Category: Blog

So much of my current reading on diet and nutrition is centred on the integrity and diversity of the gut bacteria. Research and latest thinking all point to this being a pivotal consideration in all aspects of our well-being. I have one, personal, anecdotal story that (in a non-statistically robust but satisfying way) adds to that debate.

Most of my life I have rarely suffered from colds; I have hardly every taken antibiotics. However two and a half years ago I badly cut my hand on glass whilst preparing for a photographic exhibition. This required surgery under a general anaesthetic but fortunately it has healed very well.

Following the surgery, I took a seven-day course of antibiotics. A general precaution against infection that I did not question at the time. My ignorance of the importance of my gut biome meant that I did not follow that with an intensive program of repopulating my gut bacteria

Two months later I contracted pneumonia.

With hindsight this was no coincidence. My friendly gut companions were living in harmony with me and then all of a sudden they were attacked by these post-surgery antibiotics and no longer could they offer me the immune system support I needed. This then laid me open to an infection to which I could not systemically respond and pneumonia resulted.

At the time of contracting the pneumonia I was on a trip to Iceland (a regular ‘second home’ for me) and once I was able to drag myself out of my sick-bed I strangely began to crave one of the local Icelandic delicacies – hákarl.

Those who have visited Iceland may well know this as Fermented Shark. Definitely an acquired taste. Post-pneumonia, I craved the ammonial after-taste from eating this delicacy as it cut through the sinus congestion in a way that nothing else could. In the local community of Ísafjörður, I became infamous as the mad Englishman seeking his daily fix of fermented shark.

But with what I now know about my gut biome, I realise that at that time of recovery, my body was also craving the fermented food to boost the trillions of bacteria in my gut. Fermented food needs to be a regular part of our diets to boost our biome and so subliminally I was craving what I my bacteria needed.

If we know how to listen our bodies tell us what we need. Whilst fermented shark may be a bit extreme, a bit of kefir, sauerkraut or yoghurt should be part of our daily dietary habits.

We’re all on a diet!

The clinical meaning of the word diet is the description of what you eat and drink and hence we all have one! The word diet has however been synonymous with a way of eating (usually) to lose weight or at the very least exclude or reduce something like calories or a particular food type, for example.

Each of our daily diets is shaped by many factors – what we like, what we can afford, what we know how to prepare, what we can get from the supermarket, our allergies, our childhood associations with comfort, what others in our household enjoy and so on.

It is therefore perilous to suddenly and radically change your diet just because you see something on the internet or you read something in a magazine. The influences that have shaped your diet over your life so far, will still be there putting pressure on your new transplanted diet. Willpower may overcome those influences for a while but eventually the stress and conflict caused by transplanting someone else’s diet will become over-bearing and the transplanted diet fails.

This is the all too often mode of failed diets that we all have experienced.

Far better to progressively evolve your diet in chosen directions, letting small dietary changes be incorporated gradually. This is a sustainable model of dietary change.

Exercise. Now there’s a tricky subject.

Those who have attended my ‘Going Against the Grain’ talk will have heard my views on “Eat less, Move more” and how that is all too often a doomed strategy because our bodies are homeostatic. Only in the very short term will burning calories with exercise lead to a calorie deficit. Quickly your body will balance things out and make you pay for those burnt calories by either making you more hungry or slowing your resting metabolism to recoup those exercised calories. My mantra: you cannot run away from a bad diet!

Continue reading “Exercise”