35351   24/03

Warning

We show the process of

– breeding beneficial microbes in organic waste to make soil – Wickimix.

– growing plants in this soil using the flood and flush system so the soil breathes and soil blood (like our blood) is regularly circulated

– the microbes enter the plants which we eat to form our gut biome

– the microbes sense if the available food is deficient, when it will send our hormones to make us crave the missing food, and if there is sufficient send out other hormones so we feel satisfied and stop eating.

Allowing our gut microbes to control our appetite is a natural process which has been tested over millions of years.

It worked well until we changed our food system to produce hygienic but inert foods.

This process is effective and literally dirt cheap, which allows anyone, even if they live in an apartment with no garden or growing skills.

But it must be done correctly so there is no stagnation which leads to breeding harmful microbes.

While you are deciding whether this is for you, can sign up, receive our Newsletter and access much of the site for free.

If you decide it is for you, then you can upgrade your membership. This entitles you to free support by email or video call.

If you have any concerns about the process, then you need to take full advantage of this support so you operate the process correctly.

My message

This website outlines a technology for combating the epidemic of chronic disease.

It is based on the fact that over the last million years, humanoids have developed a highly sophisticated control system that regulates what and how much food we want to eat to keep fit and healthy.

While there have always been people who are overweight and diabetic there has never been an epidemic like today.

The reason is that this control system is a combination of our head and gut brains. In the past, our gut brain was naturally fed by eating plants growing in soil teaming with beneficial microbes.

In the last fifty years, we have changed our food system so it no longer feeds our gut brain – hence the epidemic.

This technology is about restoring the health of our gut-brain.

Technology if well managed, can have major benefits for the community but if mismanaged can lead to gross inequality with a few people having great benefits while the majority gain little or no benefits and can easily go backwards.

Here we look at what we need to do to ensure that the community as a whole benefits. If you agree with this approach and would like to join the movement, particularly if you are a grower with an interest in supplying your local community by running a profitable business we would live to hear from you here

Watch the video

Fit or Fat – Gut microbes create the hormones here or read the text below

Read the text of the video

Fit or Fat, the gut microbes create hormones

What we know for sure

The amount of quality research being conducted by recognised research institutes around the world on diet and health is massive. This is understandable as the epidemic of chronic disease is the world’s greatest health problem causing untold personal hardship and massive costs to our health systems.

There is an overriding consensus that goes beyond dispute.

The microbes in our gut communicate with each other to form, with our head-brain, real intelligence.

If it senses any deficiencies it will send out hormones which make us hungry and if it senses we are full it will send out other hormones to make us feel full and satisfied so we don’t overeat and get fat and sick.

This works fine as long as we have the right microbes in our gut and we feed them.

We get our initial gut microbes from mum at birth and later we feed them from her breast milk.

But after that, it is from the food we eat.

This should come from microbes which breed in the soil.

This should come from microbes which breed in the soil, then enter the plants which we eat to regularly enhance our gut microbes.

All this is well-known and established wisdom of the experts and beyond debate.

The implication

The implication is that we can go along to the local supermarket and load up our trolleys with fruit and vegetables.

This is a trap because while the vegetables may look fresh they are most likely grown using synthetic fertilisers and toxic sprays so they contain very few microbes to start with.

But the real catch is that the beneficial microbes have a short life, we are talking a half-life of a day, so they will have long gone by the time we buy them.

They are in a state of dynamic equilibrium, breeding and dying at a rapid rate, at least while the plant is growing but this stops when the plant is harvested.

For the lucky few who have gardens and are experts in organic gardening, this is not an issue but it is incredibly damaging for the bulk of the population.

The Gbiota solution

Gbiota make no claim to be leading the charge in microbiological research but we can read and study the research papers of the experts and make it available to benefit the community.

We have developed a system where anyone, even if they live in a flat and have no gardening skills, can have fresh plants growing at home ready to be picked and eaten.

Let me show you our latest system.

An experienced licensed grower will produce the special soil we call Wickimix which is teaming with beneficial microbes. This is loaded into gbiota baskets.

Nothing special here, supermarket baskets work great.

The basket is seeded with a spectrum of plants.

The householder loads up the base of the box with organic waste.

Often kitchen scraps but grass clippings do a great job.

This fits into a box, again just a regular box but fitted with a swivel tube for draining the soil blood out of the box. We call it soil blood because it does the same job as our blood transferring nutrients and oxygen.

The swivel tube is rotated to the up position and the basket irrigated with soil blood.

Later the swivel tube is rotated to the down position and the soil blood collected for the next irrigation while sucking in fresh air to the soil.

The soil is breathing.

Simple but effective.

Community action

This simple system could have immense benefits to the community but it needs community action.

Local growers are essential so we are running a campaign to recruit local growers.  We canhelp you set up a profitable local business supplying your local community.

But it also needs a major community education program.

Dietitians, suitably educated themselves, should play a critical role but that, by itself, won’t be enough.

It needs Governments to run a major community education program. They have everything to benefit as the epidemic is costing Governments trillions of dollars in paying for a health system creaking under the load.

We need to safeguard our democracy where Governments are sensitive to what the public thinks and act accordingly.

Recap

Our gut has trillions of cells which communicate with each other to provide intelligence. It works with our head brain to form the intelligent control system which regulates our bodies – this is our gut-brain.

If our gut-brain senses any deficiencies in our diet it will send out hormones to make us hungry. This is in our subconscious and we have no control over this.

We may try and restrict the amount of food we eat but it is very difficult to overcome those hormones for any length of time – that is why it is so hard to avoid becoming fat and sick.

In our modern diet, we are very unlikely to have a deficiency in energy food which comes from sugars and fats.

The deficiencies that our gut-brain may detect are deficiencies in trace minerals of vitamins, deficiencies in food to feed the gut-brain but by far the most common and important is deficiencies of species in the gut.

We show people how to feed their gut-brain.

Why our gut-brain matters

This is important because our gut has trillions of microbes of thousands of species which can communicate with each other to create genuine intelligence.

It works with our head brain to form the intelligent control system which regulates our bodies, particularly our appetite – how much and what we want to eat.

We don’t overeat and get fat and sick because we are little piggies, we get fat and sick because our gut-brain senses deficiencies in our diet and creates hormones that make us overeat.

Having a fully functioning gut-brain is the difference between enjoying a long health span and falling prey to the modern epidemic of chronic diseases – obesity, diabetes, heart attacks and dementia.

How it works

Wickimix

It starts with a special soil we call Wickimix. Like all good soils it has an open structure full of the essential nutrients, N,P,K but also the minerals we are generally short of, calcium, magnesium, iron, zinc, copper selenium, iodine, chromium, vanadium etc.

But what makes Wickimix so different is that it is full of the natural creatures of the soil – the recyclers, worms, beetles, larvae, nematodes, fungi etc plus a high loading of organic waste for them to feed on.

Wickimix is at the heart of the Gbiota process and requires some knowledge and skills. It can be done by an experienced and dedicated gardener but if that is not your is probably best left to a commercial grower who has been trained in the art of making Wickimix.

Soil blood

These creatures of the soil have guts – like us and they exude a complex array of gut microbes into the soil which helps to form soil blood, – that potent combination of water, nutrients and microbes which circulates in the soil to feed the plants.

The plants feed on soil blood so the microbes enter the plants which we eat to enhance our gut biota.

There is nothing new about this, it has been the norm since life first appeared on Earth a billion years ago. It stopped some fifty years ago when we adopted our modern chemical industrial food system.

Dynamic equilibrium

Microbes breed like crazy but have a very short life. This means that to get the benefits of eating plants loaded with beneficial microbes we need to eat them fresh. The most practical way is for people to have the plants growing at home so they can pick and eat them straight away.

This is practical, even in an apartment with the Gbiota box and basket system.

The Gbiota box and basket system

The creatures of the soil that give us the beneficial gut microbes need to be fed waste organic material.

We do that with the Gbiota box and basket system. People just collect all organic waste they can lay their hands on, kitchen waste, grass cuttings, coffee granules from the local shop – whatever.

When sufficient has been collected this is placed in the base of the Gbiota box and the basket, where the plant grow placed, on top.

The basket is full of holes so the creatures of the soil can move freely between the waste and growing areas.

Soil blood is full of nutrients and living microbes so must never be allowed to become stagnant and needs to be aerated which is done by a process of regular flooding and flushing.

The organic waste must be aerated, this is done by making it breathe. The swivel tube in the box is places upright and the base flooded which expels the old stale air.

The swivel tube is then swivelled to the down position so the water (actually soil blood) drains out sucking in fresh air.

This soil blood is full of nutrients and beneficial microbes so is very valuable and so is caught and reused. Effective but simple.

I appreciate that growing your own gut microbes is not for everyone and requires a certain amount of dedication but you are welcome to email me here so we can have a chat about whether this is a fit for you.

Our Intelligent Control System

Our gut-brain comprises trillions of cells which communicate with their neighbours to create swarm or group intelligence which regulates our bodies – our intelligent control system.

If our gut brain feels satisfied it will send out hormones which make us feel satisfied.

GLP-1 is the active ingredient in drugs like Ozempic, Seaglitude and Wegovy.

This is a naturally occurring hormone which our body produces automatically to tell us we are full and should stop eating. Our bodies, specifically our gut, normally produce this for free and has done so for a million years or so.

But our modern diet, dominated by ultra-processed food is deficient in the foods to feed our gut-brain. This deficiency is detected by our gut brain so it decides not to produce natural GLP-1 so we keep on eating.

This is the underlying cause of the epidemic of chronic disease, obesity, diabetes, heart attacks and dementia.

The solution is not to take these GLP-1 drugs but to feed our gut-brain.

We know exactly how to do that. We create soil, loaded with organic waste and minerals so the natural recyclers, the worms, beetles, larvae, nematodes etc breed.

They have guts, just like us and they excrete beneficial gut microbes into the soil. These enter the plants we eat, which is the natural way we, and all creatures, have been replenishing the gut for millions of years.

That is what Gbiota gut-brain food is all about.

Any question email me here

35351   24/03

Innovation is a funny business.

Colin Austin 27 March 2025. Published under the Creative Commons System, This may be reproduced without further permission, just acknowledgement of source.

Food and health

Let us look at the story of food and health.

In the past, and that means going back a million years to the first humanoids there was no epidemic of chronic diseases like obesity, diabetes, heart attack and dementia.

These are all caused by the wrong fat in the wrong place and we had evolved a very effective system in which our gut would sense if there were any deficiencies in our diet and send out a hormone complex so we craved the needed food. When satisfied it would send out other hormones saying stop eating you are full.

For convenience, let us call this our gut-brain.

Evolution at work

Our gut-brain is an incredibly sophisticated system that has evolved over millions of years. But evolution is never after perfection just survival, so there are millions of creatures, from cockroaches to crocodiles, which have survived for millennia but are far from perfect – like us.

So although there were isolated cases of chronic disease, there was no epidemic.

Then, about fifty years ago, we changed our food system and the epidemic of chronic disease has been growing steadily ever since.

The great human intelligence

So what did we humans, with our great intelligence and innovation skills, do to reverse this epidemic? If ever there was a $64,000 question, this is it.

We understood the cause of the epidemic. Our gut-brain stopped working in the way it has done for the last million years.

Our gut-brain is in a state of dynamic equilibrium with individual microbes breeding and dying rapidly but with the system staying in equilibrium.

This depends on feeding and replenishing them from the food we eat.

Increased population and food demand

As our population increased, we changed the way we grew our food so instead of eating fresh plants grown in living soil teeming with beneficial microbes, we changed it to growing plants with synthetic fertiliser, which is debatable, but far worse is we changed the food distribution system with extensive delays from harvest to eating.

Net result – poor gut health and poor control over our appetite – we got fat and sick, and the epidemic grew and grew.

Ask a seven-year-old kid for the solution, and they would say we need to invent a box so people can grow plants, full of beneficial microbes, on their windowsill.

This would have been a great solution as our subconscious brain would have continued to control our appetite as it had done for the last million years.

Eat less exercise more

But being highly intelligent and sometimes overly logical creatures, we ignored the advice of the seven-year-old and decided we had the technology to manage our diet.

So we developed sophisticated diets and pills measuring calories and nutrients down to the last microgram.

People thought this would solve all the problems and we had catchy advertising programs like eat less, exercise more which sounded great but were a total failure – we just got fatter and sicker.

Subconscious and conscious intelligence

To understand why these catchy advertising jingles fail, we need to understand the differences between conscious and sub-conscious intelligence.

The fact is that subconscious intelligence eventually wins.

To make the point, let me refer you to one of my favourite characters – the kid on the bike.

A three-year-old will soon learn how to ride a bike and will be outpacing mum or dad. That is because the kid is using her subconscious brain which is highly perfected.

If dad had never seen a bike before and I tried to explain how it stays upright by talking about self-balancing gyroscopic couples he is likely to have no idea what I am talking about and certainly no better idea how to ride a bike than when I started.

It is the same with food. We may know, in our conscious brain, what we should eat but what we want to eat (our subconscious brain) will win in the end.

Back to the boxes

OK, our seven year old has the idea of breeding the beneficial microbes, and their food, in a box. She will probably love playing with all the worms and creepy crawlies but will need a bit of adult assistance to get everything working properly.

That is where we are now, but that is just the start. There is this conception that all you need to be an innovator is to have this great idea.

I have been having so-called great ideas all my life. 80% fail because they don’t work.

Another 15% fail because they don’t do anything useful that people want.

To turn the remaining 5% into a useful product or service requires a lot of grunt work.

The marketing myth

There are internet advertising gurus who will try and convince you that they can run an internet campaign and you will be an overnight success – and nothing is further from the truth.

Let us get back to the box which does have the potential to combat the chronic disease epidemic – but there is a long way to go.

Growers

It is fine to have all these wonderful concepts but they are useless without a product. A very old-fashioned idea I know but innovations need products that work and do the job and people have confidence that the product works.

That means setting up what is a new industry which requires on one hand growers who can produce the boxes but also the marketing, legal and commercial infrastructure which requires a spectrum of skills.

We may know how to do that but is still has to be done.

Changing the way we eat

Now comes the difficult bit. Persuading the bulk of the population they should have a box on the balcony growing plants which they cut and chop up to make a garnish for their main meal.

The Internet marketing gurus will tell you how they can run this brilliant marketing campaign on the web with flashy web pages, social media, video clips etc the whole shebang.

The net result will be they will end up richer, you poorer with no advance to the cause.

How innovations happen

I have spent my life in the innovation business, with my fair share of ideas that did not work, ideas that worked but no one wanted, two that worked and now the last one which is by far and away the most important. Broadly food that makes us healthy but more specifically breeding gut microbes that will create the hormones to tell us to stop eating when we have had sufficient.

There are three steps in this process.

Step 1 assembling the skill set

No one person has all the skills to generate the social change that a major innovation involves.

This requires the formation of an inner circle with a range of skills, technical, marketing, communications and understanding of how societies work and change.

This is where we are now, forming this inner circle – are you interested in changing the world for the better – let me know, we need you.

Step 2 the pioneers

There are eight billion people on Earth and we are all different. We are a social animal and being part of a group is incredibly important to us.

But there is a small minority of people who are prepared to go against the conventional wisdom and replace it with a better wisdom – the paradigm shift.

But they won’t do this based on logical augments alone, they have to test it first for themselves.

I know this very well. Fifty years ago I was travelling the world telling people about my innovation in the area of Computer Aided Engineering which challenged the conventional wisdom.

Not a nutter

Most people wrote me off as a nutter, but a few thought I may have a point. In no way were they convinced by my logic but they thought it worth their while to test for themselves.

Fortunately for me, it worked, an essential requirement for any innovation, and then they became convinced. It was not my logical or miserable marketing skills that convinced them – they had to try it and prove to themselves that it worked.

This group then became the disciples, they were often people of influence and when other people saw that people were using this technology they became the message bearers and we entered the third stage.

Step 3 Acceptance

When it became clear that there was a group, even if it was a small group, people felt more comfortable about making the change. Again they had to go through the process of trying it for themselves before they made the change but eventually, the change became the norm and the paradigm shift occurred.

Back to the box

This is the process we need to follow to get the box accepted.

We need this small group with the spectrum of skills needed.

Recruit the growers to produce the boxes so people can try it for themselves.

Make contact with the pioneers who will become the first wave of acceptance

Finally, be able to satisfy the demand as this becomes the accepted norm.

Interested

Interested in becoming part of a global change for the better – contact me

Good gut-bugs create hormones that control appetite naturally – no pills

You can grow the good gut-bugs at home in containers, gbiota baskets – even if you live in an apartment with no garden and no growing experience.

You grow plants which lead to a healthy gut-biome. You change your gut biota by diet – eating plants grown in soil teaming with beneficial microbes and eaten shortly after picking while fresh. We show you how.

If you are a grower we can help you set up a good business supplying gbiota baskets to customers wanting to grow their own gut-bugs and be fit and healthy.

Email me here

Some people appear to be naturally skinny while others appear to be naturally fat.  This is because of the gut bugs which send out hormones which control appetite.

You can’t fight the hormones but you can change your gut bugs by eating plants grown in soil where the beneficial microbes breed, but you must eat them fresh as microbes have a short life so you need to eat them shortly after picking.

That is why you need to grow the plants at home – just pick and eat.

Our gut has trillions of cells which communicate with each other to provide intelligence. It works with our head brain to form the intelligent control system which regulates our bodies – this is our gut-brain.

If our gut-brain senses any deficiencies in our diet it will send out hormones to make us hungry. This is in our subconscious and we have no control over this.

We may try and restrict the amount of food we eat but it is very difficult to overcome those hormones for any length of time – that is why it is so hard to avoid becoming fat and sick.

In our modern diet, we are very unlikely to have a deficiency in energy food which comes from sugars and fats.

The deficiencies that our gut-brain may detect are deficiencies in trace minerals of vitamins, deficiencies in food to feed the gut-brain but by far the most common and important is deficiencies of species in the gut.

We show people how to feed their gut-brain.

Why our gut-brain matters

This is important because our gut has trillions of microbes of thousands of species which can communicate with each other to create genuine intelligence.

It works with our head brain to form the intelligent control system which regulates our bodies, particularly our appetite – how much and what we want to eat.

We don’t overeat and get fat and sick because we are little piggies, we get fat and sick because our gut-brain senses deficiencies in our diet and creates hormones that make us overeat.

Having a fully functioning gut-brain is the difference between enjoying a long health span and falling prey to the modern epidemic of chronic diseases – obesity, diabetes, heart attacks and dementia.

How it works

Wickimix

It starts with a special soil we call Wickimix. Like all good soils it has an open structure full of the essential nutrients, N,P,K but also the minerals we are generally short of, calcium, magnesium, iron, zinc, copper selenium, iodine, chromium, vanadium etc.

But what makes Wickimix so different is that it is full of the natural creatures of the soil – the recyclers, worms, beetles, larvae, nematodes, fungi etc plus a high loading of organic waste for them to feed on.

Wickimix is at the heart of the Gbiota process and requires some knowledge and skills. It can be done by an experienced and dedicated gardener but if that is not your is probably best left to a commercial grower who has been trained in the art of making Wickimix.

Soil blood

These creatures of the soil have guts – like us and they exude a complex array of gut microbes into the soil which helps to form soil blood, – that potent combination of water, nutrients and microbes which circulates in the soil to feed the plants.

The plants feed on soil blood so the microbes enter the plants which we eat to enhance our gut biota.

There is nothing new about this, it has been the norm since life first appeared on Earth a billion years ago. It stopped some fifty years ago when we adopted our modern chemical industrial food system.

Dynamic equilibrium

Microbes breed like crazy but have a very short life. This means that to get the benefits of eating plants loaded with beneficial microbes we need to eat them fresh. The most practical way is for people to have the plants growing at home so they can pick and eat them straight away.

This is practical, even in an apartment with the Gbiota box and basket system.

The Gbiota box and basket system

The creatures of the soil that give us the beneficial gut microbes need to be fed waste organic material.

We do that with the Gbiota box and basket system. People just collect all organic waste they can lay their hands on, kitchen waste, grass cuttings, coffee granules from the local shop – whatever.

When sufficient has been collected this is placed in the base of the Gbiota box and the basket, where the plant grow placed, on top.

The basket is full of holes so the creatures of the soil can move freely between the waste and growing areas.

Soil blood is full of nutrients and living microbes so must never be allowed to become stagnant and needs to be aerated which is done by a process of regular flooding and flushing.

The organic waste must be aerated, this is done by making it breathe. The swivel tube in the box is places upright and the base flooded which expels the old stale air.

The swivel tube is then swivelled to the down position so the water (actually soil blood) drains out sucking in fresh air.

This soil blood is full of nutrients and beneficial microbes so is very valuable and so is caught and reused. Effective but simple.

I appreciate that growing your own gut microbes is not for everyone and requires a certain amount of dedication but you are welcome to email me here so we can have a chat about whether this is a fit for you.

Our Intelligent Control System

Our gut-brain comprises trillions of cells which communicate with their neighbours to create swarm or group intelligence which regulates our bodies – our intelligent control system.

If our gut brain feels satisfied it will send out hormones which make us feel satisfied.

GLP-1 is the active ingredient in drugs like Ozempic, Seaglitude and Wegovy.

This is a naturally occurring hormone which our body produces automatically to tell us we are full and should stop eating. Our bodies, specifically our gut, normally produce this for free and has done so for a million years or so.

But our modern diet, dominated by ultra-processed food is deficient in the foods to feed our gut-brain. This deficiency is detected by our gut brain so it decides not to produce natural GLP-1 so we keep on eating.

This is the underlying cause of the epidemic of chronic disease, obesity, diabetes, heart attacks and dementia.

The solution is not to take these GLP-1 drugs but to feed our gut-brain.

We know exactly how to do that. We create soil, loaded with organic waste and minerals so the natural recyclers, the worms, beetles, larvae, nematodes etc breed.

They have guts, just like us and they excrete beneficial gut microbes into the soil. These enter the plants we eat, which is the natural way we, and all creatures, have been replenishing the gut for millions of years.

That is what Gbiota gut-brain food is all about.

Any question email me here

35036   27/02

Food change

For the first few billion years the earth was just a barren rock.

Then microbes appeared, they broke down the rocks and made soil which led to plants flourishing.

Next came animals that ate the plants which were full of microbes so some microbes ended up in the guts of these animals

These microbes digested the animal’s food, manufacturing the spectrum of complex chemicals the animals needed and, most significantly regulating appetite, sending out specific hormones to make the animals hungry for that food when they were low in a particular food and yet other hormones so they would stop eating when full.

Microbes make life possible

We need the microbes to power the intelligent control system which regulates our bodies.

Without these microbes we don’t live a long and healthy life we overeat and get fat and sick.

Our modern food system is a highly sophisticated industrialised chemical process relying on synthetic fertilisers and toxic sprays which have eliminated the microbes.

This has led to the modern epidemic of chronic diseases which is causing so much personal suffering for the population and so much cost to the Governments in charge of our health system.

Obesity affects much of the population.

Diabetes is the fastest growing of all diseases with over eight million people a year having a limb amputated.

Heart attacks are the most common cause of death.

Dementia must be one of the most heartbreaking conditions.

All these stem from not having the beneficial microbes in our gut that regulate our appetite.

Solution – breed microbes at home

But we can solve this problem.

Microbes breed in organic waste which makes breeding microbes easy and naturally move into plants. But they also die very quickly which means they must be grown and eaten shortly after picking, in practise – as most people now live in apartments or have little garden, this means in special breeding containers at home.

This is cheaper than buying aged plants from a supermarket but it does mean a change in behaviour, like having a breeding container on your balcony if you live in an apartment.

Microbes have a short life.

We already have the technology of breeding beneficial microbes. Gbiota basket-boxes breed beneficial microbes in organic waste under controlled conditions to grow the plants which contain the beneficial microbes.

This is straightforward but we need to create a social change where people grow that critical part of their diet – gut brain-food – at home rather than relying on the centralised industrial chemical food system.

For that, we need a food social movement.

The community has to be educated about the importance of our gut microbes and shown that they can grow these microbes at home, even if they have no garden or growing skills.

Local gut-brain food industry

We need to create a new industry where people can buy everything they need – the soil, boxes, seeds etc from a local supplier and if needed, get the critical support from a suitably qualified dietitian who understand how the gut microbes act as the control system for our appetite.

How do we create this societal change? We need to create a team of people with a range of skills who understand the benefits to the community of the gut microbes in regulating our bodies.

We need a team because no one person can have all the skills needed, these skills include a spectrum of knowledge, not just the obvious skills of diet, of how gut microbes control our appetite, but a knowledge of how communities work, internet marketing, communication and business skills.

If you feel that you could be interested in becoming part of this team then I suggest you have a look at the many articles on my website gbiota.com then contact me directly here.

Managing change

Colin Austin 17 March 2025 Published under the Creative Commons system so may be reproduced without further permission, just acknowledgement of source.

The third mega-change

If you think the world is going through a difficult period you are right. We are going through our third mega-change and managing this change is not going to be easy.

But we can learn from looking at the two previous mega changes.

Mega change no 1 – Fire and cooking

The biggest change was the use of fire for cooking over a million years ago.

The results were dramatic – more nutrients led to bigger brains and smaller guts.

Fire changed us humans creating a new, very different creature.

Humans became the dominant creature and changed the planet forever. No fire and we would have remained an insignificant ape.

Mega change no 2 – Agriculture

The next biggest change was the development of agriculture which had some surprising side effects. It led to us living in close proximity in cities where infection could easily spread.

Natural selection meant that those with a stronger immune system survived better – so again humans changed. We became smaller than our hunter-gatherer ancestors but with a stronger immune system.

This led to the age of colonisation, the history books may talk about significant battles won by the colonisers but in truth, these were just a formality, the people of the colonised countries had been decimated by the introduced diseases.

The world changed yet again.

These changes were not planned by some evil master brain, we can leave that to some Netflix video and were only well understood after the event.

Mega change number 3 – Technology and Industrialisation

We are now in the midst of a third change which is neither planned nor understood – it stems from the new technologies we have developed.

The simplest, and easiest to understand is climate change which is leading to a steady but progressive change to our planet and also has led to a strong activist movement.

Related and even more significant is the industrialised food system.

Let me explain why this is so dramatic.

How life started

For the first few billion years the earth was just a barren rock, nothing, no Netflix, Facebook, nothing not even TikTok.

Then one day microbes appeared, probably from an asteroid that crashed into Earth.

These microbes were hungry so they broke down the rocks and made soil which led to plants flourishing.

Next came animals that ate the plants which were full of microbes so some microbes ended up in the guts of these animals where again it was nice and warm with plenty of food so they flourished.

Evolution leads to the most amazing results. It was in the interest of the microbes to keep the animals alive as long as possible.

So they adopted the role of digesting the animal’s food, manufacturing the spectrum of complex chemicals the animals needed and, most significantly regulating appetite, sending out specific hormones to make the animals hungry for that food when they were low in a particular food and yet other hormones so we would stop eating when full.

We are only just beginning to appreciate the sophistication of this system which is the deal of the millennium.

Microbes make life possible

It is just a fact that life on this planet is only possible because of the microbes.

Without the microbes, our planet would still be a dead rock with no soil to grow plants to feed the animals.

But having food is not enough, we need the microbes to power the intelligent control system which regulates our bodies.

Humans goof

But there was one funny animal that decided to stop feeding the microbes.

That animal was of course us and that is why instead of living a long and healthy life we overeat and get fat and sick.

Why did we stop feeding the microbes?

This was not because of some evil person worthy of being the central character of a Netflix film. It was because we did not understand the sophistication and benefits of this natural intelligent control system and it was a lot cheaper and more convenient to use synthetic chemicals to grow our food rather than rely on the natural process of microbes making nutrients bio-available.

This was among the biggest goofs that humans have made and has led to the modern epidemic of chronic diseases which is causing so much personal suffering for the population and so much cost to the Governments in charge of our health system.

Fixing the goof

So how do we fix this goof? We need two things, the technology and a change of attitude.

The technology is easy. Microbes are a randy lot and are happy to breed in organic waste which makes breeding microbes easy. But they also die very quickly which means they must be grown and eaten shortly after picking, in practise – as most people now live in apartments or have little garden, this means in special breeding pots at home.

It is still cheaper than buying aged plants from a supermarket but it does mean a change in behaviour, having a pot on your balcony rather than going to the supermarket.

This does take a bit of training for the non-gardener so the right microbes are bred. They also need to be able to buy their pots and particularly soil from a local grower.

But these are simple problems to resolve.

Creating social change

The overriding problem is how to create the change by creating a social movement.

Just as climate change requires climate activists food requires food activists.

The motivation is there, in most developed countries over half the population are overweight.

Diabetes is the fastest growing of all diseases with over eight million people a year having a limb amputated.

Heart attacks are the most common cause of death.

Dementia must be one of the most heartbreaking conditions.

Two ways to look at food

Visit a dietitian and you will get a clear picture. Highly processed foods full of fats and sugars are not healthy and you should be incorporating plants grown in living soil, full of nutrients and beneficial microbes and eaten fresh into your diet.

The amount of research being undertaken in research labs across the globe into food and our gut biome is staggering. Thousands of peer-reviewed papers are published every year and they conform to a common theme.

You will learn the importance of microbes and how they regulate our appetite so we naturally want to eat the right sort of food in the right amount.

We know what sorts of food we should be eating.

Now walk out of the office and enter the commercial world we live in.

The supermarkets are full of highly processed foods supported by multi-billion dollar advertising campaigns claiming how healthy they are.

The fresh fruit and vegetable myth

You may not be convinced so you go to the fruit and vegetable aisles expecting to find healthy products. You see row upon row of identical and almost perfect-looking produce.

How wonderful you may think – just what I am looking for – healthy fruit and vegetables, my search is over.

But wait a minute, how did they manage to grow such magnificent-looking produce? By a highly sophisticated industrialised chemical process relying on synthetic fertilisers and toxic sprays which have eliminated the microbes you have been told are essential for health.

And worse – any beneficial microbes will have died in the time from when the plants were harvested to when they are eaten.

Microbes have a short life.

The great divergence

There is a clear divergence between what the science-based community are telling us we should eat and what the commercial mega corporations are offering.

The deficiencies in the current food system are seen as an opportunity for another industry, the supplement industry to create good profits by providing pills.

But pills are not the solution, we need to fix the problem at the source and eat healthy food.

‘Real food not pills’ is a good motto.

Gbiota role

Gbiota is not trying to duplicate the massive research effort which is being carried out in respected research institutions across the globe. We are taking that as a given.

We are facing the challenge of how the community as a whole can access the food which is accepted as healthy.

When I say the community as a whole I mean the whole community. There are many dedicated home growers who are using organic style approaches to produce food which is genuinely healthy. No arguments here.

But the reality is that the majority of the population now live in apartments or houses with very small gardens. They don’t have the area, time or the skills of the dedicated organic home grower so they need an alternative to access the healthy food they need.

The first part of the problem, the technical part has been solved by the development of the Gbiota boxes which breed the beneficial microbes in organic waste to grow the plants which contain the beneficial microbes.

This is straightforward.

The difficult part is to create the social change where people grow that critical part of their diet – gut brain-food – at home.

For that, we need a food social movement.

How to create the food social movement

The pressure is there but how do we make it happen? How do we create this social movement?

This problem is made worse by the misinformation and disinformation which now dominate the web and the marketing power of the food and drug industries.

One person, (particularly if he is 85 like me) is not going to be able to do this, it needs a team of about a dozen people with a range of skills, not just technical but marketing and communications and an understanding of how communities work to form a team.

My immediate aim is to build this inner sanctum of a dozen or so people, committed to the ‘food for health’ cause.

Local gut-brain food industry

Once we have this inner sanctum in place we can move onto the next stage – creating a local gut-brain food industry.

The bulk of the population cannot do everything from scratch – they need to be able to go and buy the soil, boxes, seeds, and everything they need from a local supplier.

It has to be local as microbes have a short life.

Going Viral

In the current age of disinformation, people may have become sceptical about what they are told but they believe what they see.

When they see so many wobbly tums and bums at the shopping centre and while there are other people who are fit and healthy from eating a different diet they will change their views and see the need for change.

Death of the Deniers

We can learn from that other and closely linked need for change, climate. For decades climate deniers who benefit directly from the current system have been able to create doubt so they could block the needed action.

But when people experienced for themselves the increase in floods, droughts and storms they began to question what they were being told and now the bulk of the population has accepted the need for change.

The deniers, often in positions of extreme power are still able to block the change.

In my younger days, I fought a similar reluctance to change from deniers. I accepted that it was impossible to change their attitude but then I was young and knew they would die and be replaced by younger people who were more accepting of change.

It will happen with climate change and it will happen with food change.

Younger people have this odd habit of growing up into older people in a position of power.

The future of our species lies with the fresh minds of the young and they will create the change and our species will not just survive but thrive.

At my age, I will not be around to see it but I am happy to have been part of the process of change that enables our species to thrive.

Invitation

If you feel that you could be interested in joining this inner sanctum then I suggest you have a look at the many articles on my web gbiota.com then contact me directly here.

The community needs you. There may be a lot of selfish pricks in the world but our future lies with those who are not selfish pricks. Labelling them woke greenies won’t stop them.

Prevention Super Clinics

Colin Austin 12 March 2025 Published under the Creative Commons system so may be reproduced without further permission, just acknowledgement of source.

Fighting the chronic disease epidemic

Across the globe, we are facing an epidemic of chronic diseases, obesity, diabetes, heart attacks and dementia.

Whether we approve or not what happens in the real world is that people just carry on with their normal life until their health deteriorates to the point where they need to go to a doctor who tries to cure them.

This is at great personal burden to the individual and financial cost to our health system. Chronic diseases inflict the most damage to community health and are a major financial cost.

Prevention is better than cure.

Prevention depends on understanding the root causes of the epidemic.

Changes in our food production system

One of the best videos explaining the changes in our food system is by David Trood of The Weedy Garden

Organics is an unfortunate name as the underlying principle is how all food has been grown for over a billion years, until we changed it.

A complex array of soil creatures, microbes and fungi break down the rocks to make them bio-available for plants and then animals that eat the plants.

These microbes end in our gut, they communicate with their neighbours to create real intelligence and work with our head brain to form the intelligent control system which regulates our bodies, particularly our appetite by creating the hormones which make us feel full or hungry.

Watch video here https://gbiota.com/2025/03/14/hormones/

The hormones work at the subconscious level and are extremely powerful.

Our sub-conscious brain is what enables us to do amazing things like catch balls and ride a bike.

We may try and control what and how much we eat by going on a diet but this is at the conscious level and is typically only effective for a period of time, our hormones almost always win.

The change in our food system to relying on inert fertilisers has resulted in a loss of the beneficial microbes that form our gut-brain and is the underlying force behind the epidemic of chronic diseases.

This is why we need to change our gut biota – by diet – to combat the epidemic.

Our intelligent control system

At the core of all chronic diseases is the wrong fat in the wrong place. Our gut has trillions of cells which communicate with their neighbours to create genuine intelligence which then forms part of the intelligent control system which regulates our bodies.

If our intelligent control senses deficiencies in our bodies it will send out hormones to make us hungry so we overeat, and alternatively, when it thinks we are satisfied, it will send out other hormones so we feel full and stop eating.

This is a very powerful system operating at the sub-conscious level; we have no control over it and attempts to override this in our conscious brain are rarely successful long term.

We have to work with, rather than against, our intelligent control system.

Prevention super clinics

I am suggesting setting up a network of prevention super clinics.

Prevention super clinics would be run by a qualified dietitian, following the existing protocols but integrating a much wider range of services.

They would certainly have close working relations with a suitably trained grower to breed the beneficial microbes in soil containing both organic and mineral waste using the appropriate protocols.

This soil is referred to as Wickimix and can be sold directly to keen gardeners but is more likely to be incorporated into growing baskets for wider use.

These baskets, with growing plants, may be bulk delivered to a place where the clients may visit regularly such as a gymnasium or health food cafe or store.

It needs to be recognised that the life span of the beneficial microbes is short so the plants need to be consumed shortly after picking.

While these may be separate businesses they need to follow protocols, and the dietitian has both and integrating and supervising roles.

Making organic style food widely available

I think there is no debate that organic food, rich in nutrients and microbes, is beneficial for health however, it tends to be expensive and the microbes only have a short life after picking.

The Gbiota basket/box system means that people, even if they live in an apartment, can have organically grown plants growing in their home at minimum cost ready to harvest.

Personal anguish and money.

Before you reject the idea that this is adding an extra expense to the system, this would save a great deal of personal anguish and money.

The basic cause of chronic disease is deficiencies in our diet, specifically beneficial gut microbes and trace minerals.

With the appropriate protocols, you can breed beneficial gut microbes in organic waste at a relatively trivial cost.

Growers can have a truckload of volcanic rock dust, a waste product from quarries, delivered to their door at about $10 per tonne. This contains all the trace elements needed, it just needs the soil microbes to make it bio-available in our food, which costs a fraction of buying pills and contains a wider and better-balanced spectrum.

Further information

My website gbiota.com contains many articles and videos on food and health. there is a special section for health professionals accessed from the home page and you can contact me directly at colin@gbiota.com

Integration

Surely the aim for any community is for its members to live a long and healthy life.

Yet we are not doing that well with over half the population suffering from some form of chronic disease, maybe just a bit podgy, maybe in fear of having a limb amputated from diabetes or worse of all dementia, sitting in a chair, covered with blanket to hide that you have just peed your pants and wondering who those pesky kids are who keep on calling you granddad.

But the frustration is we know exactly how to fight this epidemic, if you take 5 minutes out of the whirlwind of modern life and look at all the expertise that is available then we have all the knowledge needed, but everyone is just too busy beavering away they never have time to lift their head and look at what all the other beavers are up to.

It is not that we are not cooperative, the two features that have led to humans becoming the dominant creature on Earth are that we are both intelligent and cooperative.

It is just that we all have different skills and our current system and work pressures make it difficult to communicate with a fellow human with a different skill set to you.

I know this too well. I look at my granddaughter’s skills on their mobile phones. Their fingers and thumbs are just a blur of high speed activity making me look like some monster from the pre-dinosaur age.

Yet ask them to help clean out a blocked gutter and their interest and skill level is well into the negative, yet to me, it is just a routine part of the chore of being a householder.

So how are we going to coordinate all the skills necessary to battle the epidemic of chronic disease?

The motivation is there, no one wants to be fat or have a leg chopped off from diabetes and it costs trillions of dollars to the world economy.

And believe me the skills are there, I don’t have a job description so I spend my time in anyway I want and that is chatting with Mr Google and following up on the leads to chat further twith the specialist in all the relevant fields. I have also been recognised as one of Australia’s leading innovators and conduct experiments that no sensible grant agency would even consider – but good ideas come from doing things that seem daft and learning from the failures.

So what is the next step? It is no good just talking about the integration of skill sets, we have to show that it really works and to do that we need to set up pilot operations. One is good but three or more would be so much better particularly if they are in different parts of the world, this is a global issue.

So how do we set up these pilot projects? A must-have is a coordinator, someone with the skill set to bring a range of different skill sets and people with very different backgrounds to work together.

What is the required profile for a coordinator? They must have a conviction of the importance of fighting the epidemic of chronic disease and they must be comfortable with working with a variety of people from researchers, growers and maybe highly stressed members of the public facing some pretty horrible predictions.

Do they need any specific qualifications? I am not sure they do, I think motivation that this is a highly socially important project is the key but if I had to pick a particular skill it would be a dietitian.

And who are the other members of the group?

There must be members of the public who are motivated about their health and they must be willing to learn about how we all have an intelligent control system, a combination of our gut and head brains which regulate what we want to eat and also control what happens to the food that we eat, burned for energy, rebuild our body parts, stored as fat or out at pooh.

We need organisations who are prepared to carry out this education. The lead organisation here would be the Government Health Departments which are carrying the cost of the epidemic.

This is not as simple as it seems as there is a well-recognised time gap from the leading edge of research to when this knowledge becomes the norm. In the medical field, which has requirements for caution, this time gap can be twenty years.

For these projects, we must apply the latest thinking.

We need growers who are going to breed the beneficial microbes in the soil which will eventually become part of our gut biota. There are many regenerative growers with a good knowledge of soil biology who can readily acquire the specific skills of breeding the beneficial microbes.

The growers need a supply of organic waste for breeding the microbes. Local Governments have a key role to play here.

So what is the next step? First step is to have a look at the section for health professionals on my web gbiota.com then if you feel you would like to be part of these pilot projects (note the plural) email me indicating whether you see yourself in the coordinator or participant roles.

I have created this section for health professionals.

This may seem a little odd as I have no medical qualifications apart from being married to a medical doctor, who became diabetic, her foot turned black and our medical advisers were talking about amputation, but we changed her diet and she still has both feet.

But I am not a drongo, I am an engineer I was selected by the Institute of Engineers as one of Australia’s leading innovators for my pioneering work in Computer Aided Engineering.

I, like many of my fellow engineers, may lack the sophistication in articulation of many professions but I don’t rank too badly in understanding how things work.

I was what is often called a code cutter, I wrote software and that included intelligent or self-learning software for intelligent control – which works by monitoring what needs to be controlled, making changes, observing the effect of these changes to develop an understanding of how that system works which eventually leads to very effective control of that system.

Even though I am an engineer I can read, which I do with great intensity, trying to understand how food affects the health of our bodies and recognise the sophistication of professionals in that area.

I see an almost universal belief among health professionals that modern ultra-processed foods are harmful to health while diets centred on plants are beneficial.

Yet, despite this overwhelming evidence the consumption of ultra-processed food increases but plants-based food does not, or at best marginally.

As an engineer with expertise in control theory, I ask myself why?

It is not that people are not informed, they know full well that this ultra-processed food is harmful to their health and plant-based foods are beneficial but the majority of people continue to eat an ever-increasing amount of ultra-processed foods.

Why do people do things that are bad for them knowing full well that they will cause harm? And being an engineer what can we do about it?

Humans are notorious for doing things that are harmful to other humans and themselves so I thought I would ask Mr. Google if he had any ideas.

As usual, I was surprised.

I anticipated to be told that humans were the most destructive creatures to their own species, after all just watch the news and it is dominated by humans using their great skills in technology for the sophisticated killing of other humans.

We humans can be a violent species, with stories of war, murder and terrorism frequently hitting the headlines. Yet the record went to those cute and cuddly Meerkats who put our bloodthirsty tendencies to shame with 20 per cent of the cute critters being slaughtered by their own species.

Animals unquestionably kill members of their species, all the time. Male lions slaughter all the cubs when they join a new pride; rival ant colonies of the same species fight bloody wars; chimpanzees have been shown to kill each other at similar per capita rates to humans.

Hippopotamuses, Hamsters, Crab spiders, Cane toads, Praying mantis, Black widow spiders, Polar bears and many snakes are going to have to improve their game to win a Nobel Peace prize.

This may all be interesting but it does not answer the question why the bulk of people eat food that is bad for them, while knowing it is bad for them. That is why understanding how our intelligent control system works is so important and what this website is about.

I have created this section for health professionals.

It consists of a number of posts and videos that I have previously created and are relevant to health professionals.

You are welcome to contact me here happy to chat.

You can start with the video gut-brain matters

Then posts

Superclinics

Integrations trials

Health Span or Epidemic

Change for the Better

Intelligence

Taste Hunger and Health Span

Gut Health

Health Myth

Fake Food

Health challenge

Your choice – how to change your set point

Health span or Epidemic

Colin Austin 6 March 2025 published under the Creative Commons system. It may be reproduced without further permission – just acknowledgement of source.

Why is it?

Why is it that some people are fit and healthy, enjoy a long health span with hardly a visit to the doctor while despite the sophistication of modern medical research does the epidemic of chronic diseases continues to increase causing a great deal of personal grief and costing health systems trillions of dollars?

Why is it that some people are slim, fit and healthy and others are fat and sick?

Maybe it is time to take a moment out of the rush of modern living and have a deep think.

Who the (?) are you?

Let me start by saying that I have no formal medical qualifications, I am a successful innovative engineer and was recognised by the Institute of Engineers as one of Australia’s leading innovators for my pioneering work in Computer Aided Engineering.

Innovation requires more than developing new technologies, important as that is, but it also requires challenging long established views often held by experts in the field – not a pleasant process.

However, among all those well respected experts there are those free thinkers, the technical entrepreneurs, who see the need for a new way of thinking, pick up the baton and lead the charge for a new way of thinking.

Change is often born when an isolated individual, often outside the field, without the burden of the conventional paradigms rethinks an issue.

But that isolated individual rarely makes the change. That happens when a few entrepreneurial thinkers within the field see the need for rethinking and lead the charge.

Our intelligent control system

We have a wealth of perfectly valid science helping us understand the biochemistry of our bodies which has led to the development of the so-called wonder drugs like Ozempic based on glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1).

This is based on a naturally occurring hormone which our bodies produce to tell us to stop eating. Development of such drugs is highly sophisticated and valid technology which we must respect.

But the question we need to ask is – “This is a naturally occurring hormone which our bodies produce, why is our body not producing this hormone to stop us getting fat and sick?”

This is the question that the entrepreneurial free thinkers within the health profession should be asking.

The answer lies in understanding how our intelligent control system works.

The change in thinking we need right now is to recognise that our bodies have an intelligent control system which regulates our bodies, particularly what and how much we eat and try and understand how this intelligent control system works, why it sometimes does not work and then how to fix it.

Intelligent control software

One of my activities was writing intelligent or self-learning control software for irrigation control.

This is of course nothing to do with how our body’s intelligent control system works, but understanding the methodology of how human generated intelligent control system works gives us an insight into how our natural intelligent control system works.

Irrigation is a complex problem as the weather is changing, the plants are growing and have different water requirements throughout their lives.

By continuously monitoring soil moisture, past evaporation and rainfall and anticipated evaporation and rainfall it is possible to learn how the ever-changing system works and predict how much water should be applied at the next irrigation to cater for anticipated needs.

Chronic disease

I say I have no medical qualifications but I am married to a medical doctor who is also diabetic, her foot started to turn black and our medical advisers were talking about the necessity of amputation.

However, I did learn that chronic diseases have a basic cause of the wrong fat in the wrong place, in the case of diabetes fat in the pancreas. (nb she still has both feet.)

Out of the Silo

So I asked myself, as an engineer, what is the basic cause of the wrong fat in the wrong place.? The classic answer from the viewpoint of biochemistry is overeating, but as an engineer knowing how intelligent control systems work it seemed that the more valid answer is that it is a control problem.

Why do we overeat?

Swarm intelligence

We know that the gut contains trillions of cells with each cell being able to communicate with neighbouring cells to create swarm intelligence – which is well understood.

We also know that the gut is in continuous communication with the cerebral brain to create an intelligent control system for our bodies.

This is a remarkable system but as it operates in our subconscious brain we are not aware and have no control over its operation.

Subconscious control

But it is still remarkable, it can control our temperature over a range of conditions to a fraction of a degree, it controls our heart and breathing rate to ensure that there is adequate oxygen for our muscles.

But perhaps some of the most remarkable achievements occur with a combination of our subconscious and conscious brains.

We can walk upstairs, carrying a cup of coffee while talking on our mobile phones. Even a three-year-old kid can ride a bicycle which requires the skill to apply the mechanism of self-balancing gyroscopic couples – truly remarkable.

Equally remarkable is the control of appetite. For the last billion years, all animals (and despite our intellect when it comes to scoffing down slices of piazza and cheesecake we are all animals) have been able to manage their appetite knowing what and how much to eat to thrive.

So I suggest that when we face the very real problem of the epidemic of chronic diseases we expand our thinking from the science of bio-chemistry and diet to include the thinking of a control engineer.

Three critical issues – intelligent gut, deficiencies, learning

It seems there are three critical issues where we only have partial understanding, at least at the theoretical level but where we have indisputable, even if empirical evidence.

There is a saying that science is the art of managing truth while engineering is the art of managing ignorance.

Maybe to combat the epidemic of chronic disease we need to learn to manage our ignorance.

Intelligent control system

Unfortunately, we do not have a proper understanding of how our intelligent control system works, at least at the code level but there are certain experimental observations which are indisputable and important.

We have known for many years that we can make fat mice skinny and skinny mice fat by changing their gut biota and that is equally true with humans, (although we have not adopted the habit of eating each other pooh).

Specific deficiencies

Empirical evidence shows that the human body is far more sophisticated than the simple calorie theory. Our bodies can detect specific deficiencies, and when it does it will create hunger hormones so we eat more, not just more but more of the specific food it has learned will satisfy that specific deficiency.

If we don’t eat the specific food it will keep on sending our hormones until we do – a somewhat random process which results in overeating.

Again the understanding at the scientific level is limited but at the empirical level, there is no doubt as anyone who has dug their garden on a hot summer day experiences.

Sweating on a hot day leads to a loss of salts which, if our self-learning process has worked, will normally create a craving for salty food – often beer and crisps but not cheesecake.

But again our body will keep on pumping our eat more hormones until the deficiencies are filled.

This is not a new concept, homeostasis was first proposed over two hundred years ago.

Training and long-term memory

We know that from birth our intelligent control system is monitoring the specific food we eat and associating this with our feeling of following satisfaction.

If there is a serious deficiency it will decide that it needs to operate with a higher safety margin for food – a long-winded way of saying the intelligent control system decided we need to store more fat.

We have known this for over eighty years, people who suffered severe starvation in the war became obese when food was later available.

Three-pronged solution

Changing the gut biome of eight billion people

Changing people’s gut biome is already a well-established technology, the issue is how to viably and economically change the gut biome of the eight billion people on Earth. Now there is a challenge.

There is no difficulty in breeding gut microbes, the issue is how to breed the right sort, the beneficial microbes without breeding the harmful ones.

We have to step outside the confines of the lab and think on an industrial scale recognising that a healthy gut biome may have over a thousand different species of biota.

The solution, which can operate on an industrial scale is based on the principle of ecological balance, creating the conditions that favour the beneficial microbes so they out-compete and out-breed the harmful microbes.

This is not a medical or even a biological issue, it is a straightforward engineering problem – largely based on fluid flow.

By luck I was a pioneer in computation fluid flow and when younger was recognised as a leader in this field. The solution is technically straightforward and well within the capacity of an experienced grower.

But there are two obstacles.

The first is with the scientific community in getting them to accept a simple, pragmatic solution when the underlying science has not matured.

The second is with Governments. It does mean creating what is a new industry of gut-brain food. This really needs Government support, just waiting for economics and the profit motive will not lead to a rapid solution.

But there needs to be a sense of urgency with eight million people having a limb amputated every year and the ever-increasing increase in obesity, now creeping into the younger generation.

The second problem of specific deficiencies is automatically resolved by this technology as breeding the beneficial requires a supply of the trace minerals to feed the microbes.

The third problem of training our gut-brain is more difficult. For years the standard promotion of ‘eat less exercise more’ has become ingrained into the system.

As we learned from wartime starvation a simple restrictive diet aggravated rather than resolves the obesity problem.

Changing the paradigm within a profession which has a duty to be cautious is not going to be easy. That can be resolved by pilot plant style demonstrations working on the show me don’t tell me basis.

The punch line

The health of billions of people and controlling the trillions of dollars spent on trying to manage health care costs depend on recognising the importance of our intelligent control system.

I may have developed technology to power our intelligent control system but I cannot create this change myself, this has to come from the entrepreneurial free thinkers within the health profession.

If this is you I would love to hear from you colin@gbiota.com

Creating Change for the Better

Happy Birthday

This is a decidedly different post. I have just had my eighty-fifth birthday. Very nice party – but a time for reflection.

I was thirty-five when I formed Moldflow pioneering my career in computer-aided engineering. This involved a lot of paradigm busting, brushing away old ways of thinking and replacing them with the new ways that computer simulation enabled.

But this was a battle to change thinking between engineers and I am an engineer so I was fighting on my home turf.

Tough Battle

This was a tough battle, and although I am still fit and healthy you don’t have to be a brilliant mathematician to see that eighty-five is a lot bigger than thirty-five.

Gbiota, at its core, is still about paradigm shifting but the scale of the battle is just so much bigger. Chronic diseases are the biggest health problem across the globe.

Being overweight is everywhere, don’t bother about statistics just go to the local shopping centre.

Diabetes is the most rapidly expanding disease with eight million people a year suffering from a limb amputation, heart attacks are the most common cause of death and at eighty-five dementia is a real threat – sitting in a wheelchair, peeing your pants and wondering who those pesky kids are who keep calling you grand-dad.

If you are one of that diminishing minority that thinks human suffering matters this is an immense challenge.

If you are one of that rapidly expanding majority that thinks the only thing that matters is money then the global health costs are measured in the multi-trillions.

The battle over paradigms

Again the battle is over paradigms.

The old way of thinking is that chronic diseases are a medical issue which will be solved by medical technology.

The new way of thinking is that chronic diseases may appear to be a medical problem but they will be solved by food technology.

Wrong fat in the wrong place

It is simple. The underlying cause of chronic diseases is the wrong fat in the wrong place and that, quite correctly, stems from overeating.

But we overeat because we are not feeding the intelligent control system which regulates our appetite.

The microbes in our gut communicate with their neighbours to create swarm or group intelligence which, together with our head brain, regulates our appetite.

It does this by manufacturing hormones which make us crave specific types of food which we have learned about from our accumulated experience of eating food over our lifetime. That information is stored in our head brain which works at the subconscious level – we have no conscious control over what our sub-conscious brain does.

Food not pills

Our modern food system does not feed our gut-brain so it generates hormones to make us hungry.

We may be able to override our hunger cravings for a while but they will always win in the end. That is why telling people to eat less and exercise more does not work long term.

The solution is to feed our gut-brain which includes enhancing the microbes which live in our gut and drive the process.

We know exactly how to do that – breed beneficial microbes in soil which includes both organic waste and a spectrum of minerals, which is the food for the microbes.

Three snags

But there are three big snags.

The first snag is that it is incredibly inexpensive. Yes, you read that right, inexpensive. Breeding beneficial microbes can be done for next to nothing by collecting organic waste and incorporating this into a special soil and growing plants in this soil.

So why is ‘inexpensive’ the problem?

Because of snag number two which is that it must be done right to breed the beneficial microbes and not the harmful microbes which are equally keen to breed.

This is a catch-22. Because there is no expensive product to sell there is no money to promote and teach people how to feed their gut-brain.

Companies selling drugs like Ozemic, which costs about a thousand dollars a month have plenty of money to promote their expensive pills.

Snag number three is that we live in an age of disinformation. The web is saturated with very effective, manipulative advertising so that no one (or at least no one with a basic thinking capacity) believes anything they see on the web.

But I do know that people will listen to and follow real people (no Avatars thanks) they trust.

Don’t sit in the corner and rock

Now before we sit in the corner and rock, or hit the bottle or whatever is your method of coping – there is a solution.

In theory, it is simple but in practice not so easy.

We have to form a small group, not the entire population of eight billion people – so how many? This small group needs to change their gut biota to show what happens.

Eating gut-brain food and showing that this really does curb appetite and avoids food cravings is hard evidence.

Forming a lead group

How many people should be in this group?

Robin Dunbar may have the answer. He suggested that the maximum number of people we can effectively communicate with is 150.

But there is a little twist to the story which I discovered when I gave a talk to the local organic growers association. They were not that motivated by my talk, which was a little frustrating until I looked at the audience of about fifty people.

They looked a similar age to me (eg old) but they all looked fit and healthy and were certainly very different to the people I see at the shopping centre.

We have to work with the people that need help.

Diabetics

We need to focus on a group that needs help, and there is no group that needs help more than diabetics. The standard procedure as soon as someone is diagnosed as diabetic is to start medication of some, sort, typically Metformin.

If that may be proved essential later but the first action should be diet. But it is no good just telling people if their hormones are telling them differently so the first action should be to change the way their gut works so they want to change their diet.

The magnificent dozen

So my thinking is that we should aim for a small core group of about a dozen people. They may not need help themselves but can be leaders of a group again of about a dozen, who are at risk of suffering from a chronic disease.

How do we find these dozen people to act as group leaders? I have no idea but I do believe in the power of ‘group think’ so if you have an idea how to create this group of group leaders please, let me know.

Colin