My life has been to seek the Absolute Truth of God; to help others find the real purpose of their lives... Attempt to make this or where ever I am; better for my having been there! Amen!
Matthew
26:75 'And Peter remembered the word of Jesus, which said unto him,
Before the cock crow, thou shalt deny me thrice. And he went out, and
wept bitterly.'
MATTHEW 26:75
There are
several Greek words used for 'word.' The Greek word used here is RHEMA
and it literally means, 'a spoken word; an utterance, a saying, but
specifically a spoken word appropriate for the situation.' It's not the
Bible lying on your coffee table that makes the enemy flee, but the Word
of God hidden in your heart, activated by the power of the Holy Spirit,
and spoken in the appropriate situation. It's similar to what Jesus
says in John 6:63, that 'the words that I speak unto you, they are
spirit and they are life.'
The words that we speak from the
written Word of God are empowered by the Holy Spirit. The Word by itself
doesn't make us free. It is the Word we know and speak that will
deliver us (Jn. 8:32).
Why is the Word so effective? Because it is
the WORD of God. It has authority, because it is indeed the WORD of
God. God's Word supersedes all authority of the church, of reason, of
intellect, and even of Satan. That's why it is so effective.
In
Luke, chapter four, when Jesus was tempted of the devil for forty days,
it was the Word of God that Jesus used to defeat the enemy at His
temptation.
Jesus constantly met His temptation by quoting from
God's Word as He repeatedly stated the phrase, 'It is written.'
Likewise, the Christian soldier must avail himself of God's Word by
placing it in his heart so that the Holy Spirit may bring it forth at
the appropriate time to accomplish a complete and total victory.
The physical nation of Israel still has a very important part to play in God's plan. They have a prominent role in end-time prophecy. However, the physical nation of Israel has been displaced in importance by the spiritual seed of Abraham, which is the church of Jesus Christ.
Christians are the true circumcised people of God. In Romans 2:28-29, Paul reveals that true circumcision is a matter of the heart, not the flesh, and that true Judaism is through new birth, not physical birth.
In Colossians 2:11, Paul says that spiritual circumcision was done by God without the hands of man. This circumcision, that was made without hands, proves that it was not done in the physical. Paul is referring to the spiritual circumcision of the heart. The sins of our hearts were cut away and discarded through the sacrifice of Christ in a similar way that the foreskin is removed from a male. The physical act of circumcision is a picture of the spiritual circumcision that is now a reality in every born-again believer.
The condition of a person's flesh is not the important thing. It doesn't matter if the flesh is circumcised or holy. It is the condition of the spirit that matters with God. Those who put faith in their circumcision to save them are putting confidence in the flesh and not in God. Today, the act of circumcision is not the issue, but acts of holiness are still deemed by many as essential for receiving salvation.
That is just as wrong as those in Paul's day who believed that being circumcised granted them salvation.
While the myriad ways exercise can shape our
bodies are well known, researchers have long suspected the same might be
true of the brain. Decades of research have gone into examining the effect of exercise on attention, memory, and visual sensitivity, according to Richard Maddock,
a professor of psychiatry at the University of California, Davis.
“There is a very consistent finding that the brain works better after
exercise,” Maddock says. But why that is has been harder to figure out.
“Few studies have really looked at what’s actually going on in the brain while we’re moving,” says Tom Bullock,
a postdoc at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Only recently
has technology given scientists the tools to zero in on the mechanisms
at play. Aerobic exercise appears to lead to changes in both the
structure of the brain and the way it operates, which together bolster
learning in kids, give adults an edge on cognitive tasks, and protect
against the cognitive declines that often come with age.
Here, we outline exactly what we know happens in your head when your heart rate rises.
Brain Waves Get a Boost
Your brain becomes much more active during
exercise, “perhaps more active than at any other time,” says Maddock.
One way neurons communicate is with electrical pulses, and sometimes
entire networks of neurons fire in unison, like a group of soccer fans
chanting together at a game. These synchronized pulses are known
colloquially as brain waves. Different kinds of brain waves,
characterized by the number of times they oscillate in a single second,
are linked to one’s mental state and mood. Lower-frequency waves occur
when we’re running on autopilot: brushing our teeth, driving, or
sleeping, for example. Higher-frequency waves, known as beta waves,
occur when we’re awake and mentally engaged and are associated with
attention, memory, and information processing.
Using tools like an electroencephalogram (EEG),
which pick up on these electrical pulses, researchers have found that
aerobic exercise causes a shift in the amplitude and frequency of brain
waves. More beta waves, in other words, means that exercisers may be in a
more alert state. “The brain is in a different gear when the human
being is in motion,” Maddock says.
You Become More Sensitive to the World Around You
During exercise, the brain becomes much more
receptive to incoming information, leading to measurable changes in
vision. Tom Bullock and Barry Giesbrecht,
a professor of psychology and brain sciences at UC Santa Barbara, work
in one of the few labs that have managed to measure the effects of
aerobic activity on the visual cortex during exercise. Bullock says it’s
taken him four years to figure out how to consistently and reliably
record an EEG while a subject is in motion.
The visual cortex is designed to zero in on
important features in the environment—the kind of features that might
indicate, for example, the presence of a predator or prey—and filter out
less important background noise. This year, Bullock and Giesbrecht found that low-intensity cycling boosted this feature-selectivity ability so the brain was able to better identify specific features during exercise.
Scientists have also administered cognitive
tests right after exercise—for example, measuring the flicker fusion
threshold (the rate at which a flashing light begins to look like it’s
steadily glowing) and found the same thing: After exercise, one’s senses
are heightened and thus can detect the flashing at a higher frequency
than before exercise.
Taken together, these findings indicate that
“people see more clearly and immediately after exercise,” Maddock says.
“They can make finer visual distinctions; their perceptions are
sharper.”
Your Brain Shores Up Neurotransmitter Stores
The benefits of exercise to your brain may begin
as soon as your heart rate begins to rise. Imagine, if you will,
climbing onto your bike for a morning ride and pedaling at a tough but
sustainable clip. Your breath becomes faster and heavier as your lungs
struggle to meet the oxygen demands of the body in motion. Your heart
rate climbs as it pumps oxygenated blood around the body and into the
brain. And in much the same way that your muscles demand more energy
during exercise, the brain begins gobbling up glucose or other
carbohydrates when the body is in motion.
“In the past, nobody had any idea what the brain
was doing with all this fuel,” says Maddock. That is, until 2016, when
he and his colleagues published a new study in the Journal of Neuroscience.
They discovered that the brain uses some of that fuel to build more
neurotransmitters, the chemicals that relay messages around the nervous
system. Maddock and his colleagues used MRI to measure levels of
neurotransmitters in study subjects after a bout of exercise on a
stationary bike and found that levels of glutamate and GABA—two of the
most common neurotransmitters in the brain—had increased. The brain may
be “filling up its stores of essential ingredients,” Maddock says.
“Perhaps in order to deal with a sustained period of hunting, for
example, or running or fleeing or war.” Exercise, in other words, may
restock the brain with essential neurotransmitters that it needs to
operate optimally.
This process might be why exercise has been shown to alleviate depression.
Maddock’s team found that during activity, glutamate levels rise in the
same region of the brain where stocks of the neurotransmitter have
previously been found to be low in depressed patients.
Your Brain Becomes Younger
A few things happen in the exerciser’s brain that make the organ appear younger. First, studies in both animals and humans
suggest that exercise sparks the production of growth factors that
nourish new neurons and help existing cells survive. Budding neural
cells also need more nutrients as they grow, and animal studies suggest that exercise promotes the release of other growth factors that promote blood vessel growth, which could deliver those nutrients. At least one study in humans
has found that active individuals tend to have more and healthier blood
vessels, or, in the words of the authors, a “younger-appearing brain.”
These structural changes in the brain generally
take at least a few weeks to develop but lead to long-lasting
improvements in regions of the brain associated with cognitive tasks,
like working memory. “A lot of intervention studies that are out there
show that aerobic exercise increases neurogenesis in the hippocampus,
for example” says Giesbrecht. “The hippocampus is really critical for
memory.”
Beyond that, research shows that aging
exercisers have increased gray-matter volume in regions associated with
general intelligence and executive function, which encompasses
everything from attention to planning to problem-solving skills. Studies
also show that fit adults have healthier white-matter tracts—the
superhighways that connect various regions of gray matter—in the basal
ganglia, a critical region for balance and coordination.
New Connections Between Neurons Emerge
Over time, exercise changes both the number of neurons in your brain and how they communicate. A 2016 study
from the University of Arizona, for example, found that cross-country
runners had increased connectivity between parts of the brain involved
in memory, attention, decision-making, multitasking, and processing
sensory information—the very same regions that tend to be hit hardest as
we age—compared to healthy but sedentary controls. The networks that
fire together as you run—coordinating your route, keeping tabs on
traffic, trying not to trip on rocks, and maintaining your
pace—strengthen as you use them, so that even at rest, runners tend to
have greater connectivity between brain regions. It’s the kind of
connectivity that musicians and cab drivers and other skills-based
experts develop. At the same time, the runners had decreased
connectivity with a region of the brain typically associated with mind
wandering, which indicates runners may have increased focus or
concentration skills.
So, Is Exercise Magic?
Hillman cautions that for now, exercisers should
be realistic about what aerobic activities can do for the brain. “You
shouldn’t expect to increase your IQ or anything of that nature,” he
says. “We’re talking about small to moderate effects, which are
potentially great for improving cognition and brain health.”
But Bullock and Giesbrecht envision a future in
which doctors prescribe exercise instead of drugs. “Exercise is a
potential prophylactic against some aspects of age-related cognitive
decline,” Giesbrecht says. “When you think of the fact that we have an
aging demographic and the high prevalence of depression, there might be
simpler treatments out there, like exercise.”
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This article was originally published on May 31,
2017, by Outside, and is republished here with permission.
The abortion industry will not allow a single commonsense pro-life
law - even basic health and safety regulations on abortion. Period.
Now the abortion industry has set its sights on a critical Louisiana
law that could save lives. They are trying to have an appellate court
decision that found the pro-life law constitutional OVERTURNED. We cannot let the abortion industry win. The Supreme Court's decision could impact hundreds of pro-life laws and be a benchmark for future abortion legislation.
It is the biggest abortion case of the current Supreme Court.
We've already filed one brief in this case, and now our deadline to
file our final brief is quickly approaching. We urgently need your voice
to defend babies' lives and defeat the abortion industry.
Matrices do this by changing an object’s “vectors” — mathematical arrows
that point to each physical location in an object. A matrix’s
eigenvectors — “own vectors” in German — are those vectors that stay
aligned in the same direction when the matrix is applied. Take, for
example, the matrix that rotates things by 90 degrees around the x-axis: The eigenvectors lie along the x-axis itself, since points falling along this line don’t rotate, even as everything rotates around them.
Shape-Shifting Particles
That application would be neutrinos: the oddest, least understood,
most reclusive of the known fundamental particles. Neutrinos pass
through each of our bodies by the trillion each second, but because they
barely register, many of their properties remain unknown.
Intriguingly, theory suggests that differences in the behavior of
neutrinos and antineutrinos could be what allows matter to dominate over
antimatter in the universe. If these opposites had arisen in equal
amounts in the Big Bang, they would have mutually annihilated, yielding a
cosmos empty of everything except light. A distinction between
neutrinos and antineutrinos could be what allowed the all-important
surplus of matter to accrue. “If they act differently, that will give us
some hint as to why the universe is filled with matter,” said Deborah Harris,
a physicist at York University and Fermilab who works on a neutrino
experiment called DUNE (for Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment) aimed
at measuring such differences.
The experiment, which will measure neutrinos shot from Fermilab in
Illinois to an underground detector 1,300 kilometers away in South
Dakota, makes use of the fact that neutrinos come in one of three
possible “flavors” — electron, muon or tau. But each neutrino flavor is a
quantum mechanical mixture, and neutrinos oscillate between flavors on
the fly. As a neutrino from Fermilab travels along, its mixture changes,
so that a muon neutrino might morph into an electron neutrino or a tau
neutrino.
An egregiously complicated three-by-three matrix describes these
oscillations. From the eigenvectors and eigenvalues, physicists can
calculate an expression for the likelihood that a muon neutrino will
oscillate into an electron neutrino by the time it reaches South Dakota.
They can also calculate an expression for the probability that a muon
antineutrino will become an electron antineutrino.
Our
goal is to connect believers who want a deeper understanding of God’s
Word with a local group that teaches Andrew Wommack’s foundational messages. We are connecting believers with Charis Bible College graduates in neighborhoods across the United States. Through study and fellowship, they are empowered to take the Gospel into their sphere of influence.
By signing up for a Charis Bible Study, you will have the opportunity to fellowship with like-minded believers in a
relaxed setting. By studying from Andrew Wommack’s study guides, you’ll be reminded that God has anticipated your every need and has provided it all through Jesus. Get practical steps on walking in grace, and appropriate everything God has provided for you by faith. Take these teachings and affect the lives of your family, friends, co-workers, and neighbors.
Hebrews 10:25 encourages us to fellowship with one another, and Mark 16:15 commands us to go into the world and preach the Gospel. Charis Bible Studies equips you to do both.
It’s
striking that water can illustrate and elucidate a martial arts
philosophy while also being, to this day, the “least understood material
on Earth,” as researchers reported recently. Photo by takoburito /
Shutterstock.
One
day, frustrated after many hours of meditation and practice, Bruce Lee,
still a teenager, went sailing. His martial arts teacher, Yip Man, had
been instructing Lee in the art of detachment, a key facet of gung fu.
Lee couldn’t let go. “On the sea I thought of all my past training and
got mad at myself and punched the water!” he later wrote. “Right then—at
that moment—a thought suddenly struck me; was not this water the very
essence of gung fu? I struck it but it did not suffer hurt. I then tried
to grasp a handful of it but this proved impossible. This water, the
softest substance in the world, which could be contained in the smallest
jar, only seemed weak. In reality, it could penetrate the hardest
substance in the world. That was it! I wanted to be like the nature of
water.”
For Lee, the budding martial artist, water embodied an
ideal of lithe and effortless strength. He learned this from ancient
Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching and updated it,
adding, “When heated to the state of steam it is invisible but has
enough power to split the earth itself.” It’s striking that water can
illustrate and elucidate a martial arts philosophy while also being, to
this day, the “least understood material on Earth,” as researchers
reported recently.
Water can appear to be “fine-tuned” for life.
In their study
published in early 2018, Hajime Tanaka, John Russo, and Kenji
Akahane—all researchers in the Department of Fundamental Engineering at
the University of Tokyo, in Japan—tried to tease apart what makes water
unique among liquids. It’s got anomalous properties, like expanding when
cooled below 40 degrees Fahrenheit, which explains why lakes freeze
downward, from top to bottom, rather than up. Normally frozen solids are
more dense than their liquid equivalents, which would mean that frozen
chunks would fall to the bottom of a lake instead of staying on top.
Water also becomes less viscous compared to other liquids when
compressed, and has an uncanny level of surface tension, allowing beings
light enough, like insects, to walk or stand atop it. Since it’s these
distinctive features among others that power our climate and ecosystems,
water can appear to be “fine-tuned” for life.
The researchers, with the benefit of supercomputers,
were able to tweak and untune a computational model of water, making it
behave like other liquids. “With this procedure,” Russo said,
“we have found that what makes water behave anomalously is the presence
of a particular arrangement of the water’s molecules, such as the
tetrahedral arrangement, where a water molecule is hydrogen-bonded to
four molecules located on the vertices of a tetrahedron,” a shape of
four triangular planes. “Four of such tetrahedral arrangements can
organize themselves in such a way that they share a common water
molecule at the center without overlapping,” Russo said. As a result,
when water freezes, it creates an open structure, mostly empty space and
less dense than the disordered structure of liquid water, which is why
water props ice up. Both highly ordered and disordered tetrahedral
arrangements give water its “peculiar properties.” The paper’s title
spells this out: “Water-like anomalies as a function of tetrahedrality.”
Nautilus asked Richard Saykally,
a chemist at U.C. Berkeley, why these peculiarities make the liquid so
ripe for scams and fanciful speculations. The ancient Greeks thought
water was one of the four “essential” elements, the others being earth,
air, and fire. Homeopathy, which purports to cure illness using small
doses of disease-causing substances dissolved in water, evolved out of
this, Saykally said. But there are more modern magical claims about
so-called “structured” or “hexagonal” water. Some “wellness”
practitioners claim humans age in part because we don’t replenish our
stock of structured water. Depending on water’s structure, they say, it
can penetrate your cell walls more effectively and has all kinds of
health benefits.
“There’s no scientific basis to that at all,” Saykally
said. “You can’t make structured water. Doesn’t make any sense because
the hydrogen bond in water lives for a few picoseconds—10-12
seconds—and these hydrogen bond structures of water are rearranging very
rapidly so you don’t have water clusters existing as isolated entities
in water despite a lot of these claims.”
The ancient Greeks may have been wrong about water being
an essential element, but Saykally says it’s no coincidence that water
is essential for life on Earth. “It’s something intrinsic about water in
that the strong tetrahedral hydrogen bond network that water makes is a
very flexible environment for chemical processes to happen,” he said.
“It has the right properties to dissolve many ions; it has the right
properties to cause what we call hydrophobic materials”—like
proteins—“to fold up in special ways.”
Saykally has invented a new laser to study water
clusters, with the ultimate goal of producing “the perfect model for
water,” he said. “We want to combine all the information available from
studies of water clusters with our terahertz laser spectroscopy—from
quantum chemical calculations and from condensed phase measurements—and
make a computer model of water that will answer any question you ask.
That perfect water model is what we have been calling the universal
first principles model of water.”
You can enjoy the rest of our conversation with Saykally here, in which he says, among other things, whether another form of liquid water is possible.
Brian Gallagher is the editor of Facts So Romantic, the Nautilus blog. Follow him on Twitter @brianga11agher.
What are the Qumran Caves? Many people have heard of these sites and the stories of the many scrolls found there about; which have between called " the evolutionary link " between Judaism and Christianity! Based upon the so-called " Dead Sea " scrolls recent historical discovery of 1947, at the time of the re-establishment of the nation of Israel!
One of the most curious things about the whole Qumran community is that it existed at the same time and at very close proximity to the same geographical area where Jesus Earthly ministry was! Even with an incredible parallel to the Gospel of Christ - it does not appear to make any mention of Jesus or his disciples by name!
To date, some almost a thousand ancient parchment scrolls have been found in several caves along the Northwest shore of the Dead Sea! An area only about 13 miles from Jerusalem at about 1,300 ft below sea level - marking it as the lowest point in the world! Does this stir your imagination and curiosity about the plan and purpose of the Holy Bible of God?
Want a healthy gut? Reach for the
kimchi, sauerkraut, artichokes, coffee and chocolate. But watch out –
one category of food will make your microbes wither.
Kimchi,
kombucha, sauerkraut, miso and kefir – all fermented foods and drinks –
have been around for centuries, but suddenly they are all the rage. The
reason? They are supposedly packed full of gut-healthy microorganisms,
and we are finally waking up to just how much the trillions of
microorganisms that live in our guts (AKA the gut microbiome) contribute
to our mental and physical health.
True, probiotic products such as Yakult –
sweetened skimmed milk fermented with a single strain of friendly
bacteria – have been shifting hefty units for some time: the global probiotic market, dominated by yoghurt drinks, was worth $45.6bn (£33bn) last year.
But Yakult is fairly bland and sweet. Traditional and home-fermented
delicacies are another, more pungent matter altogether: kombucha (a
naturally fizzy cocktail of green tea and sugar) tastes vinegary; kimchi
(vegetables fermented Korean-style) is sour and fiery; sauerkraut,
which is fermented cabbage, whiffs of sulphur. All can intimidate
palates used to highly processed western blandness.
Because of how they are prepared, they all contain microorganisms that boost the diversity of good bacteria,
yeasts and fungi living in our guts. Harbouring a flourishing gut flora
has been linked to lower obesity, fewer autoimmune conditions and
digestion problems, longer lifespan, good brain function and happiness.
Some very big companies are beginning to take
this on board. If you could never quite trust the mouldering kombucha
you once nurtured in your airing cupboard, now you can buy some from
Whole Foods instead. Step forward brands such as Eaten Alive, Bio-tiful –
whose flavoured version of the fermented-milk drink kefir is now
stocked in Sainsbury’s – and the Urban Fermentary, whose
bacteria-riddled pickles and drinks come in appetising packaging. (It is
unlikely, however, that mass-produced, pasturised ferments will contain
as many of the desired microorganisms as those made using traditional
methods, so it’s worth checking how a product was made before you buy.)
Take sauerkraut, the pickled cabbage beloved of
central Europeans.
Unlike the majority of supermarket-bought pickles,
which are preserved in vinegar and have no “live” element, the cabbage
in sauerkraut is massaged in salt until the juices are drawn out and the
healthy microorganisms living on it produce lactic acid. This stops it
going off, while adding a vinegary twang. The result, says Tim Spector,
professor of genetic epidemiology at King’s College London, where he
also directs the British Gut microbiome project, is “a really good
combination of a pro- and prebiotic”. Spector’s 2015 book, The Diet
Myth, revealed that much of what we eat is digested by our microbes,
which in turn produce vitamins and unlock other nutrients for us (and
are influential in many other ways). As with live yoghurt, the
probiotics are the friendly bacteria food contains, whereas prebiotic is
the word for substances that feed your gut flora. “The cabbage actually
feeds other microbes in your gut, so I’m definitely a fan of kraut,
kimchi, all those kind of things.”
But unless you are fermenting foods yourself,
these products are not cheap – a 375g jar of sauerkraut from Eaten Alive
will set you back £6. It’s good to know, therefore, that bog-standard
live yoghurts aren’t a total waste of time. All yoghurt is fermented and
the milk used to make products for sale is legally required to be
pasteurised to kill off pathogens, after which a few strains of
lab-produced friendly bacteria are added. “We’ve done some
[not-yet-published] research ourselves,” says Spector, “showing that
[this] yoghurt definitely does have an effect on the microbes.” The
added bacteria aren’t the same as the ones that live in our guts, he
says. “The [former]are moving through the body, but
they can have an effect on your existing microbes and we also know they
produce substances that are beneficial. So, in a way, they’re energising
your gut microbes as they go through, producing some chemicals that
look as if they’re good for weight loss as well.” However, he reserves
the title of “super yoghurt” for kefir. “It has about five times as many
microbes, with more diversity, and also has extra fungi in there and
they’re all good.”
Sourdough bread is extolled for its natural wild fermentation, harvesting diverse yeasts and Lactobacillus bacteria from the environment, but they then all perish in the oven. The main health benefits come from microbes
having chomped away on lots of fibre, breaking down the gluten
proteins, releasing tasty, mould-deterring acids, rendering the
nutrients more digestible and lowering the glucose spike after
consumption. “But if you make it yourself,” says Spector, “the extra
microbes go on your hands and there’s increasing likelihood that people
who make sourdough are potentially healthier because they have greater
microbe diversity.”
Of course, alcoholic drinks are fermented, too,
and red wine in moderation is actively gut-friendly. This is partly to
do with the polyphenols in red wine, which you may have already heard
about in their capacity as antioxidants, but they have the added benefit
of being rocket fuel for good bacteria. It seems to be the combination
of alcohol and polyphenols that is especially good. “If you compare
grape juice and wine and gin’s effects on the microbiome,” says Spector,
“gin isn’t very good, but red wine is better than grape juice. So,
alcohol plus the fruit is good.”
Not surprisingly, warns Spector, “microbes don’t
cope very well if you drink too much, and liver damage also causes
problems for your microbes”. But he does hypothesise that beer and cider
in moderation “are probably also of some benefit”. The alcohol has
killed off the fermenting microbes before you drink, but you still get
the tasty and useful chemical byproducts from fermentation. “A lot of
these things that are thought to be bad for you,” says Spector, “have so
many polyphenols that they might be overcoming any potential
downsides.” He also recommends a little polyphenol-packed coffee and
dark chocolate.
If you were to view your microbiome as a garden,
fibre would be your fertiliser. Spector reckons that most people need
to double their intake. Foods containing the best fibre types for your
microbes – AKA prebiotic foods – include artichokes, jerusalem
artichokes, leeks, celery, chicory, onions and garlic. Variety is the
top priority. “So, it’s not just focusing on one or two of these
examples,” warns Spector. “Our latest research is showing that it’s not
necessarily someone who calls themselves vegetarian who has the most
healthy gut – it’s the person who eats more diversity of plants in a
week. Having the same salad every day isn’t going to be as healthy as
eating a rich diversity of food with occasional meat.” This could just
as easily be a way of describing the Mediterranean diet, with its
kaleidoscope of fruit, veg, nuts, grains and legumes.
The exciting news for carb lovers is that you
can render potatoes, rice and pasta more prebiotic by cooking and then
cooling them and then either eating them cold or reheating them (be
careful with rice, which can potentially harbour unhealthy bacteria). In her book Gut, gastroenterologist Giulia Enders writes
that, as they cool, some of the starch crystallises, making it more
resistant to human digestion, “so your potato salad or sushi rice
reaches your microbes untouched”.
Fasting – a dietary habit as ancient as
fermenting – is also beneficial to gut health. “When you’re not eating,”
says Spector, “a whole different set of microbes comes and cleans up
your gut wall, eating the sugars and things there, and that’s important
in keeping a good immune balance.” We are not talking extreme
abstention. In fact, animal studies have shown microbes nibbling through
the gut’s protective lining if starved for too long. But intermittent
fasting with low-calorie days, or simply leaving long gaps between
meals, is beneficial for your gut microbes. You are even allowed to skip
breakfast – Spector says it’s a myth that this makes you gain weight.
“There are now at least six randomised control trials showing that.
Skipping breakfast has generally been shown to be good for adults and
helps you lose weight. Basically, in southern Europe, their breakfast is
an espresso and a cigarette, if they’re lucky, and they don’t snack.
Whereas we are told to always eat breakfast and continual snacking is
encouraged.”
Junk food is the gut microbes’ nemesis. In the
introduction to a new book, The Healthy Gut Handbook, by Justine
Pattison, Spector writes that after he put his student son on a fast
food diet (chicken nuggets, burgers, soft drinks etc) for 10 days, the
boy had lost 40% of his microbe species and felt sick and lethargic.
Emulsifiers, which keep texture consistent, are rife in heavily
processed foodsand,warns Spector, “it has been shown in a couple of studies in rodents that they cause disruption of the gut microbes,
which react differently and produce funny chemicals, in a similar way
to sweeteners. If you give animals lots of sweeteners, you get a
reduction in diversity of the microbes and they produce abnormal
chemicals – different metabolic signals which have been shown to be more
likely to give you diabetes and make you put on weight.” There’s no
hard evidence yet in humans, but Spector has seen enough to make him
wary of regularly eating these additives.
Refined sugar is another culprit, although we
don’t fully understand the reasons. One simple answer, he suggests,
could be: “If you’re eating junk food, you’re having a surge of fat and
sugar that are absorbed before they reach the gut microbes, so you’re
starving the guys of fibre lower down. Then they send out signals that
promote obesity.”
Make Slow Changes to Avoid Discomfort
If
you are inspired to consume more fibre, Pattison offers a word of
warning: “It’s best to start slowly” – especially if you have digestive
problems – or you could end up with uncomfortable bloating and wind.
Each gut is unique and one diet doesn’t fit all, so if you change your
eating habits to no avail, try something else. You are on the right
track, says Spector, “if you notice a change in your bowel habit. After a
couple of days, your stools will get softer and you’ll be going more
regularly. That’s a sign your microbes have changed for the better, and
though they are working harder, they are happier.”
This article was originally published on May 31,
2017, by Outside, and is republished here with permission.
