The Microbiome
Most people have never heard of the microbiome, and yet it may control your mood, your appetite, your weight, and the sense of what you like to eat, and ultimately even who you feel yourself to be. So it is possible that eating to change your microbiome may change all of those things.
The microbiome is the collective name for the organisms that live inside your gut.
There are 6 -10 times as many organisms in your microbiome as there are cells in your body. They consist of multiple species, and these will be very different in the gut of a whole-food eating vegetarian, to that in the gut of someone who lives on fast food. Indeed, a young man was asked to live on McDonald’s food for 2 weeks and his microbiome was analysed. Within two weeks, half the species in his microbiome had simply disappeared.
From a medical standpoint the microbiome is intimately involved with the immune system, and it has been suggested that , if it malfunctions, it could be involved with autoimmune diseases like diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, muscular dystrophy, multiple sclerosis, fibromyalgia, and perhaps some cancers.
In some countries they are even experimenting on microbiome transplants, which will need the right food to keep them alive.
Many companies promote real food ways of eating that will make your microbiome more healthy-
www.drperlmutter.com which is the Grain Brain site,
Most of them talk of the value of cutting sugar and processed food, and instead eating real natural foods, and the value of including fermented foods and adding probiotics and prebiotics.
I often think the value of phase one of the Harcombe diet is made so much more by the suggestion to eat natural live yoghurt, so enriching the microbiome at the point of change to a real food way of life.
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