Colin Austin © 11th Dec 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.

Our intelligent control system

Infectious and chronic or non-infectious diseases

chronic diseasesWe are living longer, thanks to major advances in medical science.

In the past people died, often when young, from infectious diseases now we die predominantly from chronic or non-infectious diseases with three out of four people dying from a chronic disease.

We are in the midst of an epidemic of chronic diseases overweight, diabetes, heart attacks, strokes and dementia.

Medical science may keep us alive for a long time but far worse is that we may live for a long time with poor health. Our life span may be increasing but our health span is not.

The mind and body are inseparable

We have a mind and a body, they are inseparable with our mind controlling our bodies, I prefer to call the part of our mind that controls our body our intelligent control system.

Chronic diseases determine whether we are fit and healthy or fat and sick. They stem from our intelligent control system not working properly.

fat and skinnyA person may be obese because they suffer from food insecurity, this may have started in early childhood or in a war when food was scarce and is now firmly implanted in our mind or intelligent control system.

The person is obese because their intelligent control system has decided that it needs to store more fat so it sends out signals to both eat more and store the excess fat.

Going on a restrictive diet or taking appetite suppressant pills like Ozempic may appear to give some temporary benefit but is not facing the core of the problem which is food insecurity which may be hidden away in our subconscious so we are not even aware of it.

Some people are fat while others are skinny. It all depends on our intelligent control system.

If it decides we should be fat we end up fat and if it decides we should be skinny we end up skinny.

Finding out how our intelligent control system works

We need to understand how our intelligent control system works. Finding a cure once the chronic disease is well established can be very challenging.

For example, it is very difficult to cure blocked arteries which can cause death but it is relatively simple to avoid arteries becoming blocked in the first place.

Prevention is so much better than cure.

We are a communal animal, we cannot breed and thrive without our tribe. If we are suffering from a deep feeling of food insecurity we may find the solution is eating communally with sympathetic members of our tribe, often our family.

The support and understanding of our tribe which focuses on the underlying cause may be a far better solution than some restrictive diet which may make matters worse.

Fat in the wrong places

The underlying cause of these diseases is fat in the wrong place, in our tummies, pancreas, arteries and brain.

So what causes fat in the wrong place? It does not just happen.

Saying that it is because we eat more than we burn and the solution is to eat less and exercise may explain how we get fat, and has not been effective.

That is just restating the fundamental laws of conservation of mass and energy. It does not tell us why we get fat.

We need to understand why we get fat and the answer is because our intelligent control system decides we need to store more fat.

The big question

whyThe big question is why does our intelligent control system decide we need to store more fat?

Every single person has an intelligent control system which regulates their bodies.

This system controls our temperature, heart rate, breathing and most importantly our appetite, what and how much we want to eat and how much fat we store.

If we are going to resolve the epidemic of chronic diseases we need to understand how our intelligent control system works.

Understanding intelligent control systems

I am an engineer. Engineers create machines, and every machine has some form of control system. These can range from simple on-off switches to highly sophisticated intelligent control systems that learn the operating characteristics of a machine to anticipate changes before they happen.

I will describe an intelligent control system I wrote for irrigation and compare it to the intelligent control system in our bodies. This comparison will help us understand how this significantly more advanced biological control system may work.

Both systems are designed to control living organisms – relatively simple plants in one case and our complex bodies in the other.

 

Processors

  • In the irrigation system, there is just one processor. In the human body, we have three:
  • The Conscious Brain
    This allows us to decide what food we eat – fish and chips or a fresh salad. This is a deliberate choice.
  • The Subconscious Brain
    This determines what we want to eat, among many other functions. Some actions, like body temperature regulation and heart rate, are entirely outside our conscious control. Others, like breathing, are partially and temporarily controllable.
  • The Gut
    This contains trillions of microbes capable of communication, providing genuine intelligence. However, the results depend on the species of microbes present, which can create different “answers” – a complication akin to having a computer with conflicting outputs. Having a computer which gives different answers does not make life easy.

Awareness

When I suggest that we store fat because our intelligent control system decides that we need to store fat I am not suggesting that we can think ourselves thin.

We are obviously aware of what is happening in our conscious brain but our conscious brain is only a small part of our intelligence system and is very slow and clunky in comparison with our subconscious brain.

Look at catching a ball. Our conscious brain may decide we want to catch but is just too slow and clunky for us to catch the ball.

Our subconscious brain is much faster, looks at the speed and direction of the ball and works out where our hands must be to catch the ball. This takes the speed of our subconscious brain and a lot of learning and storing of information so it is available in the fraction of a second needed to catch the ball.

Our gut brain

baby swiping phoneWe have even less idea what is happening in our gut brain which is not even us.

We know that there are trillions of cells in our gut and they can communicate with each other to provide intelligence similar to a computer.

But we have no idea of the code that drives this super computer.

Science may be the art of managing truth, understanding how our intelligent control system works needs that art of managing ignorance.

The human brain is very good at that – just watch a baby in a pram swiping away at a mobile phone or electronic toy. They have no idea how it works but they can still have fun playing with it.

Fat and skinny

fat and skinny miceWe have known for a long time that we can make fat mice skinny and skinny mice fat simply by feeding them the pooh from the other mice.

Humans are not in the habit of eating each other pooh but we find the same thing happens with faecal transplants.

Sensors for the irrigation software and us

The irrigation software needs a number of sensors.

It needs a soil moisture sensor to measure the moisture level in the soil. This may give multiple values for different positions in the soil but otherwise is simple.

Our bodies are much more complex, we sense much more than full or empty.

We can sense the level of many different chemicals in our bodies, if we spend time digging in the garden on a hot day we can detect a deficiency in our salt levels so we may have a craving for salted nuts rather than for cheesecake.

The irrigation software also needs measurements of how much water is applied at each irrigation, evaporation and predicted evaporation based on data from the weather forecast, rainfall and predicted rainfall and time of the season or rather the stage of development of the plant.

Our bodies are also receiving a plethora of information about events now and predicted.

Learning and Adaption

The initial trial

When seeds are first planted, the irrigation software has no data about the “crop factor” (the ratio of water use to evaporation). It begins by applying a trial amount of water and observing the results – analogous to taking a sip of unfamiliar food.

Learning begins

The software adjusts its calculations based on the trial, learning the relationship between water applied and soil moisture levels. This is akin to us sampling food to decide if it’s bland and can be eaten with gusto or spicy and requires caution.

Similarly, human babies begin with fat reserves and learn to suckle, sensing fullness and satisfaction. If a baby experiences food insecurity (e.g., no breast appears when hungry), it may develop lifelong food cravings and anxiety.

Understanding and learning

We rarely fully understand the world around us but we manage by a sophisticated process of observation and trial and error.

We may start by making a small change and observe what happens, we then may make a bigger change based on what happened with the small change.

You can see this happening from babies to adults, take a sip to see if the curry it mild or hot, observe the results then take a mouthful or just take a very small serving.

That is the way man made intelligent control system works, we call it predictor-corrector schemes and in our machines, we have developed this to very high levels measuring not only the result, but the rate of change of result and any accumulated errors or offset.

This is the way machine controllers work and is the way our body’s control system work.

Self-Learning and Prediction

I designed the irrigation software to self-correct – predict, apply, observe, and refine. Humans perform this prediction-correction process naturally, from learning to walk to gauging how much to eat.

 

Processors

  • In the irrigation system, there is just one processor. In the human body, we have three:

  • The Conscious Brain
    This allows us to decide what food we eat – fish and chips or a fresh salad. This is a deliberate choice.

  • The Subconscious Brain
    This determines what we want to eat, among many other functions. Some actions, like body temperature regulation and heart rate, are entirely outside our conscious control. Others, like breathing, are partially and temporarily controllable.

  • The Gut
    This contains trillions of microbes capable of communication, providing genuine intelligence. However, the results depend on the species of microbes present, which can create different “answers” – a complication akin to having a computer with conflicting outputs. Having a computer which gives different answers does not make life easy.

Awareness

When I suggest that we store fat because our intelligent control system decides that we need to store fat I am not suggesting that we can think ourselves thin.

We are obviously aware of what is happening in our conscious brain but our conscious brain is only a small part of our intelligence system and is very slow and clunky in comparison with our subconscious brain.

Look at catching a ball. Our conscious brain may decide we want to catch but is just too slow and clunky for us to catch the ball.

Our subconscious brain is much faster, looks at the speed and direction of the ball and works out where our hands must be to catch the ball. This takes the speed of our subconscious brain and a lot of learning and storing of information so it is available in the fraction of a second needed to catch the ball.

Our gut brain

We have even less idea what is happening in our gut brain which is not even us.

We know that there are trillions of cells in our gut and they can communicate with each other to provide intelligence similar to a computer.

But we have no idea of the code that drives this super computer.

Science may be the art of managing truth, understanding how our intelligent control system works needs that art of managing ignorance.

The human brain is very good at that – just watch a baby in a pram swiping away at a mobile phone or electronic toy. They have no idea how it works but they can still have fun playing with it.

Fat and skinny

We have known for a long time that we can make fat mice skinny and skinny mice fat simply by feeding them the pooh from the other mice.

Humans are not in the habit of eating each other pooh but we find the same thing happens with faecal transplants.

Sensors for the irrigation software and us

The irrigation software needs a number of sensors.

It needs a soil moisture sensor to measure the moisture level in the soil. This may give multiple values for different positions in the soil but otherwise is simple.

Our bodies are much more complex, we sense much more than full or empty.

We can sense the level of many different chemicals in our bodies, if we spend time digging in the garden on a hot day we can detect a deficiency in our salt levels so we may have a craving for salted nuts rather than for cheesecake.

The irrigation software also needs measurements of how much water is applied at each irrigation, evaporation and predicted evaporation based on data from the weather forecast, rainfall and predicted rainfall and time of the season or rather the stage of development of the plant.

Our bodies are also receiving a plethora of information about events now and predicted.

Learning and Adaption

The initial trial

When seeds are first planted, the irrigation software has no data about the “crop factor” (the ratio of water use to evaporation). It begins by applying a trial amount of water and observing the results – analogous to taking a sip of unfamiliar food.

Learning begins

The software adjusts its calculations based on the trial, learning the relationship between water applied and soil moisture levels. This is akin to us sampling food to decide if it’s bland and can be eaten with gusto or spicy and requires caution.

Similarly, human babies begin with fat reserves and learn to suckle, sensing fullness and satisfaction. If a baby experiences food insecurity (e.g., no breast appears when hungry), it may develop lifelong food cravings and anxiety.

Understanding and learning

We rarely fully understand the world around us but we manage by a sophisticated process of observation and trial and error.

We may start by making a small change and observe what happens, we then may make a bigger change based on what happened with the small change.

You can see this happening from babies to adults, take a sip to see if the curry it mild or hot, observe the results then take a mouthful or just take a very small serving.

That is the way man made intelligent control system works, we call it predictor-corrector schemes and in our machines, we have developed this to very high levels measuring not only the result, but the rate of change of result and any accumulated errors or offset.

This is the way machine controllers work and is the way our body’s control system work.

Self-Learning and Prediction

I designed the irrigation software to self-correct – predict, apply, observe, and refine. Humans perform this prediction-correction process naturally, from learning to walk to gauging how much to eat.

 

Anticipation

kid on bikeBoth the babies and the plants now have a common situation – they are both starting to grow and need more food or water.

In addition to the predictor-corrector capability the irrigation software also needs an anticipation capability.

This has to operate at several levels. Based on the weather forecast for rainfall and evaporation the software anticipates how much water needs to be applied but that is not enough.

The plants are continuously growing, so basing the water demand on the last irrigation is always going to mean that less water is applied than is actually needed.

This has to be allowed for by building in a method of looking at the rate of change of the crop factor so the amount of water applied is increased to allow for the increased growth of the plants.

If this sounds complicated let me tell you that the human brain is absolutely superb at this.

Just watch a three year old kid on a bike. They have absolutely no understanding of gyroscopic couples and stability factors. They learn that they have to steer in the direction they feel the bike is falling, which is inherent with gyroscopic couples and they don’t fall off.

By the time they have reached adulthood, they have acquired an incredible range of anticipatory skills. Catching a ball is a classic, you put your hands where you anticipate the balls will be when it get near you.

Observing our intelligent control system

Understanding our intelligent control system should be central to combating chronic diseases. Despite advances in computing, artificial intelligence, and biochemistry, research into this system remains sparse. This neglect may stem from its perceived complexity.

Yet, even without sophisticated tools, we can observe patterns. For example, after gardening on a hot day, I crave salty foods, not sweets – evidence that my control system senses deficiencies and responds accordingly.

Maybe it has been put in the too hard basket, but we don’t have to completely understand it, we can do what artificial intelligence does, which has no understanding – look for patterns.

That is what I do as I try and work out how my intelligent control system works. It does not take any sophisticated scientific equipment, I don’t need any complex scientific equipment to tell if I am hungry, I can tell if I am hungry or satisfied or if I am craving some specific food.

Blood Sugar Regulation

If I spend time digging away in my garden on a hot summer day I come inside craving for some salty food.

That tells me that my intelligent control system does more than tell me if I am full or hungry but can sense deficiencies in my body, has learned over time which foods remedy that deficiency and send out signals so I want to get stuck into a packet of salty nut and not a slice of sugary cheesecake, which I normally gobble up at speed.

Just by digging in my garden, I have already learned a lot about my intelligent control system.

Continuous blood sugar monitoring

I do wear a continuous blood sugar monitor ancontinuous blood sugar monitord compare this with what I eat and other events.

We know that when we eat food it is first processed in our gut and then enters the blood, largely as sugars to power our muscles and our bodies.

That will create a blood sugar spike which our intelligent control system treats as an error in a predictor-corrector system.

Our intelligent control system can detect blood sugar levels and as soon as they start to rise beyond an acceptable level will send out messages to convert these sugars into fats which are then hopefully stored where fat should be stored, in our bums.

Again our intelligent control system senses when our blood sugar levels drop and will send out messages to turn some of that fat back into sugars to power our muscles.

Using a continuous blood sugar monitor I can watch this process of my intelligent control system shunting sugars and fat backwards and forwards so I don’t drop dead from lack of energy or make my blood so viscous with excess sugars that it can no longer flow into the fine capillaries throughout my body.

 

My intelligent control system is continuously learning

But I see much more – every morning just as I am waking up my blood sugar rises. I have not eaten anything so I know that my intelligent control system can learn and I have taught it, without thinking, that I go for a walk before breakfast so will need extra energy.

As I walk, or ride my bike, I might expect that my blood sugar levels may drop as I am burning up energy, but that is not what happens, it maintains or increases the level.

Intelligent Control Software

When I used to write software for intelligent control systems I looked at graphs which would tell me how well (or otherwise) my software was working.

The responses I see from my blood sugar graphs bear an uncanny resemblance to the graphs I used to see from the machines.

But there are even more surprises in store.

I expected to see the graphs fluctuate up and down as it tried to balance the energy coming in from the food I ate, basically in three pulses a day at the main meal times and the energy I was using from my morning walk, my sitting at my terminal reading all those emails and the sporadic energy burst as I worked in my garden or lugged out the rubbish bins.

That is what I saw and it was working pretty well with relatively minor fluctuations as you would expect from a well functioning control system that was under control.

Expect the unexpected

What I did not expect is that there would be much larger variations which I could not relate to any food or energy load.

Mostly there were high peaks soon after I had eaten with the graph often going above the allowable range for a short period indicating that my intelligent irrigation system is working as expected.

Unexpected lows

It is natural to expect that eating food will lead to a blood sugar spike, it makes common sense.

However, I do many experiments trying to understand the link between food and blood sugars.

I was therefore very surprised to see my blood sugar levels dropping below the minimum bar when I drank a green smoothie made from selected vegetables.

My explanation is that it takes a certain amount of energy to digest food. Drinking a smoothie made from vegetables with no fruit takes more energy than is readily available from the vegetables to my blood sugar levels drop.

An even bigger surprise

I was looking for connections between food and blood sugar levels. It was no surprise that stress also caused a significant increase in blood sugar although the extent was surprising.

We live in a high stress society but it may well be that our high stress lifestyle is having a big impact on the chronic disease epidemic as the highly processed food industry.

Watching videos with music and dancing

dancingSometimes I get tired and just want to relax so watch videos with music and youngsters dancing.

I am not doing anything, just sitting and watching so it would be reasonable to expect my blood sugars to be at equilibrium levels.

But that is not what happens, and what happens is what happens, regardless of what the theory says.

My blood sugar levels rise, presumably because my intelligent control system, with its build in anticipation effect that is essential to all intelligent control systems, is anticipating that I will jump and start leaping around in that crazy gyroscopics I delude myself is dancing.

You just cannot seperate body and mind.

The punch line

Chronic diseases are now the greatest health issue across the globe. We need to move on from thinking that this can be cured by the simplistic calorie balance theory and even our high levels of sophistication in biochemistry – that is just the “how” and start thinking about the “why” which means understanding how our intelligent control system works.

 

Action plan

 

  1. Shift the Paradigm
    Move from focusing on calorie imbalance to understanding and optimising our intelligent control system.
  2. Focus on Gut Biota
    Support appropriate gut microbes, as emphasized in Gbiota technology. This is the aim of the Gbiota technology which is well described in the following articles.
  3. Train the Control System
    Develop a sense of food security to reduce lifelong cravings and stress-related eating habits. We must learn how to train our intelligent control system, particularly focusing on creating a feeling of security.
  4. Foster a Supportive Society
    Address societal stressors contributing to chronic disease and mental health crises, such as suicide among vulnerable populations. The epidemic of chronic disease is bad enough but we also need to recognise that suicide among young girls and middle aged men is the commonest cause of death.

 

 

 

Summary – Rediscovering Gut Health

highly processed foodNot so long ago, our gut health thrived naturally.

Beneficial microbes from the soil entered our food, replenishing our gut biota effortlessly as we consumed fresh plants. These microscopic allies worked together like a supercomputer within us, communicating and releasing hormones to regulate hunger and maintain balance.

It is very simple, our intelligent control system, a subconscious brain formed from our head and gut-brain decides how much sugar we need in our blood and how much fat we need to store in our bodies.

This is subconscious, it decides based on the current situation and learning from the first suck on mum’s breast to that last slice of cheesecake you scoffed.

It sends out signals to regulate our blood sugar and fat levels. We can’t stop these signals – we have no control over our subconscious brain.

But we can restrict our food intake which certainly can work in the short-term but may make matters worse in the long term.

It is only by understanding how this intelligent control system works that we have any hope of preventing the epidemic of chronic disease.

Back then, overeating was rare, and while infectious diseases were a concern, chronic conditions were virtually unheard of.

Medical science has since made remarkable strides in combating infectious diseases.

However, modern food systems – while more hygienic – have inadvertently stripped away the essential microbes our bodies depend on.

The result? A global surge in chronic diseases like obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and dementia, far outweighing the threat of communicable illnesses.

Introducing Gbiota Technology: Nurturing Gut-Brain Health

Gbiota technology breeds beneficial microbes in the soil under carefully controlled conditions avoiding the harmful microbes, leading to a healthy and intelligent gut-brain so we feel full and naturally satisfied and no longer want to overeat.

Simple, Affordable, and Life-Changing

This is gaining momentum among health-conscious individuals who are ready to grow their food in microbe-rich, living soil.

But to make a real dent in the chronic disease epidemic, we need visionaries – people and businesses committed to bringing this solution to their communities.

Join the Movement

Whether you’re looking to improve your own health as a home grower or interested in building a profitable business that benefits the community Gbiota is your opportunity to make a difference.

Let’s work together to create healthier communities and a brighter future.

Reach out to us today at colin@gbiota.com. Your health – and your community – will thank you!

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