Now every animal and plant on the planet is built using DNA which comprises of chromosomes which them selves contain genes.
Genes are factories which produce ‘goods’ for our body to use for repair, building, signalling and more, when you think goods in this case think vitamins, hormones, the raw materials to build cells.
So you would imagine that as the MOST complex species on the planet we humans would have a lot of genetic complexity…
Right?
WRONG
We humans have 23 chromosomes.
Cilated Protozoa (one of the simplest life forms on the planet) has 16,000…WTF?
How can this be and what on earth is going on?
We have outsourced our genetic complexity.
We rely on our bacteria to do these jobs, which in other creatures genes will do, for us. It’s the perfect relationship, it allows us to be more flexible as we can shift our genetic potential simply by adjusting the populations of bacteria and means as an organism we can afford to be much simpler and thus much more genetically stable.
Unfortunately it’s gone hideously wrong…
To understand why you have to understand how our populations of bacteria primarily regulated.
They are regulated primarily by the environment we expose them to. So…
- By what we eat.
- Our levels of stress
- How much we exercise
- Our environment
- Our social life
- Our parents (7 generations)
- What we think…
You see a lot of what we are meant to eat isn’t designed for us…it’s for our microbiome.
The way this works is we eat food, our bacteria eat the food we eat and their metabolites (the things they give off after eating that food) are the things our body actually needs.
Vitamin B being a prime example. Normally it’s very difficult to get from the diet but it’s something Bifidobacteria will produce in spades if we feed them right…in this case with lots of phenols.
However bacteria do a lot more than just that. They can determine how much fat we will store, hormone production, how many mitochondria we have and how effectively they perform, in short they control EVERYTHING. In fact so much so that there are credible theories in biology that humans were created by bugs to serve as hosts for them!
They also seem to be the chief signallers to the immune system…which is increasingly being viewed as the GATEWAY to health.
So what…?
Well this actually a REALLY BIG deal
Why?
Because our immune system seems to be the lever at the top of the hierarchy of the human body.
To understand why we have to tackle what initially seems like a daunting subject and certainly has a daunting name, but can actually be understood fairly simply. We have to understand…
MACROPHAGES.
Think of these as the bodies highly trained SAS Operatives. They have 3 primary functions: Seek and destroy, communicate and to act as Combat Medics.
These guys patrol the organs looking for bad guys, when they find them they go in shoot up the place, kill the bad guys and radio back to HQ (the organ) that it is under attack and to send more SAS to help. The organ then sends out a signal across the whole body that it is under attack asking for more SAS to come in and help.
Crucially in shooting the place up they cause a LOT of inflammation.
Which is normally fine…The problem comes (as far as weight loss is concerned) when we get a source of inflammation in the fat which does not switch off. As then the organ just keeps asking for more and more help, which brings more and more SAS in, who cause more and more inflammation, which drives weight gain, dysfunction and disease.
Which is where we come back to our microbiome.
One of the primary roles of the microbiome is to identify self from non self.
When we have an imbalance of the microbiome, things are allowed through the gut lining which shouldn’t be. Things like Lipopolysaccharides (LPS). These pass by the microbiome, penetrate the gut wall, enter the bloodstream and find themselves in the fat. Which then sends out the signal for the SAS to come and blow them away.
But as the source of the inflammation is constant the SAS never switch to medic role…meaning the fat or the organ those SAS are in, gets more and more inflamed.
And it gets better…
That many SAS in the organ makes fat uncoupling impossible or at least VERY difficult because the release of Catecholamine (which allows fat uncoupling) is controlled by the Combat Medics.
So you gain more and more weight or the organ becomes more and more dysfunctional regardless of how well you eat or how much you exercise.
Now it also works the other way around…as we flip macrophages back in to the Combat Medic role we naturally see fat uncoupling occurring and organ function being restored.
Before we can flip the SAS back into combat medic role we have to first stop the LPS from getting through the gut wall and so prevent the source of the problem. Once we’ve done this we can allow the SAS to finish their job and then tell the body to flip those SAS macrophages to their Combat Medic role.
Which is what we’re going to start doing today.
How do we stop LPS from entering the gut lining? By getting our bugs to close the gates to the kingdom! Which we do by ensuring enough of the right bacteria are present in the gut who can determine what should be let through and what should be turned away at the door.
As an aside this will also clear insensitivities (and possibly ease autoimmune disorders) over time as the wrong stuff getting into our blood stream is a MAJOR cause of both of these.
LET’S GET STARTED
The protocol I want you to start doing is shown below, get started on Week 1 as soon as you can and start logging your progress on the calendar in the app as you complete each day so I can tell you’re doing it.
THE PROTOCOL
Week 1: Peel or 2 Red Apples or 1 teaspoon or Apple Peel powder a day, on an empty stomach.
Week 2: Peels of 3 Red Apples or 2 teaspoons or Apple Peel powder and 1 tea spoon of Red Powder a day, on an empty stomach.
Week 3: Peels of 3 Red Apples or 2 teaspoons or Apple Peel powder, 1-2 tea spoon of Red Powder and 1 dose of HMO powder a day, on an empty stomach.
Week 4: Peels of 3-4 Red Apples or 2-3 teaspoons or Apple Peel powder, 1-2 tea spoon of Red Powder and 1 dose of HMO powder a day, on an empty stomach.
All the items I suggest here can be found on the Sam Recommends Page of the website.
FOOD DIARY
If you’re interested in improving your nutrition I’d also like you to keep a food diary for this first week just so I can get an idea of how you’re currently eating. It’s important here that I get an accurate snapshot and being human as soon as you know someone else will be looking at this you’ll try to eat better to compensate, please don’t! The more accurate this snapshot is the easier it will be for you to make positive changes in the future.
Once you’ve filled it in, just email it over to me or attach it in a message in the app.