What’s in store for 2025?

In 2024 I wrote 43 articles on various topics. I also highlighted eight trends within those articles as follows:

Gut microbiome
Ultra-processed foods
Mechanisms of action
Sunlight
Conferences
Other diseases
Regenerative gardening
Nature

I think when I used the word “trends” I probably meant recurring themes or topics that struck me as especially important. As I’ve thought about what I’ve written since I started, I realise that most of it has been driven by my need to learn specific things at the time. I see articles that cover the gamut but with scant underlying direction. I don’t know about you, but I need a structure upon which to hang new ideas and understand and remember how the world works.

As I produce new articles this year, I’m going to use two foundational principles as that structure.

Foundational Principles

Principle 1

Each of us exists in a unique state of health determined by interaction with the natural world. We can exists anywhere on a spectrum from good health to bad, and can change depending on the way we choose to interact with the natural world where we live.

This principle has been encapsulated in everything I’ve thought about. I first wrote it down in November 2022 when I stated:

“In order to maintain a healthy relationship with our microbiome, each of us may need to adopt a diet that is nutritionally unique and may change with environmental exposures at different stages of our lives. My approach to healthy nutrition means that I avoid processed components and eat a range of natural plant- and meat-derived, nutrient-dense foods. That seems to work for me at this stage in my life.”

I went a stage further in January 2023 in an article about the fundamentals of human metabolism when I wrote:

“…we all respond uniquely to what we eat, to levels of insulin in our blood, and to insulin resistance if it develops. I encourage you to understand your own metabolism and eat what you think makes sense for you.”

Principle 2

There are four aspects of the natural world we evolved with, as follows:

Food
Microbiome
Natural sunlight
The earth’s negative charge

Each of these affects our health in ways we still don’t really, if at all, understand. My education and career exposed me to the life sciences. Biochemistry dominates my understanding of the way our bodies work, and biochemistry combined with ecology informs how I perceive the symbiotic relationship with our microbiome.

Only in the past year have I started to appreciate the effects of natural sunlight and the earth’s negative charge on my health. I’m learning about the field of quantum biology in order to understand these things.

A unique state of health

In my past Life Sciences Research existence, we would describe an experiment with a single participant as having an N=1, where N is defined as the size of the experimental group. A healthy life requires an N=1 experiment. That doesn’t mean we’re on our own, we resemble people around us and may be guided by what has affected them. However, to achieve our best health, we need to pay attention to and listen to what our own body is telling us and to act accordingly.

I’ll be exploring what it means to live locally and seasonally. I’ll describe what it’s like where I live in Scotland with very distinct seasons that vary in day length, temperature, and what can be grown locally.

As I continue to explore the N=1 scenario I want to remain mindful of a couple of major themes playing out that I don’t think are still well enough understood. The first is the extent to which men and women are fundamentally physiologically different. I’ll try to highlight those along the way.

I also want to develop a better understanding of how the modern epidemic of evolutionary mismatch is playing out in human health. The concept is summed up by the phrase

“Genes load the gun, environment pulls the trigger”

In essence, each of us has within us a potential genetic tendency towards an outcome. When we live in an environment that does not match that to which we evolved and are adapted, our bodies and microbiome can become dysfunctional. I ate a poor diet for a long time and my negative symptoms were described as heart “disease”. In others it may be obesity, T2D, mental illness, etc. They are all symptoms of metabolic dysfunction brought on by poor diet. I want to describe more of those symptoms, paying particular attention to mental health, and show that they are all forms of malnutrition and their progress can be halted and even reversed. They are not chronic diseases.

Our natural world

Many of us are literally out of touch with our natural world. I’ve written extensively in the past about the dangers of industrially processed food ingredients and how not enough real food is harming us. I’ve also introduced the concept of the microbiome and our existentially necessary symbiotic relationship with it. In one article, I described the beneficial effects of sunlight on my energy and well-being. I haven’t addressed exposure to the earth’s negative charge.

This year, I hope to do a better job of filling in the gaps and explaining how they work together to help us live our best lives. I’m thinking about the following:

Food

Processed grains – explain why modern hybridized grain products harm us
Regenerative food supply – the key to returning to nutrient-dense food. I’ll continue with insight to our no-dig vegetable gardening progress
Fasting – essentially extending what happens to our body when we sleep. In particular, how do hormones result in differences between men and women
Evolution – does understanding how our body evolved to eat real food inform what we believe about nutritional guidelines?

Microbiome

There is only one microbiome in the world that changes in time and space. Modern notions of separation are false human constructs derived from a simplistic scientific approach that doesn’t join the dots
We still don’t really understand how it works
- Most of the human microbiomes we study today are unhealthy as a consequence of our modern lack of exposure to nature
- We don’t have the tools to sample and analyse our microbiome properly. This means that what we see may not actually represent what is actually happening
- We don’t know what a healthy microbiome should look like and how communication between our body and microbiome should work
For the microbiome, every person represents a separate time and place. This means that every person alive has their own functionally different version of the microbiome

Natural Sunlight

We may understand more about the effects of sunlight than the microbiome but don’t talk about them
Circadian rhythm – an important framework for our health
Different types of light (ultraviolet, blue, red, infrared) have different but synergistic effects on our health

Earth’s negative charge

I don’t have much to say on the subject yet. If you’re interested, here’s an easy book to read – Ober, C. et al (2014) Earthing: The most important health discovery ever! Basic Health Publications, Inc.

My thoughts on the challenge of achieving our best health:

“The quality of published data is inversely proportional to the level of effort to profit from that knowledge.”

The field of human nutrition is by far the most severely compromised as I wrote about a year ago. I’d go as far as say corrupted when you consider how poorly national food guidelines actually promote what’s healthy. Microbiome publications are contaminated with barely concealed attempts to raise funding for the next breakthrough drug. Thankfully the literature on sunlight and the earth’s negative charge is still mostly believable, although we’ll see how long that will last.

For most of my life I followed contemporary dietary and medical advice. I believe that advice resulted in chronic malnutrition and my heart disease. I’ve spent almost eight years now trying to figure out how to live more healthily and acting accordingly. In many ways I’ve never felt healthier. I have more energy, clarity of thought, and motivation than I can remember.

I’ll continue to write about this stuff if I think I’m still learning. Maybe you’ll benefit too, but remember, what works for me may not for you and vice versa, you are your own N=1.