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.