Community Health
Colin Austin© 2024 Published under the Creative Commons system. This article may be reproduced without further permission, just acknowledgement of source www.gbiota.com
The essence
We are in the midst of an epidemic of chronic diseases, overweight, diabetes, heart attacks and dementia.
It is a problem for almost everyone, three out of four people will die prematurely from a chronic disease, it is the great health challenge of our time.
We know chronic diseases are caused by the wrong fat in the wrong place but what makes us store more fat?
Just take a look around your local shopping centre and see the number of wobbly bums and tums and people with a diabetic amputation.
But why are so many people getting fat?
Changing paradigms
The current paradigm is the calorie balance theory, we eat more more calories than we consume. We get fat because we are little piggies and overeat.
This is a popular theory with the powerful food industry because it means it is not their fault, it is your fault for being a little piggy.
They are very good at manipulative promotion so the calorie imbalance theory has become the accepted paradigm and that has to change.
Partial truth
The basic laws of physics, like the conservation of mass and energy, are valid. To get fat and sick we need to consume more than we burn. This is what enables us to get fat but is not the reason.
The calorie balance theory may be convenient, popular with big food and have some elements of truth but it is only part of the story.
So what is the real reason?
Our intelligent control system
Our bodies have a built-in intelligent control system which regulates our bodies, particularly our appetite and immune system.
We have known this for 175 years but still struggle to understand exactly how it works. Just because we don’t fully understand how it works does not mean it does not exist.
There is ample observational evidence showing that it exists and works. Without our intelligent control system, we would not survive, it is essential for life.
Our gut-brain, the microbes in our gut communicating with each other, creating intelligence so are an essential part of this control system.
For hundreds of thousands of years, we fed our gut-brain so there was no epidemic of obesity or chronic or non-infectious disease – we died mainly from infectious diseases.
But our food system changed and no longer contains gut-brain food so our gut-brain senses this deficit and sends out hormones to make us crave food and overeat.
Despite all efforts to apply the calorie balance, the epidemic gets worse day by day.
Social and technical challenges
The social challenge, however difficult it is to create a paradigm shift from the calorie balance paradigm to the intelligent control paradigm.
The technical challenge is to breed the beneficial microbes without breeding the harmful microbes. This must be simple and economical enough to be done at scale so the population as a whole can live a healthy life.
Health should not be a luxury for the wealthy.
Feed your gut-brain
We know how to feed our gut brain, it is straightforward and inexpensive, but must be done right – breed the beneficial microbes in a special growing medium controlling the conditions so the beneficial microbes preferentially outbreed any harmful microbes, grow plants and eat the plants shortly after harvesting.
Changing paradigms is always a bloody business but with the vested interests, this will be a particularly bloody battle.
Here we tell the story of this bloody battle.
Preface
I would rate climate change as the biggest existential threat to humanity and food and the epidemic of chronic diseases as the second.
However, there is one fundamental difference.
With climate change we know what needs to be done, we may not like the idea of stopping burning fossil fuels and there are very powerful companies using very clever but manipulative tactics, to protect their profits, but we at least know what we should be doing.
The technology we need to apply is not disputed – the problem is the social one of how to make the change happen.
This is not the case with chronic diseases. We know that before 1940 there were people who suffered from chronic diseases but it was not an epidemic.
Since the modern food system developed after the war, it has transformed into a global epidemic. Diabetes is the fastest growing disease with 8 million people a year suffering from a limb amputation.
It is a global phenomenon with every country struggling to learn how to deal with it, and failing miserably.
No country has solved the epidemic of chronic diseases.
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It is not just rich countries, poor countries have suffered far more. In these countries, when fed using their traditional agriculture, there was no major issue with chronic diseases.
However many of these countries swapped from their own food production to the far more profitable system of growing for the rich countries while importing the supposed more convenient modern processed foods which has led to some of the worst cases of chronic illnesses.
This is powerful evidence that this epidemic of chronic diseases is linked to our modern food system.
The epidemic is man-made, it will not be solved by some magic pill or wonder plants. We certainly have to look at the technology but if we are going to be successful in combating the chronic disease epidemic we have to look at the society which allowed the epidemic to evolve.
A pretty hot topic.
Introduction
The widely held view, simplistic and wrong, is that this epidemic is caused by our modern foods, full of sugars, fats and flavourings (often addictive) which has led to the view that this can be resolved by the calorie balance, eat less exercise more and the problem will be resolved.
We have been trying that formula for half a century, it has failed miserably.
If I can quote the old adage – the difference between a wise man and a fool is that they both make mistakes but the fool continues with the same approach while the wise man tries to understand why he failed, and learns from the experience to develop a new approach.
Climate change is the sister problem to the chronic disease epidemic and they have a lot in common.
We can learn a lot about how to combat chronic diseases by comparing the history of climate change and chronic diseases.
Comparing climate change and the chronic disease epidemic
Studies in both areas started around 1850.
Early climate change
With Climate change the early pioneers were Fourier in 1824, but it was in 1856 that Eunice Foote demonstrated the warming effect of the sun is greater for air with water vapour than for dry air, and the effect is even greater with carbon dioxide.
Despite her pioneering work climate change is typically associated with Svante Arrhenius in 1896.
We had to wait until 1938 for steam engineer Guy Callendar to do the grunt work of calculating the expected rise in temperature from various levels of greenhouse gases. Working with pencil, paper and slide rule he came up with pretty much the same answer as our modern-day supercomputers.
Early intelligent control
But so we keep to the same era let me switch to the history of Intelligent control.
The work on what we now call the intelligent control system is similarly dated starting with the concept of what was then called ‘the regulation of the internal environment’ was described by French physiologist Claude Bernard in 1849, and the word homeostasis was coined by Walter Bradford Cannon in 1926.
Basically, we are talking about how the body naturally self-regulates – a topic critical to combating the chronic disease epidemic.
In both cases we are not talking about some magic innovation but with a history going back the best part of 200 years.
The Social Side of Modern-day Climate Change
You may wonder why in an article on the chronic disease epidemic I am talking about climate change.
The answer is simple, we will never resolve the chronic disease epidemic purely by technology, it is man-made and the result of social issues so we have to understand these.
Climate change is further down the road than battling the epidemic so we can learn a lot by studying the climate change battles.
The climate change area got really interesting with the work of Charles Keeling in 1958 with the production of what we now call the Keeling curves which showed a steady increase in greenhouse gas levels.
In the early 60’s he presented his work to Congress to warn the world of the dangers of climate change.
It would be wrong to say that the Government took no action as the National Science Foundation withdrew its funding. If that does not make you stop in your tracks with your mouth wide open I don’t know what will.
But why would they do that?
We know that the oil industry, particularly Exxon were fully aware of the threat that climate change presented to their profits.
Their approach, learned from the Tobacco industry was to promote the idea that climate change has occurred naturally throughout history with periods of intense cold and other periods when the world was much warmer than now.
There were periods when the poles were enjoying a period with a temperate climate with forests and animals just like in modern temperate zones so there is no problem.
That’s if you don’t consider the millions of climate change refugees fleeing their homeland as it becomes uninhabitable.
Presumably, that was the week when mega-fences were on special.
Manipulative promotion
This is the classic technique used in manipulative promotion.
It is no good denying something that is supported by undeniable evidence (like the Keeling curves) instead you provide partial information which is equally valid, like the fact that climate has changed over time but never provide the full information which would reveal your hereditary as a snake oil salesman.
This gains confidence, but only providing partial information gives the impression that the idea you want to deny is either incorrect or irrelevant.
It is very effective.
Watch out, small girl approaching with cardboard placard.
But all this very clever and no doubt expensive manipulation of the Government and the public thinking was thwarted by a little school girl – Greta Thunberg.
Now let us stick to the facts, Greta did not develop solar panels or wind turbines or any new technology, she just read the information that was widely available on climate change, translated it from techno-jargon to everyday English and sat outside the Swedish parliament with a grotty cardboard sign and after a bit managed to convince a few people that this was a real threat that the Government should be doing something about.
And what did the Governments do, just what they had done before – procrastinate and do nothing.
And then more nothing – until
So what happened next? An unprecedented increase in floods, drought, fires and storms that were completely out of the normal so no normal intelligent thinking person could ignore just leaving a few die-hard deniers.
In my life as an innovator, I have had to fight many battles and I used to divide people up into activists – people who would go out on a limb and actually do something, puddings – people who would agree with everything you said but never do anything and crusties – who would just deny anything on principle – the good news is they die off, eventually.
These climate disasters led to protests, with Greta, not so much as the organiser but the symbol that the climate change movement could centre around.
But climate change cannot be averted by demonstrations or even a few dedicated people putting solar panels and batteries on their houses.
It can only be averted by Government action. It is only Governments that can achieve the massive transformation of our society from one based on fossil fuels to one based on renewable resources.
But what those protests did was to show to the Governments that Climate change was not just the interest of a few dedicated climate activists (who could safely be ignored or locked up) but was a serious issue for much of the population.
So the Governments quickly worked out that unless they responded they would be voted out of office and the procrastination evaporated.
What has this to do with the epidemic of chronic disease?
No one disputes that chronic diseases start with the wrong fat in the wrong place.
The question is what is causing this increase in fat?
It is very convenient to say that it is because we eat too much and don’t exercise enough so the solution is to eat less and exercise more. The law of the calorie balance.
This is a very convenient partial truth for the food industry and any procrastinating Government. It takes the responsibility away from them and puts it onto the public who, with a wave of some witches wand, have suddenly turned into little piggies.
It is not my fault
Partial truths are the key tool of those wishing to manipulate the real truth for their benefit and are certainly a bonanza for the food industry – it is not our fault that you get fat and sick and maybe have a leg chopped off from diabetes it is all your fault because you eat too much and don’t exercise enough.
It sounds so reasonable and logical and it is not untrue, it is a partial truth which can be just as harmful as a miss-truth.
We have known for the best part of two hundred years that our bodies have an intelligent control system which regulates our bodies, particularly our appetite or what and how much food we feel we need to eat.
Control systems
Regrettably, we do not know it works, at least at the code level, but we have ample experimental evidence to give us a pretty clear picture of the way it works.
I am an engineer, and engineers make machines and every machine has some form of control system, even if it is just an on/off switch.
My first job was working for a company that made control systems for power stations, later in life I wrote software to manage irrigation systems, which I refer to as self-learning software.
This is not that different to our internal control system which decides how much food we need.
The plants are growing and they need different amounts of water at the various stages of growth, just like humans need different amounts of food as they grow and age.
The conditions are continuously changing, sometimes it is hot and dry and other days it rains, just as some days people go for long walks or are stuck in an office with maybe a lot of stress so each day we need different amounts of different types of food, sometimes energy food and other times comfort food.
In an intelligent irrigation system, we can monitor these conditions, and learn how to apply the right amount of water. We may not know the code in our bodily intelligent control system but we can observe and with an understanding of how intelligent control systems work have a pretty good idea of how our intelligent control system works.
What we see is that if our bodies sense a deficiency in our diet it will respond by sending our hormones to make us feel hungry so we may end up overeating.
If we are on a diet we may manually override these hunger desires, but that is difficult to do for any length of time.
The most common deficiency in modern food is lack of the beneficial microbes that power our gut, but we can also sense deficiencies in trace minerals.
The food industry would much prefer you to think that you are fat and sick because you are a little piggy rather than the real truth that modern food is commonly deficient in both beneficial microbes and trace minerals and that is the true cause of the chronic disease epidemic.
But it is not always the food industry’s fault, as anyone who has spent a hot sweaty day in the garden and craves something salty to eat. This is our intelligent control system doing its job of regulating our food supply to meet current conditions.
Only fools keep on repeating their mistakes
For the best part of fifty years, we have followed the calorie balance approach and every year the epidemic of chronic diseases has increased. Yet we say that it is because people are not trying hard enough and they need to eat even less and exercise even more.
It has the logic of the farmer who was trying to train his donkey to eat less and got it down to one bean a day when the donkey died.
Instead, we need to focus on ensuring our intelligent control system is working properly, which means feeding it gut-brain food and then training it so it learns what type and how much food we need.
Health and the New Capitalist System
We have come a long way since the days of Adams Smith and his perfect market philosophy.
We now live in a new era of mega-corporations with Neo-monopolistic powers that control not just products but also the flow of information. They operate on the principle of profit first, certainly profits before people.
Naturally, the general population look to their Governments to protect them from any potential abuse of power but this is becoming less effective.
Governments themselves are not immune to pressure from these mega organisations which have the power to influence Governments directly by a level of access to Government not available to the general voter but in this age of disinformation, they have the power to influence voter behaviour.
This unwillingness of Governments to exercise control over this market power has led to a widespread disenchantment with the political system and the rise of so-called populist Governments even in countries which have enjoyed a stable moderate Government such as the Scandinavian countries and dare I say Australia which despite its apparent conflicts has been a comparatively well run and stable country.
But despite this Australia is still among the leaders in the epidemic of chronic disease.
So what can we do about it?
Learning from Greta
We can learn from Greta.
The world’s leading scientist were warning their Governments of the dangers of climate change, and they just procrastinated and did nothing.
The fossil fuels companies had a very simple argument, climate change is natural, it has changed many times before from hot to cold. A simple statement of fact with the implication that there was no problem with climate change and we could go on burning fossil fuels (and making profits for the fossil fuel companies).
The Governments were happily under the influence of the fossil fuel companies.
Then along came Greta Thunberg and still nothing happened until the effects of climate change were undeniable (except to the crusties).
Then Greta gave a speech, to my mind one of great speeches of all times. It was not a particularly sophisticated speech, but one only an emotional young girl could give.
Not the sort of speech that Charles Keeling (or I for that matter) could give but what she said changed the world forever.
What she said was ‘You have stolen my future with your Blah, Blah, Blah’.
No sophistication really just one word Blah repeated three times.
No long words like procrastination just Blah, Blah Blah.
I very much doubt if Charles Keeling had ever heard of Greta before but together they changed the world.
Charles Keeling, and all his associates, with all their sophistication and respect as scientists failed to change the course of history unaided.
Greta was not a scientist, did not develop any new technologies or insights into existing technology and would have done nothing without the expertise of these dedicated scientists.
But she took the sophistication of these scientists and made it clear to the world that it was time to stop procrastinating with just three words Blah, Blah Blah.
From Climate Change to the chronic disease epidemic
Combating the chronic disease epidemic is analogous. I am not without standing in the world of technology. I was a pioneer of Computer-Aided Engineering, I solved complex coupled non-linear equations to solve difficult flow problems and was recognised by the Australia Institute of Engineers as one of Australia leading innovators and recognised as a wold expert in fluid flow.
I (and a few other respected scientists) have been saying for decades that the root cause of the epidemic of chronic disease stems from the failure of our internal intelligent control system because we are not feeding our gut brain.
I have spent years experimenting with ways of growing food to preferentially breed the beneficial microbes to create a technology which can be economically applied at scale.
But like the partial truth, which benefits the fossil fuel industry, that climate has always changed there is a similar partial truth, which benefits and is profitable for the food industry, that calorie imbalance is the cause of the chronic disease epidemic.
People are just little piggies and eat to much – we are not to blame.
But sad to say I am not Greta, I recognise that I talk about osmotic pressure, hydrophobic and hydrophilic soil and the peculiar inter molecular forces of water which makes life possible and that sort of talk can be incredibly boring.
But I do know that somewhere out there is Greta Foodberg. She may be a mum with two babies on the other side of the world and worried about their future and she will tell the world in her own language like it is.
I am not Greta Foodberg so can only guess what she might say it may be ‘You have stolen my health with your Fib, Fib, Fib’.
I just hope that when she says these words that people will respond and demand an action plan. So that is what I have prepared.
Action plan
As you may have guessed solving the chronic disease epidemic is going to take a bit of thought.
It is in two bits the easy bit and the hard bit.
The easy bit is developing the technology, I did that in comfortably under eighty-four years and I now I know the answer I could do it all again in an afternoon.
But as I have said the chronic disease epidemic is man-made and a result of the way society works, how do we change society so it works for the benefit of the community and not just a few greedy people – got you there ChatGPT – you haven’t a clue either.
But humans are sometimes smarter than even ChatGPT and the solution is doable – a nice word meaning you will end up old and drained, a bit like me, but you do win eventually.
Thomas Edison had a nice formula for innovation, work out what you want to do, read everything you can find to read on the topic, throw all the books away and start from scratch.
What do we want to do?
We want to feed our gut-brain.
We can do that by breeding beneficial microbes under preferential conditions (so the good bugs out-breed the bad bugs) in soil made from organic waste minerals and a few starter bugs, (Wickimix) grow plants in this soil so the good-bugs and nutrients go into the plants, then eat the plants before the good bugs die.
Technically straightforward.
The catch is that last phrase ‘before the good bugs die’. Breeding the good bugs is easy, they are a randy lot and are breeding within twenty minutes, putting teenagers at a drunken party to shame.
But they do die equally quickly and the best way of doing that is having the plants growing in boxes at home.
There are people, keen gardeners with a bit of time who are more than happy to do the entire process themselves but if we are going to feed the eight billion people on earth with gut-brain food we need more than a few gardening enthusiasts.
We need to create a new industry of local growers producing Gbiota boxes with plants already growing and ready to pick and eat.
Logistics
There are a few logistical issues here. In a big city, we need to have areas for what are essentially urban farms, they need not be big, just a normal house block size but that needs approval from the local council.
Then we need a collection system for the organic waste which is an integral part of the process and that means clean waste not just the kitchen bin with all last night’s beer bottles and plastic pizza boxes.
This is all good, recycling waste leads to a sustainable food system and local food ensures a resilient food system should nasty things happen.
Just to make a quick point, we are not aiming to replace the entire food system just supplement the existing food system with gut-brain food.
Making it happen
If all we had to do was to feed gut-brain food to the couple of hundred people in upper Woopwoop life would be easy. But there are eight billion people who need to be eating gut-brain food.
How do we do that? Create allies.
Combating the chronic disease epidemic is a major operation and no one organisation can be successful.
The key allies we need are
The Government
Governments are the only organisations with the power to make the change.
They also have the most to benefit. The health costs of chronic diseases are massive running into billions of dollars and worse they are clogging the health system.
Governments have many roles to play but the most important is educating the public that the underlying cause chronic disease epidemic is that our intelligent controls system is not working as it should. We should stop worrying about calorie balance and focus on feeding our gut-brain.
Health and Wellbeing
The majority of people now live in an urban environment.
If the design of our towns and cities were left to for-profit private enterprise we would see a continuation of the trend to high-rise apartments and smaller blocks with larger houses – this makes the most profit in the short term.
But a concrete jungle with no open spaces does not make for better living. We rely on our Governments to ensure that our cities are livable with green spaces where people can relax, kids can play, and generally have access to the infrastructure which makes for a better life.
This is the cost of living in a democracy, citizens need to be active in promoting what sort of life they want and not leave it to what is the most convenient.
Governments have many specialist departments with their areas of expertise and it may seem initially that the planning department should be the centre of attention. I would suggest that the Health and Wellbeing Department should be the focus of public attention.
Look at our modern food with food produced in mega-farms, possibly thousands of kilometres away from where it is consumed, shipped to factories for processing then further shipped to warehouses then supermarkets.
This structure is a prime cause of the modern chronic disease epidemic.
Now think about a better structure from the viewpoints of both health and quality of life.
We would set aside areas within the city for micro-urban farms so some food would be fresh.
We would collect organic waste and process this locally within the city boundaries in Gbiota beds where decomposition is underground so there are no smells.
But better still we would use these beds as recreational areas, with either plants or lawns.
Many people with environmental leaning criticise lawns as wasteful but this is not valid.
Lawns act as solar panels capturing the sun’s energy while at the same time capturing carbon from the atmosphere.
But they do much more, they also are giant evaporative coolers helping to reduce urban temperatures, often using grey water.
But they can also be used to produce Wickimix, the soil that is needed to grow gut-brain food.
Having a multi-use area for recreation is a good use of valuable space. Somewhere for the kids to play, people to have a picnic or just generally enjoy being part of nature as well as being part of the process of growing gut-brain food.
These are normally managed by the Parks department who may not see they have a critical role in the production of healthy food, recycling food waste to create a more resilient food system, controlling city temperatures, and capturing greenhouses gasses.
Multi-functional operation is not generally a strength of government departments who tend to be specialists but it may well be that the Departments of Health and Wellbeing may provide that coordinating service.
But as we have seen from the history of Climate change this needs social pressure from the community.
Research centres
Research centres, particularly the Universities are important as governments will turn to their specialist expertise for advice but also there are multiple facets to this project so we need access to a range of expertises.
Dietitians and doctors
Most doctors are not trained in diet and refer patients to a professional dietitian, but they need to be aware of the technology to make the referals.
Dietitians are key but many have been indoctrinated with calorie doctrine so they will need not just information but re-education to adopt different ideas.
Experience has taught us that paradigm shift are most difficult with people expert in the old paradigm.
Growers
Growers will become the core of the project, producing Wickimix (the special soi), processing waste organics and manufacture of Gbiota boxes which will be recycled regularly.
Growers are local so naturally are community benefit organisations.
The Consumers
Our modern society has adopted the view that food is something you throw into the shopping trolley and if you get sick just take a pill.
This is a paradigm that needs to be changed with the new paradigm that health starts in the soil.
Educating the public about the basic cause of the modern chronic disease epidemic is the critical part of the project and is something that can really only be done by the Governments, by direct promotion but also ensuring it is built into our education system.