The Baby Boomer Diet

What has happened to most of us—and our fatigued and lifeless inner ecosystems—is quite literally a gut-wrenching experience. Without a healthy body ecology, we simply cannot thrive.

For as long as we humans have existed, the inner workings of the womb and the miracle of birth have been shrouded in mystery, superstition, and old wives’ tales. The universe inside the womb—like the moon, sun, and stars above us—was obscure and unfathomable. Today, 4-D ultrasound technology allows us a rare glimpse into this remarkable enclosed garden and what takes place there.

We now know that the womb is not a self-contained holding cell where the fetus simply “hangs out” until birth. Instead, it is a highly intricate, fragile, and dynamic environment where every minute of every day, some new piece of the developmental puzzle falls into place. By the time a baby is born, it has tasted, smelled, flexed its muscles, and heard and recognized its mother’s voice. Pictures from the womb reveal fetuses smiling, yawning, tugging at their umbilical cords, sticking out their tongues, responding to music, reacting physiologically to their mothers’ stress, and using the walls of the uterus as a trampoline to practice their “stepping reflex.”

These miraculous glimpses also show us firsthand how the biological and emotional interplay between mother and unborn child is critical, not just to the baby’s survival, but to its future vitality and longevity. From as early as day 15 after conception, we observe this vital connection at work, as the tiny embryo begins to develop nerve cells and the mother’s blood volume increases to compensate for the new life inside. At two months, the placenta becomes the baby’s life-support system; and the fetus obtains everything it needs from its mother’s bloodstream—water, oxygen, and food. By 18 weeks, its digestive system becomes active, and we see it actually tasting and sipping the amniotic fluid in which it floats.¹

As these pictures inside the womb clearly demonstrate, what happens during the gestation period plays a dramatically important role in later health. But we also know that the birthing process itself becomes a significant stage in the infant’s future vitality and longevity.

During childbirth—and often several days before—the mother’s cervix will open slowly. It will dilate approximately ten centimeters—large enough for the still immaturely developed infant to enter the world. When this happens, microflora from the mother’s birth canal inoculate the amniotic fluid and begin to coat the body of the emerging fetus, and even to enter the baby’s digestive tract.

The inner ecosystem will determine the effectiveness of the baby’s future immunological defenses and his or her ability to digest nutrients and remain free of toxins.

Unfortunately, many babies born today are exposed to pathogens from the birth canal, and mothers unsuspectingly pass these on to their newborn children. In fact, millions of childbearing women today will culture positive for yeast (candidiasis), virus (HPV), and bacterial (group B strep) vaginal infections.

In addition, many infants begin life with another disadvantage—they inherit poor prenatal jing from their parents (see Chapter 3). This means they will have very little constitutional energy throughout their lives. Weakened adrenals and thyroid are a widespread problem in babies today. Their pathways of detoxification often do not work well because of this inadequate energy, poor peristaltic movement in the intestines, and congested livers.

As many babies are commonly fed formula, these factors are often compounded by a lack of colostrum at birth; colostrum is necessary for building the immune system so that the baby can combat any pathogens in its environment and be able to fight fungal and viral infections inherited from its mother. Because these events occur “invisibly,” no one pays much attention to them.

Physicians and nurses are more concerned about how well the mother is doing and if the baby has all its fingers and toes than they are about establishing the unseen world of the baby’s inner ecosystem. Yet it is this inner ecosystem that will determine the effectiveness of the baby’s future immunological defenses and its ability to digest nutrients and remain free of toxins. In other words, it is integral to quality and length of life.

I remember a time when newborns were treated very delicately. Because so many infants and children died from infectious diseases in the generations before us, most mothers understood how very vulnerable the baby was during the first six months of life. Parents didn’t allow many visitors; only the immediate family was permitted to hold the newborn, who was kept indoors and protected from exposure to germs and extremes in climate.

Microflora have incredible survival and adaptive power, which allows them to recognize and overcome pathogenic bacteria, transforming themselves to fight and to flourish.

Sadly, this is not true today. The first few weeks are a time to “show off ” the infant to as many people as possible. I’ve often seen newborns exposed to extreme temperatures and stresses at shopping malls and friends’ homes so that parents won’t be inconvenienced and can resume their busy lives. Parents will hold and play with their babies even if they have bad colds and coughs. We’ve forgotten about the dangers of infection today, because we feel that we have these medical “safeguards” called antibiotics to always protect us. But antibiotics often do as much harm as they do good.

Because a baby’s defenses simply aren’t in place yet, and its natural abilities to defend itself against toxins are significantly lower or nonexistent, we should be even more vigilant about establishing the inner ecosystem and protecting the baby from environmental threats.

Early vaccination during this time is dangerous. In fact, during this time nature is already hard at work to “vaccinate” us with a highly intelligent immune system—one that can resist ever-mutating pathogens.

As mentioned in the last chapter, we have been indoctrinated to believe that all bacteria and yeast are harmful and must be destroyed. We don’t understand that when nature is in balance, she provides natural defenses—good bacteria and beneficial yeast that destroy the bad.

Because most of us believe that all bacteria are the enemy, we have come to rely on antibiotics to destroy them. But this is rather like throwing out the baby with the bathwater … because, in destroying the good bacteria, antibiotics also kill the bacteria that keep us alive. I liken this to “friendly fire” in times of war. We’re not just killing the enemy; we’re killing our fellow soldiers and comrades on the battlefield.

The other very important thing to remember about beneficial microflora is that they are highly intelligent. They have incredible survival and adaptive power, which allows them to recognize and overcome pathogenic bacteria, transforming themselves to fight and to flourish.

Have you ever used the expression “I have this gut feeling”? Believe it or not, your gut (also called the enteric nervous system) thinks and communicates in a highly sophisticated and orchestrated manner. It has more than one billion sensory and motor neurons; and it utilizes information-processing circuits (neurotransmitters) such as dopamine, serotonin, nitric oxide, and norepinephrine to transmit and receive messages. In other words, it communicates.

We at Body Ecology refer to this enteric nervous system as the “primal brain.” The next time you run away from a stressful situation, ask yourself if it was your brain in your head or the primal brain in your gut that got you moving! Nausea, abdominal pain, the urge to vomit, feelings of satiation, butterflies in the stomach, and so on are the gut brain’s way of warning us of danger from ingested food, infectious pathogens, or unpleasant stressors.²

It makes sense that a highly intelligent gut would have highly intelligent ways of communicating. Scientists now know that in addition to being able to communicate with members of their own species, many bacteria can also “talk” to members of other species using a universal chemical language (see sidebar at the end of the chapter). Individual bacteria secrete signaling molecules called autoinducers into their environments, and as the number of bacteria in a colony increases, so does the concentration of the signaling molecules. Once a critical mass—or quorum—of bacteria and autoinducers is reached, specific behaviors can be initiated. This process in the gut is called quorum sensing, and it allows bacteria to coordinate their behavior on a global scale and to act like enormous multicellular organisms.³

As environmental conditions inside your intestines and all throughout your body change rapidly, microflora need to respond quickly in order to survive. These responses include adaptation to nutrients and avoidance of toxins. For pathogenic (bad) bacteria to survive, they must coordinate their efforts (join forces to become stronger) in order to penetrate the immune response of the host.

Healthy bacteria, on the other hand, communicate in very beneficial ways. One of the functions of healthy gut flora is to help erect an “electric fence” to protect the environment in our intestines from pathogens.

With all this activity taking place inside your gut, it should now seem quite logical that your small and large intestines are the hub or power center of your well-being. Both disease and health have potential there. And what will you, as the master of your inner garden, allow to grow there? Will you allow “weeds” such as pathogens (parasites and yeast) to grow there; or useful fruits, vegetables, and lovely flowers (beneficial microflora)?

What does it mean to have an intestinal garden that is balanced and productive? Well, everything!

But when healthy intestinal flora are exposed to a toxic environment, they can be transformed into dangerous microbial bacteria that attack, rather than support and maintain, our organs. These are just a few of the health challenges that are linked to putrefaction and a compromised inner ecosystem:

Beneficial bacteria and yeast have long been thought to slow down the aging process. Their use has been advocated by some pretty impressive innovators who had the courage to sidestep the conventional thinking of their day. Élie Metchnikoff, a Russian microbiologist and a contemporary of Pasteur, developed the very radical theory (at the time) that certain white blood cells could engulf and destroy harmful bodies such as bacteria.

Driven to desperation by the deaths of his two wives (one from tuberculosis and the other from typhoid), Metchnikoff made the study of microbes and the role they play in the immune system his life’s work. His theories about white blood cells were scorned by the “microbe hunters,” such as Pasteur and German bacteriologist Emil von Behring, but Metchnikoff was later vindicated, winning the Nobel Prize in 1908.⁴

Metchnikoff lived to the age of 71, unusual for his day. He believed that lactic acid could prolong life, and drank sour milk every day to prove it! He is one of our earliest probiotic pioneers and practitioners!

Bacteria affect us in cosmetic ways as well. Bad bacteria cause fine lines on the skin, freckles, and age spots. That’s why skincare companies are now putting probiotics into their creams and lotions. But beautiful skin cannot be purchased in a jar. It is the result of being clean from deep within ourselves. This can only be accomplished by removing dangerous substances from our bodies and putting back in the finest nutrients and purest water. Fortunately, Body Ecology has a highly effective methodology for doing this. We are finally returning to the knowledge and discoveries of people like Metchnikoff, whose work was often dismissed or obscured by others. Now we must reeducate our bodies as well as our minds.

Like the womb, our inner ecosystem has been an unseen mystery. Most of us have very little awareness of what goes on inside our wounded inner garden—our colon and small intestine.

In the sections ahead, you will discover how to get to know your body ecology and what it needs. I’ll explain how to make sure the space inside your digestive tract is reserved for beneficial yeast and bacteria that work for your body rather than against it. You’ll learn practical guidelines on how to properly cleanse, the benefits and pleasures of a probiotic diet, and some eating principles and practices that will reestablish your vital connection to the earth and transport you back to the Eden-like garden you lost so long ago.

From the Physician’s Desk

“What’s going on in the gut could be made into a Spielberg movie.”

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The amazing thing about bacteria is that they do exactly what we humans do. They communicate. They are social. We even refer to them as “cultures,” the same way we refer to the French or American or Spanish culture. Bonnie Bassler, Ph.D., who is a medical investigator and a professor of molecular biology at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, said it best: “We scientists were all wrong thinking that bacteria live asocial, reclusive lives. There isn’t any way they could accomplish the terrible and the wonderful things they do on earth acting as individuals.”ⁱ

Bassler contends that bacteria are gregarious by nature, preferring to crowd together in complex, multispecies communities. Most humans want to be where the action is. We move to big cities because there is a richer culture and a more multicultural environment available to us. We flourish in complex, often competitive situations. And we have intricate and meaningful ways of communicating. So do bacteria.

Bacteria communicate with each other through a method called quorum sensing. What this means, simply, is that bacteria release chemicals from inside their cells known as autoinducers, or “signaling molecules.” These signaling molecules give bacteria a way to “count” one another. When they reach a critical number, they come together in the same way a voting quorum comes together to pass a referendum. As a quorum, bacteria are able to share resources and information with each other. They can also form bridges among one another and create opportune communication networks. It takes a quorum to make what Bassler calls “a population-wide alternation of gene expression.” In other words, it truly does take a village to create systemic change.

As a single individual, a bacterium doesn’t have a particularly strong voice. But as a group or “working conglomerate,” they have great impact. It’s like the sound of one solitary instrument versus the entire Boston Philharmonic.

This rather astounding and complex process is replicated on our teeth every morning. There are 600 species of bacteria on our teeth every night when we go to bed. When we wake up, they are in exactly the same organization as the night before. How do they maintain this blueprint or “biofilm”?

They do so by communicating with each other, knowing what other cells are out there and using the information to function collectively. Bacteria have to behave in this way because their environment changes so rapidly. They must respond quickly in order to survive.

So how does this relate to our inner ecosystem, our gut?

There are at least 500 to 600 species of bacteria in our gut, and they are all competing for space and food. They have to respond in a variety of ways: they need to adapt to the availability of nutrients; defend against other microorganisms, which may be competing with them for the same nutrients; and avoid toxic compounds that are potentially dangerous to them. In fact, what’s going inside our gut would make a very frightening but fascinating Spielberg movie. Bacteria feed themselves from the food we take into our bodies.

While beneficial bacteria help us digest our food and make several B vitamins and vitamin K, pathogenic bacteria can turn food into a poison by oxidizing the essential fats we eat, and turning nitrates into cancer-producing nitrosamines.

To ensure we get sick and stay sick, pathogenic bacteria need to join forces and coordinate their virulence in order to escape the immune response of the host (us!) and establish a successful infection. Creating an antibiotic-resistant biofilm, they then take up residence and feast on us for their benefit, leaving us with a nasty infection. To make matters worse, many of the antibiotics we take to heal ourselves of infection may have little effect, if pathogenic bacteria and their biofilms have overwhelmed the intestinal tract with the force and intelligence of their numbers.

This is the real genius behind the Body Ecology system. It ensures that greater numbers of beneficial bacteria have taken up residence and created cities (biofilms) in the gut and are talking to each other. This “cross-talk” between bacteria and the intestinal ecosystem is the key to health. It promotes the proper utilization of nutrients and defends against sickness. The dietary and lifestyle choices in the Body Ecology system, particularly the use of fermented foods and probiotics, are some of the best ways I know to prevent illness.

— Leonard Smith, M.D.

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ⁱBonnie Bassler, “Microbial Chatter: How Bacteria Talk to Each Other,” New York Academy of Sciences, delivered in a speech at Princeton University, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, reported by Marcia Stone in the Academy eBriefings, August 23, 2006.