Your turn

The story so far

Twenty-four years ago my arteries clogged up and I needed an emergency triple bypass. Fifteen years later my wife, Xiulan, a medical doctor became diabetic, her foot started turning black and we were told she needed to have her foot amputated.

Statistically, I should be dead, but I am not, I am fit and healthy and Xiulan still has both her feet.

What happened?

We wanted to know more and what we found was that chronic or non-infectious diseases, obesity, diabetes, heart attacks and dementia are the most common causes of sickness and death. The statistics are horrifying with eight million people are year having a limb amputated from diabetes from what we are told (wrongly) is a irreversible disease.

Chronic diseases all have the common feature of the wrong fat in the wrong place.

The tank theory

And what are we told? Eat less exercise more. This is what I call the tank theory, there is food going into your tummy and food being used.

If you eat more than what you use the tank overflows and you store fat and end up with one of these horrible chronic diseases.

This assumes our bodies have no intelligence and just work on a simple basis of energy in and energy out.

Our bodies are much more complicated than that.

The deficit theory

It is not simply we are little piggies and eat too much food it is because we have a deficit in our diet. and we need to fix that deficit.

Our bodies, actually our gut-brain have real intelligence and can detect for deficiencies in our bodies and hit the red alarm bell sending out messages for us to eat more.

When it senses that we have all the multitude of nutrients that we need it sends out signals saying you are full stop eating.

You may have heard of drugs like Ozempic which work by reducing appetite. Our bodies naturally produce natural hunger suppressants without the side effects of drugs (or cost).

Our super-computer

Out gut-brain is like a super-computer in our gut with trillions of cells communicating with each other and making decisions.

If we have the wrong microbes in our gut it does not work as it should and tell us to stop eating – that is probably the most common cause of obesity.

The Food, drug, and supplement industries

The food industry is the worlds largest industry with estimated revenues of around $15 trillion dollars. It is extremely efficient in producing high-calorie food in vast quantities which is highly profitable but is low in essential trace minerals and even more importantly deficient in the microbes needed to power our gut-brain.

The drug and supplement industries try and overcome this deficiency which they do well in supplying trace minerals and specific chemicals.

Together these industries spend billions of dollars in very clever advertising to sell their products, but the fact remains that every year the number of people suffering from chronic diseases, stemming from the wrong fat in the wrong places, steadily increases.

What works?

The only effective way of providing the essential microbes is by growing plants in living soil, full of beneficial microbes and nutrients. This is the way we used to eat so has been tested over thousands of years.

Chronic diseases have only reached epidemic proportions since we changed our food system.

Growing gut-brain food is simple, anyone can do it, even people living in an apartment and it costs less than buying food from the supermarket.

You may think that a system which costs less and reduces the risk of having a leg amputated from diabetes would be widely adopted – the benefits are so overwhelming – but that is not the case for a simple reason.

Showing people how to grow gut-brain food does not generate the billions of dollars to compete with the advertising budgets of the mega industries.

Social movement

We know how to grow gut-brain food. The question is how to get that message out to the millions of people at risk of chronic disease amidst a barrage of manipulative advertising.

This will only happen with a social movement.

People need to talk to real people who are growing their own gut-brain food so they can see for themselves that this works in the real world and is not a figment from the virtual world of the digital society.

With eight million people having a limb amputated from diabetes, with the increasing impact of climate change and degradation of our soils, this is one of the most critical issues facing the future of humanity.

I, just one eighty-four year old man, can do little to change this. Last time I looked at my bank account I did not see billions of dollars just lying there for me to run an advertising campaign.

But what I can do is provide the mechanism for people who are growing their own gut-brain food to tell their story.

The communal web

I have taken three steps so people can communicate.

I have added a plugin to gbiota.com which enables external people to make posts. I have to restrict use to protect against spammers, (the curse of the modern web), but it is free but you must sign in to post.

I have spent the last twenty-five years working on sustainable food production for health because I don’t like bingo or bowls and want to feel that in the last years of my life, I making a useful contribution to society, my grandkids and now my great grandkids.

In return, I ask you contribute by sharing your experiences with growing gut-brain food.

I have also been working on turning my second web gbiota.club into a viable website. The big advantage of this site is that it allows users to form local groups to share information and experiences.

I also have been re-activating my Facebook page Gbiota Club which has the big advantage of reaching a wider audience.