Primer

“You are what you eat” misses an extremely important fact.

Nutrition takes a backseat when it comes to the microbiome.

When the microbiome work in your favor you are better able to extract nutrients from food, resulting in a significant and positive impact on your health. When they work against you malnutrition and disease will soon follow. You are like a bush planted into the ground: with good soil you grow large and produce much fruit. And this good soil is filled with microbes that have a positive impact on their environment. Bad soil will cause the plant to wither and die.

The body is only able to digest a portion of the foods you consume. Without the help of the microbiome you may find yourself malnourished, especially when faced with disease. The mantra of health shouldn’t be, “you are what you eat.” Rather, the mantra of health should be, “you are what lives inside you.” And what lives inside you includes your cells and the microbes that impact those cells. For as long as they’re working in your favor you’ll experience good health.

Considering how several causes of disease can exhibit the same or similar symptoms as each other, it is important to understand that health is more than what you eat. Health is a lifestyle. The choices you make, the things you expose yourself to, the things you consume—everything can make a significant difference on your health. Even the things that you may pass off as nothing may one day significantly reduce your quality of life. Likewise, the choices that you don’t make, the things that you don’t expose yourself to, among other things, can have a significant impact on your health.

What does it mean to be healthy?

Health shouldn’t be limited to being without an illness or disease. Health should also include the capacity to fend off any illness or the rate at which one recovers from disease. If there is anything that COVID-19 has taught us, it is this:

A large portion of humanity is malnourished.

Given the fact that the gut microbiome can significantly reduce the amount of time spent sick and are able to synthesize certain nutrients, COVID-19 reveals all the more that a large portion of society have low-quality gut microbiome. Infections both reduce the number of resources the body has to work with and negatively impacts the gut microbiome. This negative impact on the gut is not necessarily simple to recover from. Being malnourished simply makes everything that much worse.

Health, therefore, in its simplified state, is comprised of a strong and nourished system with a favorably strong and nourished microbiome. If either the body or the microbiome is found to be functioning contrary to the benefit of one’s person, then you are to consider yourself far from being healthy. A body whose microbiome does not work in its favor will be forced to spend valuable resources trying to defend itself against the very microbes it houses. Likewise, the microbiome will be forced to defend itself from a body that hurts itself, of which can lead to gut dysbiosis.

Both the body and the microbiome can recover from systemic issues. Nevertheless, unlike the body which can recover lost cells, once you lose a certain species in your gut it becomes extremely difficult to get it back. And with the ever-evolving species of the gut, to get the exact strain becomes near impossible. A body in poor health will simply get worse as it ages, negatively impacting both itself and the microbiome. A healhty body is constantly exposed to anti-aging nutrients, so the sooner you focus on your health the better things will be in the long run.

So, then, longevity is also a sign of good health. With a strong and favorable gut microbiome, diet can often be somewhat neglected without negatively affecting longevity. Those who find themselves numbered among centenarians or close to cutting it, chances are the gut microbiome held out longer than the microbiome of most people. How well you age reveals how much in good health you were and are in, and how much the microbiome worked in your favor.

Frailty is also suggestive of being in poor health for far too long. Contrary to popular belief, frailty shouldn’t increase exponentially as you age. Rather, you should feel fairly strong and capable while in your seventies and beyond.

The real meaning of diet

Fads and constant misinformation have confused the understanding of what a diet really is. “I’m on a diet” adds to this confusion. Let’s be real here: everyone is on a diet, whether they admit to one or not. A diet isn’t a restriction that you place on the foods and drinks you consume. A diet is what you are consuming at the current time. A diet is simply “what you eat.” What people are eating, however, isn’t necessarily healthy.

What constitutes a healthy diet?

There is one major problem with society as a whole when it comes to health: We know we should take care of ourselves, but we have no clue as to how to do so. We can be certain that if you require consuming supplements to compensate for your diet, then your diet is unhealthy and you’re doing it wrong. If good health is achieved through both a nourished system and a favorable microbiome, knowing what to eat becomes paramount to good health. The concept of “empty calories” is used to try and guide people in the right direction, but there are several areas that are not touched on that are necessary to understand what constitutes a healthy diet.

In its most simplest understanding, a healthy diet is a diet that meets or exceeds all the nutritional requirements of the body. This excess cannot in itself lead to problems for the body if it is to be considered healthy. The diet cannot also negatively impact the gut microbiome. To cause harm to either is to necessarily deviate from a healthy diet. Any diet wishing to fall within the umbrella of health must be both nourishing to the body and supportive of a favorable microbiome.