You Are What You Eat…
Getting To The Root Cause of Health & Wellness

  • “The soil and all that grows in it…must be regarded as our external metabolism, which produces the basic substances for our internal metabolism”

    Dr Maxwell Gerson

  • “There are microbes on every single thing you touch and eat and even in the air you breathe. And right now inside you body, there are TRILLIONS of microbes. They outnumber your human cells by about 20%. In some ways your are more of a home to microbes than you are a person!”

    ~Gut Garden: A journey into the wonderful world of your microbiome

  • "We all have trillions of microorganisms living inside our gut—not just our stomach but our intesti­nes and throat and mouth, and on our skin, in our eyes and nasal passages… These microbiota are essential for our immune, brain and hormone health—in part because they make chemicals that immediately impact how the rest of our body functions... The bottom line is: we need to nurture these living microbiota cargo to best support our mental and physical health."

    Dr. Andrew Huberman

  • “Humus is the Latin word for soil; it is also the root of the word human.”

    ~Vandana Shiva

  • "Everyone wants to understand the human gut & the symbiosis of the microbiome. But not many souls care for farming. Little do tehy know that all their food comes from Earth. Every time they eat a single bit of food, they are engaging in the art of agriculture."

    Dr Pranavan Yoganathan

You are what you eat
and you eat what you are!

The microbes in your gut are the root to proper digestion and overall human health.

Some of the same species found in soils & compost live symbiotically in our gut.

Eating plants grown in healthy soil allows our ancient allies to protect and heal us from chronic illness.

We Provide Microbes With Plenty of Food
They Provide Us With:

  • Neurotransmitters

    Neurotransmitters

    Microbes produce a lot of the neurotransmitters in your brain, which regulate your mood. They also make compounds that tell brian cells to divide. Microbes hav a big influence on learing and memory

  • Antibiotics

    Microbes, like Streptomyces bacteria, deactivate toxins that enter our body with our food as well as toxins made by other microbes

  • Vitamins

    Vitamins

    Microbes make vitamins we can’t make on or own, including B vitamins which help maintain healthy blood and tissues.

  • Digest Food

    Microbes keep us fit. By breaking down our food, the help our body process nutrients and store sugar. They even regulate our appetite.

  • Boost Immune System

    Microbes, like bacillus, bind to immune system cells ad help them reproduce to out compete, inhibit, and consume disease causing viruses and bad bacteria.

  • Prevent Infection

    Microbes prevent infection by filling up space that could otherwise be taken up by harmful bacteria.

The Bad Guys

Not all microbes are good. Some cause infectious disease like flu and measles. These bad microbes are called pathogens. It’s up to our immune system to protect us against pathogens.

Sometime microbes that are usually ‘good’ end up multiplying too quickly, or find themselves in the wrong place, and then end up doing harm.

Research continues to be done learning more about microbes. Scientist are beginning to understand how imbalances in microbe populations can cause disease, and how restoring balance can lead to cures.

What Happens When We Eat Food

  • When you eat, you are not just eating food, but millions of microbes on and inside the food. And you are not just feeding yourself but all the microbes inside you.

  • Inside your mouth there are over 500 species of microbes. Microbes are adapted to different habitats, so the microbes in your cheeck are different to those on your teeth or tongue.

  • Plaque forms a film on our teeth when we don't brush, it contains hundreds of species of microbes. They break down sugar and release acid as a by-product, this acid can eat through tooth enamel.

  • Saliva helps control bacteria, at night your mouth is dryer and bacteria can multiply. Brushing your teeth before bed, is the most important time to do so.

  • Your tonsils are a fortress, helping prevent infections. They filter the bacteria and viruses. When you swallow, food goes down the oesophagus into the stomach.

  • When food reaches your stomach, the muscles in your stomach walls pound it and gastric juices dissolve it into a creamy, nutrient rich liquid. The acidity of our stomach juices kill off most microbes, but some survive.

  • After the stomach, your body slowly drips broken-down food in small amounts down the long winding tube that is the small intestine. This is where vitamins, minerals, carbohydrates, fats, and proteins are extracted and passed in your bloodstream through the small intestine's velvety lining.

  • When nutrients enter the bloodstream, through a tiny blood capillary. The blood distrbutes them to the rest of your body. Once food leaves your small intestine, over 90% of the nutrients will have been extracted from it.

  • After all the nutrients have been extracted by your body, it's time for the microbes to get to work. The large intestine is where 99% of your microbes can be found. Not becuase there are so few elsewhere but becuase there are SO MANY here!

  • The microbes break down indigestible fibre from your food, and as a by-product make vitamins such as vitamin K & B12. 90% of microbes are bacteria and there are so many in your colon there is no spaces for pathogens to grow. Most of the large intestine is made up of the colon. This is where water is absorbed from leftover waste, which stores as feces/poo.

How do we get our gut microbiome

  • Everybody is different

    Even people in the same family, eating the same diet, have different microbiomes.

    This is because it’s not just diet that affects what is living inside us.

  • Any individual Experience

    Spending time in nature or around pets, or any experience can introduce new microbes into your gut.

    Children growing up with a dog have been shown to have more diverse microbiomes.

  • From Birth

    In the womb we have no microbiome because it’s a sterile environment.

    The moment we are born, we are colonized by millions of microbes.

    Over the first two years are microbiome changes a lot.

  • Illness, Diet, Antibiotics

    At three years old, our microbiome levels out. Things like illness, change in diet or a course of antibiotics will affect the our microbiome, but it usually returns to a similar landscape.

Franklin D. Rosevelt

“A Nation that destroys its soils destroys itself”

The Importance of Soil

Dr. Gerson emphasized the critical importance of the soil in his book, A Cancer Therapy: Results of Fifty Cases. He believed that disease is caused by “a permanent daily poisoning brought about by our modern civilization” that causes the deterioration of the digestive tract organs, mainly the liver (pg. 37).

This daily poisoning is rooted in modern agricultural methods that deplete the soil and reduce topsoil by using artificial fertilizers and spraying with DDT and other poisons (pg. 37). He said that poisoned soil will not only increase disease but will also “reduce the healing power of the body” (pg. 151).

Dr. Gerson stresses the critical importance of taking care of the soil for the health of future generations. Otherwise, “we disturb the natural equilibrium and harmony, producing sickness of the soil, sickness of the plants and fruits… and finally sickness of both animals and human beings” (pg. 175).

Dr. Gerson liked the expression “mother earth” (pg. 175) and goes on to say, “We may compare the work of the soil to a mother feeding her baby” (pg. 176). I think the following quote from Dr. Gerson’s book sums it all up: “Organic gardening food seems to be the answer to the cancer problem” (pg. 185). Let us all follow his suggestion.

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