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It seems that many of us these days are finally getting the message that we must care more about what we eat.

For too long, marketing by the big food companies and supermarkets have been plugging some pretty unhealthy food choices.

All food can be categorized into three groups. If you are lucky enough to have a fair sized garden, or have a holding at an allotment, then you can have the satisfaction of eating healthy fresh vegetables or fruit. This is unprocessed food.

Processed food is when a natural product goes through some process such as milk being pasteurized. Just packaging a food, such as cling wrapping a product, can be described as processed.

But none of the aforementioned touches upon the ultra processed foods that fill our supermarkets.

Supermarkets are part of the biggest industry in the western world. Older people remember a time when they didn’t exist. In the UK around two thirds of all foods are bought in the top five supermarket chains.

The supermarkets want long life goods that are easily stored and packaged. Conformity is a big issue.

Near to us is a farm that grows hundreds of acres of vegetables. Depending on the time of year, cauliflower is just one of these.

The farmer was delighted to get a contract with one of the big supermarkets that agreed to buy all the cauliflower he could grow. Initially it seemed a great deal although the prices they were prepared to pay was more than a little disappointing.

Supermarkets also have a habit of paying three months after delivery. And even then, it is necessary to chase their pay division vigorously.

After two reasonably happy years, the farmer had committed more of his land for cauliflower growing. But in the third year, the supermarket buyer complained that the cauliflowers were smaller than usual.

They cancelled the whole order. The farmer explained that weather conditions and a lack of rain was the cause but that there was nothing wrong with the product.

This didn’t matter to the supermarket and it left him almost broken. In the end he ploughed the whole lot back into the soil and vowed never to deal with supermarkets again.

Today, supermarkets employ teams of food scientists that find ways to mix various additives to enhance flavours, colours, and life expectancy of the product. Our gut bacteria hasn’t a clue how to deal with some of these additives and particularly with the amount of sugar, sodium and other salts, it’s all bad for our health.

The new way we should be looking at food is to concentrate on fresh, unadulterated product with plenty of variety.

Most of us are aware of the central spinal cord that runs through the vertebra that make up back bone. And between each of these vertebra, branches of the nerves reach out and through the body to other parts of the body.

We are less familiar with another trail of nerves that runs between our brain and onwards throughout our stomach, digestive system, and associated glands and organs. 

This nerve system is called the vagus and it is attracting a great deal of present day research. 

It has always been obvious that the brain and the gut are in close communication. From the very basic hunger pangs we get to emotions from fear to ecstasy, the two areas of the body seem to work in unison. 

We use expressions such as going with a gut feeling, to others that involve the gut and other emotions. It is a fact that we have more bacteria in our gut, along with other microorganisms, than we have total body cells. The power of these little creatures is one of life’s mysteries. 

Bacteria has been on Earth for at leats a couple of billion years and have evolved to live at the bottom of oceans, the top of mountains, and in our very warm and accommodating gut. 

We on the other-hand, have been in our current homo sapien form for just a few hundred thousand years. There is a new therapy in use called VNS. This stands for vagus nerve stimulation. 

It involves sending small electrical shocks directly into the vagus nerve where it runs down either side of our throat. It is showing signs of being good therapy for epilepsy, depression and other related problems. 

Throughout human history people have made use of natural foods from plants to seafood and some wild caught meats. But in the last couple of generations, we have relied upon a trip to the supermarket where heavily processed foods are on offer. 

It’s intriguing to wonder what these ultra processed foods are doing to our gut microbiome that is used to hundreds of thousands of years of natural, unprocessed food.

A sign that it’s clearly not doing us much good is the number of obese people in the modern world. Along with obesity comes all the associated problems such as type two diabetes, cardiovascular problems and simple ailments such as bloating, constipation, and general gut discomfort.

Some form of diet change and a little help with a colon cleanser will help. There are a number of supplements that involve the use of good live gut bacteria that exist naturally in probiotic foods. 

Fivelac is a supplement that contains plenty of good live gut bacteria. It can help shift any sluggish movement in the colon and help clear any compacted waste in other parts of the intestines. 

Many of us will have had the dubious pleasure at some time or other of visiting a hospital for a procedure called an endoscopy. 

An endoscopy usually involves the inserting of a fine tube into any of our body cavities. The most common is the mouth or the anus. It can also be used to look into the nose and beyond. 

In rarer cases, it may involved none of the cavities but will require piercing a small hole through the skin and into the relevant part of the body. 

Speaking from personal experience, I have enjoyed the throat and anus entries; though at different times. The doctor in the latter case laughed at his own joke that if both procedures had been done at the same time, the lights may have met somewhere in the middle of the whole digestive tract.

For some reason, tubes and lights along with a camera up another person’s bottom is funny for all but the recipient. Lights, camera, action!

Before the rear entry endoscopy, a person is given a very special suppository.  Within a couple of hours you have to be within a nano second of a lavatory. This all adds to the visual funny picture that all but the recipient enjoys. 

In all the informative articles on the internet, including countless videos that should at all costs be avoided, I cannot find any detail about what happens to the two kilos of bacteria we are all supposed to have in our gut. 

If some of this gets flushed away, I imagine it doesn’t take long for replacements to arrive. Gut bacteria is just like all other forms of life. Some die but are only replaced by equal or more numbers of new ones. 

In order to have a healthy stock of these essential bacterial friends, we need just eat more prebiotic and probiotic foods. 

Probiotic food is food that contains good live bacteria when we eat them. Prebiotic food is the stuff that live gut bacteria already within our intestines, likes to munch. 

The latter is usually high fibre food that the existing bacteria breaks down to release the nutrients we need to live. 

Nature provides us with all the thirteen vitamins and fifteen minerals we need in our diet. Our forefathers and mothers were taught this by thousands of previous generations. 

By trial and error they learnt which foods were best for various ailments. But we are the first generation that has forgotten most of this. In the developed world, the tendency is to grab fast foods that in the main, are ultra processed and contain extras we ordinary folk hardly understand. 

These extras are artificial colours, flavours and a string of meaningless other extras. 

Our only hope is to avoid ultra processed as much as possible and to make sure we have a great variety of natural old school foods. 

If in doubt, there are supplements of good gut bacteria with products such as Threelac. 

As the name implies, Threelac is a carefully balanced mix of three well known good gut bacteria.

We think that when we have hunger pangs it’s our stomach that is complaining. But after a meal when that hunger is quenched, the food passes through the stomach in an hour or less. 

And so it makes some sense that as we are unlikely to feel hunger for another few hours, it’s not the stomach that craves more food, buT something else. 

This something else is now thought to be interoception. And if you have no idea what that word means, don’t worry; neither did I until I just looked it up. 

The word means it’s part of our sixth sense. And if you didn’t think we had a sixth sense, then think again. 

Just because that old Greek, Aristotle, defined humans as having the five senses of sight, hearing, touch, taste and smell, doesn’t mean he was necessarily correct. 

Any creatures have a well defined sixth sense that is easier to recognise than our own. Migratory birds have a sixth sense called magneto-reception. As the word implies, they have a strong connection to the Earth’s magnetic field. 

Pigeons have the strongest example of this, but all other migratory birds have this also. At the end of my street in western Turkey, as regular as clockwork on the fifth of March every year, give or take a single day either side, a stork arrives at his nest on top of a pylon. 

He has flown several thousand miles from central Africa. His mate arrives three or four days later and just four months later, they fly back to their same spot in Africa with three or four youngsters. 

Spiders have a sixth sense called slit sensilla that allows them to identify whatever is trapped in their web. Dolphins and some other sea creatures have echolocation. 

Bats are thought by many to have not just a sixth, but a seventh and possibly eighth sense. They have echo, geomagnetic and polarization senses. 

Our human sixth sense comes from our gut bacteria and other members of our gut flora, and its connection to our brain. This is also closely connected to our immune system. 

Our gut bacteria munches away on our food to help release the nutrients we need to absorb. So hunger pangs is likely not to be from our stomach, but from our gut microbiome sending the message to our brain that more food is required. 

Many psychologists that have a particular interest the study of the sixth sense, reckon we should all spend more attention to this. If you feel a sudden fear walking down a dark alley at night, you should probably take notice. 

A healthy digestive tract clear of compacted waste or other type of blockage or sluggishness, can be cleared with supplements like Oxy Powder that introduces an extra boost of oxygen molecules. 

Oxygen is an essential component of digestion and Oxy powder is one way to ensure we get plenty of this element for our friendly gut microflora.

We need a regular supply of thirteen different vitamins and with a healthy diet that includes much variety and fewer ultra processed foods, we should get enough of all of them. 

We also need fifteen different minerals and along with those vitamins, they should also be absorbed from good diet.

There is one vitamin that is a little different from the rest. This is vitamin D3 and most of this comes from sunlight and rarely do we get enough from food sources that includes fleshy fish and some dairy products.

The human body is so efficient and has evolved so well that it is odd to think that there may be one common fault. But lack of vitamin D3 is a problem for an estimated one billion people today.

Vitamin D3 comes to a new born baby via mother’s milk, but strangely, there is rarely enough of this vitamin in that milk. Whilst breast feeding is the best way for mother and child bonding and for kick starting the babies immune system, powder milk is fortified with vitamin D3 along with other vitamins. 

In the poor industrial streets of Victorian England, mother’s milk was particularly poor in nutrients including D3 simply because the mother herself was on a poor diet. From just a few months of age, babies that were not old enough to walk were delayed from doing so on account of rickets. 

Rickets is one of the worst problems with vitamin D3 deficiency. Because this vitamin is primarily responsible for strong bone growth, rickets in babies was very common. 

Another problem was that living in a Victorian city slum meant there was very little sunshine. We rarely get enough vitamin D3 from food and yet just twenty minutes a day of expose to sunlight on the skin is enough to keep us replenished.

What chance of sunlight in an industrial smoke and smog filled city slum? It seems nothing has changed over the years as malnutrition in poor parts of the world continues to exist and a lack of vitamin D prevails.  

There are at least fourteen countries around the world where government health bodies have arranged to add vitamin D3 to milk and some other common foods. 

As we get older, we need more vitamin D3 as our kidneys are less efficient and it is in kidneys that the vitamin is processed. 

A supplement of vitamin D3 is recommended for elderly infirm people. In some care homes there are plenty of people that see little sunshine. Naturally, this is particularly true in cold winter months. 

In the first half of the twentieth century, nearly all the thirteen vitamins were identified and named. The discovery of vitamin D3 in 1922 led to a Nobel prize for chemistry.

Any nation can be gauged upon their tolerance and social development by the way it treats the old, infirm and other minority members. 

The UK was always proud on its introduction of a free National Health Service. But the problem is the use of that word ‘free’ as it has to be paid from the success of others. 

It’s still a brilliant concept but nobody can argue against the fact that it is splitting at the seems. Population growth and an influx of immigrants, along with attitudes of many others that they are owed this free service, has brought it to its knees. 

When the NHS was first introduced, the population was much less than it is today. The world population has more than doubled the figure it was in 1950. Back then it was estimated at four billion and today it is above eight billion.

One figure that always amazes me is that there are more people alive today than the sum of every other human life that has gone before. 

That strange fact is difficult to accept. But if in any doubt, just think that there are many people alive today that were born before 1950. Before then, a total of four billion others had lived upon Earth. Like compound interest in reverse, it starts to make sense. 

Humans have only been around a few hundred thousand years. The fantasy that there were any around before then during the time of the dinosaurs, is pure Hollywood fantasy. 

Those creatures died out around sixty million years ago. They had existed for a couple of hundred million years before that. 

Just about the oldest creatures that were here not just millions of years, but billions of years ago still exist. They go back to the beginning of Earth, three to four billion years ago.

Furthermore, these greatest of survivors had found the safest place to exist and get fed. They are the same creatures that line our intestines and we call them bacteria. 

The trillions of bacteria and other microorganisms in our gut lining are an essential part of the digestion process. They are responsible for the creation and control of our immune system. 

They also have a special connection with our brain through a unique set of neurotransmitters known as the vagus nerve. 

This powerful connection is still relatively little understood. It’s a whole new science that still has many secrets to reveal. But when we use expressions such as going with a gut feeling, there is clearly a clue that this may be something to do with our missing sixth sense. 

We all need to take better care of our gut that is a near thirty foot long food processor. Keeping it healthy should mean following a healthy diet. Unfortunately, ultra processed food is not helpful.

There used to be a T-shirt some years ago that showed a series of characters evolving into a modern standing man. 

It started with a hairy monkey on all fours and then a series of ever evolving ape-like creatures to the people we look like today. In reality, it took around the last eighty million years for this to happen.

But it is only over the last three hundred thousand years that our particular type of ape came into being. We are the homo sapiens and our nearest other branch of primates are great apes. 

This seems like a very long time but it’s only a flash in the pan compared to some other types of living creatures. The oldest survivors over time are the bacteria and viruses along with fungi, many of which live upon us and in our gut. 

When the Earth was formed around four and a half billion years ago, it is thought the very first life form was something even smaller than bacteria. These are prokaryotes. 

Throughout the last four billion years it is estimated that many millions of creatures have been and gone. All sorts of strange and unknown animals and insects have existed that we can only imagine. By simple logic, it seems inevitable that the human race will disappear, and the way we’re going, that is not too far away.

Most of the two kilos of microorganisms in our digestive tract are bacteria. There are smaller numbers of viruses and fungi. These bacteria are both friends and enemies. The good news is that they generally balance themselves out and have nothing to gain by killing us. 

They have evolved far longer than we humans. And without them we would not be able to have an immune system. Neither would our food get properly digested to the point where are essential nutrients are obtained. 

There are half a dozen particularly useful digestive types of bacteria and these are well recognised. We know which probiotic foods to eat in order to keep them topped up. And they have been cultivated into powder and capsule form in supplements such as Fivelac. 

Fivelac contains five of these known good digestive bacteria and acts as an easy to take colon cleanser. 

All of us suffer sometimes from digestive problems. It may just be a bloated feeling, excess wind or constipation. Many of these conditions are the result of a poor diet.

The main culprit is our fondness for ultra processed foods that are often overloaded with sugar, salt and emulsifiers. Something like Fivelac won’t cure the problem but it’s a help in washing away any compacted waste.

Most of us can remember a particularly inspiring teacher from our schooldays. The best of the best may even inspire some of us to end up as teachers ourselves. 

Fortunately, for the next generation, and perhaps the whole of the human race, that choice of career didn’t happen to me.

But my science teacher rarely failed to entertain. He frequently dropped things and at least once a year he would manage to set up an experiment that went wrong, usually ending up with some explosion and flames in the classroom.

Before my time at school, he had had an accident that resulted in him losing an eye. The outcome of this loss was that at the beginning of each term, every pupil would rush into the classroom and try to sit on the far right desks. It was his left eye that was missing. 

One lesson remains firmly in my memory and it involved the concept of time. We had begun the lesson talking about gut bacteria and digestion after spotting a packet of something called Oxy Powder on his desk. 

It led to a discussion about the evolution of humans over the past fifteen thousand years and the idea that this is when humans began to propagate and create an early type of farming. 

Most anthropologists consider humans evolved a few hundred thousand years ago but only in the last twenty thousand have we been living in communities rather than being travelling nomads. 

The memorable moment in the lesson came when the teacher drew a vertical line on the blackboard. He drew another vertical line just an inch to one side and told us to imagine the first line was time present, and the other line, time year one AD.

He then walked a complete circuit of the room before adding another line and said, this is the time of the dinosaurs. 

He then told us to imagine he had walked another twenty or thirty more classroom circuits before adding another line and saying this is the beginning of Earth, four billion years ago. 

All this storytelling began with that packet of Oxy Powder and concluded with the information that bacteria were likely almost as old as Earth’s beginning, give or take a billion years. 

As humans have been around for such a short time, it’s possible to argue that bacteria and other microorganisms are the true occupants of Earth, and we humans are just recent aliens. 

It’s also intriguing to try and imagine what sort of other creatures have lived and disappeared over those billions of years. 

The message seems to be getting through to most of us that ultra processed food is generally bad for our health. 

This is most of the stuff you find on supermarket shelves. It’s products that have too much salt, sugar, and emulsifiers, not to mention a dozen or so extras that begin with the letter E. 

Men and women in white coats with degrees in chemistry, nutrition and psychology work in the food business, They are looking for ways to prolong shelf life and optimise taste. 

It turns out that many of these scientists are often the same ones that worked in the tobacco business. Just as they were denied for many decades the obvious truth about cancer and cigarettes, so they are doing again with ultra processed foods. 

Presumably, when you get paid big bucks, you’re not going to kill the golden goose paying big salaries. 

Food production has become a science, and a lesson in getting people addicted, in much the same way as cigarettes used to, before someone pointed out that smoking is a killer. 

A few years ago, a chance meeting with someone in my local pub led to an invitation to a food laboratory the next day at his place of work.

He was one of these food scientists and it was a fascinating experience. There were about twenty of us human guinea pigs and we were being tested on a possible new  product launch.

There had to be no talking and no distraction so we all sat in our own tiny white cubicle facing our own small hatch. The hatch suddenly opened and very quickly, a small white plate slid out with a small biscuit on it. 

We had just ten seconds to take a bite and record a mark from one to ten on a pad we each had. The hatch opened and a hand grabbed the plate whilst pushing another out. 

This procedure was repeated about twenty times. The hatch was very small so you never saw the person presenting the biscuit. 

Suddenly, we were told the experiment was over. In every case, the biscuit was identical and mostly seemed to taste the same. 

These experiments are carried out every day all over the country. The food companies sponsor these sites and presumably, food scientists and marketing supermarket suits analyse the results. 

Although all the biscuits tasted much the same, I did mark number seven and twelve a little higher by just one point. Later I was told that when twenty thousand other people around the country had been tested, perhaps just one biscuit may have passed out top, and that would be the chosen one. Or maybe, none at all would be chosen.

Just stick to natural healthy foods and you should get the essential thirteen vitamins and fifteen minerals needed for good health. 

Sometimes a supplement may be needed. B12 is one and vitamin D3 another. 

Every child goes through a period of dreaming about growing up and guessing their future. For many generations, boys wanted to be train drivers, tractor drivers or firemen. 

Very few end up fulfilling those dreams. And unfortunately, few end up with anything other than far less exciting jobs. But then again, most people end up in work they never expected and actually enjoy. 

An acquaintance has become a very successful gastroenterologist and this has led to a further career in bacteriology. Bacteriology is unlikely to have been any small child’s dream job. They would most likely have had no clue as to what it entails.

It is only in recent years that a very close link between gastroenterology, bacteriology and neuroscience has been established. It is an area of research that many in this field claim to be making some of the most exciting medical discoveries of this century so far. 

The health of the gut is becoming more obviously linked to the health of our mental state. Those two kilos of microorganisms in our intestines are closely linked to the brain, and if one or other is unwell, the other is likely to show signs that something is out of balance.

This makes diet more important than we ever thought. It’s incredibly important that we understand the need to eat healthily. Modern ultra processed food is doing all of us a lot of harm. 

Too much junk food has led to the modern curse of obesity and the aftermath of diabetes, vascular difficulties and heart attack are all a result of a lifetime eating unhealthy food.

Understanding the importance and source of both probiotic and prebiotic food helps. This means food with good live gut bacteria and food like greens and fruit, grains, and cereals for essential fibre. 

Think about food for the benefit of our gut intestinal bacteria, and not for the stomach, and it helps. When we crave food and talk about hunger pangs, this is driven by the brain, via the bacteria, and not the stomach. 

Food is only in the stomach for half an hour or so, the main journey over the next twenty-five hours plus, is along the intestines. 

Once the food reaches the last stages through the large intestines, that’s when the bacteria communicates with the brain and asks for a refill. 

Since ancient Greek and Roman times, people have sought ways to clean the colon. This was probably thought of as a way to shift constipation and other types of intestinal discomfort. 

Colonic irrigation is still practised by some whilst others prefer probiotic supplements including oxygen boost with Oxyanion or other similar agent. 

Oxysan is one way to deliver an extra boost of oxygen molecules into the intestines. Oxygen is a powerful and natural agent that every single living cell in our body needs constantly. 

A couple of weeks ago I took my cat to the vet as it was constantly sick. He asked me what had I been feeding the cat, and then a few other probing questions.

Finally, he pointed to a wall chart on the wall and asked me to indicate the type of stool my cat had been dropping. I couldn’t help with that question without going back to my house and knocking on my irate neighbours front door.

The chart however, called for further examination. It’s known as the BSFS chart and I later found out from a nursing friend that it was originally designed for medical students, and not really for cats and dogs, although it does seem to apply.

The BSFS stands for Bristol Stool Form Scale. It shows pictures of seven different piles of crap from number one being a rock hard lump, through to number seven that looks as runny as gravy. 

Later, I obtained one of these charts and sent it by post to an alcoholic friend of mine as a birthday present.

With few exceptions, most animals are just like humans in their digestive systems. We may eat different foods and some are exclusively vegetarian and others carnivorous. We humans like a mixture of both. So it stands to reason that most creatures will share the same sort of stool scale.

Without doing some research, which I have no particular desire to do on the matter, I seem to remember that cows have three stomachs, and as they also only eat grass, their stools are consistently number 6 or 7 on the Bristol scale.

We British can be a bit queasy or Victorian on the subject, but in some countries, the toilet bowls look different to ours. They have a shelf where the solids drop, enabling the flusher to make a cursory inspection before pulling the chain.

A great deal can be gleaned from the condition of the offerings. The most obvious is the fibre content. But there is a great deal more that a sample can reveal about our medical health. 

Stool samples can reveal everything from bowel cancer to a number of different infections. Stool samples can also reveal the health of our gut microbiome. There is increasing use of microbiome transplanting techniques being carried out. 

Trillions of bacteria and some other organisms live in our gut, mostly in the colon. Numbers of the most useful have been identified and their specific purpose revealed. Some can be helpful when reproduced and taken orally as supplements. 

Fivelac contains five known good gut bacteria and this is a well established probiotic that helps clean the colon. 

For every body cell we have, there are about ten microbes of bacteria, archaea, fungi and viruses. It stands to reason that with so many trillions of these single cell creatures, that none of us are likely to have the same collection.

Most of the microbes live in our gut lining, particularly in the colon. They help define our unique DNA and an immune system, that is stronger in some people than others. 

We all know people that seem constantly to be ill with colds, flu and other virus attacks. And other annoying people that never suffer at all. The same may be said about those with high and low metabolisms, that seems some can eat massive amounts at mealtimes, and still put on no extra weight. 

Just as our microbes living inside and on us makes each of us unique, it may come as a surprise that the same can be said for inanimate objects.

Every year, on the 21st June, a little known event called global city sampling day takes place. On this day, around many cities throughout the world, groups of researchers go about collecting samples of bacteria and other microbes from all sorts of objects. 

This includes swabs from outside walls of public buildings, public transport, handrails, pavements and hundreds of other surface areas. It’s also referred to as ‘global metagenomic study of microbes’ and when analysed, DNA and RNA and common or less common microbial similarities are compared. 

It seems that cities have their own unique characteristics. Also called a microbial climate, the main influences comes from geography, climate, construction material, design and ventilation. 

One of the fascinating other influences involves disinfectant agents used to clean things like handrails and other surfaces. Different types of cleaning agents are used around the world and just like antibiotics used for our health, there is reason to think that some bacteria is growing resistant to some cleaning agents. 

The study of microorganisms only started with the invention of a microscope capable of seeing them just three hundred and fifty years ago. And after that, it took a couple of hundred years before they were starting to get a better understanding. 

Before then, they were all looked at in a bad light. They were considered to all be bad news. Today, the study of bacteria and other microorganisms is one of the most exciting areas of medical research. 

It’s our gut bacteria that seems to be the most interesting area. Only thirty years ago, the importance for digestion of certain types was identified. Grown in laboratory conditions, products like the supplement Threelac harnessed three of the most useful types of gut bacteria. 

Is it just a particular trait of the English to use so many different euphemisms for death, or is it common in other parts of the world?

We tend not to mention the death word and instead say things like he’s passed away. Or, he is no longer with us. Maybe, he’s gone to a better place. 

We all know that the fact we are alive, means we will one day have to die. Or as some wit said the only two certainties in life are tax and death. 

During the Covid crisis, we were constantly told that thousands of people were dying by the hour. Emergency giant warehouse centres the size of football pitches, filled with row upon row of beds, were opened. Though to my recollection, were never used. 

Many years earlier, when AIDS was discovered, a nursing sister told me that this was the end of mankind. The same kind of panic happened with Covid and yet, here we all are. 

In both the above examples, many people were incorrectly using the term pandemic. Goodness knows how they would have coped with the Black Death, or the equally lethal Spanish flu in the first quarter of the last century. 

Modern medicine is constantly developed to deal with most types of illness and although people generally are living longer, a recent paper suggests that human cells will never live beyond a maximum one hundred and twenty years. 

We are just organic material with the inevitable dust to dust. We even have decay living inside our gut in the form of bacteria and fungi as well as viruses. Our whole being is more alien microorganisms than human cells by ten to one. 

It is becoming increasingly obvious that there is a very close connection between our collective gut microbiome and our brain. 

There is a [powerful nerve system between the two areas of our anatomy and bacteria will be cultivated to provide help in much the same way as organ transplant. 

Humans have been on planet Earth for an extraordinarily short period compared with creatures such as fungi, bacteria and many insects. The age of the dinosaur ended sixty five million years ago, and that is around two million years before we ever showed are faces other than in monkey form.

A healthy digestive system is clearly most important, and if we listen to our brain and gut, we should be eating a healthy mix of probiotic and prebiotic food. 

It’s not our stomach that craves particular food, but our gut bacteria via messages to the brain. 

Unfortunately, we often ignore the signals in favour of a desire to fill our stomach with junk over-processed foods. 

Sometimes it helps to think about the difference between pro and pre biotic food. And sometimes it helps unblock the whole system with a probiotic such as Oxy Powder that introduces a boost of nascent oxygen into the colon. 

I’ve just been reading an article in my newspaper about our microbiome and what are the main features that affect its efficiency. 

The article goes on about our genetics, any drugs including antibiotics we may take, our personal hygiene, physical activity and diet. 

It doesn’t mention the importance of oxygen in the process and although the article goes into some more detail about the above, it seems to put little emphasis on the type of food we eat. 

Understanding the difference between probiotic and prebiotic food is important. Probiotics are foods that contain good live gut bacteria and prebiotic foods are things like fresh fruit, vegetables, nuts and whole grains. 

In other words, prebiotic food is designed to satisfy not just our hunger, but to keep our existing gut bacteria happy as well. There are certain types of bacteria that live in our intestines that look forward to a meal as much as we do. 

In so doing, they are like any other form of bacteria that exist on rotting organic matter, and reduce the mass to worthless waste. In our gut this munching away by bacteria means we benefit with the nutrients it releases that our gut lining then absorbs.

The intestines is an aerobic atmosphere and so is the vast majority of our bacteria. Other microorganisms also live here. Fungi in the form of candida lives inside us. Usually it remains in a small enough number not to cause any problem.

But it can sometimes create a problem we call thrush and this can usually be eliminated with an oxygen agent such as Oxysan. 

Candida doesn’t like oxygen and this makes it quite rare. When the world began, it is safe to speculate that the first living organisms on the planet, four and a half billion years ago, were creatures such as this. And when mankind blows himself to oblivion, they’ll be one of the few things left alive. 

Since our gut bacteria has been on Earth longer than we humans have existed, it’s almost worth considering that as they were the first, we are the aliens. 

Like all symbiotic relationships, we cannot exist without some bacteria, and our gut bacteria would struggle to thrive without us. 

Any of the oxygen based supplements such as Oxysan may be considered as colon cleansers. The extra boost of oxygen agitates good gut bacteria helping to shift any sticky compacted waste. 

Junk food that often contains strange additives, may stick on the gut lining and result in many minor problems such as constipation, bloating, and other discomforting conditions. 

In Victorian times, colonic irrigation was all the rage. Spa towns like Harrogate did a roaring trade in this, and continues to a slightly lesser degree today. 

Most people don’t have the time or the inclination for the Harrogate lavage. And Oxysan seems a much kinder and cheaper method of colon cleansing.

It’s annoying when some TV producer comes up with an idea for a new show and it becomes so successful that it spawns a load of copycats.

A classic example of this is an Antique program that began in 1977 and has been running weekly ever since. 

The program has lost a lot of its appeal because the internet makes it easier for guests to have done their own research before appearing. It means there are fewer genuine surprise reactions.

Anyway, this program has led to plenty of similar antique shows, although you can replace antique with the word junk now.  

The same problem has happened with cookery shows. There are far too many of them and it seems everyone that appears is an expert mostly repeating variations of the same recipes. 

One of these cookery programs seems to have disappeared. This is a shame for me and many others as it seemed just that little bit different. 

Guests were presented with a number of seemingly unconnected ingredients and they had to find a way of putting them together and producing a tasty dish. This is just the way I like to cook, and I believe many others also like to cook this way.

I also have a theory that this creative cooking is a great way to have a good variety of healthy meals. I also believe that you can listen to your gut and it will tell you what is good for you. 

Many years ago when I suggested this to a friend, he thought I was clearly mad. But now, there is much evidence that our brain health and gut health is more closely connected than ever thought before. 

It is also becoming clear that variety is the best way to good health. Our gut bacteria needs to be fed, and it likes nothing better than prebiotic products it can all feast upon. 

Modern thinking is that at least a third of our daily food intake should consist of of fresh fruit and vegetables. 

Good food should keep us regular and prevent any blockages that leads to constipation and other digestion problems. If this occurs, there are supplements such as Oxysan that is one of the best natural ways to move things along. 

Some newspaper recently revealed the order a chef and nutritionist put in for the main diet of the England Rugby team, for one week at their training ground.

It included 100Kg of berries, 200kg of bananas, 150kg of potatoes, 25kg of pasta, 50 litres of milk per day, and 2,000 eggs. 

There was plenty of sushi, not on the list as this was consumed fresh at a Japanese restaurant. Such a diet should preclude the need of Oxysan.

We use the expression of going with your gut, and it seems there is evidence that this has a serious primal truth to it. The connection between gut and brain is now a proven fact.

The expression of neurodevelopmental psychiatric disorder, may not roll off the tongue so easily for most of us, but medical science is constantly revealing remarkable connections between good diet and gut bacteria, in relation to brain health.

It has been discovered that the greater the diversity of gut bacteria in children, the more likely it is of an increased learning ability.

It’s strange isn’t it that we get urges for certain foods and this particularly with women in pregnancy. We should listen to our gut. It may be warning us that we are low on a certain vitamin or mineral.

On the other-hand, we should not always listen to our gut when it craves ultra processed foods like frozen pizzas or constant burgers. The same with sweet sugary food, as the latter may be a sign of early diabetes. 

Ultra processed foods are laced with additives that are designed to create craving for more. Many of these processed foods are by definition, low in fibre. Low in fibre diet means our gut bacteria isn’t getting enough to eat. 

This in turn, means the brain gets the message that more food is required and this eventually leads to obesity.

Obesity is a modern problem and there is no doubt it can be mostly attributed to over-eating of low fibre, highly processed food. 

The UK Heart Association sets out a table of recommended daily safe amounts of sugar, sodium, and some other common food additives. 

Sodium is added to white processed bread to act as a stabilizer as well as a preservative, and additionally, to add flavour. Just two thin slices of this bread provides over a third of the recommended daily maximum amount we should take of sodium.

The USA has an even worse obese condition than the UK. And in the US, it has been found that the average adult intake of sodium today is 3.400 milligrams a day when the recommended maximum is 500. 

Bacteria of any kind does not thrive well on salt, or sodium. And our gut bacteria is responsible for the final stages of food digestion and deserves to be looked after.

Bacteriology is a fairly new science not least because it took the invention of the microscope to view them. 

Around twenty years ago a handful of the most common and useful gut bacteria were identified. The are reproduced in laboratory conditions and sold as supplements such as the popular Fivelac.

As the name suggests, Fivelac contains five of these bacteria types and the boost they give us results in a colon cleanse. 

In some countries a visit to hospital as an outpatient automatically begins with a blood test. This is true in Turkey when a friend was visiting a private hospital with some worry-some pain in their chest.

After a brief talk with the heart specialist, he was directed to the blood station where the phlebotomist took a couple of syringes of blood. 

He was told to amuse himself for a couple of hours and return for the results. This was no hardship as the hospital was on the waterfront of a tourist part of town, and there were several coffee bars to while away the hours. 

On return to the hospital blood station, a folder was handed to him with a sheet of paper detailing the twenty or more blood results. Things like cholesterol, iron, sugar and so on. Like me, he didn’t know more than twenty different tests were available so quickly.

Additionally, besides each count was another column revealing an acceptable range of the ideal counts. 

He was shown into the consultants office where the same results were already revealed on a large flat wall mounted TV screen. The consultant ran through the highlighted, and relevant to his condition, results. 

As it happened, after an ultrasound and ECG, he was released without further ado. The efficiency of the whole procedure was impressive. As is the custom in Turkey, he was given a file with a record of everything for him to keep. 

Later, someone told him that they had a colonoscopy procedure at another private hospital and when they left, they were given a CD of the procedure to watch in the comfort of their own home. Imagine mixing that up with your holiday snaps to show the in-laws. 

Where these blood tests are the norm, there is a real possibility that sometime soon in the future, hospitals will take a stool sample to discover many other secrets of our health. 

This procedure is already in operation for men over sixty in the UK to test for early onset colon cancer. But in future it may be used for many other tests. 

The state of our colon gut bacteria, or microbiome, can reveal a great deal. A healthy gut should be easy to maintain as long as we eat a healthy diet. Our gut needs a balance of both prebiotic and probiotic foods. 

Sometimes it also helps to take a supplement like Threelac that boosts good bacteria and helps counter candida along with other toxic waste. 

Threelac is one of the original probiotic supplements that was developed just over twenty years ago. The fact that it is still a worldwide best seller after all these years, confirms its usefulness.