“Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.” —Albert Einstein
Like much of what I learn and share with you about the gut microbiome, I find it from a host of experts I follow on X.
John Damianos, MD, is a GI Fellow at the Mayo Clinic and is someone I can always count on for objective, cut-to-the-chase gut health science.
Sometimes he swims in the “Sheldon from Big Bang Theory” end of the pool as he forces me to work harder toward comprehension.
He references an article by a slew of authors that breaks down this complex explanation by using a progression from disease to the optimal functioning parts of a healthy gut.
The authors must have known my need for visual aids since they included a fantastic diagram of the easiest way to define an unhealthy gut on the left and progressed to an optimal functioning gut on the right.
In other words, depending on where you start in your gut health journey, it will be easier to define a healthy gut from how deep of a hole you start from.
Let me explain it differently.
If you start with a diseased gut, it’s pretty obvious how far you are from a healthy gut.
You’re in a pretty deep hole.
When I think of climbing out of a deep hole, I think about the Chilean Coal Mine disaster in 2010 when it took 69 days to rescue 33 coal miners from about 2300-feet below the surface.
The rescue required skill and precision on multiple fronts and ultimately they prevailed.
When you think of a diseased gut, it takes a much larger effort to recover, rebuild, and thrive with a healthy gut. There’s a bright spotlight on the image of a healthy gut when you’ve been the owner of a diseased gut.
Staying with the idea of starting in a hole, maybe we’re not “Chilean Coal Miner” deep, maybe we’re only “Baby Jessica” deep.
I’m showing my age a bit but in 1987, Jessica McClure fell into a well in Midland, Texas, and needed to be rescued from about 22 feet below the surface. This 56-hour rescue was every bit as challenging but much closer to the surface.
It gets slightly tougher to identify a healthy gut when you have an absence of a diseased gut and only symptoms of discomfort like bloating, gas, irregular bathroom habits, etc.
If someone becomes accustomed to “dealing” with this regularly, the effort it takes to restore gut health can be just as challenging. If there’s only slight discomfort, the idea of having an optimal, functioning gut is a little less apparent.
The likelihood that someone will seek help to address minor, yet abnormal symptoms of gut function delays or prevents achieving optimal gut health.
Lastly, perhaps we don’t fall below the surface at all. Maybe we just slip on an icy surface.
The absence of any disease and being asymptomatic requires the smallest effort to obtain optimal gut health (because you’re almost there) but it skews good gut health more than any other stage.
The appearance of being disease and symptom-free does not mean there is an absence of the beginnings of gut permeability, low-level inflammation, or sub-optimal nutrient absorption. Not to mention, pathogen defense is a full-time job for a healthy gut.
What can we take from this?
Defining a healthy gut can be challenging. It’s more challenging when there are no black and white, no doubters of poor gut health staring you down.
Diseased gut owners have a huge advantage because the task is obvious. The rebuild and restoration measures taken; diet, exercise, good sleep, and stress management are implemented out of necessity.
It is more challenging when the gut landscape might appear healthier than it is.
I hope you’ll give the linked article a read. It’s very enlightening.
Bonus Material
There are many “laugh-out-loud” memories I have but only one happened when I saw the image above of the toddler going down on the ice.
Our last stop in the Army was in Fairbanks, Alaska. I don’t do well on the ice so walking was a challenge for me ten months out of the year.
My wife and I made a run to the grocery store on a 40-below evening, without a wind chill of course. I felt more prepared for the elements than her. And I let her know that.
As we made our way to the front door of the grocery store in the “pitch black” darkness, a truck stopped, and the driver flicked the headlights to signal safe crossing. As I held my wife’s elbow because her tennis shoe-covered feet might need some stability on the ice, we simultaneously stepped off the curb onto the pavement.
In the bright white spotlight of the waiting truck, my second step saw my feet, adorned with my clearance aisle winter boots, launch skyward.
As my body was completely horizontal, suspended in the air some 3 feet off the ground, I distinctly remember my wife not breaking stride as she wrestled her elbow from my airborne, clenched hand.
Still ill-prepared for the elements, she uneventfully made her way to the warmth inside the front doors.
Some 15-feet away, my body had reached its apex and began an unceremonious descent.
Still in the white-hot beam of the awaiting headlights, a thunderous thud marked my final resting spot. I triaged myself by whispering “OK, OK, OK”.
I gathered myself and started laughing as I slipped trying to get up, to what had to be pants-wetting laughter inside the truck. This driver had a front-row seat to this spectacle.
The only person who thought it was funnier was my wife, as my snow and ice-covered parka walked through the sliding doors at the cart corral.
Take care of your gut and be careful this year on the ice. If I see you fall, I will laugh.
Thanks for reading,
Jeff
