Food is Information

“Let food be thy medicine and thy medicine shall be thy food”
-Hippocrates

After a lifetime of work, Hippocrates concluded that all disease begins in the gut.

What kind of information are you giving your body?  Which provides better information? A tomato or a donut?  How does this affect our health? What difference does the type of food we eat make in our little gut-world (microbiome)? The field of medicine is now starting to realize that it makes a huge difference!

Studies done about the Microbiome from 2000-2006= 0

Studies done about the microbiome from 2007-2015= 2,007

There has been a huge increase in interest in this amazing little world going on in your body that you are governing.

2/3rds or your organs are involved in digesting, absorbing or assimilating (using) the food you eat. This world is dominated and lived in by trillions of microbes, 4-6 pounds of them to be exact. There are 6000+ species of them.

The bacteria of the mother are passed on to the baby at birth. The metabolic (in part, is the fat burning capacity) outcome of the baby is set therefore at birth. If good a good microbiome is set up at birth then that will ensure good metabolism for the child, if a poor microbiome has been passed on, then the outcome is a predisposition for obesity.

Breast fed babies have a higher abundance and a more diverse microbiota than formula fed babies. Early gut microbiota consists of bacteria that can metabolize lactose. An example of the microbiota difference can be seen in this sample taken from bottle fed babies versus breast fed babies.

On average:

• Breast fed babies -good Bacteroidetes =19.6
  • bad Firmicutes  =9.8
• Bottle fed babies-good Bacteroidetes =0
  • bad Firmicutes = 35.1

The bad bacteria (firmicutes) love salt, sugar and fat.

Babies have an imbalance in their metabolism even if it is just formula fed and does not eat these other things. By age 3 most of the microbiome is set in stone and it will take a whole lot of work to change it.

Your microbiome is everywhere, your skin, gut, mouth, your nose, your hair. If you shake hands with someone with your left hand you are sharing 1/6^th of your microbiome with them. Some will stay with them, some won’t.

Your Health Starts in Your Gut

New findings in the last 5-10 years are that there is a gut/brain access. Both the gut and the brain develop from the same tissue. They are bi-directional which means that they communicate with each other. It’s more than a “gut feeling”. The gut is connected to the nervous system. What would happen if we had a disrupted digestive system that had a direct effect on our behavior? Well, it does.

 Brain-Gut Connection

The condition of the gut dictates a lot of your moods, behavior, psychosis, etc.

• Studies show: gut microbiome can have a significant influence on psychosis, mood, and behavior via communication along the gut-brain axis and the HPA axis

• Research: indicates exposure to stressful events influences the composition of the microbiome creating both short and long-term effects

Disruption by these bacteria equals negative effects on your mood and your behavior. Too many GMO’s, EMI’s, microwaves, and anti-biotics affects what happens to our microbiome and changes them. 90% of your serotonin (think happy brain chemical) is made in the gut and is influenced by your microbiome. Depression, mental disorders, immunity, anxiety, are all implicated in the poor health of the gut.

The word dysbiosis means difficult or out of balance. It can be caused by alcohol consumption, antibiotics and diet and had been indicated in cardiovascular disease, fungal and bacterial overload, IBS/colitis, obesity, diabetes and metabolic syndrome. Metabolic syndrome is a lifestyle disorder characterized by elevated fasting glucose, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, polycystic ovarian syndrome and obesity. The longer you have any of these the more you are at risk for developing Type 2 Diabetes and cardiovascular complications.

If you change the gut, you change the microbiome.

If you change the microbiome, you change the person.

As of 2009, 1/3^rd of adults have metabolic syndrome. Skinny people can develop pre-diabetes  (metabolic syndrome). They look skinny outside but have too much visceral fat. This is fat around the abdomen and vital organs. This is called being metabolically obese. These people have metabolic toxemia which is when the level of endotoxins (from bacteria) are 2-3 times too high and things start leaking. The cell walls of their bacteria contain compounds (toxins) that leak into the bloodstream when the gut lining is compromised,) resulting in systemic overload. This can result in insulin resistance, mood disorders, muscle pain and fatty liver.

When systemic overload occurs, there is increased intestinal permeability.

Leaky Gut

Leaky gut is caused by disrupted intesitinal  “tight junctions” or the space between the cells. This creates loss of a healthy gut barrier between the gut and the bloodstream. Then bacterial toxins leak beyond the mucosal barrier which continues to weaken the tight junctions. This can cause immune disorders or auto-Immune problems, and then the liver takes a beating and becomes inflamed and starts to replace itself with fat. As fat replaces healthy cells you get what is called nonalcoholic hepatitis (“itis” means inflammation) and if left long enough can turn into cirrhosis.

Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) ranges in from 17% – 33% of the population. It is the fastest growing diagnosed disease in North America today.  NAFLD can progress from normal, to fatty liver to cirrhosis of the liver. Many studies found a relationship between the gut microbiota and NAFLD. This can all change with the addition of probiotics.

Obesity and your Microbiota

Obesity is associated with microbiota rich in the bacteria belonging to firmicutes (not the good ones) family. Researchers have found that the microbiota from obese mice was dominated by firmicutes whereas the guts in thin mice favoured bacteriodetes (the good type of bacteria).

Harvard University studies showed dieting and gastric bypass shifts the gut to more good bacteria (bacteroidetes) and less firmicutes.  Shifting of the gut bacteria through changing the diet to include an abundance of beneficial bacteria can show the same results when compared to surgery.

We transfer bacteria back and forth to each other and the diversity of these bacteria is healthy and diverse. Children raised with dogs have a better immune system. 70% of our immune system comes from the gut and close contact with animals and other humans creates a better immune system in children.

The Fish Tank Analogy

Think of your  gut as an aquarium and your fish as your bacteria. The pH of the water keeps everything in balance. The microbiome of the sediment or soil in the tank should eat up the bacteria to keep it clean. The tank also needs to be solid and have no leaks.

Fish can’t live underfed, over fed or fed the wrong type of food. Our fish (bacteria) love to eat plants, fiber, and fermented food and have good clean water.

So what do you do if your fish tank is filthy, your fish are sick and the tank is leaky? Well, it would really do no good to just put new fish (bacteria) in before repairing the tank. You could be eating very good food but seeing no improvement in your health because your fish are sick. You are missing some very important steps in improving your overall health.  You could be using very good supplements and herbs but again without the proper bacteria level to digest them properly, you get minimal goodness from them.  What about those probiotics that you buy from the store advertising billions and billions of good bacteria in them? Surprise!!! The amounts of bacteria (fish) that you put into your gut (fish tank) doesn’t matter. Even small amounts of good quality bacteria will thrive and reproduce in a clean aquarium if it is clean and gets good food and doesn’t keep leaking out.

Let’s look then at three important steps to get your fish tank working well.

Reset, Repair, Replenish

Reset (or remove): First you must remove the nasty things in the tank. Get rid of chemical toxins in your diet, get rid of pollutants in your home and stop drinking those high sugary beverages that lower your fish tank’s PH and make it too acidic for your fish to live in. (I drink a green drink (Chlorophyll) which is very alkaline, to help make the PH of my tank is good)

Repair: Provide nutritional support for healing and the regeneration of the fish tank. Phytotherapy  (plant therapy) because it’s anti-inflammatory, along with vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, essential fatty acids and good amino acids and proteins all work to repair your guts. Protein is the main functional and structural component of all cells in your body. One important protein is L-glutamine. It is like glue that gels the cracks back together again. Protein shakes with plants provide the body with what it needs to repair your fish tank and stop it from leaking.

Replenish: Restore a healthy balance of beneficial bacteria by re-inoculating with a good gastrointestinal flora. Only do this after you have reset and repaired. If you do this and skip the first two steps, you get a civil war going on between the good and bad fish (bacteria). This will cause gas and bloating and not make you feel well at all. Putting good bacteria in after you have cleaned up your tank will create a healthy environment that will not allow the bad bacteria to flourish. 50% of fecal matter (poop) is dead bacteria so we need to put good bacteria back in.

You can accomplish these three steps with one simple program!

1. Add a good protein shake with good plants and L-glutamine (the glue). The one that I use is mentioned below and helps with creating lean muscle mass, adds fiber (the prebiotics to feed my probiotics), has 20 grams of protein per serving, has legumes and flax and berries and only costs about the same as it would cost you to eat breakfast.
2. To repair my gut and combat toxins that cause leaky gut and encourage a healthy gut population, I use a combination of alkaloid herbs. I have mentioned it below. It also helps me to accept my insulin better and achieve better triglycerides (fats in my blood) and healthier cholesterol levels.
3. Add a good variety of good quality fish (probiotics).

Remember, Change your gut… change your Health. It all starts here!