I like my neighborhood. It is very quiet and everyone watches out for each other. We get together in the little court on the 4th of July for a big barbecue and snow cones. It is all very cozy and safe feeling.
But what would happen if a crack dealer moved into the neighborhood? Strangers would always be driving down our little street stopping at the dealer’s house to buy drugs. Low-lifes would be hanging around partying on the front lawn and harassing the good folks of our little community. It wouldn’t feel safe anymore.
Then suppose a few doors down someone set up an opium den for users to shoot up and crash while they drift on their heroin high. Before you know it a biker gang has moved in at the end of the court and are always working on bikes and cars at all hours of the day and night, spewing oil and trash into the gutters. In short order people start putting up chain link fences to keep their pit bulls in their front yards hoping to scare away the scum now in the neighborhood. Our quality safe home has suddenly become a slum full of bad elements and toxic waste.
This is what has happened to our gut. When our gut was fresh and young, it was like my neighborhood is now – safe and clean with caring neighbors that look out for each other. Then we moved in the crack dealer – sugar. Sugar stimulates the same brain centers as crack and cocaine. It poisons the liver and corrodes our blood vessels. It also feeds a whole class of nasty bugs that now take up residence and party on our inner lawn creating tons of inflammation in the process.
Or maybe we moved in the opium den first. Gluten from grains and casein from dairy are opiate drugs that affect not only the brain, but also the enteric nervous system in our gut. The gluten triggers a breakdown of the gut lining that allows poisonous proteins created by the bad bacteria to enter our bloodstream and drive our immune system crazy.
Maybe the bikers moved in first – the toxic vegetable oils that we fry everything in and use as soft buttery spreads and mayonnaise. These get turned directly into inflammation producing cytokines as well as get incorporated into all the cell membranes making them work incorrectly. All these dietary bad guys destroy the gut neighborhood and promote the overgrowth of bad guy bugs in our gut. Gone are the good neighbors that looked out for each other. Now the houses all have broken windows and doors that let in all sorts of pollution as well as insects and rodents.
The Standard American Diet produces ghetto gut. Everything we have been taught to love in our diet is helping to destroy our health. This destruction begins in our gut. One third of the control of our DNA – the blueprint for who we are – comes from the bacteria in our gut. What do you think happens to that control if your gut control center is taken over by bacterial terrorists? They take over and make you crave even more of the foods that are destroying your gut. This is not a metaphor, bad gut bacteria actually produce neurotransmitters that signal your brain to crave junk foods and trigger snacking behaviors. They are controlling your actions. This is scary stuff here. Ghetto gut is real and it is affecting most all of us.
I re-watched the movie Tomorrowland a couple days ago because Ellen had no memory of seeing it. It came out right about the time she broke her leg, so she might have missed it. The key message of the movie was a parable about the two wolves. There are two wolves fighting outside your front door – one of light and hope and the other full of darkness and despair. Which one wins? The answer is: the one you feed. Our guts are the front door and our microbiota (gut bugs) are the wolves. Which ones will win the battle for the neighborhood? The answer is, whichever ones we feed.
Sugar and simple carbs, grains and dairy, vegetable oils and trans fats, these all feed the dark despairing gut bug wolves, while vegetables and resistant starches, omega 3 and mono saturate fats, polyphenol and antioxidant rich herbs and spices all feed the gut bugs that are filled with light and hope.
Without a strong and healthy gut neighborhood we cannot keep the poisons out of our body. We cannot properly break down our foods into the life giving nutrients we need. We cannot keep infectious bacteria, viruses, and parasites from damaging our health. We need a strong healthy gut lining and we need a rich and varied neighborhood full of life supporting good gut bacteria. Hippocrates, the father of medicine, said “all disease starts in the gut.” Modern medicine is discovering that he was right. Nothing impacts our health as much as our diet. There is no pill or potion or drug that can overcome the devastating effect of a bad diet.
A massive amount of research is just now coming out about the huge importance of the types of bacteria that inhabit our gut. There are thousands of possible types of gut bacteria and the average person will have up to 500 different types. The critical question is, do you have good bugs or bad bugs? That is entirely determined by what you feed your gut. Good guy bugs live on soluble vegetable fibers, while bad guy bugs live on sugars, simple carbs, and incompletely digested proteins. Which ones will you feed?
Do you want a happy gut neighborhood, or a ghetto gut?