Countdown To Carbmageddon

ost people don't realize it, but inside and outside of us, trillions of bacteria, viruses, fungi and even insect life—lots of insect life—live in perfect balance, keeping all parts of us, large and small, functioning with no outward or inward signs of their existence.

It's only when these delicate balances are upset that we begin to become aware of the awesome power of these tiny creatures to influence our wellbeing—or lack thereof.

If we imagine ourselves to be a planet, then all of the various microbes listed above could be considered the aliens inhabiting this planet; inhabiting us.

Just like the planet we live on, Earth, the creatures that live on and in us are organized into vast populations of organized groups, but unlike Earth, easily the most numerous population of creatures that inhabit us are the bacteria that live inside our guts.

Let's consider this population of bacteria, leaving out for the moment the other things: viruses, fungi and so on.

We can imagine our gut to be like a city, and the bacteria to be the city's citizens. Just like in a city, there are neighbourhoods, some upscale and some not so upscale. There are upstanding citizens, and then there are gangs. And just like in a real city, there are police to control the gangs—bacterial cops.

Under normal circumstances, everyone in this vast city gets along very well. It's usually one big, happy family . . . until there is an invasion of the bad guys: the Pathogen Gang.

The Pathogen Gang can be small groups of hoodlums who breeze into town, get drunk on glycerides or other cheap chemicals and try to pick up local germs, but the bacterial cops usually have no trouble  kicking asses all round and the Pathogens are packed off and sent out of town on a, umm, crock of shit.

What I've been living on for the last two weeks

That's a somewhat simplistic description of what goes on in Planet Gut, but for the past two weeks I've been doing my level best to keep the kids in the 'hood very well fed on the finest life can offer because I want them to feel as good as they can feel before I pull the rug out from under their 52 trillion little flagellas.

Lemon Meringue Pie. Kinder Buenos. Bastard Robbers Caramel Turtle Truffle ice cream with lots of Magic Shell and sprinkles, not to mention whipped cream.

Enough sugar to trigger pre-diabetes in a termite colony crossed my plate in the last fourteen days and it's all coming to an end on Sunday night, November 17 . . . on that evening I'm going to fire up my test kit from Viome and see just what my microbiome has been up to, partying it up with all these sugars and fats.

After that, starting Monday morning, it's going to be two weeks of as little sugar as possible. No more six apples for lunch; it'll have to go down to one. No dessert after dinner. No nothing after dinner. Just tea.

It's going to be the toughest two weeks I've ever done, but it has to be done, if this experiment—fucked up the first time around by the idiots at uBiome (now justifiably bankrupt)—is to come to a successful conclusion.

So it's a sugar-filled countdown . . . to Carbmageddon.