The Health Myth
Across the globe people are getting fat leading to an epidemic of chronic diseases. Here is why and what we can do about it.
Our gut-brain
In our gut, we have trillions of microbes of thousands of different species.
We know about swarm or crowd intelligence from studying swarms in nature, in birds, bees, and insects – particularly ants and bees and of course that freak of nature slime moulds.
It is Really Smart
Our human gut is smart.
Each insignificant microbes or cell can communicate with its neighbours, our head brain, and an array of sensors throughout our body to form our intelligent control system which regulates our bodies.
Intelligent control systems are important.
We don’t get fat and sick simply because we eat too much. We get fat and sick because our intelligent control system decides we need to store more fat and then sends out signals so we overeat.
The three steps to a healthy gut-brain
Get the right microbes
The first step is to get the right microbes.
We normally get our first flush of microbes during birth, but after that, we get them from our food, specifically plants grown in living soil and eaten fresh.
Living soil is full of beneficial microbes, or more correctly creatures with guts like ours – full of beneficial microbes.
Feed the microbes
Microbes have a short life, if we supply them with the right food they will breed inside us but we still need to continuously enhance them by eating plants containing a broad spectrum of beneficial microbes.
If we don’t feed our gut fresh microbes the species profile will change for the worse.
In our modern food system, we fail miserably at feeding our gut-brain. Not good.
Train our gut-brain
We must train our gut-brain. When we are born it has no idea what food is good for us and what food is harmful.
Just like Artificial Intelligence it learns by looking at a mass of information over time and developing associations but has no understanding.
Conscious and sub-conscious brains
There is a fundamental difference between the way our conscious and subconscious brains work.
If we ask our conscious brains why we like chocolate it will try and develop an explanation based on understanding, chocolate contains endorphins which lead to the production of feel-good chemicals like dopamine.
Ask our subconscious brain and it does not care, it just sees an association between chocolate and feeling good.
It is the difference between real and artificial intelligence – associations or understanding.
Our bodies will always give priority to our subconscious brain which is why just telling people to eat less fails so spectacularly. Our conscious brain may understand we should eat less but our subconscious brain is saying you are hungry eat more and eventually wins.
The epidemic
We are suffering from a worldwide epidemic of chronic diseases – obesity, diabetes, heart attacks, and dementia. The personal and economic costs are massive.
The underlying cause is we are not caring for our gut-brain which we are depleting and then training to crave sugary fatty foods. A formula for disaster.
We need to care for our gut-brain by the three basic rules – ensure the right spectrum of microbes, then feed and train them.
We are not going to solve this by appealing to our conscious brain saying eat less.
This shows the wisdom of the saying that for every difficult and complex problem, there is a simple solution that does not work.
We know how to ameliorate the epidemic, we have to follow the three rules of caring for our gut brain, that is what Gbiota is all about but we have to get this message out to the community, our health professionals and Governments.
More detailed explanations are on my web gbiota.com and you can always contact me from there, then help spread the word. Eight million people a year have a limb amputated from diabetes – those facing the horrors of the epidemic of chronic diseases will thank you.
