, we call the driver, read my article Lamborghini and our gut.

Let us face reality

Medical science has made major advances in fighting infectious diseases and until recently has been increasing our life span.

But in this modern era of non infectious diseases we are going backwards, our health span (how long we remain healthy rather then live) is decreasing and with the diseases that stem from storing excess fat like diabetes we are loosing the battle. Just go round any shopping centre and see for yourself.

Our attempts to combat this by restrictive diets, particularly those that just focus on restricting calories, are not working and are actually making things work as our intelligent control system fights back.

We are fighting our intelligent control system rather than working with it. Not good.

Every eight seconds some has a limb amputated from a side affect of diabetes, we are loosing the battle and need to change tack.

Changing tack

We need to change tack by working with our in built intelligent control system rather than fighting it.

But neither I nor anyone else really understands the detailed coding of how our intelligent control systems works. We may one day but every eight seconds we delay some unfortunate person has a limb amputated.

How many feet are we prepared to have chopped of before we act?

We do not need a complete understanding of how our intelligent control system works. Our three year old kid happily rides her bike with absolutely no understanding of gyroscopic forces and probably never will.

But she does know that she has to let the bike steer into the direction she is falling and everything will be fine.

In the same way we know what we have to do. We have to change our gut biome, which is key to our intelligent control system, so we want to eat the sort of food that will change our intelligent control system – our gut brain.

It is not a question of forcing us to eat some horrible restrictive diet which we hate and does not work, it is changing our gut biome – which naturally regulates what and how much we eat – so we actually want to eat food that will make us healthy.

We do that in exactly the same way that our three year old kids learns to ride a bike, by seeing what works.

What worked then and now

Visit the hunter gatherer tribes in Tanzania or the Amazon or any of the blue zones where people live a healthy life to a ripe old age. Do you see them sitting around their DNA testing machines looking at the latest results for their gut biome? No.

But you do see them picking and eating plants which are growing in soil which is teaming with all sorts of wriggly creatures.

When experts actually analyse the results of any DNA test they conduct they see they have the most diverse and healthy gut biome and that the non infectious diseases, like diabetes are virtually unknown.

Now don’t get me wrong. We cannot go back to that early life style, there is too many of us, rather we should study their foods and see what we can learn then apply this with the best technology that is available to us right now.

We should not be tempted to wait until we have the perfect solution, as they say perfection is the enemy of progress.

The Gbiota system

These are the principles I used to develop the Gbiota system, breed the beneficial organisms in organic waste to create a growing mix which can be placed into boxes so people can have plants ready to pick and eat in their own home.

See the Wickimix story.

This is a simple but effective way of changing our intelligent control system – our gut brain.

This technology is now used by a group of dedicated growers who are prepared to spend their time understanding the basic principles and grow some of their own food. Technical details are in the growing section

But this only reaches a very small proportion of the population and every eight seconds someone has a foot chopped off.

If we are going to prevent people having their foot chopped of we need to make this technology mainstream and for that we need the cooperation of medical researchers which is why I extend an invitation to work together to make this mainstream.

With the harm caused to the public and the cost to the medical system of non infectious disease it should not be too difficult to raise the funds to sponsor a few of our young and brightest researchers to work in this field.

Please contact me at colin@gbiota.com