2024 Review
A collection of thoughts on the important trends that emerged for me this year. I’ve included at the end a month-by-month list of the 43 articles from 2024.
Important trends
I’ll write more about these in the coming year and expand upon the points I make below. For the time being, I’ve laid out below the themes that developed for me as the year progressed.
Gut microbiome
The human gut microbiome and its role in human health has fascinated me for a long time. I managed a small microbiome therapeutic company for a short while and it was the subject of the second article on this blog back in September 2022. In fact 3/4 of my first four articles were about the human microbiome. I believed back then that I could accurately influence my gut microbiome through what I ate. This year I finally changed my mind.
I’ve been having my doubts about how confidently I could manipulate my gut because the literature suffers from enormous gaps in our knowledge. I’ve written more about these on LinkedIn but can summarise them as:
Research data to date does not provide a robust picture of the gut microbiome:
Most research samples are taken from fecal material. These do not represent the upper intestinal sections nor the mucous that lines the gut and plays an important role in immunity
Only bacteria are typically characterised despite the fact that we now know that fungi may play an over-sized role
We have a very limited understanding of the very complex compounds within the microbiome soup such as proteins linked to carbohydrates (glycoproteins). These are amongst the most functional yet poorly understood compounds in biology
Most research done to date has been conducted with material from western population. From this we know that each individual microbiome is as unique as a human fingerprint and yet we aren’t close to understanding variation accross different geographies
Two other factors are preventing us from understanding our gut microbiome. Firstly, it has been estimated (credibly in my opinion) that very few people in the west likely now have a healthy microbiome. This means that all of our research is based on studying an unhealthy baseline.
Finally, we now know that natural sunshine does affect our microbiome, even the microbiome deep in our gut. This is very rarely acknowledged and even less frequently understood as a variable to be controlled in microbiome experiments
The conclusion I have reached on the human gut microbiome is similar to the message from Prof. Benjamin Bikman delivered at the London PHC conference in May. He said:
“…we should continue to conduct basic research into its function but it is still too early to manipulate it therapeutically to affect human health. It is presently a very low yield thing to worry about.”
Ultra-processed food (UPF)
I tend to refer to this junk as industrially processed because I think it makes a stronger point. This stuff is ubiquitous, contains seed oils and high levels of unnatural carbohydrates, and is the main cause of so-called chronic disease.
At a recent conference on mental health, I loved points made about the the unique ability of the human species to self-sabotage
“Humans are the only species suffering from so-called chronic diseases
We are the only species clever enough to create our own types of food
We are the only species stupid enough to consume them”
Thankfully, the wider world is slowly beginning to wake up.
Mechanism of action
I’ve found through my conversations with friends and family that there is widespread confusion about how modern “food” can be harmful. Regularly I’m met with blank stares when I describe that I eliminated seed oils and things like bread, pasta and potatoes from my diet.
To help me figure out how best to communicate and help anyone interested, I dug into the weeds of how a high carbohydrate diet causes so-called chronic disease, how starchy foods are simply sugar holding hands, and tried to highlight why such a diet makes it almost impossible to lose weight.
Sunlight
My biggest as yet undocumented effort this year has been trying to understand the biological benefits of sunlight. I threw out an easy one on circadian rhythm early in the year during a trip to Florida. I followed that up with an introduction to sunlight and some of its direct health benefits, and it’s benefits to our microbiome.
I’m as taken aback with what I’m finding as I was seven years ago when I started to investigate the effects of what we eat. I’m in part shocked, disbelieving, and taking my time to sift through what’s available to read. This stuff is fascinating and I’ll be writing more in the year ahead.
Conferences
I attended conferences in the UK in May, October and November of this year. These events are relatively small by the standards of the behemoths I attended professionally but I’ve found them incredibly valuable.
I won’t go as far as saying I’ve found my community, but I did benefit from talking to people with whom I didn’t need to awkwardly introduce the concept of nutritionally-based malnutrition and illness.
Meeting and listening to people who have suffered from and often eliminated the symptoms of their chronic malnutrition is incredibly moving emotionally. This is especially the case when listening to the stories of people suffering from mental health issues to the point of attempting to take their own lives. Understanding from their lived experience that such misery can be reversed with adequate nutrition is incredibly affirming and optimistic.
Finally, these conferences have convinced me that when it comes to human health, whether directly through our own biochemistry, or indirectly in collaboration with our microbiome, we are clinically N=1. There is no such thing as a single diet, a drug, or a lifestyle for everyone. We each should stop damaging ourselves with things like seed oils and high carbohydrate diets and fine-tune everything to meet our individual needs at any point in our life.
Other diseases
I started writing this blog in September 2022 as a way to describe how I came to believe that the food I ate caused my heart disease and to understand how this could have happened. When I started writing, I read that consuming seed oils and a high carbohydrate diet were a likely cause of what ailed me and other so-called chronic diseases. At the time I wrote:
“Other non-communicable chronic diseases documented as associated with our modern diet include obesity, type-2 diabetes, poly-cystic ovarian syndrome, hypertension, dementia, cancer, and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease.”
It’s one thing to read about such things, but it is entirely a different thing to hear from people who have suffered from their own symptoms of chronic malnutrition. This is what happened to me when I attended conferences in May, October, and November of this year. Those conferences provided strong and consistent messages that many things we have described as chronic disease are in fact symptoms of chronic malnutrition which can be treated and very often reversed with proper nutrition. Most prominently:
Type 2 Diabetes - same as obesity but can be overcome especially with the use of a continuous glucose monitor
Heart disease - caused by repeat artery wall damage that swamps our natural clotting and repair mechanism. Not caused by high cholesterol
Mental illness - the greatest surprise for me this year. The first-hand stories of how conference attendees suffered from diet-induced mental illness are horrific. Conversely, the ways in which they eliminated their symptoms with real food are nothing short of inspiring
Regenerative gardening
This is our most important ongoing project. My wife and I want to produce as much of our own food as we can in order to eat mostly what grows in our part of the world seasonally (we are stretching things a bit with the greenhouse). We also want to overcome the reductions in micronutrients caused by modern agricultural practices.
To achieve our objectives, we have embarked on a multi-year project employing gardening practices to overcome damage to our garden caused by monocultures and soil coverings, hence use of the term “regenerative”. To achieve this we’re focused primarily on soil quality improvement through no-dig and regular composting and mulching.
Nature
I try to get out into the natural world regularly, always have. I eschew exercise in a gym for exercise in nature, whether biking, walking, or hiking. I love the fresh air, the sunlight (even in cloudy Scotland in winter we are bathed in life-giving infra red), and breathing in the natural microbiome. Besides the beneficial practicality of being out in the natural world, it is just drop-dead gorgeous.