…there was a factory. It was efficient in its production processes and had many well-trained workers. The original design of this factory was intended to use the best materials to make its products, and there were a lot of workers on staff to maintain the equipment and keep things running. When it was operating at its best, it was a great place to work — the output was high, and all the workers were energized and happy to work there. Problems started when they began regularly receiving lesser quality materials, which made the production less efficient and tended to put wear and tear on the equipment that caused the machines to run slower and break down. To make matters worse, many workers quit, so no one was there to fix the machines.

If we think of our body as that factory, I think it will help explain how things seem to be "going in the wrong direction" with most folks that eat a Western Diet.

A Western diet is a dietary pattern typical of many Western countries. This dietary pattern is characterized by a high intake of red and processed meats, saturated fats, sugar, and refined grains and a low intake of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, and nuts. It often includes large amounts of fast food, processed and convenience foods, sugary drinks, and snack foods. The Western diet has been associated with an increased risk of many chronic diseases, such as obesity, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and certain cancers.

You see, in this example, if our body is the factory, then our digestive organs (like the stomach, small intestines, and large intestines) are the machines. The foods we eat are the materials used to make things, like energy and nutrients that the rest of our body needs to function correctly. It should start to make sense why, in the U.S., there is a big problem with diabetes, obesity, and high-cholesterol-related heart disease.

Back to my analogy of our bodies as factories, the workers are the good bacteria that are supposed to live in our gut. They keep all the cells in the lining of our intestines protected and working correctly. In our gut, there are “bad-guy” and “good-guy” bacteria  (called Gut Microbiome). Still, if things are working correctly, the good-guy bacteria are in control of the bad-guy bacteria, and they maintain order in the processes.

So if you are not eating a wide variety of fruits and vegetables, and if most of your meals consist of red meat, sugar-rich drinks and desserts, and highly processed foods, over time, in your factory, all the good guys won’t be able to make it in that hostile work environment and will quit. Now you have all the inflammation from eating the typical western diet and no workers to clean things up. After several years of that, your body has to make some changes. Your liver won't work well and cannot process all the dietary fat, so it will be stored in our bodies, and our blood cholesterol will go up and we will gain weight from fat storage. High cholesterol makes deposits inside the small blood vessels all over our body. Like rusty pipes in an old building, the openings of those vessels get smaller and smaller over time. That, then, causes high blood pressure and could eventually cause a vessel to clog completely, allowing no blood or oxygen to get through. If that happens in a heart vessel, that's a heart attack; if it happens to a vessel in your brain, that is a stroke.

Your pancreas makes insulin, a hormone produced and released when it senses an increase in the sugar level. It's used to process/break down those sugars (carbohydrates). When someone eats a high-fat/high-carbohydrate diet and has excess fat stored in their middle area, the pancreas can't keep up with the demand for insulin and eventually it ignores those signals and slows the release of insulin. Without insulin being produced, there's nothing to break down the carbohydrates into useful pieces that our body can use, and it just goes right out into the bloodstream. That is usually how type II diabetes starts.

Our bodies were designed to eat differently than our modern society has enticed us to eat. Just a few generations ago, people had to eat, mostly what they grew, hunted, or gathered around them. That meant the foods going into our ancestors' bodies were fresh and primarily unprocessed, and what they ate changed from season to season. That variety meant that their gut microbiome was diverse and healthy.

To go from eating that way, to having drive-thru fast food places, sweetened drinks, processed box foods, and not eating enough fresh vegetables, along with not a lot of physical activity, has caused us to get to the point many people in this country are now - dealing with multiple chronic health conditions.

Another crucial thing we need for a healthy gut microbiome is fiber. We all know about fiber in the context of not being constipated and that if you take some of that powder mixed up in a drink (like on the commercials), it adds fiber that acts like a broom to sweep the poo down the tube😁. At least, that was my understanding of the importance of getting fiber in your diet. Although that is sort of true, that isn't the most essential part of the fiber story. There are different types of fiber, some that don't get broken down and mostly come out as it went in. But the other kind of fiber can be broken down in our large intestines, resulting in some components that act as food to feed the good-guy bacteria. Suppose you happen to have a diverse gut microbiome, but you aren't feeding those good guys by eating enough foods with soluble fiber. In that case, they will eventually starve and die off.  The bad guys will outnumber the good guys again, and the inflammation state continues.

Most people that are in the “pre-diabetic” category have heard the recommendations from their doctor to “lose weight” and “eat less carbs.”  The trouble with how that’s commonly done is that it doesn’t consider the analogy of your body as a factory, that we mentioned earlier. Avoiding carbs in an attempt to lose weight or control blood sugar is problematic as a long-term strategy because the good type of fiber IS a carbohydrate.  In an evil paradox, artificial sweeteners, that people often use to replace their sugar habit when they are trying to be healthier, have been shown to work against those good guy bacteria in our gut, making matters worse.  It seems like we are setup to fail at having a healthy gut microbiome.

Add a wide variety of plants to all your meals — That's a good start. I try to eat 5-7 different fruits and vegetables daily. {Honestly, it's why I started my company, Visionary Microgreens. In a future blog, I will write about my personal journey dealing with being pre-diabetic and how I changed things.}

Improving your diet, along with a few other factors are important to reduce this high inflammation state in our bodies that can lead to chronic diseases (and they probably deserve separate articles). They are exercise, managing stress, and getting enough good sleep.

So just keep this in mind…

The way your factory runs is up to you.

Follow along for more information on how to use microgreens to improve your diet and improve your gut health. 

After all, we all want to live “Happily Ever After.”