Our intelligent control system

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Changing the Health Paradigm

by Colin Austin | Dec 13, 2024 | Uncategorized

Changing the Health Paradigm

Our intelligent control system

Infectious and chronic or non-infectious diseases

chronic diseases We 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.

This result from our modern food system which we need to change, but changes are never easy.

For the last thirty years, I have been working on how we need to change our food system so it is sustainable and leads to healthy people.

This requires a food paradigm shift - a different way of thinking about food.

As luck would have it I had spent the previous twenty years creating a paradigm shift in how engineers went about their design process.

This was an invaluable lesson on creating paradigm shifts and this is my story of creating a paradigm shift for food.

The birth of Computer Aided Engineering

Fifty years ago I was a humble lecturer in plastics processing at the RMIT in Melbourne. They had a mainframe computer, typical of the time with punched card input - a most unimpressive machine.

But then the very first mini-computer appeared and I had this instinct that this would change the way engineers went about their business.

I took out a second mortgage on my house to buy the second mini-computer to come to Australia, which is now laughable in its capabilities but still costed about a third of the value of my home.

The simulation with unexpected results

I learned computer programming and wrote, in my spare bedroom, a simulation of hot plastics flowing into a cold mould which was a pioneering technology for that time solving coupled complex non-linear partial differential equations.

The software may have been an achievement but the unexpected results changed the industry.

The industry was having problems in filling some moulds and the obvious solution was to make the flow channels bigger. That looks like common sense.

My software showed that some parts of the mould were filling first and the solution was to make some flow channels smaller to divert the flow into the more difficult areas of the mould.

That simulation showed that the current paradigm of how to design plastic moulds was deficient and my software led to a new paradigm which literally changed the industry across the globe.

Comparing Paradigms

The old paradigm for plastic flow was that the way to fill a mould was to make the flow channels bigger. It seems so obvious.

The new paradigm was to make some flow channels smaller to divert the flow to the more difficult to fill areas.

When I presented this idea at public lectures I was at first ridiculed and heckled. It made no sense. How can making flow channels smaller help a mould to fill?

But a few people heard the message, tried it and it worked and gradually became the accepted new paradigm.

Years later I face a similar situation. The current paradigm is that if you are getting fat then eat less. It seems so obvious.

The new paradigm I am presenting is that we get fat because our bodies (our intelligent control system) can sense deficiencies in our diet so we overeat and then get fat.

My solution is to fix these deficiencies by eating more, well not just more but more of the right sort of food.

I know the conventional wisdom is to eat less so to propose eating more sounds ridiculous. The missing words in that sentence are “more of the right sort of food”.

That automatically leads to eating less of the sugary fatty foods which make us fat.

From Plastics to Food

The company I formed Moldlfow became the leading exporter of technical software and was eventually sold for $500 million. Most of that went to the vulture capitalists but it still put me in the multi-millionaire category.

For my pioneering work on Computer Aided Engineering and creating the paradigm shift which changed the industry I was recognised by the Institute of Engineers as one of Australia’s leading innovators.

I took a complete turn in my life to focus on what I thought, and still think, is the major issue facing humanity, how to grow food sustainably which will keep us healthy.

Speculative Research - doing daft things

We like to think of science as a nice logical step by step process and that is certainly part of the scientific process.

But doing things which seem daft at the time can lead to new ways of thinking. Moldflow, a company worth half a billion dollars was the result of doing daft things that led to a new way of thinking.

I was in a position to spend a few million dollars on speculative research knowing that most would be a complete failure but that failures lead to new ways of thinking which can have a profound impact.

With climate change, I am even more convinced of the importance of how we grow our food. I could say that I have spent the last thirty years of my life focused on how to sustainably grow food that will make us healthy but that would not be strictly accurate as I was used as child labour in WW2 to help mum grow food in the German U-boat blockade.

Computers have a delete button - Doctors don’t

My wife is a medical doctor, I am an engineer and there is a vast difference in the mode of operation.

If I make an error in my computer programming I can just hit the delete button whereas a medical doctor has to follow strict protocols which slows the rate of change and the adoption of new paradigms.

I am only too well aware that the current paradigm for chronic diseases is that they are caused by fat in the wrong place and we store fat in the wrong place because we eat more energy food than we burn, the calorie balance theory.

Eat less, Exercise more - it is more complicated than that

eatless exercise more There is no disputing that calorie balance is an essential requirement for storing excess fat, this is just obeying the fundamental laws of conservation of mass and energy so it is not in dispute - this is what I call the “how” we store excess fat but it does not explain “why” we store excess fat.

Intelligent control software

It just so happened that I had written intelligent control software which can be quite complex as the software has to learn the behavioural characteristics of the specific machine, it is a form of Artificial Intelligence with self-learning capabilities.

Our bodies have a similar self-learning capability, as we can see from simple experiments on the human body, and the reason why we store excess fat, which leads to the chronic disease epidemic, is that our intelligent control system has decided that we need to store excess fat.

How is not the same as Why

why This is the “why” underlying chronic disease.

It then sends out signals so that we eat more food which is the “how” we end up storing fat and is the underlying cause of the epidemic of chronic disease.

To understand why our intelligent control system decides we need to store more fat we have to understand how it takes decisions based on the information it receives.

The key point here is that our intelligent control system is highly sophisticated and the result of millions of years of evolution. Over this extensive period, it has learned to manage our bodies with a food supply relatively low in energy food but with an abundance of both microbes and nutrients.

We changed our food system

It is now faced with a different food supply with an abundance of energy food but deficient in microbes and some nutrients. This is a direct result of changes to our food supply.

To rectify this we need to change the paradigm from calorie balance, which we have tried for decades without success to the intelligent control paradigm.

Changing paradigms is always difficult but in the medical world can be a matter of life and death so a cautionary approach, which may seem prudent, makes this even more difficult.

Effective democracy depends on pro-active Governments

too busy The first problem we have to overcome is the modern phenomenon of busy work.

For the last thirty years, I have been working on how we need to change our food system so it is sustainable and leads to a healthy outcome and I am not a drongo.

I cannot condense thirty years of thinking in an email or two.

It needs intelligent time from someone prepared to consider new concepts with an open mind.

Hopefully, my little cartoon demonstrates the status better than any words.

This is a global issue, every twelve seconds some unfortunate person has a limb amputated from diabetes, eight million people a year.

This is the dominant issue for health globally and I have an instinct that by changing the paradigm to our intelligent control system I could be sitting on the solution - just as I had that instinct fifty years ago that computers would change the way engineers would carry out their daily business.

Colin

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Mind and body

by Colin Austin | Dec 9, 2024 | Uncategorized

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 diseases We 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 skinny A 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

why The 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 phone 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

fat and skinny mice 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.

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 bike Both 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 and 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

dancing Sometimes 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

Shift the Paradigm
Move from focusing on calorie imbalance to understanding and optimising our intelligent control system.
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.
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.
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 food Not 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!

"I

Game changer

by Colin Austin | Nov 30, 2024 | Uncategorized

colin and Xiulan When Colin's wife, Xiulan - a dedicated medical doctor - faced a dire health crisis as her diabetes spiralled out of control, leading to a threat of amputation, Colin knew something had to change.

As a celebrated engineer recognized for his groundbreaking work in Computer Aided Engineering, Colin's expertise in adaptive systems sparked a revolutionary idea: What if chronic diseases like diabetes, obesity, and dementia stem from a malfunctioning intelligent control system within our bodies?

Drawing inspiration from swarm intelligence in nature—like the collective behaviour of birds, insects, and even slime moulds - Colin realised the key wasn’t about fully understanding this intricate system. Instead, it was about nurturing it, much like feeding and training a loyal puppy.

This breakthrough led to Gbiota technology - a transformative approach to feeding and training your body's internal "puppy" for lifelong health.

Learn how Gbiota can revolutionize your life. Read on to discover more!

The Game Changer: Rewrite Your Future

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

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

Short-term success. Long-term failure.

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

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

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

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

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

Are you ready to lead the way?

The Real World: A Call for Change

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Summary

by Colin Austin | Nov 24, 2024 | Uncategorized

Summary: Creating Gbiota Beds and Boxes

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

1. Setting Up a Gbiota Bed

Location & Preparation:
- Select a suitable area and determine the size (recommended size is around 5 meter long and 0.5 meters wide).
- Dig out the topsoil and set it aside. Create a sump box at one end for water drainage and nutrient collection.
- Line the base with compacted clay, silt or if needed plastic film to prevent excessive water leakage (add clay if the soil is sandy).
Base Layer & Irrigation:
- Install ag (agricultural) pipes for irrigation. The pipe should allow water (or “soil blood”) to seep into the soil but also drain out excess moisture.
- Create a “leaky dam” near the sump box to ensure slow drainage and prevent stagnation.
Layers of the Bed:
- Organic Waste Layer: Fill the base with organic waste, such as kitchen scraps or grass clippings (about 100mm deep).
- Nutrient Layer: Add a mix of manure (e.g., chicken manure), rock dust, dolomite (to balance pH), and blood and bone fertilizer.
- Topsoil: Return the reserved topsoil to the bed. If the soil is sandy, mix in clay to improve its structure and water retention.
Planting:
- Thoroughly wet the top layer to create a moist surface for seed germination.
- Sow a diverse mix of seeds to attract various beneficial microbes and fungi. Include sunflowers for optimal growth of mycorrhizal fungi.

2. Setting Up a Gbiota Box

Box Selection:
- Use a UV-stabilized container, such as a 30-liter storage box. Depth should be between 200-300mm for efficient water wicking.
Installation of Swivel Tube:
- Drill a hole near the base of the box and install a swivel tube with a grommet for drainage and water level control.
- Fit a piece of ag pipe at the bottom for water distribution.
Layering the Box:
- Add one-third of the box’s depth in organic waste at the base.
- Top with a nutrient mix (manure, rock dust, dolomite, and trace minerals).
- Finish with a layer of Wickimix (a microbial-rich soil blend) or good-quality garden soil.
Compost Tube:
- Insert a compost tube vertically into the box to allow for easy addition of organic waste. Cover the tube with soil or Wickimix to keep pests away.
Planting & Germination:
- Wet the soil thoroughly before seeding to ensure good germination.
- Cover the seeds with a light layer of Vermiculite or Wickimix.

3. Key Maintenance Practices

Flood and Flush Irrigation:
- Regularly flood the base to provide moisture and nutrients to plant roots while expelling stale air.
- Drain excess water (soil blood) to prevent stagnation and aerate the soil.
Soil Blood Reuse:
- Collect drained soil blood, dilute it, and use it for irrigation or as a foliar spray to enhance plant and microbial health.
Worm Integration:
- Introduce worms to aid in organic matter breakdown and nutrient cycling. Red wrigglers are particularly effective.
Regeneration:
- Periodically move the compost tube to distribute nutrients evenly. Add new organic waste and nutrient layers during reseeding cycles (every three months).

4. Benefits of the Gbiota System

Improves soil fertility by fostering microbial diversity and nutrient recycling.
Produces plants rich in beneficial microbes that support human gut health.
Provides a sustainable solution for home gardeners and urban dwellers.

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

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Essence

by Colin Austin | Nov 22, 2024 | Uncategorized

The essence

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

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

The Health Crisis at Our Doorstep

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

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

A Revolutionary Insight into Food and Health

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

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

Enter Gbiota: A New Path to Wellness

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

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

Beyond Nutrition: A Community Movement

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

Food waste is recycled into Wickimix to enrich the soil.
Local governments support urban agriculture, turning parks and open spaces into hubs for growing fresh produce.
Communities take charge, learning to cultivate and share nutrient-rich food locally.

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

A Sustainable Solution for All

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

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

Why It Matters

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

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

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

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

The Trial

by Colin Austin | Nov 21, 2024 | Uncategorized

The trial that changed the world’s health

What we know for sure, and don’t know

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

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

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

Conventional wisdom

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

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

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

Why we get fat and sick

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

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

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

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

Continuous blood sugar monitoring

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

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

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

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

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

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

Two opposing solutions

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

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

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

The divergence in thinking is in the solutions.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Flow balancing - analogous to food balancing

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

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

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

What does have to do with food?

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

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

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

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

Three tanks not one

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

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

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

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

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

It wasn’t me

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Flow balancing - analogous to food balancing

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

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

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

What does have to do with food?

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

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

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

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

Three tanks not one

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

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

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

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

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

It wasn’t me

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

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

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

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

Flow and food

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

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

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

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

Why we need the risk takers

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

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

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

Changing the food and health industries

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

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

I am here - waiting

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

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

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

Healthy food – intro

by Colin Austin | Nov 21, 2024 | Uncategorized

The real cause of chronic diseases

Summary

Chronic diseases are the result of the wrong fat in the wrong place.

The new paradigm is to focus on our intelligent control system, which regulates our bodies. We do this by feeding our gut-brain by breeding beneficial microbes in organic waste to form biologically active soil, growing and eating plants while fresh to feed our gut-brain, and training our head-brain that food is secure.

This leaves us satisfied so we no longer crave food.

This contrast with the conventional paradigm of restricting calories which has not been effective as it leaves us craving food.

The failure of simple calorie restriction

The remedy which has been promoted for decades is eat less and exercise more. This has not been successful. The calorie theory is a valid explanation of how we get fat but does not explain why we get fat. The right answer to the wrong question.

We have an intelligent control system that regulates our bodies, particularly our appetite. If it decides we need to store more fat it sends out hormones that make us feel hungry and eat more.

With determination we may be able to override that for a short time, but not for long.

If we want success in overcoming chronic diseases we have to learn how to change the signals coming from our intelligent control system.

Adaptive or self-learning controls

We have yet to fully understand how this intelligent control system works but engineers have a good understanding of the complex intelligent control used to control difficult engineering problems which we can use as a model.

They work on the principle of adaptive control. The controller makes a small change to the system and observes the results. Based on the result it will compute an improved change to the system and again observe results.

This can happen hundreds of times a second and as all data is logged rapidly acquires a comprehensive understanding of the operating characteristics of the system.

This is the way humans manage complex tasks like riding a bike or catching a ball. It all happens in our subconscious brain at speeds far higher than our conscious brain can operate so we are not even aware it is happening.

Continuous blood sugar monitoring

Our bodies appear to work in a similar way as I see from wearing a continuous blood sugar monitor. I can see the changes in my blood sugar and the loads on my body which demonstrates the similarity between our bodies and mechanical intelligent control systems.

Our intelligent control system has two parts, the first in our gut which provides short-term intelligence while our head brain provides long-term data storage or memory.

Swarm intelligence

We can understand the intelligence in our gut from swarm intelligence which we can study in many insects, birds and slime moulds. The trillions of cells in our gut communicate with their neighbours providing this swarm intelligence.

For this to work effectively we need the appropriate species of microbes in our gut and we have to feed them.

The long-term memory in our head allows us to train the control system.

Functions of food types

We need relatively simple food for energy, complex chemicals to replace our body parts as they age and wear and food to feed the microbes in our gut.

The control system will only send out signals to make us feel satisfied so we want to stop eating when it senses that all these three types of food are available.

Changing paradigms

If we are to resolve the epidemic of chronic disease we have to recognise that the current paradigm of calorie balance is simplistic and learn how to direct our inbuilt intelligent control system.

Gbiota is a social movement of people dedicated to the prevention of chronic diseases by ensuring that the community has viable access to food, at an affordable price, which will correct for these deficiencies by breeding beneficial microbes in organic waste, then growing and eating plants while still fresh.

We aim to either teach people, or local growers, how to grow these plants themselves.

Dynamic situation

The change from the calorie-restricting paradigm to the new paradigm of managing our intelligent control system is dynamic.

This web is dynamic, we publish a new article most weeks but you can read the older articles by following the links at the bottom of each article.

To follow sign up and click the link ‘Notify me of new posts by email’ at the bottom of every article.

Community Benefit

by Colin Austin | Nov 20, 2024 | Uncategorized

The community benefits of gut-brain food

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

The black foot and avoiding amputation

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

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

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

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

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

The body as a thermodynamic machine

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That great clanking machine

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The intelligent controller

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We all have an intelligent control system

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

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

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

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

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

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

But that does not mean it is not happening.

At the shopping centre

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

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

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

The disinformation age

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

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

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

AI or GS?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Social conscience and the food industry

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Creating a new local gut-brain industry

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ecosystems

by Colin Austin | Nov 18, 2024 | Uncategorized

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We must create an ecosystem, a food ecosystem in which humans can thrive.

Charles Darwin taught us that creatures evolve to thrive in their local environment. Humans now have the technology to change our environment, we must use our technology to create an environment where humans can thrive.

Sure our immediate focus is combating the current epidemic, but we won’t do that with some-short term fix.

We have to create the ecosystem, the food ecosystem in which humans can thrive.

Join us in this community benefit movement putting people ahead of profits.

The real cause of chronic diseases

Chronic diseases are the result of the wrong fat in the wrong place.

The remedy which has been promoted for decades is eat less and exercise more. This has not been successful. The calorie theory is a valid explanation of how we get fat but does not explain why we get fat. The right answer to the wrong question.

gut brain connection We have an intelligent control system which regulates our bodies, particularly our appetite. If it decides that there is a need to store more fat it sends out hormones so we are hungry. With determination we may be able to override that for a short time, but not for long.

If we want success in overcoming chronic diseases we have to learn how to change the signals coming from our intelligent control system.

We have yet to fully understand how this intelligent control system works but engineers have a good understanding of the complex intelligent control used to control difficult engineering problems which we can use as a model.

Our intelligent control system has two parts, the first in our gut which provide short term intelligence while our head brain provides long term data storage or memory.

We can understand the intelligence in our gut from swarm intelligence which we can study in many insects, birds and slime moulds. The trillions of cells in our gut communicate with their neighbours provide this swarm intelligence.

For this to work effectively we need the appropriate species of microbes in our gut and we have to feed them.

The long term memory in our head allows us to train the control system.

We need relatively simple food for energy, complex chemicals to replace our body parts as they age and wear and food to feed the microbes in our gut.

change the world The controls system will only send out signals to make us feel satisfied so we want to stop eating if it senses that all these three types of food are available.

Gbiota is a social movement of people dedicated to the prevention of chronic diseases by ensuring that the community has viable access to food, at an affordable price, which will correct for these deficiencies by breeding beneficial microbes in organic waste, then growing and eating plants while still fresh.

Our aim is to either teach people, or local growers, how to grow these plants themselves.

Join the movement of other people wanting a better world to live in.

Disruption

The bad news

bolder Humanity is approaching a period of massive disruption, maybe not annihilation, but certainly disruption on an unprecedented scale.

The combination of climate change and degradation of our soil will create difficulties in producing enough healthy food, our intense city lifestyles leaves us exposed to the next pandemic but that will be small compared to the epidemic of chronic or non-infectious diseases.

This will create tension resulting in waves of displaced people trying to migrate and the continued increase in conflict and killing of civilians on an industrial scale. See Society and Community Health and Jenny and Recycle and Serious Think about Food

The good news

blood sugar roller coaster We know how to avoid this massive disruption, our technology and understanding have increased on a scale which would have been unbelievable even a few decades ago. See Food - we love it and Friendly bugs

But technology can be a force of good or bad, it can work for the benefit of the community or it can increase the division across society creating a handful of people with unimaginable wealth and power while the bulk of the community suffers from ever-increasing hardships.

See prevention better than cure and Health Prevention first

Busy work

busy work Our technologies give us the potential to solve these problems as long as we take action. We can produce all society’s needs in a couple of days work,

Sadly, a system of busy work has evolved so instead of taking action to resolve these problems we live in a state of overwork and stress leaving us exposed to the approaching disruption.

You can hide under the bedclothes but it does not make the monster go away see My Teddy

The train is at the station

disease While the worst is yet to come the chronic disease train is already at the station. Chronic or non-infectious diseases, overweight, diabetes, heart attacks and dementia are largely man-made, here now but avoidable, as long as we take action. See The Plan and The Riddle and Disease

If we overcome the busy work and take action we can resolve the curse of chronic diseases.

Start by taking action and read my article Health Paradox then follow the trail.

caring and compassionate society People get fat and prone to chronic diseases because our modern food system is deficient in gut-brain food so we never feel satisfied, overeat, get fat and so are prone to chronic diseases.

We want to change the system, but we don’t go on street marches, spend money on manipulative marketing or other aggressive actions.

Our plan is simple: Form local clusters of people who grow their own gut-brain food, see for themselves that they now feel satisfied, are no longer craving food, and do not get fat.

They tell their friends and contacts and as the movement grows we change the system so all people have access to food that will keep them healthy.

We are a dedicated bunch of people committed to making the world a better place in a time of chaos.

Join us - we are a bunch of decent people who want to live in a decent society.

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

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

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

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