The Game Changer: Rewrite Your Future

Chronic diseases aren’t just bad luck—they’re the result of the wrong kind of fat ending up in the wrong places. For years, we’ve been sold the idea that “eat less, exercise more” is the magic fix.

Sure, it might work for a while, but here’s the truth: it trains your body to fight back with relentless cravings, making the problem worse in the long run.

Short-term success. Long-term failure.

The smarter way? Training your body’s intelligent control system—your gut-brain connection—to work with you, not against you. This means fueling yourself with the right kind of food that addresses deficiencies in today’s diet.

When your body gets what it actually needs, cravings disappear, and self-regulation kicks in.

It’s not about eating less. It’s about eating better. Once you realise that eating more of the right foods eliminates the urge for junk, the whole “calorie-cutting” myth falls apart.

But here’s the kicker: this change – the real paradigm shift – depends on you.

Young people like you, who aren’t weighed down by outdated thinking, are the ones who can make it happen. The future is in your hands. Get it right, and you’ll rewrite not just your life, but the health of an entire generation.

Are you ready to lead the way?

The Real World: A Call for Change

What’s happening in the real world? By middle age, many of us face the consequences of poor health choices – weight gain, illness – and only then attempt to undo the damage with calorie-restricted diets.

These efforts often fail because they miss the root cause: our bodies’ “intelligent control system” has already been hardwired by years of unhealthy habits.

The tragedy is greater still for the next generation. Young people witness their parents’ struggles and, driven by societal pressure to look like “broomsticks” to attract a mate, adopt calorie-restricted diets themselves – not for health, but for aesthetics.

This vicious cycle sets them up for long-term harm, training their control systems for a lifetime of scarcity and imbalance.

This isn’t just a health issue; it’s a societal crisis. Walk through any shopping centre and witness the evidence.

Magic diets and pills won’t fix it. True change will come from forward-thinking individuals who challenge the status quo, rally communities, and drive the energy needed for societal transformation.

Eventually, governments, burdened by the escalating costs of chronic diseases, will recognise the urgency and lead preventative measures, starting with public education.

The path forward starts with the young. By teaching them that their bodies’ ultimate regulator is an intelligent control system – not fad diets or quick fixes – we can revolutionise health.

This includes understanding the vital role of gut microbes, nurtured by plants grown in microbe-rich, mineral-rich soil. But let’s make no mistake: this isn’t about promoting “boring” diets.

Through the creative use of herbs, spices, and innovative cooking, we can turn these plant-based foods into exciting, delicious meals.

Yes, change will challenge the food and drug industries, but it also presents an opportunity to redefine their roles in a healthier future.

Together, we can consign the chronic disease epidemic to history – a time when humanity learned from its mistakes and transformed the earth into a better place for all.

Lots of stuff

There are over 300 articles and 200 videos on this site, that is a lot of stuff and nobody expects you to view everything so here are some tips to make life easy.

The key point is that we all have an intelligent control system which regulates our bodies and the key to health is to learn to feed and train this control system.

If this control system is working as it should we don’t have to worry about taking a specific number of micrograms of B12 or Selenium or whatever, our intelligent control system learns over time what foods contain what nutrients or minerals, sends out signals so we want to eat those foods without even thinking about it.

We have been successfully doing this for a million years or so without a dietary handbook in sight, just by eating natural foods grown locally.

These foods naturally contain the microbes which form part of our intelligent control system and also process naturally occurring minerals which make them bio-available.

That was until we changed our food system so it was deficient in these microbes which has led to the modern epidemic of chronic diseases.

As these microbes breed in the soil it may seem obvious to start breeding these beneficial microbes in the soil again which is a simple and inexpensive process.

But that is not the conventional wisdom.

Gbiota is simply about how to breed these beneficial microbes in organic waste to make a nutrient-rich living soil then grow plants in this soil and eat the plants while fresh before the microbes die.

In a world which seems to worship complexity, it seems that such a simple solution to the major problem of the epidemic of chronic disease would be welcomed with open arms but that is not the case.

So this website has two streams. The first stream starting with the heading Essence contains literally hundreds of articles written over the last thirty years when I have been working in this area which are aimed at showing this is sound technology.

The very first article summary is as it says a summary of all these articles.

So I suggest you start with this stream until you are convinced that breeding beneficial microbes is the solution, the link to the next article is at the bottom of each article, so keep on clicking on that as though you were reading a book, moving onto the next chapter.

When you are convinced click on the back to home page link and start reading how to breed beneficial microbes with the stream Creating Gbiota beds and boxes.

The first few articles in this stream are free to give you an idea on what is involved, and let us be upfront, there is some effort required – that is the cost of health.

If you feel that this is something you may like to undertake then you will need to sign up and become a full paying member when you will receive technical support.

However before you sign up and pay the money I suggest that you drop me an email, tell me a bit about your situation and I can make some suggestions on the best way to proceed.

You may lwant to be a home grower, you may want to become a Gbiota coach and advise new members or you may want to become a Gbiota grower and supply boxes to local people.

Summary: Creating Gbiota Beds and Boxes

Gbiota beds and boxes are systems designed to grow nutrient-rich plants while enhancing soil health through the cultivation of beneficial microbes. These systems utilize compost, organic waste, and rock dust to create a living, sustainable environment that mimics natural ecosystems. Below is a concise guide to building and maintaining Gbiota beds and boxes.

1. Setting Up a Gbiota Bed

• Location & Preparation:

  • Select a suitable area and determine the size (recommended size is around 5 meter long and 0.5 meters wide).

  • Dig out the topsoil and set it aside. Create a sump box at one end for water drainage and nutrient collection.

  • Line the base with compacted clay, silt or if needed plastic film to prevent excessive water leakage (add clay if the soil is sandy).

• Base Layer & Irrigation:

  • Install ag (agricultural) pipes for irrigation. The pipe should allow water (or “soil blood”) to seep into the soil but also drain out excess moisture.

  • Create a “leaky dam” near the sump box to ensure slow drainage and prevent stagnation.

• Layers of the Bed:

  • Organic Waste Layer: Fill the base with organic waste, such as kitchen scraps or grass clippings (about 100mm deep).

  • Nutrient Layer: Add a mix of manure (e.g., chicken manure), rock dust, dolomite (to balance pH), and blood and bone fertilizer.

  • Topsoil: Return the reserved topsoil to the bed. If the soil is sandy, mix in clay to improve its structure and water retention.

• Planting:

  • Thoroughly wet the top layer to create a moist surface for seed germination.

  • Sow a diverse mix of seeds to attract various beneficial microbes and fungi. Include sunflowers for optimal growth of mycorrhizal fungi.

2. Setting Up a Gbiota Box

• Box Selection:

  • Use a UV-stabilized container, such as a 30-liter storage box. Depth should be between 200-300mm for efficient water wicking.

• Installation of Swivel Tube:

  • Drill a hole near the base of the box and install a swivel tube with a grommet for drainage and water level control.

  • Fit a piece of ag pipe at the bottom for water distribution.

• Layering the Box:

  • Add one-third of the box’s depth in organic waste at the base.

  • Top with a nutrient mix (manure, rock dust, dolomite, and trace minerals).

  • Finish with a layer of Wickimix (a microbial-rich soil blend) or good-quality garden soil.

• Compost Tube:

  • Insert a compost tube vertically into the box to allow for easy addition of organic waste. Cover the tube with soil or Wickimix to keep pests away.

• Planting & Germination:

  • Wet the soil thoroughly before seeding to ensure good germination.

  • Cover the seeds with a light layer of Vermiculite or Wickimix.

3. Key Maintenance Practices

• Flood and Flush Irrigation:

  • Regularly flood the base to provide moisture and nutrients to plant roots while expelling stale air.

  • Drain excess water (soil blood) to prevent stagnation and aerate the soil.

• Soil Blood Reuse:

  • Collect drained soil blood, dilute it, and use it for irrigation or as a foliar spray to enhance plant and microbial health.

• Worm Integration:

  • Introduce worms to aid in organic matter breakdown and nutrient cycling. Red wrigglers are particularly effective.

• Regeneration:

  • Periodically move the compost tube to distribute nutrients evenly. Add new organic waste and nutrient layers during reseeding cycles (every three months).

4. Benefits of the Gbiota System

• Improves soil fertility by fostering microbial diversity and nutrient recycling.

• Produces plants rich in beneficial microbes that support human gut health.

• Provides a sustainable solution for home gardeners and urban dwellers.

These systems prioritize eco-balance, combining practical design with the principles of natural ecosystems to grow healthier plants while reducing waste.

The essence

Colin Austin 23 Nov 24 This document is published under the Creative Commons and can be reproduced without further permission, just acknowledgment of source www.gbiota.com

In today’s fast-paced world, junk food dominates our diets—tasty, convenient, and inexpensive, but hardly healthy. Organic food offers a wholesome alternative, but its high cost puts it out of reach for many. Now, a revolutionary third option promises to be both affordable and nutritious, challenging conventional wisdom about what we eat and how it affects our health.

The Health Crisis at Our Doorstep

Chronic diseases – obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and dementia – are the silent epidemic of our time. They plague millions, drain healthcare systems, and diminish quality of life. For decades, the prevailing solution has been simple: eat less, and exercise more. Yet, this advice fails to address the underlying cause.

What truly lies at the root of these conditions? An imbalance caused by improper nutrition and a neglected gut microbiome.

A Revolutionary Insight into Food and Health

Our bodies operate with a sophisticated control system, akin to a smart thermostat. It manages fat storage, hunger, and immune responses. At the heart of this system is the gut microbiome—a community of trillions of microorganisms vital to our health.

Modern diets, packed with processed foods and depleted of nutrients, starve this essential system. The result? Increased food cravings, inefficient fat storage, and a cascade of chronic conditions. Cutting calories alone cannot fix this; the solution lies in what we eat and how it nourishes our gut.

Enter Gbiota: A New Path to Wellness

The Gbiota movement offers a groundbreaking approach. Transforming organic waste into a nutrient-rich soil called Wickimix, it enables the growth of plants brimming with gut-friendly microbes. When consumed fresh, these foods restore gut health, reduce cravings, and help prevent chronic diseases like diabetes and heart attacks.

This method mimics the diets of earlier generations, who thrived on fresh, locally grown produce teeming with natural goodness. Gbiota’s innovative process combines traditional wisdom with modern science to create a sustainable, scalable solution.

Beyond Nutrition: A Community Movement

Gbiota is more than a health initiative; it’s a call to action for individuals, communities, and governments. It envisions a world where:

• Food waste is recycled into Wickimix to enrich the soil.

• Local governments support urban agriculture, turning parks and open spaces into hubs for growing fresh produce.

• Communities take charge, learning to cultivate and share nutrient-rich food locally.

By empowering people to grow and consume fresh, microbe-rich food, the Gbiota movement creates a ripple effect – one healthy choice inspiring another.

A Sustainable Solution for All

The Gbiota approach isn’t just good for people – it’s good for the planet.

Recycling waste into rich soil reduces landfill, while local farming cuts the carbon footprint of transporting food. It’s a win-win solution that addresses both environmental and health challenges.

Why It Matters

The message is clear: to combat chronic diseases, we must rethink how we feed ourselves. Prevention is better – and cheaper – than cure. Instead of expensive treatments and reactive measures, we can embrace fresh, nutrient-rich food that aligns with our bodies’ natural systems.

Gbiota is leading the charge toward a healthier future. By rediscovering the basics of nutrition, supporting local food systems, and feeding our gut microbiomes, we can break free from the cycle of chronic illness.

Are you ready to be part of the change? Join the Gbiota movement today and take a step toward a healthier, happier tomorrow.

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Colin Austin  © Creative commons this document may be reproduced but the source should be acknowledged. Information may be used for private use but commercial use requires a license.

The trial that changed the world’s health

What we know for sure, and don’t know

We know that the world’s biggest health issue is the epidemic of chronic diseases, obesity, diabetes, heart attacks and dementia and that these are caused by the wrong fat in the wrong place.

We think we know how to fix it, eat less and exercise more but we have been trying that for decades and we know for sure that it has not worked, people are getting fatter and diabetes is the fastest-growing disease on the planet.

We live in an age of hyper-activity. Everyone is heads down with busy work but maybe it is time to take a break and have a bit of a think.

Conventional wisdom

The conventional wisdom, the current paradigm, is that we get fat and sick because we eat more than we burn – the calorie balance theory.

This is based on the fundamental laws of conservation of mass and energy which no one is saying are wrong. Eating more than we burn is essential for us to store more fat than we need, it is what I call the enabling factor. It enables us to store more fat than we need but it is not the reason.

It is the ‘how’ we get fat not the ‘why’ we get fat.

Why we get fat and sick

We get fat and sick because we have an intelligent control system that regulates our bodies, we have known this for the best part of 200 years, the idea of an intelligent control system was first proposed in 1849 by Claude Bernard.

He had no idea how it worked and we still don’t fully understand how it works – but we can make some smart guesses.

We know that our gut has trillions of cells that communicate with each other to provide real but short-term intelligence. We can see that working in swarm intelligence we see in many insects and birds.

We know that our head brain provides long-term intelligence and memory and that it is learning and remembering about food from the first suck on mum’s breast and onwards every time we eat something, for better or worse.

Continuous blood sugar monitoring

I can see this working on my own body by wearing a continuous blood sugar monitoring device.

I understand that my body has two ways of storing energy, large amounts are stored as fat which is not readily available for use while my blood contains very small amounts of energy as sugars in my blood. My body can readily transfer sugar in my blood to fat and vice versa when I need to use or store energy.

I see this on my blood sugar graphs every morning. During the night my blood sugar levels are low but at dawn, even before I wake up my blood sugar levels rise in anticipation of a need for energy, even though I have had nothing to eat.

I go for a brisk walk before breakfast which, if you followed the simple conservation of energy rule you would expect to lead to a drop in my blood sugar levels as I burn energy.

But that is not what happens, my blood sugar levels rise and the only feasible explanation is that my intelligent control system is sending out signals to convert fat in long-term storage into sugars for immediate energy.

When I eat breakfast, particularly if it is serial my blood sugar levels spike, as you would expect but then drop back to normal. Again the only feasible explanation is that my intelligent control system is sending out instructions to convert the sugar in short-term storage into fat in long-term storage for use later.

Two opposing solutions

There are two opposing schools of thought on how to tackle the world’s epidemic of chronic disease.

They start from a common understanding that chronic disease is a major worldwide problem, overloading our health system while costing billions of dollars and causing immense personal suffering with eight million people a year suffering a limb amputation from diabetes.

There is also agreement that the basic cause is the wrong fat in the wrong place, in our Pancreas for diabetes, in our arteries for heart disease and in our brain for dementia.

The divergence in thinking is in the solutions.

The calorie balance school says the solution is to eat less and exercise more which sounds logical.

The intelligent control school says this could be the worst possible approach and is making the situation worse. Instead of eating less, we should be eating more, certainly not more sugary fatty food, that is stupid, but food that will both feed and replenish the beneficial microbes in our gut and provide a consistent supply of the right sort of food so our head brain sees no need to store large amounts of fat.

This is certainly less instinctively obvious but could still be right and if it is right it could save a lot of suffering for the global population and a lot of money for the Governments who fund the health system.

Which one is right – how to find out, a story

How to find out? Let me tell you a story which may seem to have nothing to do with health – but does. Just bear with me for a moment and I will show you how.

Many years ago, when computers were becoming available I realised that they would change the way engineers went about their business.

Moulds often fail to fill so I wrote some software which solved the problems of a hot plastic flowing into a cold mould by solving the simultaneous equations of heat transfer and fluid flow.

Flow balancing – analogous to food balancing

From my simulation, I realised that some areas of a mould were very easy to fill while others were more difficult. By the time the easy parts were filled the plastic entering the more difficult area had frozen so the mould never fully filled.

The conventional approach was to make all flow channels bigger which rarely worked.

With my simulation, I realised that the solution was to make the flow channels to the easy-to-fill area smaller thus diverting flow to the more difficult-to fill areas – a process I called flow balancing. Sounds ridiculous but it works.

What does have to do with food?

We all agree that we are eating too much sugary fatty food, the obvious solution is to persuade people to eat less sugary fatty food. We have been trying that for decades and it has not worked, in the way that making flow channels bigger did not work.

The reason why simply eating less does not work is that we need food that replaces our body parts as they age and wear and food that feeds and replaces our gut microbes. Our modern food system is deficient in these foods. Our intelligent control system senses this and sends out signals for us to eat more food. The result is we eat more sugary fatty foods and get fatter and sicker.

To keep to the analogy with flow balancing we could call this food balancing. If we eat more replacement food and food that feeds and replaces the beneficial microbes in our gut we will feel satisfied and naturally eat less sugary fatty food.

Sound ridiculous? You’re getting fat and sick but instead of eating less eat more food – but not just any food the right sort of food.

Three tanks not one

A common view is that our bodies are like a single tank, as it gets empty we feel hungry and want to eat. That is not the way our bodies work.

We have three tanks, one for fuel or energy food – sugars and fats, one for replacement food – all those complex minerals, vitamins and phyto-nutrients and a third tank to replace and feed the microbes in our gut.

Our intelligent control system can sense all three tanks and if just one is empty it will send out ‘eat more’ signals, even though the other tanks (typically fuel) are overflowing.

That is the core of the epidemic of chronic diseases, we need to balance all the tanks so they equally full.

That is why I call it food balancing and why it is so analogous to my experiences with flow balancing.

It wasn’t me

How did I convince the world’s industry about the importance of flow balancing and how am I going to convince the world about the importance of food balancing?

Here comes the crunch. I went around the world giving lectures about the importance of flow balancing, (just as I now write hundreds of articles about food balancing).

I was jeered and heckled as some nutter from down under telling us that the way to fill a mould is to make the flow channels smaller.

What they missed was that I was not saying make all flow channels smaller, just the select critical flow channels.

Which one is right – how to find out, a story

How to find out? Let me tell you a story which may seem to have nothing to do with health – but does. Just bear with me for a moment and I will show you how.

Many years ago, when computers were becoming available I realised that they would change the way engineers went about their business.

Moulds often fail to fill so I wrote some software which solved the problems of a hot plastic flowing into a cold mould by solving the simultaneous equations of heat transfer and fluid flow.

Flow balancing – analogous to food balancing

From my simulation, I realised that some areas of a mould were very easy to fill while others were more difficult. By the time the easy parts were filled the plastic entering the more difficult area had frozen so the mould never fully filled.

The conventional approach was to make all flow channels bigger which rarely worked.

With my simulation, I realised that the solution was to make the flow channels to the easy-to-fill area smaller thus diverting flow to the more difficult-to fill areas – a process I called flow balancing. Sounds ridiculous but it works.

What does have to do with food?

We all agree that we are eating too much sugary fatty food, the obvious solution is to persuade people to eat less sugary fatty food. We have been trying that for decades and it has not worked, in the way that making flow channels bigger did not work.

The reason why simply eating less does not work is that we need food that replaces our body parts as they age and wear and food that feeds and replaces our gut microbes. Our modern food system is deficient in these foods. Our intelligent control system senses this and sends out signals for us to eat more food. The result is we eat more sugary fatty foods and get fatter and sicker.

To keep to the analogy with flow balancing we could call this food balancing. If we eat more replacement food and food that feeds and replaces the beneficial microbes in our gut we will feel satisfied and naturally eat less sugary fatty food.

Sound ridiculous? You’re getting fat and sick but instead of eating less eat more food – but not just any food the right sort of food.

Three tanks not one

A common view is that our bodies are like a single tank, as it gets empty we feel hungry and want to eat. That is not the way our bodies work.

We have three tanks, one for fuel or energy food – sugars and fats, one for replacement food – all those complex minerals, vitamins and phyto-nutrients and a third tank to replace and feed the microbes in our gut.

Our intelligent control system can sense all three tanks and if just one is empty it will send out ‘eat more’ signals, even though the other tanks (typically fuel) are overflowing.

That is the core of the epidemic of chronic diseases, we need to balance all the tanks so they equally full.

That is why I call it food balancing and why it is so analogous to my experiences with flow balancing.

It wasn’t me

How did I convince the world’s industry about the importance of flow balancing and how am I going to convince the world about the importance of food balancing?

Here comes the crunch. I went around the world giving lectures about the importance of flow balancing, (just as I now write hundreds of articles about food balancing).

I was jeered and heckled as some nutter from down under telling us that the way to fill a mould is to make the flow channels smaller.

What they missed was that I was not saying make all flow channels smaller, just the select critical flow channels.

Flow and food

It is the same with food, I am not promoting that we eat more food but just certain select foods and then we will naturally feel satisfied and eat less sugary fatty food.

So how did I convince the industry about flow balancing and how am I going to convince people concerned about health and food balancing?

The answer is it wasn’t me then and it won’t be me now.

When I gave my lectures, among all the heckling and jeering there were a few people quietly sitting at the back and they heard the magic word ‘some’ flow channels.

Why we need the risk takers

I won’t claim I convinced them at the lectures, but they thought there was a possibility that I might be right and they were risk takers, so they went back to their companies and their labs and tried it and, fortunately for me, it worked.

But these were influential people and they convinced the other members of the industry who were not risk takers and now flow balancing is the norm – the accepted paradigm.

I managed to survive and was later recognised by the Institute of Engineers as one of Australia’s leading innovators.

Changing the food and health industries

So how am I going to change the Health industry, the simple answer is I am not. However many articles I write, however carefully I present my arguments it will have no impact in the modern world of misinformation and pointless busy work.

But I know, by shear probability, that there will be some freethinkers out there, maybe in my local University in Brisbane or maybe in some research institute in some country where obesity and diabetes are major issues like the US, India or China who will say ‘well I am not convinced as yet but he may just he right about food balancing so I will take the risk and find out for myself by running a trial’.

I am here – waiting

And if you are one of those free thinkers and this article just happens to land on your desk then here is my email colin@gbiota.com and I will be more than happy to hear from you.

My formal qualification may be in engineering rather than medicine but since I was a toddler in WW2 when I was used as child labour I have been dunking flower pots into tanks of foul-smelling fowl manure tea.

This is the basis of the modern Gbiota flood and flush system used to breed the beneficial microbes which eventually form our gut biome and are integral to fighting the modern epidemic of chronic disease.

The community benefits of gut-brain food

Colin Austin © 2nd May 2024 This document is published under the Creative Commons system which means that it can be copied and republished without further permissions but the author Colin Austin at gbiota.com must be recognised.

The black foot and avoiding amputation

My wife Xiulan, a medical doctor and surgeon became diabetic, the professional medical advice given to us was that diabetes is an irreversible chronic disease, it will steadily get worse, we will put you on progressively stronger medicines but eventually, you are likely to end up with insulin injections and you will probably die young from some complications arising from diabetes.

We accepted that advice as an honest attempt to make us aware of the harsh reality.

But when her foot started to turn black we were advised that she would probably need to have her foot amputated.

We were not happy to accept that advice, searched all the relevant scientific literature we could find as it was quite clear to us that there was a big difference between what the leading researchers were saying and the advice being offered at the retail level.

So what did we see? Now let me be upfront, my wife may be a medical doctor but I am an engineer and engineering is really about the generation, transmission and application of power. So I naturally tend to look at the human body as a thermodynamic machine – like a steam engine.

The body as a thermodynamic machine

Thermodynamic machines have three components, they have a source of energy, in the case of a steam engine a boiler which burns fuel.

As long as the fuel burns in the boiler it does not matter much what the fuel is, coal, oil, gas, that old piano, table or chair that is never used, as long as it gives off heat that is all that matters.

It is the same with the human body. The energy food we eat, whether chicken

wings and chips or organic produce, is simply burned off as fuel.

There is widespread concern about the reliability of food supply yet our modern food system produces enough fuel, energy food to power the entire human population (if it were equatable distributed) now and for years to come.

As long as the sun continues to shine and some dictator with no social conscience and access to rocket technology, and who happens to have a palace on the shores of the Baltic Sea which is in danger of flooding, does not decide to blanket out the sun, there is, and will not be, a shortage of fuel.

Yet nutritionists seem obsessed with calories – lack of calories is not the is not the issue. They should just forget about calories. There are much bigger issues at stake.

That great clanking machine

Our hypothetical steam engine has a structure which must be built and maintained, oils and lubricants applied to keep the machine running smoothly and parts replaced as they wear. In our steam engine, this is done by humans but our bodies are much more sophisticated.

From very conception the fetus, weighing just a few grams, is supplied with food which enables it to grow to a few kilograms and after birth continues to consume food to grow to full size.

Even then our body parts may look pretty much the same but most of our body parts are being replaced, some like our skin very rapidly while others like our teeth much slower.

We could say, in round terms that every three months we need to build a new body and for that we need food, not as much volume as for fuel, but still significant. For some two thousand years this happened from our basic diet, largely from the complex chemicals, phytonutrients in plants grown in living soil and eaten straight after picking.

These phytonutrients are incredibly complex – a single tomato will have some thousand different phytonutrients and no one really knows what they do.

Our modern food system lacks these phytonutrients and this is where nutritionists shine. They use their skills, and sophistication of modern technology, to produce a range of  Pills and supplements to overcome these deficiencies.

By and large, it works – at least sort of.

The intelligent controller

But then we come to the last bit of our steam engine. All machines has some sort of controller, it could be a simple on/off switch or it could be a highly sophisticated intelligent control system.

Now it just so happens that my first job as an engineer was working for a company that made controllers for power stations which happen to be highly relevant to the human body.

So let me tell you a funny story about power station controllers – and believe me it is relevant.

Most of the time this is pretty easy, you just monitor the load on the system and adjust the input energy with some fairly basic technology. The controller measures for any error and if the energy input is too low or high it simply cuts back in proportion to the error. This is called proportional control.

But as the error reduces the correction reduces so it never completely corrects so the controller measuring the error over time which it integrates and adjust accordingly. This is called integral control.

But sometimes things change very rapidly so the system also measures the rate of change so the controller applies damping so the system is stable. This is called derivative control. This may not seem to be connected to how our bodies work but we have a much better control system which I want to tell you about.

On many Saturday afternoons, there is a football match and the power consumption is low until the interval when a sizeable proportion of the population will get up and switch their kettles on for a quick cuppa creating a huge surge in power consumption.

This completely overwhelms the control system which by the time it gets the power plant up to the power setting the play has restarted. How do struggling engineers like me manage this crisis – and no cuppa at halftime is a real crisis.

We all have an intelligent control system

This is really important because this is what our bodies do exceptionally well.

We call it adaptive or self-learning software (which was among the software I wrote).

The way it works is that you think you know that there will be a power demand at 3.30 and it will take 30 minutes to get up that extra pressure so you write software so at 3 it schedules the power station up to number 6 on the dial and sit back and see how big a goof you have made.

At 3.30 you (or the system) find out that you had made a big goof and it was no where near big enough so in the software you have written code which say big goof increase by 50% so next Saturday it dials it up to number 9 and wait and see what happens.

And what happens is pressure relief valves blowing off all over the place because number 9 is far too big so the software says 6 is far too small and number 9 is a bit too big so next week it tries number 8 and this goes on and until it works out that 7.352 works really well.

How does this relate to the human body? This is the way the human body works, we have an intelligent control system which is regulating every aspect of our bodies. This is the way our bodies work. But even though I used to be what was called a gun coder (like a gun shearer pretty good at the job) I have absolutely no idea of the code and nor does anyone else.

But that does not mean it is not happening.

At the shopping centre

Next time you go to a shopping centre you will see many obese or overweight people and assume they are just fat little piggies stuffing themselves. And you would be wrong. There is a chance it could be genetic, some people are just naturally fat, but not that many. It could be that the body is sensing that there are deficiencies in the diet, such as a lack of essential phytonutrients and goes into panic sending out signals to eat more so it can stuff fat anywhere and everywhere it can ready for a rainy day.

Or it could be a fault in the supercomputer in your gut-brain or more technically the wrong species of microbes in your gut. Either of these is easily fixed by adding gut-brain   food to your diet. I may not know the code in your gut-brain but at least I know how to feed it gut-brain food which automatically includes the phytonutrients.

You can read the technical details in this post – it is straightforward growing plants in Wickimix, the special soil, and maintaining the Goldilocks moisture level. But the plants must be eaten shortly after picking which means it must done at home or at least locally. This is not an operation for mega industries But how do I let people know that this  technology exists?

The disinformation age

When the internet and its search engines came out I thought this was one of the greatest innovations of all time giving all people access to that vast pool of knowledge which previously was only available to a limited few. What a great equaliser.

And I was wrong, we are just saturated with dis-information with companies collecting our private details so they can sell that information to anyone who wants to sell us something.

I know this from personal experience. My interest is in gut biology and we get our first gut biology from mum at birth and later while breastfeeding. So naturally I use the internet to search for information about birthing and breastfeeding.

AI or GS?

As a result, I get bombarded with companies trying to sell something that a pregnant lady may want to buy. Now I ask you what is the probability of an 84 year old male being pregnant – answer sweet FA. That’s why they call it Artificial Intelligence AI or as I prefer GS Genuinely Stupid.

What this means is that instead of the Internet being this wonderful innovation where people can get information out it is a blocker of information transfer.

But it is worse than that. Disinformation is such an important issue that it has received a staggering amount of research with some rather unsavoury conclusions.

What this research says is that we naturally form groups and are far more likely to believe what our group says than the facts.

Whether we are aware of it or like it the software on the internet naturally forms us into groups with common views. They call it the echo chamber. Right or wrong is irrelevant, it is what the group thinks that matters.

This even happens in science where the greedy piggy theory dominates the intelligent control system theory for being overweight.

Social conscience and the food industry

The modern food industry does an amazing job of providing us with energy food. It also does an equally amazing job of supplying us with an enormous variety of food choices – a variety of foods from all over the world in and out of season.

This is just so different to when I was a kid when food was just plain boring, toast for breakfast, meat and two veg for lunch and bread and butter and cake for tea.

But almost everyone would grow some fruit and vegetable in naturally living soil which supplied the phytonutrients and gut-brain food essential for health. True there were some fat people but there was no epidemic of chronic diseases, that is man-made as a result of our food system.

We can buy vegetables from the supermarket but they will have been grown in soil with synthetic fertilisers so even at picking will be low in phytonutrients and beneficial microbes.

By the time they have been transported and arrived our table these will have died – hence the food deficiency and chronic disease epidemic. There is no point in trying to  change the existing food industry which is dominated by megacorporations whose focus is on profits rather than saving people from having their limbs amputated from diabetes.

And in any case, the issue is the deficiencies of phytonutrients and beneficial microbes in their food.

If their product contained any ingredients that were harmful they would be legally liable but how can a company be legally liable for something that is not in their product? We have to think of a new way in which we overcome group think which has led to a lack of confidence in what people see on the web and is a major obstacle to the adoption of any new technology.

Creating a new local gut-brain industry

At this moment members of the Gbiota movement understand the importance of the technology and are prepared to make the boxes, collect the waste and basically do  verything themselves – it is a ‘do it yourself ‘movement run by and for the community.

I have spent a lot of time working our ways that people, living in a flat can collect their waste and turn this into Wickimix, the soil in Gbiota boxes, and a key ingredient in the   Gbiota technology.

It works, but does require a bit of dedication and is not for everyone. But think how much easier it would be with Government support. We should try and persuade local  councils to collect food waste and process this into Wickimix.

Most councils have land available even in the centre of cities that could be used but they all have some form of recreation land or parks. Every flower bed in every park could be  used to prepare Wickimix and they have horticultural expertise.

It just requires burying the rubbish, covering with soil, growing plants that exude the sugars which attract the beneficial microbes then and managing the moisture levels.

After a few months, the WickiMix could be dug up and sold to local growers who could use the Wickimix to prepare Gbiota boxes with plants ready to harvest, which they could sell, on a swap-over basis, to local people who have little to do other than water and harvest their plants and supply clean kitchen waste to the council collection service.

This is a social issue project but just look at the economics.

In Australia, 4,400 people a year have a diabetic amputation which costs about $40,000 in total cost to our health system.

That works out at $176,000,000 per year.

This money could be better spent in other areas of our health system but some of this money should be used to help the local councils who would provide the waste collection and processing.

It just needs coordinating all these activities to make it happen.

First thing, before you start to look at the contents of this web is to read Health Paradox , Chronic Disease,  Prevention better than cure,  then  Health – prevention first  These are published under the creative commons systems for anyone to read and copy free of charge.

I appreciate that there is a fair bit of heavy reading here, but saving humanity from massive disruption is not trivial.

But if, after all this heavy reading, you are prepared to join me in preventing this massive disruption then email me, say Hi and introduce yourself, then sign up to join a group of dedicated volunteers.

First thing, before you start to look at the contents of this web is to read Health – prevention first   then Health – prevention better than cure These are published under the creative commons systems for anyone to read and copy free of charge.

The health paradox

Colin Austin © November 2024 Published under the Creative Commons System, it can be republished without further approval, just recognition of source.

Preface

Chronic diseases, obesity, diabetes, heart attacks and dementia cause a great deal of personal distress and cost Governments billions of dollars.

They are very difficult to cure but can be prevented relatively easily and at low cost. But that requires a change in the way our Governments, our health systems, and society operate to one with a focus on prevention rather than cure.

The underlying cause of all chronic diseases is the wrong fat in the wrong place.

So how does the fat get in the wrong place? We could give a simple answer – because more food (actually carbon) goes in than comes out.

The wrong fat in the wrong place is the underlying cause of all chronic diseases.

So why do so many people get fat now, at epidemic proportions, when fifty years ago there were only a very few fat people?

We need to store some fat, no one likes to talk about it but that is what our bums are for and is essential for both health and survival. But why do we now store fat in the wrong places, our tummies, pancreas, arteries and brain?

Why do we store fat in the wrong places?

The simplistic answer is a bit like asking how Donald Trump got elected and answering because more people voted for him. True but not the answer.

The real question is why more people voted for Trump and that is complex and will no doubt be the subject of much deep analysis.

We know how we get fat, input is greater than consumption, but what we want to know is why we eat more than we need.

A simple answer may appear to be that modern food is cheap, convenient and tasty so we just pig out.

But that is not the real answer, we have to dig deeper and put more emphasis on prevention which takes the pressure of cure.

Why do we overeat?

We should start by recognising that the epidemic of chronic disease is a new phenomenon that started only a little over fifty years ago. True there have always been fat people, genetics play a part, but predominantly the epidemic is a modern phenomenon.

How we get fat is easy to answer – if more carbon goes into our bodies than comes out we get fat. But that is not an answer, we need to know why more goes in than comes out.

We have not all turned into little piggies so saying eat less and exercise more is not the solution, we need to understand why we eat more than we need.

There are sound scientific reasons why we overeat and if we are going to fix the chronic disease epidemic we need to understand why.

Our bodies – a thermodynamic machine

I find it useful to think of our bodies as a thermodynamic machine like a car.

Every machine has some form of control system, even if it just an on/off switch but today we have some extremely sophisticated intelligent control systems as I discuss in Health – prevention first

A car needs fuel, typically a simple hydrocarbon. We need fuel for our bodies and that is typically some combination of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen in the form of a sugar or fat which we burn to form carbon dioxide, which we breathe out and water which we use internally or pee out.

As burning carbon to form carbon dioxide always releases the same amount of energy it has become fashionable to talk about the conservation of energy, the calorie balance but it is the excess carbon we don’t breathe out as carbon dioxide which makes us fat and that is governed by the indisputable law of the conservation of mass.

So why do we store excess carbon (as fat)? That is when it get really interesting.

Cars and our bodies both need fuel

A car needs more than fuel, it needs a whole range of quite complex chemicals, oils for lubrication, water for cooling plus a whole range of components that wear out and need replacing from windscreen wiper blades to engine bearings, brake pads and batteries.

Typically the owner driver will take the car to a mechanic who will check the car over and replace bits that need replacing.

Our bodies are similar. We need a range of complex chemicals to survive and replace our body parts as they age and wear. We get these complex chemicals largely from the phytonutrients that plants produce, either directly by eating the plants or indirectly by eating animals that eat the plants and pass on the phytonutrients.

The car driver and our gut-brain

As the driver of the car, you are like a brain for the car telling it where to go, what route, how fast etc. and you like to be fed.

Our bodies similarly have a gut-brain which controls our bodies, deciding every aspect of our body’s operation, maybe subconsciously but it is still a decision and one of the most important decisions is what and how much we want to eat.

Our gut-brain likes to be fed too.

Three sorts of food

So we need three sorts of food – food for energy, food to replace our body parts as they age or wear and food to feed our gut-brain which controls our body.

In round figures about 80% of the food we eat is burned as fuel, 15% is used to replace our body parts and only 5% is needed to feed our gut-brain.

Historically energy fuel was in short supply while replacement and gut-brain food were abundant, so by the time we had gathered enough energy food for fuel we had an ample supply of replacement and gut-brain food.

Humanoids have been on this earth for some million years and in all that time we have been short of food for energy. Even today we are obsessed with energy food.

Then we changed the food system so there was an abundant supply of cheap energy food – fuel.

Who can blame the food industry for providing us with cheap energy food?

Our intelligent control system needs three ticks

Our intelligent control system can send out a complex variety of hormones to make us feel hungry or full, eg satisfied.

We don’t need any complex piece of scientific equipment to tell us we are satisfied – our bodies tell us we feel full and satisfied.

But despite eating large amounts of modern food we still don’t feel satisfied.

Why?

The key to solving the epidemic of chronic disease

The answer to that question is the key to solving the epidemic of chronic disease.

Before our intelligent control system sends out signals to say we are full or satisfied it must have three ticks, one tick for enough energy, another tick for replacement food and the last tick to feed the gut-brain.

When, and only when, it senses that all these needs are satisfied will it send out hormones saying enough – stop eating. The food cravings stop and we feel satisfied and stop eating.

We may have all the energy food we need but if either we don’t have enough replacement food or enough gut-brain food we will not feel satisfied.

The hormones will create food cravings, we will not feel satisfied and whatever our dietitian tells us we will eventually be overcome and eat more energy food than we need.

That is how 8 million people a year end up in the operating room having a limb amputated. Bad for them, bad for our health system – we need to fix it.

How our food system has changed

In times gone past energy food was on the critical path so by the time we had eaten enough energy food it had received ticks for both replacement and gut-brain food so it sends out the hormones to say we are full or satisfied so there was no epidemic stemming from the wrong fat in the wrong place.

In our modern food system, there is an abundance of energy food so we very easily eat enough food to get a tick for energy food but we will still not have created a tick for replacement or gut-brain food.

So our intelligent control system does not send out signals saying you are satisfied, instead, it sends out signals saying eat more.

While we are eating more food to generate a tick for replacement and gut-brain food we keep on eating which results in us eating more energy food than we need and as a result, we end up storing more fat and creating the epidemic of chronic disease.

Our bum, the natural storage for fat becomes overfull so our intelligent control system, faced with a surplus of energy food starts storing the fat anywhere it can in our tummies, thighs, arteries and brain so now we have an epidemic of chronic disease.

It is critical to understand this process to create the societal change we need to reverse the epidemic of chronic disease.

Fortunately, it is very easy and inexpensive to increase the supply of replacement and energy food and save billions of dollars in medical costs.

Getting the message out

But we have to get the message out to not just the Governments who fund the health system and the medical practitioners who run the health system but also the population at large to create the needed societal change.

The Health Paradox

This is so important to reversing the chronic disease epidemic allow me to emphasise this critical point even if I repeat myself, if we are going to fix the epidemic of chronic disease we all need to understand this simple paradox.

The paradox is, with our modern food system, loaded with energy food, that even though we have eaten enough energy food we still have not satisfied our need for replacement and gut-brain foods.

Our intelligent control system is smart and detects that we are still short of replacement and gut-brain food so it sends out signals saying you are not satisfied so eat more food. However determined we are to stick to some diet it is very hard to resist our intelligent control system sending out hormones that say you are still not full so keep on eating.

We don’t feel satisfied and keep on eating.

That is why we get fat, not just fat but fatter and fatter – we are losing the battle.

Why we need a prevention strategy

There is no suggestion that we should stop caring for people that are fat and sick but by the time they have reached that stage, it is a bit late.

If someone has reached the stage where they are on the operating table to have a limb removed from diabetes it is a bit late and anyway removing the limb will not cure diabetes.

That is why we need a health system that focuses on prevention, it won’t cost much money to run a prevention program and will save a far greater amount of money in expensive medical care later.

Our sophisticated intelligent control system

We won’t get far in making these changes unless we recognise just how sophisticated our intelligent control system is.

Engineers know a lot about intelligent control systems, just look at the sophistication that is used in power stations and rockets which can now navigate back to Earth and re-dock.

But we don’t have to look at these exotic applications, your car sitting in your driveway is an excellent example of intelligent control at work, which has remarkable similarities to our human bodies.

Short and long-term energy

It has a fuel tank for storing fuel – the equivalent of our bums for storing fuel in the form of fat. It just sits there, doing nothing until there is a call for action eg you start the car so it needs fuel to keep the engine running.

It does this by transferring a tiny amount of fuel from the tank to the fuel injection system where highly sophisticated sensors work out precisely how much fuel needs to be injected into the engine.

If you, as the driver of the car and part of the intelligent control system, want to accelerate or go up a hill the system works out how much extra fuel needs to be injected.

Our bodies work in a similar way.

We fill up our fuel tank, our bum, by eating food.

Initially the food, as sugars, goes into our bloodstream but the amount of energy we can store in our blood is minute so our intelligent control system sends out hormones to transfer this energy into our fuel tank, our bum.

When we start some activity which requires a lot of energy our intelligent control system will at first use the energy which is in our blood, but that is tiny so it sends our signals to transfer energy from our fuel tank, our bum, back into the bloodstream where it can power our muscles.

Our intelligent control system is continuously managing our energy supply, converting fast-acting sugars into fat for long-term storage and back from fats to sugars in our blood for immediate energy.

Watch it in action

You don’t have to believe me, you can watch this in action on your own body by doing what I do and just buy a continuous blood sugar monitor and watch.

This is what I see every day.

At night my blood sugar will be relatively low and stable (apart from a bit of a bump when I get up for a pee).

But as soon as the sun gets up my blood sugar will rise. I have not eaten anything but my intelligent control system has learned from experience (what engineers call self-learning) that when it starts to get daylight I will soon be getting up and need energy so it takes energy out of my long-term storage (my bum) making it readily available for short term use as sugar in my blood.

It is smart and has learned this over time using the same process of self-learning that I used in the intelligent control software I used to write.

Then I will eat my breakfast, the microbes in my gut, which is part of my intelligent control system, will digest my breakfast releasing the energy as sugars into my bloodstream.

This is sensed by my intelligent control system (and I see from my blood sugar monitor) as a blood sugar spike so my intelligent control system takes a decision that it needs to send out instructions to take this short-term energy supply – sugars in my blood and store this in my long term storage tank, my bum.

If the preferred storage vessel (my bum) is full it will find somewhere else to store the fat and wherever that is is not good news.

A highly sophisticated process

This is a highly sophisticated deliberate process which is occurring 375/24. It does not happen by chance and if we want to get on top of the epidemic of chronic disease we have to gain an understanding of how our intelligent control system works.

Sadly we only have a limited understanding of how our intelligent control system works a the code level.

However, we can get some inspiration from the intelligent control system that we have developed for our machines.

Take a trip to the local BMX track and see for yourself our intelligent self-learning control system at work.

Learning to ride a bike (or catch a ball)

I am an engineer. When I was at Uni I learned about gyroscopic couples and self-balancing systems, the basis of how a bike stays upright, and to be honest I found it difficult to get my head around.

But I had been riding bikes for years with no understanding of self-balancing gyroscopic couples – how come I could still ride a bike without falling off?

When I had kids and they wanted a bike for Christmas did I sit down with them and give them a long lecture about self-balancing gyroscopic couples?

No way! Take them out to the lawn so they won’t hurt themselves too much and let them learn by trial and error, falling off a few times but within a couple of hours they have the knack, never to be forgotten.

I have this somewhat crazy-sounding idea that as part of a nutrition course, the students should spend an afternoon watching the kids at a BMX park.

There will be the beginners who get halfway up the ramps and run out of speed and fall off and the experts who fly to the top of the ramp, flip their bike in mid-air and zoom back down the ramp – truly amazing.

That is our intelligent control system at work, you can see the kids learning about anticipatory control, learning the art of measuring the rate of change without a mention of self-balancing gyroscopic forces or differential calculus.

For the best part of a million years, we applied this expertise in self-learning to control our appetite so we did not get fat and sick.

Not being fat is singularly important if you don’t want to be that snarling beast’s dinner and need to nip up that protective tree. Evolution is a cruel, but effective system.

Maybe we have to change from being our modern high-tech-twenty-first century science specialist to an eighteen-century natural philosopher understanding how systems work as a whole.

We need to become modern-day Darwins.

Changed the rules

Now we have changed the rules by having cheap, convenient high-energy food readily available.

If we want to resolve the chronic disease epidemic we have to learn how to retrain our intelligent control system to adapt to these new conditions.

This requires a societal change.

Societal change

This is the aim of the Gbiota social benefit movement.

There are two parts to the Gbiota movement.

There is the technology of how to grow replacement and gut-brain food and that is just straightforward technology. This can be cheaper than buying food from the supermarket but does mean that people have to do it themselves or we change the design of our cities so local growers can supply genuinely fresh plants.

With the threat of climate change having cities with green spots to reprocess organic waste seems highly desirable.

The difficult bit – creating societal change

The second part is the difficult part, how do we change both our health system and our society so the focus is on prevention rather than cure?

How do we do this in the misinformation age where the internet is saturated with marketing crap?

People learn from other people that they trust. My experience as an innovator is there are three types of people,

– the pioneers, the change makers, or early adopters who see the need for change and make it happen,

– the puddings who agree logically that there is a need for change but there is always some reason to procrastinate, the busy work brigade,

– and the crusties who will never change but who eventually die.

Start with the pioneers

Pioneers can be found anywhere, they can be just highly motivated private individuals who see the need for change, they can be from within the scientific system, the Universities and research establishments and there are even pioneers within Governments.

I can’t change the world myself, but I can try and get the message out to the pioneers of the importance of understanding our intelligent control system and training it to change our eating habits so we stop stuffing ourselves with energy food.

I am continuously amazed by the modern world we live in, how mega companies put profits ahead of community benefit, the disinformation which saturates the internet and even the election of Donald Trump.

But even that shows one thing – there is dissatisfaction with the current system and the world is ready for change.

Let us make it happen. Email me colin@gbiota.com

Health – prevention first cure second

Colin Austin 4 Nov 2024 © This document is published under Creative Commons. It may be copied and republished without further permission, just acknowledgement of source.

Summary

Across the globe, we are suffering from an epidemic of chronic or non-infectious diseases. Three out of four people die prematurely from a chronic disease. The social and economic costs are massive stretching our medical resources to the limit and at high cost.

We know that these chronic diseases are caused by the wrong fat in the wrong place and it is widely assumed that this is because we are eating too much sugary fatty foods – the calorie balance theory.

While it is true that we do have to consume an excess of sugary fatty foods this is not the cause. How much and where we store fat is decided by our intelligent control system which regulates our bodies. The microbes in our gut are an integral part of our intelligent control system regulating our appetite and immune system.

We need to both feed and train these microbes. Our modern food system is deficient in gut-brain food.

This can only be rectified at an individual level, ‘we the people’ but it needs the Government to run educational programs and support the change in the way we grow our food.

This is not a cost to the Governments as it would save them billions of dollars in the health care system.

What life for my great grandchildren?

What will life be like for my great grandchildren? Long, healthy and happy I hope.

But at this moment we are facing an epidemic of chronic diseases. We know how to fix it but we are all too busy with pointless busy work.

Here I show how to fix that.

Three out of four people die prematurely from chronic disease.

That is bad but it gets worse, across the globe our health systems are creaking at the joints, doctors are overworked and in short supply waiting lists for other medical needs stretch out, ambulance ramping is the norm and the cost to our medical services run into the multi-billions.

Eight million people a year suffer an amputation from diabetes.

Health is a major cost to our Governments.

This is the major issue facing our health services.

The wrong fat in the wrong place is the underlying cause of all chronic or non-infectious diseases overweight, diabetes, heart attacks, and dementia.

What makes our bodies store the wrong fat in the wrong place? This is a control problem.

Not little piggies

The conventional wisdom or paradigm is that we get fat and sick because we have turned into little piggies.

We see this everywhere, in the thousands of books written, in articles and on the many influential websites on diet and health.

It is called the calorie balance theory and it says that we can model our bodies like a water tank, with water flowing in and out.

If we have more water flowing in than out the level in the tank will go up, which is equivalent to us getting fat so we get fat because we are consuming more calories than we are burning so we end up fat.

Is this really true?

It is well worthwhile breaking the over-activity cycle which seems to dominate everyday modern life by asking if this model is a valid representation of how our bodies work.

We can’t procrastinate and say we are too busy. Busy work is not an alternative to death.

Control systems

Let me confess, I am not a medical doctor, micro-biologist or bio-chemist. I am an engineer which may seem totally irrelevant to the human body.

Engineers make machines, and every machine has some form of control system – maybe a dead simple on-off switch of something a bit more complex if you are controlling a rocket to the moon.

How control system work

I understand how control systems, my first real job was working for a company that made control systems for power stations. Later in life I was a pioneer of Computer Aided Engineering and wrote software which led me to be recognised by the Australian Institute of Engineers as one of Australia’s leading innovators.

Among the software I wrote was sophisticated control software so I know a bit about control systems which means I can look at how intelligent control systems work and see if there is anything relevant to understanding how the intelligent control system in our bodies may work.

Balancing capacity with demand on time

Control systems have some target, in a power station it may be providing the power to balanced load.

This is similar to the problem in our bodies, balancing energy in and energy out.

The challenge in a power station is that the load varies while it takes some time for the power plant to increase output. It is essential to know the timing characteristics of the power plant.

In our bodies the target is to control both our blood sugar and fat levels. In a way these are interchangeable as our bodies can turn sugar into fat and fat into sugar but they have very different timing characteristics.

Sugar is like having food on the table, it is immediately available, fat is like having food in a cupboard, to make it available we have to take it out of the cupboard and process it ready to eat and that takes time.

Errors and timing characteristics

Typically we have a simple target and we can operate in a narrow band, in a more complex situation like driving a car the target is continuously changing.

In our bodies we have a fairly stable requirement for our blood sugar and fat levels to be controlled within a narrow band but a dramatically varying demand whether we are running to catch that train or waiting in a queue.

PID controllers

In a relatively simple case we can get away with measuring the error between the target and actual and this is important, the rate of change of error.

If we are driving a car and see it is wandering from the lane we may decide to just gently correct, but if we see the car is about to leave the road we may make a dramatic correction but then we have to be careful we don’t over correct.

All this is handled by the traditional proportional, integral and derivative controllers which have been around for years.

But more recently we have developed self learning software which learns over time how the system is working based on observing history or even applying real intelligence.

Intelligent controllers

More recently we have developed intelligent controllers which can learn to deal with the unexpected.

A classic example is the football half time problem.

On Saturdays, when there is a football match there is a low demand as people are busy watching the game.

But at half time many people will put their kettles onto make a cup of tea creating a huge and initially unexpected peak in demand that no regular controller could handle.

But engineers may have been caught out initially but they soon worked out the problem and developed an intelligent solution.

It was impossible for them to cover this abrupt surge in power demand with a conventional power system. But having identified the problem they located a pumped hydro facility and well before half time the put the power station on full bore but used that power to fill the upper reservoir.

Then by half time the main power plant was operating at full capacity and could be supplemented by the power from the pumped hydro so avoiding the disaster of not having a cuppa at half time.

This is the basic principle of self learning or adaptive control, it involves learning how the system works, anticipating a change and applying a correction ahead to time.

Toddler on a bike

The human body is incredibly good as this self learning and anticipatory control process.

Have you ever watched a toddler learning to ride a bike?

They don’t sit down and read a book on gyroscopic couples and self balancing systems, no way, they just hop on the bike and after a couple of spills the kid has learned the dynamics and is up and away.

Anticipatory control is natural for the human brain.

Continuous blood sugar monitoring

I am in the habit of wearing a continuous blood sugar monitor, it tell so much more than a single measurement. This shows that our intelligent control system fully understands anticipatory control.

At night my blood sugar will drop to a low (and oddly erratic level) but when it gets time for me to get up my blood sugar level will rise in anticipation of my needing extra energy.

I have not eaten anything it is just my intelligent control system looking after me.

What is happening is my intelligent control system recognises that I will soon be getting up and will need energy. It goes to the bodies pantry, the fat cells, takes some out, converts it to blood sugar ready for that spurt of energy I will need as I start the days activities.

Anticipatory control

That is what we engineers call anticipatory control, it is the technique we use so that the football fans can have their cuppa at half time.

Engineers have only been able to exploit anticipatory control since the development of the computers, our bodies have been doing this for hundreds of thousand of years.

Time for a bit of humility.

Self learning software and the self learning body

It also understand that I have different loads at different times of the day.

There is a difference in response with food eaten at a normal meal time and a meal that is not on schedule.

While it is normal to expect that a meal would increase blood sugar levels this is not the way it works.

It takes a lot of energy to digest food so we need extra energy for digestion, which is why we eat a sweet desert to provide the energy to digest the heavy main meal.

It appears our bodies have learned this so if I eat an experimental meal in the middle of the afternoon when my body is not expecting these loads I will get different traces.

Our bodies are just much more sophisticated than the over simplistic calories in calories out theory.

The puppy inside our tummies

As an engineer I know full well the laws of conservation of mass and energy but these are not the driving force that is the cause of the modern epidemic of chronic disease which makes us fat and sick, it is our intelligent control system which is the driving force.

It is like having a puppy inside us, it is there to look after us and if we feed it and look after it, all is great, if we don’t feed and train our puppy then we end up with the epidemic of chronic disease.

Feed and train

If we expect our intelligent control system to work effectively we have to both feed and train it.

At birth we get our initial burst of gut microbes from out mum, later she feeds us pre-biotics in her milk but later our gut micro-biota depends on the food we eat.

We have known it for a long time

We have known this for a long time.

We learned in the second world war that people deprived of food would be trained to overeat and get fat when food was available.

We learned that changing the gut biota in mice could make fat mice skinny and skinny mice fat.

We learned from faecal transplants that skinny people could become fat just by changing their gut biota.

And then we conducted the largest experiment on food and health ever conducted, it was called processed foods which were inert, dead, lacking the essential pre and pro biotics .

People across the globe got fat and sick in the worlds largest epidemic.

And still the simplistic calorie balance theory prevails.

A peculiar creature

We are a singularly peculiar creature, we are naturally intelligent and naturally cooperative which has led to us becoming the dominant creature on earth.

Yet we kill ourselves on an industrial scale in modern warfare, we destroy soil, the basis of a healthy food system and despite a clear intelligence we cling to outdated ideas because they are simple and convenient (and make the big food and big pharma a lot of money).

The real reason why we get fat and sick

We get fat and sick because our modern food system does not feed our gut-brain which regulates our appetite and immune system.

The solution is to feed your gut-brain.

I cannot do this for you – there is no magic pill, but I can show you how.

It is not trivial, takes a bit of effort and must be done right but other people are doing it.

It is your body, your life and your choice.

 Diabetes and insulin resistance

Insulin resistance is an evolved characteristic that ensures the brain has a continuous supply of sugars.

When sugars are in short supply insulin resistance restricts the flow of sugars to the muscles so sugars are available for the brain.

Insulin resistance is an evolved characteristic for our survival. If the brain dies we die. It is the way our intelligent control system keeps us alive.

When our intelligent control system is fully functional the system works fine. When our intelligent control system is not  functional we get diabetes.

Our intelligent control system operates in our subconscious brain, we have no control or even know what it is doing but it regulates our bodies.

Temperature is a classic example of our intelligent control system at work, it makes us shiver when cold or sweat when hot, we have no control over it but it regulates our temperature to a fraction of a degree.

Our gut biome is a critical part of this intelligent control system, playing a major part in our appetite, how much and what sort of food we want to eat and also our immune system protecting us 24/7.

From the moment we are born, it is learning and adapting to the current conditions, as described in more detail later.

It works to keep us alive protecting us from both infectious and non-infectious diseases and can only be described as a marvel of the human body.

But, at times it fails and then we have serious problems.

Unfortunately, the importance of our intelligent control system is not widely recognised so we fail to feed and train it with disastrous consequences.

The modern diabetes epidemic is caused by failure to feed our gut brain so our intelligent control system no longer functions properly.

Eating a diet rich in vegetables may improve our gut-brain and intelligent control system but only if the vegetables are grown in soil containing the beneficial microbes.

This is well understood in enlightened scientific circles but unfortunately, the popular press is fixated with the calorie balance theory which is overly simplistic so we rely on magic pills or diets, which are highly profitable when the real problem is we are not caring for our intelligent control system.

Sadly we have switched from being Homo-sapiens to Homo-profitus.

Profit or Health

Our intelligent control system

I experiment. I breed microbes in the soil, grow plants in that soil and then eat them. I eat different foods and measure my blood sugar levels to see what happens.

We do not appreciate how sophisticated our bodies are.

We have an intelligent control system in our gut which regulates our appetite – what and how much we want to eat.

It works like the intelligent control software I used to write. It senses our blood sugar has an error, it looks at how rapidly it is changing and applies a correction, it looks at how well that correction worked, learns from that and creates a new correction.

I feed my gut-brain so I have an effective intelligent control system.

Piggy me

I look at my blood sugar reading and it is fine.

But then I am naughty and go to a restaurant and pig out.

I see that I get a blood sugar spike from eating naughty food but the microbes in my gut are here to look after me and protect me from my naughty habits.

They communicate with each other, just like in a computer to provide real intelligence.

They work out that something is wrong and make hormones to bring my blood sugar level down and within a couple of hours my blood sugar is back to normal.

Feed our gut-brains

All I have to do is feed my gut-brain and make sure it has the right microbes. There is nothing new about this, we evolved this way and we have been feeding our gut-brain for hundreds of thousands of years.

And then we stopped. Why?

Because our modern food system puts their profits ahead of our health.

But you and I can fix that.

Microbes breed like crazy, they make teenagers at a drunken party look like a pack of nuns.

There is no problem in breeding microbes all we have to do is to manage the conditions so the good bugs out-breed the bad bugs a process we call Eco-balance which again has been going on for millions of years.

That is what Gbiota is all about, it is a social movement that puts health before profits and shows people who want to live a long and healthy life how to feed their gut brain.

Read on – then sign up and join the movement.

The good gut bugs are here to protect us

Beneficial microbes, the good bugs, in our gut control our appetite and immune system leading to a long and healthy life.

Our modern food system is deficient in these, good bugs, so we have an epidemic of chronic non-infectious diseases – overweight, diabetes, heart attacks and dementia.

Three out of four people now die, prematurely from chronic diseases.

Our health system is creaking at the joints, not enough doctors and health care professionals, ambulances ramping outside overfull wards, billions of dollars spent on avoidable care and amputations.

All because we don’t have the protection of the good gut bugs.

We know how to fix it – we just have to do it.

Our intelligent control system

People often think our bodies are dumb and we get fat and sick because we eat too much.

Our bodies are very smart and we can see this by looking at the blood sugar level throughout the day.

Imagine that you are controlling your blood sugar level and have to keep the level within limits, you have two buttons one to increase blood sugar levels and the other to reduce it.

How, as an intelligent creature, would you manage those two buttons?

At night there is not much to do so just a little push on the down button is all you need.

But then in the morning, you know there will be a need for energy so you press the up button at wake-up time and the blood sugar levels rise.

We can see that our intelligent control system does exactly this our blood sugar rises between wake-up and breakfast.

Both you and our intelligent control system know that at breakfast time there is going to be a big surge in blood sugar levels as your body gets stuck into all that toast and marmalade so you are both on standby.

As soon as you see the blood sugar levels rising both you and your body’s intelligent control system start pushing the down button to bring the blood sugar level back under control.

Message – your body is smart not some dumb machine that works on a crude calories in calories out basis.

Of course, the basic laws of conservation of mass and energy apply so we have to eat to get fat and sick but the reason why we overeat is because we have are not looking after our intelligent control system not because we are little piggies.

Blood sugar and fat are pretty much interchangeable.

Before I even wake up in the morning my intelligent control system anticipates that I will need extra energy so it draws down on my fat stores so I have energy available.

When I get around to eating breakfast there is a surplus of energy so my intelligent control system stores some of this sugar as fat.

I used to write intelligent control software which had self-learning and anticipatory functions. Our intelligent control system seems to have these capabilities built in.

This is a natural human capacity. If we wake up and see a blue sky we may go and water the garden. We have learned that blue sky means a probability of being hot and dry so we anticipate a high water use by our plants.

If there are dark clouds we may put of watering for now.

This is a natural human capability so we need to assume that this is how our intelligent control system is managing our blood sugar and fat storage.

What we can say for sure is that the calorie balance theory, which looks as our body like a water tank, with flows in and out and the water level is determined by these flows is a simplistic model which is leading us to major errors.

This is serious as three out of four people die prematurely from a chronic disease which is caused by the wrong fat in the wrong place.

How have we got ourselves into such a mess?

We know how to breed the beneficial microbes, the good bugs. Just collect organic waste, mix with soil and volcanic rock dust, add inoculants, grow plants and eat them while fresh.

How do I know this, for a start I study the work of experts in the field like Professor Tim Spencer and Bill Bulsiewicz, but then I collect organic waste and grow gut-brain food.

Then I test it on myself.

I wear a continuous blood sugar monitor.

If I eat modern food my readings go through the roof, I am not diabetic but would soon be if I just ate modern foods  that are deficient in beneficial microbes.

So I eat gut-brain food adding it to my regular diet and see my reading drop down to healthy levels.

This is not rocket science – anyone can do it.

I can’t do it for you but I can show you how.

So why haven’t we fixed the chronic disease problem?

Most Governments have Health and Welfare departments whose job is to prevent these chronic diseases. Why aren’t they promoting that we all eat gut-brain food full of the good bugs?

It is a simple question of profits versus health and at this moment profits for big food and big pharma are winning while Governments stand back and procrastinate with busy work.

Market power

Profits! Big food and big pharma make a lot of money from the current system, they have immense marketing power to protect their profits while there is no money to be made showing people how to collect their kitchen waste to breed the good bugs and grow the plants that will feed the good bugs in our gut.

Join us

What can you do about this? Join the Gbiota movement for social change.

The first step is to register, stand up and show you care, the more people that show they care the better able we are to get people to eat gut-brain food.

You can join for free and read the many articles on food and health, later when you are convinced that all people should be eating gut-brain food you can learn how, we do ask people to contribute but it is a pittance and you will end up saving money (and maybe your foot).

We are a social benefit organisation, but it costs money to develop technology to learn how to grow gut-brain food and we have to cover our costs. If you can’t afford to contribute we have a needy membership for $1 for those that cannot afford to pay.

Join us and change the world so people can have a long and healthy life with a sustainable food system based on recycling waste.

Want to live a long and healthy life?

DIY breed your own gut bugs? Your immediate reaction may be no thanks I am not a microbiologist.

Well, let me tell you, right now you are breeding your own gut bugs, whether you like it or not.

Microbes, I prefer to call them bugs, are everywhere, in the air, our drinks, our food and they breed like crazy doubling every twenty minutes 1,2,4,8,16,32,64,128 …. trillions.

You can kill them all off with powerful disinfectants but they will be back.

You can’t stop them breeding, the only choice you have is what sort of bugs live inside you.

There are good bugs which make you fit and healthy, not-so-good bugs which make you fat and sick, and bugs that kill you.

You don’t need to be a microbiologist to tell what species of bugs are inside people.

Just go to any shopping centre and you will see people that are fit and healthy, they have the good bugs.

People with wobbly bums and tums, they have the not-so-good bugs.

If you want to see the people with the bad bugs you will have to go to the mortuary to find them.

You can’t stop bugs breeding but you can choose what sorts of bugs are breeding inside you.

If you have the conditions that benefit the good bugs they will out-breed and out-compete the not-so-good and bad bugs.

It has been going on for millions of years and we call it Eco-balance. We can use Eco-balance to select what sort of bugs live inside us.

That is what Gbiota is all about, we can’t breed the bugs for you but we can show you how to create the conditions that will favour the bugs you want, which we assume is the good bugs so you can look forward to a long and healthy life but you have to do it yourself – we show you how.

Our intelligent control system

Our bodies have an intelligent control system which regulates our bodies, particularly our appetite and immune system.

Our gut is an integral part of this control system. If we have the right blend of species in our gut we can expect a long and healthy life, if we have a poor blend of species we get fat and sick.

The blend of species in our gut is the result of a long chain, starting in the soil with the nutrients and moisture, the microbes in the soil, the creatures of the soil, the plants that are grown, how quickly the plants are eaten after harvesting and how they are processed.

We have to look at all these factors as an integrated system, which may be complex but we can easily tell if we have it right, we feel satisfied and stop craving more food.

This may seem complex but the final answer is simple, grow your own gut-brain food. Anyone can do it and look forward to a long and healthy life.

We need the microbes

We don’t eat rocks to get our nutrients, we need microbes and fungi to break down the rocks into nutrients we can digest.

Similarly with energy, we need photosynthesis from plants on land or algae in water to capture the sun’s energy.

Our lives are dependent on these micro-organisms.

But they do much more than provide a path to nutrients and energy, they can communicate with each other to provide intelligence which regulates our bodies. We see this with insects like bees and ants, birds that live in flocks, slime moulds and even human society.

We call this swarm intelligence and it is what regulates our bodies which controls our bodily functions particularly our appetite and immune system.

Microbes are essential for life. However, there are beneficial microbes that keep us fit and healthy and harmful microbes that make us fat and sick.

Over millions of years, nature has evolved a system with trillions of microbes and many thousands of species but with the right conditions so the beneficial microbes preferentially out-compete and out-breed the harmful microbes, we call this ecological balance and it is how we exist today.

Generally, microbes breed and die incredibly fast with cells dividing within twenty minutes of formation, we may see the same species over time, they are not the same microbes they are their great, great grand kids, we call this dynamic equilibrium.

There are trillions of microbes in our gut comprising many thousands of species. Initially, these microbes come from our mum but later they come from microbes that breed in the soil, move into the plants we eat and then into our gut biome.

Our health depends on the dynamic equilibrium of the microbes in the soil and in our gut biome. Our modern food system, centred on chemical industrial agriculture and highly processed foods is lacking these beneficial microbes which has led to a global epidemic of chronic diseases, overweight, diabetes, heart attack and dementia.

To overcome this we need to preferentially breed the beneficial microbes in the soil by carefully controlling the conditions, growing plants and eating them while still fresh before the microbes die.

This is not difficult, virtually anyone can do it. We cannot do it for you but we can show you how to do it by having a Gbiota box of plants growing at your home which you pick and eat.

Modern food

Modern food, backed up by a multi-billion dollar highly sophisticated advertising campaign, may claim to be healthy but is making us fat and sick and killing us from man-made chronic diseases, overweight, diabetes, heart attacks and dementia.

It is deficient in the beneficial microbes which forms part of the intelligent control system which regulates our bodies and also critical trace minerals.

Health starts in real soil, teaming with beneficial microbes and nutrients. Eat plants, grown in living nutritious soil and eaten fresh – not plants grown in chemical soil and eaten days after harvesting.

It is not rocket science, anyone with a little effort can grow plants that will make them healthy. It costs less and is always there in an emergency.

Gbiota shows you how.

But there is so much hype on the web that people have become sceptical. They want to see hard evidence from real people. This takes a social movement.

That is why there are two parts to the Gbiota movement.

The first – the easy bit, is developing the technology – the second is to apply the technology and for that, we need a social movement and why we need you.

Start by reading my last two articles Community Health and Jenny explain why and what we can do about it.

Chronic diseases require a life style change, they cannot be cured by pills or injections. You have to make the effort.

We  have no funding, we are a membership only social benefit organisation with costs like any other organisation.

We are supported by our members. We have a free six month trial period. After that you can  join the community and read the various articles we publish on a weeklyish basis for an annual subscription of $Au15 (about ten dollars US). Use rethinking food login here or join as a full member and benefit from our growing support.

If you want to know more I am happy to chat, I can set up video calls, but you have to email me first.

Together we can make the world a better place for humans, (but maybe not for computers).

Find out who we are at Welcome to Gbiota