"The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there."
-- LP Hartley, "The Go-Between"

Figure ILF1. A cast-iron manual water pump. From [5].

Figure ILF2. Gasometer outside the Oval cricket ground in London. From [6].

Figure ILF3. A 'Beatrice' kerosene stove. From [11]

One obvious possible culprit is the increasing consumption of sugar in the west, especially of corn syrup sugars. To check a possible correlation between sugar consumption and diabetes incidence, Ann Nolan has analysed the figures for 2000 and 2011 [21], and plotted graphs, two of which are shown below.


Figure ILF5. Sugar vs Diabetes, 2000. From [21].


Figure ILF6. Sugar vs Diabetes, 2011. From [21].

Looking at the plots, it is obvious that they do not show any significant correlation between sugar consumption and diabetes incidence. But they do reveal a frightening increase in diabetes over only 11 years. In 2000, Canada and the US, typifying developed countries, had between 6% and 7% diabetics, and were then at the top of the incidence scales. By 2011, diabetes in these two countries had increased to around 11%.

Looking then at some of the 'developing' countries, racing to catch up with the West, their placings in the Diabetes Stakes have put them up and beyond the old leaders. Egypt and Mexico, formerly between 2 and 4%, are now the leaders, each at around 15%. China, a star in the development contest, has raced from under 2% to around 9%.

Is There an Explanation for some Modern Ills? Let's look at some of the aspects of how human bodies function, and see if we can extract some often-neglected, or even unrecognized, factors. We'll concentrate in particular on the digestive system.


Figure ILF7. The human digestive system. From [9].

As can be seen from Fig. ILF7, the digestive system has a lot of parts to it. The basic picture is that food comes in at the mouth and makes its way down to the stomach. At various points, enzymes and chemicals are added, in particular a lot of hydrochloric acid in the stomach.

After the stomach, the processed mass passes through quite a long section (over 8 metres) of intestines, on its way to the anus. Again various substances are added, and in addition, nutrients generated in the complex processes may be extracted, particularly in the intermediate section of the small intestine, the jejunum, which is about two and a half metres long.

It is in the jejunum where nutrients resulting from the digestive process are mostly exported from the digestive system and into the bloodstream, for use elsewhere in the body. The inside of the jejunum has huge numbers of projecting fingers, called villi, where the transfer takes place.


Figure ILF8. Inside the small intestine. From [10].

The villi are covered with even smaller villi, called microvilli. The set-up provides a huge area of transfer surface where substances from the digestive system can pass through selective 'filter membranes' to enter the blood.

You might think from this, that the digestive system is like a product line in a chemical factory, with raw materials going in at one end, and useful product and waste coming out at the other. In fact, it is far more complex and subtle than that. This is because the digestive system is actually a whole ecosystem, quite separate from the rest of the body, and with quite different inhabitants working together to make effective ecosystem operation.

The Continents of Planet Corpus We can draw an analogy with the function systems of the human body, by representing each system as a continent.


Figure ILF9. Continents of Planet Corpus.

In Figure ILF9, the human body is shown divided up into five ecosystems or 'continents' (obviously this is very simplified). The digestive system is called 'Innerlandia'. It is quite different to the other four, these are intricately interconnected, with networks of nerves, blood vessels, lymphatic systems, and bones (with continents, these might be railways, roads, telephone lines, canals, and so on).

Innerlandia lacks all such interconnections. Its boundaries, such as the microvilli in the jejunum (Fig. ILF8), are like an all-enclosing wire frontier fence -- within Innerlandia there are none of the networks interlinking the other four ecosystems.

In a way, Innerlandia is like Antarctica is on Planet Earth. Antarctica lacks all the railways, roads, telephone cables, and canals which can be found threading through and interlinking the inhabited continents.


Figure ILF10. Antarctica. From [12].

Antarctica also resembles Innerlandia in that it is still largely unknown in any detail. Conventional history has it that it was first known to civilization in 1772, when the explorer James Cook circled it, without sighting the land, but inferred its presence from icebergs floating in the region. The Antarctic mainland is recorded as being first sighted by Russian expeditions around 1820 [14].

In a fascinating aside, this modern picture is turned on its head by the depiction of the Antarctic continent, with quite good accuracy, in a map of the world made by Oronce Fine in 1532!


Figure ILF11. Antarctica as depicted on Oronce Fine's 1532 Map Of The World. From [13].

Human immune systems almost certainly carry far, far more disease antibodies in their bloodstreams than any other species. This is especially true in AD, when such a high proportion of the world's population has either visited several foreign countries, or been exposed to visitors from foreign countries.

This is not just a matter of being careful about catching diseases. In earlier years, whole populations have been decimated, even driven to extinction, by their first contacts with outsiders from more cosmopolitan societies (read: having more disease antibodies). Here is some history [31] concerning the people of the Andaman Islands, an archipelago in the Indian Ocean, between peninsular India and Burma.

"Decline of the populations. The Andamanese's protective isolation changed with the first British colonial presence (in 1789) and subsequent settlements, which proved disastrous for them. Lacking immunity against common diseases of the Eurasian mainland, the large Jarawa habitats on the southeastern regions of South Andaman Island were likely depopulated by disease within four years of the initial British colonial settlement in 1789. Epidemics of pneumonia, measles and influenza spread rapidly and exacted heavy tolls, as did alcoholism. By 1875, the Andamanese were already "perilously close to extinction."

"At the time of first contact with the British there were an estimated 5,000 Great Andamanese. By 1901, 600 were left. By 1927 only 100 survivors remained. Around independence, the number had shrunk to 25. Fourteen years after independence, in 1961, only 19 remained. The numbers have rebounded somewhat and today about 50 remain, which is still far too small for a self-sustaining society. The Aka-Kol of Middle Andaman were extinct by 1921. The last Jangil (also known as the Rutland Jarawa) were sighted in 1907, and were assumed extinct by 1931, as were the Oko-Juwoi. Today only the Sentinelese (who live exclusively on North Sentinel Island) have been able to completely maintain their status as an independent, self-sufficient population, resisting attempts to contact them."


Figure ILF12. Two Great Andamanese men, in an 1875 photograph. From [31].

The destruction and loss of so many of the Andamanese people is an especially bad case. But milder cases are common whenever one population, one ecosystem, has come into contact with another. Taken slowly and in small steps, both ecosystems can survive, and even mutually benefit by taking in useful elements of the other.

Mis-Applying Base Logic Unfortunately, mis-application of simple Base Logic to a complex ecosystem is a common occurrence. Australia generally has a high incidence of sunlight. Excess sunlight can cause skin cancers. Both these factors are not disputed.

Australia is one of the most regulated societies in the world, some of its critics decry it as a 'Nanny State'. It's illegal to wire up your own electric plug without a licence, cyclists must wear crash helmets, all milk sold for consumption (even by pets) must be pasteurized, and so on.

When it comes to exposure to sunlight, authorities are very careful about children getting bad effects from it. Most primary schools now require children under their care to wear large floppy hats outside, even if the sun is not out. "No hat, no play" is the rule.


Figure ILF13. A typical Australian primary school hat. "Blue school hat with wide brim. Children are expected to wear their school hat in order to play in the playground as part of our SUN SAFE POLICY." From [30].

It makes sense to wear a hat if you are going to be out in the sun for a long time or in the middle of a hot day, but the primary school concerned is using very basic logic, a black-and-white view. This is misguided for two reasons.

The first reason is that human beings depend on skin exposure to sunlight to generate much of their required Vitamin D. Insufficient Vitamin D in the system can lead to a host of medical problems, such as osteoporosis, rickets, and impaired cellular functions such as cell differentiation [32]. So some sun exposure is necessary for health. This can be a problem in very high latitude countries, but should not matter under normal circumstances in Australia. However, Muslim women who customarily wear burkhas or other full dress covering their faces, as well as other skin parts, are liable to Vitamin D deficiency problems [33].

The second, and perhaps more important, reason is that some exposure to sunlight 'conditions' the body to accept a later exposure without the same liability to sunburn. By cutting off most sun exposure in these children, they may become more sensitive to the sun later on.

This 'conditioning' phenomenon has the same implications as those mentioned above, that ecosystems will be more tolerant of intrusions which might involve immune reactions if they have small regular exposures first. The principle is surprisingly widely applicable -- the body can develop tolerance to cyanide poisoning, even to radioactive exposure, with preliminary small doses.

About Milk Milk is, of course, the defining feature of the class of higher organisms called mammals. Milk is produced in the breasts (udders, tits) of females and is usually the main food source for the developing young after their birth.

Arguments over whether breast-feeding is good, or necessary, for standard development in babies have raged over the years -- the general consensus is very much for it. The nutritional aspects are clear -- human breast milk has evolved over the ages to be the favoured source of baby food.

But it's now becoming obvious that human breast milk contains a lot more than food for the baby. In addition, it is setting up the baby's digestive system to give it a good start in life. The milk contains masses of micro-organisms and bio-substances apart from foods, these prime the baby's Innerlandia.

One of the positive effects is to reduce proneness to auto-immune disorders. Here is an extract from [38].

"Research by the University of Otago in Christchurch and Wellington has shown that breastfeeding of infants has a clear protective effect against children developing asthma or wheezing up to six years of age. There has long been debate over this issue in the scientific literature, but this latest study of 1105 infants in Christchurch and Wellington over six years demonstrates that exclusive, or indeed any breastfeeding, has a protective effect on the development of asthma in young children."


"The protective effect against the development of asthma is even stronger in those infants and children who are atopic, that is those who have allergies and are therefore more vulnerable. 'These are very robust and convincing results' says lead author Dr Karen Silvers. She says the evidence is particularly strong for exclusive breastfeeding in infancy as being protective against asthma. The fact that exclusive breastfeeding protects well beyond the exclusive breastfeeding period is remarkable." 


About Birds How is it that birds, the other higher life-form occupying so much of the biosphere, can do so well without any use of mammary systems?

The answer seems to be that they have an equivalent system, that of regurgitation. The parents of hatchling birds gather and swallow food, and when they fly back to the nest, regurgitate some of it (now predigested and replete with bacteria) into the frantic little beaks.


Figure ILF14. Indian Myna Chicks. From [40].

In some ways, this is a less sexist system than the milk one, since both parents can take part!

Thinking About Dandelions Let's look at dandelions for a little insight about how plants, or any ecosystem elements, spread. Dandelions produce lots of tiny seeds suspended under light, parachute-shaped structures, which means that the seeds can be taken up by the lightest breeze. They may travel for a kilometre or more before coming to ground.

Landing on suitable soil, each seed may germinate and produce a new plant, which itself will flower and produce its own seeds in about a year. Nothing strange about that. Suppose your original plant had suffered a mild mutation, and its flowers had an orange, rather than yellow colour. How long before the orange dandelions took over the landscape?

Assume the average potential spread distance was 1 km per year, in 1000 years the orange dandelions could have spread 1000 km. In 20,000 years, the spread could be 20,000 km, which is half the circumference of the Earth, and by spreading in opposite directions, orange dandelions could cover the whole Earth.

In practice this doesn't happen. Even in favourable circumstances, plants only spread at about 1 metre per year. Why is this?


Figure ILF15. Dandelion Seeds. From [41].

The point is, the new dandelion type goes out into an already-populated ecosystem, one dense with competitors who have evolved and established themselves to be completely in tune with the slightly different conditions a little distance away. These competitors include others of their own kind. The new, orange, dandelions have to compete and struggle against their whole world, and generally won't succeed.

This feature can be positive and negative, when it comes to making a change to an ecosystem like Innerlandia. On the one hand, minor intrusions of micro-organisms which could cause illness ("germs") are unlikely to get far in the ecosystem. On the other, micro-organisms such as yeasts, which could improve digestive processes, may not get permanently established in Innerlandia, and may need regular 'topping-up'.

About Pasteurization When I was young, back in BC, I actually helped the local milk supplier get milk ready for sale. In those days, some travelling milkmen were still at the stage where the milk they had drawn from their cows, hand-milked into a milking bucket, went into a cylindrical metal container holding maybe 50 litres. Their horse and cart travelled their rounds, customers would come out with their jugs, and the milkmen would dip into the container with a dip like a deep ladle, and pour the wanted amount into the jug.

Other milk suppliers had progressed on, to glass milk bottles with wide recessed tops. To fill each bottle, you dipped out the right amount, poured it into the bottle, then pressed a cardboard disc marked with the appropriate grade into the recessed top. Some grades, such as 'Jersey' (from Jersey breed cows) had more cream than the average, and got a higher price.

Now in AD, we have had more progress. Many AD youngsters may not have even seen a cow, or know that milk comes from cows. Instead, milk comes from supermarkets, in plastic or cardboard cartons. All this milk is pasteurized, heat-treated to kill possibly harmful microbes.

Pasteurization was introduced, in particular, to stop cows infected with either of two diseases, tuberculosis and brucellosis, from passing on these infections to humans through their milk. Nothing wrong with that principle.

But here is a public-health measure which had a sting in its tail. Australia requires all milk sold for human consumption to be pasteurized, no exceptions. It's irrelevant that tuberculosis and brucellosis were eliminated from Australian dairy cow herds over 40 years ago.

The sting in the tail is this. Pasteurization not only eliminates the non-existent tuberculosis and brucellosis microbes, it also eliminates a host of other micro-organisms in cow's milk which are beneficial to humans.

This, then, is the explanation for why breast milk, passed directly to children without pasteurization, can have the effect of protecting them from asthma for years after they cease breast-feeding, whereas children who are not breast-fed but drink non-microbic formulas or pasteurized milk lack this protection.


This is not a new discovery. For years, Australians have realized the benefits of drinking raw (non-pasteurized) milk in combatting allergies and other disorders. But the bureaucracy says No.


Figure ILF16. Milk straight from the cow. "Those who want to drink milk the way it used to be wonder why it is illegal in a world where alcohol, cigarettes and white bread are available over the counter.." From [36].

Although Australia has made it illegal to sell raw milk for consumption, there are many people who are convinced of the benefits of drinking raw milk. In a December 2011 issue of 'The Australian' newspaper [36], Mark Whittaker reviewed the situation and its chequered history.

He shows how the gradual tightening of regulations, accompanied by official prosecutions, almost led to the bankruptcy of some dairymen. This dismayed consumers who were convinced of the benefits of raw milk. Here are some extracts from Whittaker's article.

"Kate Netschitowsky, from Adelaide, isn't waiting for any more studies. She grew up drinking raw milk from her aunt and uncle's dairy farm. As an adult suffering digestive problems, a constant blocked nose and earaches, her doctor advised her to steer clear of milk. She did not question the advice, nor wonder why milk never used to be a problem."

"Her second child was born with eczema and, at the same time, her cousin gave birth to a son who suffered eczema and asthma so severe he had to be hospitalized. Netschitowsky investigated childhood allergies and came across research showing raw milk had a protective effect. So she fed her daughter raw bath milk and sauerkraut, and in six months the ugly rashes that had covered most of her body had disappeared. Meanwhile, she watched her cousin go through the medical wringer, exhausted by the constant promise that the next drug would work, when it never did, and by the difficulty of avoiding all the usual food suspects - milk, eggs, wheat and nuts."

"Netschitowsky prodded her cousin in the direction of traditional nutrition, but the solution seemed too simple to be true, so the cousin was slow to come around. But she did, and five years down the track the boy has also been cured without drugs, says Netschitowsky. You can't even see his eczema scars any more."

"Numerous studies have demonstrated the link between raw milk consumption and lower rates of asthma, eczema and various allergies. But when a Food Standards Australia New Zealand committee -- consisting of bureaucrats from various government agencies and dairy industry representatives -- looked into the matter in a recent review of whether raw milk should remain illegal, they found that while an association between raw milk and fewer allergies and asthma was clearly demonstrated by well-designed studies, it did not prove that raw milk was superior to pasteurized milk."

"Their reasoning was that raw milk studies were 'consistent with a broader prevailing theory that there is a protective effect from a farming lifestyle'. This was despite the fact that the studies showed city children who'd never been to a farm got the same benefits from raw milk as farm children."

"The latest study of 8300 children, published in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology in August 2011, showed a 41 per cent reduction in asthma and a 50 per cent reduction in allergies for children who drank raw milk. According to the Weston A. Price Foundation, there are no records of raw milk having ever killed a child. One in 10 Australians has asthma, and 411 died from it in 2009."

When the authorities banned raw milk for human consumption from sale, some suppliers started selling it for consumption by pets. This was also subsequently banned.

The current situation is that people can drink milk from their own animals (goats and sheep, as well as cows), but raw milk can only be sold for purposes other than ingestion. Using the first exemption, some dairymen have sold shares in individual cows to consumers, who collect 'their own' produce and drink it.

Raw milk is still sold legally in Australia. It is labelled 'Bath Milk'. An international website [37] lists sources of raw milk in many countries of the world. A local Australian supplier has the following note on its website.

"Note that unpasteurised milk is sold only for purposes such as bathing milk or cosmetic milk as recommended by the Australian Health Dept.  Those that mention that it is for consumption purposes, will not be supplied."

Talking About Shit By now we should have quite a good picture of what happens when food, solid or liquid, enters your mouth and dives down into the works below. So it's time to talk about where it ends up.

Time to grasp the matter, and talk about reality. Everybody knows what 'shit' means, but some have problems talking about it, because 'shit' is a Bad Word. Still, Wikipedia has an entry for it [17].

Bad Words are an interesting topic, and they too change with time. Let's call terms which only slightly 'off', "Bad1" words. Bad1 words include some twee circumlocutions and technical terms, words such as poo, poop, number twos, faeces, and excreta.

Bad2 words are a little more cringeworthy, words like 'shit' and 'crap', back in BC these words would not be allowed in a printed story. Once, 'shit' would be in the most extreme category, Bad3, but has lost much of its impact in AD. According to Julie Zemiro, the only Bad3 word left in contemporary English is c***, now that f*** has dropped back to Bad2.

Then there are Bad0 words, completely acceptable almost anywhere. These include 'manure', 'droppings' and 'stool' (as in 'stool sample'), but these words only apply in certain contexts. Here we will stick to 'shit', with the hope that it will shortly drop in Badness rating to no more than Bad1.

Of course, all words move up and down the scale. In Chaucer's time, and even in that of Samuel Pepys, in the 1600s, 'shit' was a completely unexceptionable word. Now, in AD, 'nigger' is regarded as very offensive, but back in BC, 'nigger brown' was a normal label on colour charts. While 'joystick', nowadays a Bad0 word, started off as a slang term for 'penis'.

According to Encyclopaedia Britannica online [18], about 100 to 250 grams of shit are excreted by a human adult daily. It's made up of 75% water and 25% solid matter. About 30% of the solid matter consists of bacteria; about 30% consists of indigestible food matter such as cellulose; 10 to 20 percent is cholesterol and other fats; 10 to 20 percent is inorganic substances such as calcium phosphate and iron phosphate; and 2 to 3 percent is protein. Cell debris shed from the mucous membrane of the intestinal tract, and a small amount of other human-origin material, is also found in the shit.

It's notable that 30% is bacteria -- these are non-human cells, organisms which have bred, lived, acted, and been discarded during the digestion process. The proportion of human cells in shit is quite low.

Uses For Shit Under the name 'manure', animal shit has been used for centuries as a fertilizer for crops. Use of human shit for fertilizer is much less common, though it was routine in China, and probably is still so in some parts of the world.

Eating shit is, surprisingly, not uncommon in the animal world, and in some cases it is vital. The technical term is 'coprophagia', and this has an extensive entry in Wikipedia [22].

Shit actually contains up to 50% of usable food which has not been fully digested. In some countries, horse shit was collected to feed pigs, and even in the United States, cattle are fed chicken litter -- sometimes treated by heating.

Some herbivores, such as such as hamsters and rabbits, may produce 'soft fecal pellets' [22] which still contain a lot of partially-digested grass, and these are consumed immediately, a practice which is important to provide adequate vitamins B and K, produced in their gut by bacteria.

Young elephants, pandas, koalas, and hippos eat the faeces of their mothers or other animals in the herd, to obtain the bacteria required to properly digest vegetation found on the savanna and in the jungle. When they are born, their intestines do not contain these bacteria (they are completely sterile). Without them, they would be unable to obtain any nutritional value from plants.

Termites eat their mother's faeces as a means of obtaining their hindgut protists. Protists are uncomplicated, single-celled organisms, such as algae and simple fungi. Termites and protists have a symbiotic relationship that allows the termites to digest the cellulose in their diet via the protists.

The mothers of newly-born and infant mammals are commonly observed to lick their baby's anal regions, especially if the infant has diarrhoea or a digestive upset. This is said to be so that the mother can develop antibodies to the disorder affecting the baby. These antibodies are then passed on the infant in the mother's milk.

When it comes to human use, consumption of fresh, warm camel faeces has been recommended by Bedouins as a remedy for bacterial dysentery; its efficacy (probably attributable to the antibiotic subtilisin from Bacillus subtilis) was confirmed by German soldiers in Africa during World War II [22].

This use may be amusing, but there are other applications which fall into the life-or-death category. One of these is described by Dr Karl, Australia's foremost science guru.


Figure ILF17. Dr Karl. From [16].

Notwithstanding his taste in loud shirts, Dr Karl was in early 2012 honoured as an 'Australian Living Treasure'. See reference [1] to understand why Australians are quite content to make do with just his first name.

The Helicobacter Story There happens to be one inhabitant of Innerlandia about which quite a lot has become known. It's called Helicobacter pylori, and it's the bacterium associated with stomach ulcers. In an article in Scientific American [20], Martin J Blaser poses the question "Is the decline of Helicobacter pylori, a bacterium living in the human stomach since time immemorial, good or bad for public health?".

Here are some extracts from the article.


Figure ILF18. Helicobacter. From [20]..

"Helicobacter pylori is one of humanity's oldest and closest companions, and yet it took scientists more than a century to recognize it. As early as 1875, German anatomists found spiral bacteria colonizing the mucus layer of the human stomach, but because the organisms could not be grown in a pure culture, the results were ignored and then forgotten. It was not until 1982 that Australian doctors Barry J Marshall and J Robin Warren isolated the bacteria, allowing investigations of H. pylori's role in the stomach to begin in earnest. Over the next decade researchers discovered that people carrying the organisms had an increased risk of developing peptic ulcers -- breaks in the lining of the stomach or duodenum -- and that H. pylori could also trigger the onset of the most common form of stomach cancer".

"Just as scientists were learning the importance of H. pylori, however, they discovered that the bacteria are losing their foothold in the human digestive tract. Whereas nearly all adults in the developing world still carry the organism, its prevalence is much lower in developed countries such as the US. Epidemiologists believe that H. pylori has been disappearing from developed nations for the past 100 years thanks to improved hygiene, which blocks the transmission of the bacteria, and to the widespread use of antibiotics. As H. pylori has retreated, the rates of peptic ulcers and stomach cancer have dropped. But at the same time, diseases of the esophagus -- including acid reflux disease and a particularly deadly type of esophageal cancer -- have increased dramatically, and a wide body of evidence indicates that the rise of these illnesses is also related to the disappearance of H. pylori.

The theme that the ecosystems that exist within you can have both beneficial and harmful aspects will by now be familiar. An interesting thing that DNA studies reveal about H. pylori is that it is extremely diverse -- there are at least two strains, which differ between themselves in gene counts by 6%, which (according to [20]) is six times the corresponding difference between humans and chimpanzees. Also, both strains can exist within the same individual.

Helicobacter DNA studies have led to an interesting fact about a quite different topic -- that of mankind's migrations across the globe. By checking the proportions of Helicobacter variants in different populations, it is seen that South America was settled overwhelmingly by people from Portugal and Spain, while the distinctive Chinese variant is not significant anywhere outside south and east Asia.

The present Australian population is mostly from north and east Europe, while North America is obviously a blend. Yes, we knew all this anyway, from historical records, but the technique could be usefully applied in cases where the historical record is lacking.


Figure ILF19. Variations in Helicobacter genetics around the world. From [20].

Once again, Australia probably leads the field in Regulation. The authorities definitely know what is good for you, and are determined that you Obey. Here is an example in the area of foods to be available in Australian schools.


Figure ILF20 Northern Territory School Canteen Policy. From [39].

Here are some relevant extracts from the start of this document [39].

"This policy identifies the categories of food and drink items that will / will not be available or sold through school canteens and vending machines in Northern Territory government schools."

"The policy has been written in response to increasing levels of overweight and obesity in children and young people. Research shows that over a 10 year period, the prevalence of overweight in children aged 7-15 years has increased almost twofold, while that of obesity has more than tripled."

"Childhood obesity contributes substantially to illness in childhood. Short term consequences include psychological or psychiatric problems and adverse effects on the cardiovascular system. Long term consequences include adverse effects on psychosocial and economic outcomes in young adulthood and the persistence of obesity into adulthood. This in turn may translate into cardiovascular morbidity and mortality, and increased rates of diabetes, cancers, osteoarthritis, kidney disease, respiratory and musculoskeletal problems."

"Dietary choices that contribute to overweight and obesity can also result to increased dental disease. The rate of dental decay in young children in the NT is amongst the highest of any State or Territory."

And later on, some of the grisly details:

"4. Foods/Drinks that will not be available at all. Confectionery including chocolate, carob, cough lollies; Soft drinks (including diet), flavoured mineral water, cordial, sports drinks and fruit juice drink; Energy-high caffeine drinks (e.g. drinks containing guarana); Deep fried foods of any description e.g. spring rolls, dim sums etc; Deli meat e.g. fritz, salami, devon; Cup style noodles and full fat 2-minute noodles; High sugar spreads e.g. jam, honey, hazelnut spread; Foods such as pastry items, hot dogs, sausages and pre-packaged, cooked hot meals (unless School Approved); Cakes, biscuits, bars, muffins and snack foods (sweet/savoury); Ice creams and icy poles."

The Canteen Nazis Rule, OK?

Stoking your microbe boilers We've already seen how important all the microbes you lose when milk is pasteurized may be. There are other microbe sources which used to be present in common foods, but have quietly disappeared since BC.

Take cheeses. Cheeses are produced from milk, an agent called rennet is then added to precipitate solids, and cheese biological cultures are added -- the particular culture is what defines the type of cheese produced (cheesemakers can develop their own cultures, to get distinctive types of cheese). Here's some of what Wikipedia says on Cheesemaking [42].

"Cheesemaking may originate from nomadic herdsmen who stored milk in vessels made from the sheeps' and goats' stomachs. Because their stomach linings contains a mix of lactic acid, wild bacteria as milk contaminants and rennet, the milk would ferment and coagulate. A product reminiscent of yogurt would have been produced, which, through gentle agitation and the separation of curds from whey would have resulted in the production of cheese; the cheese being essentially a concentration of the major milk protein, casein, and milk fat. The whey proteins, other minor milk proteins, and the lactose are all removed in the cheese whey."

Cheese still contains many useful contributors to Innerlandia's microbe mix. However, the contribution from rennet has changed, it is no longer the original BC material.

Rennet If you look in an old dictionary (such as Lloyd's Encyclopaedic Dictionary, 1895) you'll find a definition for rennet along the lines of: "An aqueous infusion of the dried stomach of a calf. It is a valuable agent in the coagulation of the casein of milk preparatory to the manufacture of cheese".

Cheesemakers in AD use 'non-animal rennet', simple cultures now removed from connection with calf stomachs. Junket, a material used to make solid puddings from milk, also once used rennet, but now is a simple culture.

Probiotics Products such as yoghurt are good sources of useful bacteria and are acknowledged to be helpful in digestion. But again, they usually contain only two or three microbe types, maintained in simple culture, compared to the hundreds of types which may be present in raw milk.

Sausages, Tripe, and Haggis Back in BC, all sausages were supplied in natural skins, technically called 'casings' [26]. Some readers may be surprised to know that these skins were made from the cleaned intestines of animals. It would not be impossible for some of the digestive system microbes to survive through to the completed sausage.

A material called collagen makes up 75% of intestinal walls and other types of skin. Collagen can be extracted from the hides of cattle and other animals, and re-formulated for use in 'artificial' sausage skins. The product is well suited for use in high-speed sausage-making machines, which produce the bulk of sausages sold in supermarkets.

According to Perth specialist sausage manufacturer Paul Marinovich, natural sausage skins are still preferred for the best-quality products, though they cost more and are harder to use than collagen ones. Interested in a tip to tell the two apart in the store? The natural skins tend to give a curve to the sausages, the machine-made ones are straight.

Tripe is a type of edible offal from the stomachs of various farm animals. Back in BC, it was a common and cheap source of protein, but is little seen these days.


Figure ILF21. Tripe on sale in an Italian Market. From [43].

Haggis is a kind of savoury pudding containing sheep's pluck (heart, liver and lungs), minced with onion, oatmeal, suet, spices, and salt, mixed with stock, and traditionally encased in the animal's stomach and simmered for approximately three hours. Most modern commercial haggis is prepared in a sausage casing rather than an actual stomach.

All these goods incorporate parts from animal digestive systems. Microbes from these will normally be destroyed by cooking.

An Apple A Day Keeps The Doctor Away Many of the fresh foods from the vegetable kingdom that we eat come with their own natural micro-organisms, and more may be added en route to our stomachs.

Antibiotics Antibiotics have been one of the great modern health developments, transforming and extending lives throughout the world. But they do have a massive downside.

Of all the changes in medicine over the last 80 years, very possibly no factor would better correlate with the rise in auto-immune disorders, than the rise in use of antibiotics.


Figure ILF22. Antibiotic pills. From [44].

We've seen several instances above, where ingestion of antibiotics has had a bad, sometimes devastating, effect on people's digestive systems. Antibiotics are the Agent Orange to Innerlandia's jungles.

It's almost impossible to contemplate a future without antibiotics, but sensible changes to their use can be made. It's commonly accepted that over-use of particular types of antibiotics has 'built up resistance' to them [44]. How could this problem be minimized?

Here's a case where a little Base Logic may be effective. Why are most antibiotics swallowed? The disorders that they are intended to tackle are not usually in the gut, but elsewhere in the body. It would seem logical to bypass Innerlandia completely, and deliver antibiotics more directly to the target sites -- by injection, by inhalation, by absorption through skin patches, and so on.

It's also accepted that antibiotics are sometimes used even though the disorder involved is not known to respond to them. This is a common occurrence with virus-based diseases.

Finally, a little failsafe logic. Sometimes the Agent Orange approach will be the only one available, even though the danger of decimating the gut microbe mix is recognized. Store a little of the patient's shit as a backup, maybe frozen, and their inner jungle may be rapidly restored if necessary from this.

No Man Is An Island We exist in complex and changing environments, in which there is continual interchange between us and these environments -- interchange in energy, substances, and organisms.

Draft Versions, 1.0, 2012 Jan 25; 1.1-1.6, Feb 8-Mar 21;
Version 1.9, First draft up on Web, 2012 Mar 22;
Final general release V. 2.0, 2012 Mar 27
V. 2.2, minor changes, Apr 5, 19, May 27
V. 2.21, technical adjustments, 2014 Jun 21