This is a video presentation of a recent hypothesis of obesity and Western disease that could explain the benefits of both low-carbohydrate diets and high-carbohydrate ancestral diets. The hypothesis suggests that the bacterial ecosystem of the upper gut is a sensitive detector of dietary refinement, with potent effects upon health. Replacing life-derived ancestral foods with dense, processed alternatives may be responsible for the collapse in diversity of our upper gut’s flora, paralleled in the mouth by tooth decay. Plant seeds contain dense deposits of carbohydrate, and milling and refining them to flours may make them part of the problem. These changes in the bacterial ecosystem are suggested to alter immune regulation and drive the inflammation behind obesity, diabetes, autoimmunity and many Western Diseases. The notion is consistent with diverse available data, while fitting well with the ancestral foods that form an effective template for health.
Ian Spreadbury is a Canadian neuroscientist who argues that the effects of flour, sugar and processed foods on the upper gut microbiota and the immune system may be the main cause of obesity and many Western Diseases. The chain of dominoes from this idea tallies with many of the noted paradoxes in the literature, including the apparent macronutrient independence of ‘real food’ diets and the associations between dental and systemic health. The hypothesis was published in 2012 and continues to gather interest within the ancestral health community and beyond.
His past research interests have included the biophysics of single ion channels in auditory hair cells, the pathophysiological mechanisms of double seronegative myasthenia gravis, retrograde synaptic transmission in brain stem slices and the mechanisms behind the pain of Crohn’s, colitis and irritable bowel syndrome.