Why All This Gut Talk? PART I

"In the summer of 2008, a 26-year-old man from Shanxi Province walked into a lab at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, and 23 weeks later walked out 113 pounds lighter. He had not participated in a clinical trial of some new secret weight loss pill, or signed up for a punishing Biggest Loser-style exercise program, nor had he been fussed over by behavioral scientists who made his plates and drinking cups smaller with each passing week. The researchers, who were microbiologists, had simply put the man’s gut microbes on a diet.
One of the huge mysteries in studies of diet and exercise is the difference between people who get the same treatment but have remarkably different outcomes. Inevitably, some people in a study show little improvement despite weeks or even months of following what might seem like draconian changes in their normal diet and lifestyle. Other people apparently drop weight just by getting out of bed in the morning, and also improve their circulating triglycerides, total cholesterol, and biomarkers of inflammation with apparent ease. We all know someone like this in our daily life.
But why are there such extreme differences between people?
Is our DNA to blame? Our human genes may be involved in some cases but we generally share more than 99% genetic similarity with other people; more interestingly, the huge differences in peoples weight gain/loss may be driven more by the different bacteria in our intestines, which can be more than 90% different between one person and the next". (Taken from Jeff Leach's American (Gut) Gothic: 5 Things You can do for a healthier microbiome in 2013).  http://humanfoodproject.com/american-gut-gothic-5-things-you-can-do-for-a-healthier-microbiome-in-2013/


SETTING THE STAGE:
The last few years have seen an abundance of material presented to the public on the importance of gut health. In the medical and science community as well, there are hundreds of scholarly papers and peer reviewed journals being published on how our gut health is critical to robust health and vitality. The gut, and more specifically, our microbiome (the trillions of bacteria as well as their unique genes, that call our skin, intestines, and mouth home sweet home) might just be the lynchpin that connects modern day life with, quite frankly, modern day malaise.  The malaise I speak of is the throngs of folks living with chronic disease, from auto-immune disorders, metabolic syndrome, depression and anxiety, cardiovascular disease and a host of other illnesses. 

I have spoken quite exhaustively on the topic of humans amidst their ecology (see http://fluxregina.blogspot.ca/2013/01/food-challenge-update.html .... ) and have suggested that the health of the human species cannot be disconnected from the health of the local and global ecologies of which we are a part. In many ways, technology and science have allowed us to jettison our local ecologies (why of course I can eat bananas and mangoes in Saskatchewan year round) and have led in some ways to an even more diverse diet. And yet ironically,  our collective palette seems to be less and less imaginative these days. When you add to this stunted imagination, a desire for immediate gratification, the food landscape appears pretty bleak.  Try the following thought experiment: walk into the grocery store as though you were an alien visiting earth for the first time. Cellophane wrapped broccoli, cauliflower, so clean and sterile, no ragged edges, the stalks removed, no traces of decay. It is as though the grocery store has answered our collective, and bizarre desire that food be completely severed from its connection to the earth, and to the cycle of life, which demands both  death and decay.

Another case in point is our last food challenge, where many of you bravely took up the exhortation to eat organ meat once a week and to make your own broth from chicken feet and beef bones. This proved to be a gruesome experience for some as they apprehensively cut into a beef tongue or stared at a package of chicken feet that they were now expected to boil the hell out of for 24 hours.

What does all of this have to do with our microbiome? A couple of things actually - just as we are implicated within an external ecology, we also have a gut ecology. And this gut loves DIVERSITY, DIRT and DECAY. There are hundreds of various microbial species at home in our bodies. In fact, some scientists go so far as to suggest that the human body is really just a vessel for the trillions of bacteria living in our body.  And so the tables are turned, we are not the center of the universe, and in fact, we are just along for the ride. Our main function being to host this multiplicity of microbes. The first order of the challenge will be to feed your gut some diversity. You will try and eat 30-40 different plant types every week.

As further dfpreparation for our challenge, I suggest you go to The Human Food Project's Website and become acquainted with the work of Jeff Leach, the anthropologist leading this project. Mr. Leach  defines this project as "an effort to understand modern disease against the back drop of our ancestral/microbial past." http://humanfoodproject.com/