Esteemed Chromatographer
Corona is forcing many people onto a new path in life. Many searches for Life-improvement-opportunities? In addition, we have other big environmental problems to solve. Those who tackle them now and develop pragmatic solutions have an interesting and Lucrative future ahead of them.
We tend to forget that we are now 8 billion unique individuals worldwide! Everyone has different identifiable and hidden needs. It is commonsense, most people have similar desires – they want an interesting, healthy, financially secure and long life with a lot of freedom. This is most likely also true for you?
Already 5000 years ago, some intelligent people in Asia observed nature and how people reacted after eating plants, animals and fungi. Soon they discovered that certain plants and minerals had healing properties. This gave rise to Ayurvedic and Traditional Chinese Natural Medicine. Somewhat later, other cultures followed suit. All of them (Aborigines, Incas, etc.) developed their own healing methods using local plants, parts of animals and fungi.
Modern, science-based medicine began around 1928 when Alexander Fleming discovered the antibiotic penicillin. Around the same time, pharmacology emerged, scientifically describing the mechanism of action of new, synthetically produced drugs.
During my studies, I became fascinated by the science of futurology”. It claimed that we can calculate and predict future development in industries with analytical methods. At that time, the most common diseases were infections. A professor asked me to investigate the future of infectious diseases. In my research, I concluded that we would have eradicated all infectious diseases by the year 2000. (I could not imagine that nature is regularly producing new mutations for which we have no skills or means to fight).
Status Quo
Around the year 2000, sociologists surveyed 20 and 65-year-old people about their life trajectories.
The red arrow represents our desires – a long and pleasant life. The orange arrow shows reality. Many people get sick, die or retire from life at an early age!
The United Nations and the health statistics of Western economies answer the question mark:
12 disruptive factors that prevent a long and happy life
- poverty: Despite continued progress, 10 per cent of the world’s population live in poverty and struggle to meet their basic needs such as health, education and access to water and sanitation.
- hunger: we need to ensure food security, improve nutrition, achieve equitable food distribution and promote sustainable agriculture.
- heart and circulatory diseases
- cancer
- lung diseases
- strokes
- accidents
- Alzheimer’s disease
- diabetes
- kidney disease
- infections
- suicide
The Microbiome opens new perspectives
About 10 years ago we discovered that human health is built on three major pillars.
Most people believe that we get sick largely from pollution.
Unfortunately, few know that we are made up of about 45% of a variety of human cells that make up our anatomy and physiology. The remaining 55% of cells are bacteria, fungi and viruses distributed throughout our oral, genitourinary, skin and digestive tracts, known as the microbiome.
Researchers have now found that many serious diseases such as Diabetes Mellitus, Alzheimer’s disease, cardiovascular disease, cancer and others arise from the microbiome. Most people carry about 13 billion microorganisms. The researchers counted how many different microorganisms we have in the microbiome. They discovered that people in Western cultures with poor, standardised diets had only 800 different bacteria in their microbiome. An average person has a range of between 1000 to 1200 microorganisms. In tribal people in the South American rainforest, they found up to 4000 different types of microorganisms in the microbiome.
Varied food intake and the avoidance of bacteria-killing drugs (antibiotics) have a great influence on the smooth functioning of our health.
This led to a closer look at the components of food. More than 400,000 different plants and 18 times more fungi grow worldwide. Half of these plants are not suitable for human consumption. The researchers also found that over the past 20 years, major efforts have been made in western economies to reduce the range of edible plants to eighty plant varieties.
Simplification improves productivity and reduces genetic diversity
The idea behind optimizing plants will raise agricultural productivity and yields. With a smaller range of edible plants, special companies emerged that divided these plants into their components. Food technologists used these refined raw materials to develop new foods and beverages with new textures, colours, smells, tastes and packaging for the growing affluent population (potato and rice starch were used to make thousands of different snacks, bars, as well as adhesives, fillers and building materials). Unfortunately, such refined materials lack the important phytochemicals that are needed to make the food more nutritious.
Plants grow slowly. They need to defend themselves against insect and disease attacks. For this purpose, plants produce their own phytochemicals (flavonoids, terpenes, saponins, steroids, glycosinolates, alkaloids and many more.) to defend themselves. When we eat the plants, we feed the microorganisms a variety of phytochemicals from the plants.
In the digestive system, microorganisms break down the raw and cooked plants and the refined raw materials and transport the resulting phytochemicals and metabolites through the intestinal wall into the blood. With the blood, these molecules are distributed throughout our body until they get stuck on a receptor and do something or metabolize further.
These new foods, made with refined raw materials, are made of simple molecules. The microbiome breaks them down into reactive metabolites (free radicals). The free radicals trigger inflammation in our bodies, which over time become chronic diseases.
A wide range of complex phytochemicals also leads to a wide variety of microorganisms in our gut. Some phytochemicals neutralise free radicals. The greater the diversity of microorganisms in our gut, the better the metabolism and diversity of active ingredients. As we grow older, we suffer less from chronic diseases. We have better health and enjoyment of life.
Sick people go to the doctor. He prescribes us medicines, health care costs increase. These are costs that we don’t really need.
What alternatives do we have to cure rare diseases?
There is another problem here. We, humans, suffer from about 8000 different diseases and ailments. From about 1500 to 2000, we have medicines that are developed and manufactured by pharmaceutical companies. In the last 50 years, the cost of discovering, developing and synthesising a new drug has gone from USD 450 million (1995) to USD 5 to 12 billion. (2019). This means that the remaining 6000 diseases do not have enough patients to justify such high R & D costs.
Currently, there are only three options for patients with rare diseases
- to treat the disease with old traditional methods, e.g. Ayurveda, TCM. Unani etc.
- change the lifestyle and support the microbiome. (Experiment with new eating habits).
- diseases caused by a damaged microbiome (colitis) can be repaired cheaply with good microorganisms. (Faecal transplantation)
People nurture their own logic
Corona has shown us many economic and social problems. Lucky, we were able to bring tailor-made vaccines to the market quickly because a few researchers experimented with mRNA for 10 to 15 years beforehand. Unfortunately, not everyone has access to such products. Even worse, about 40% of the population lacks confidence in these products.
It also shows that many people think that we function like machines. This is an illusion that no one accepts. To create a little more understanding, let’s divide the population into three groups. 1. people who manage money and get paid for it. 2. people who earn their money with words and knowledge 3. people who earn their money with machines, instruments and knowledge.
In the third group you are, the chromatographers, scientists and researchers. In a pandemic, a national economy is led by a head of government. It makes its decisions from discussions with other groups. A global infectious disease follows a scientifically explainable pattern that can be measured. The data obtained has a great deal of truth. Mostly, it is a lot of data from measurements on living beings that are constantly changing. The consolidated data are not absolute, they are proof of concept, like most research data from living beings.
The others are very quick to want black and white facts as provided by machines. They don’t accept that life science data is constantly changing. In pandemics, all mechanisms change permanently because there are people behind them. The people from groups 1 and 2 go their own ways. Unfortunately, these ways lead to even more variables and chaos. This prevents the rapid immunisation of all people. This leads to mutations and to an infection that can no longer be eliminated or only with a bit of luck.
It is interesting to observe how people who know the active substances of plants (phytochemists, ethnobotanists) are now trying to use certain active substances against the Coronavirus. What we see is proof of concepts but no epidemiological studies in humans. Nevertheless, it is not wasted time. As we know from history, new viruses and bacteria will always make our lives difficult.
Dear Happy Chromatographer, Knowledge is growing so why not using it to live longer and better?
We know from thousands of years of experience that we need to intelligently adapt our lifestyle and diet. In the past two years, many people started experimenting with new foods and diets. Some even started growing vegetables in their own homes and flats. Many people realised that they were contributing to the list of major diseases (see above) and to the growth of the pharmaceutical industry with the diets they consumed over many years. Suddenly, more and more people are realising that by eating more plants than meat, they are also reducing emissions of climate-damaging gases.
In recent years, the nutraceutical industry has grown by 20-25%, especially in the US. To improve health conditions, they offer nutritional supplements in convenient forms (as tablets, as dinks, etc.). Whether this leads to progress, no one knows yet. Nevertheless, it is good that many people believe in this path and buy products. New knowledge, product improvements and jobs are constantly being created. In 10 to 20 years, we will have usable data that will show whether we are improving the world.
With the shift towards more processed foods, the demand for low-cost, mass-produced agricultural materials grew. Today, we realize that we are on the wrong track in this regard. In some countries, the state administration tried to control farmers and motivate them to develop mass products. In Switzerland, farmers work in mountainous and difficult terrain. Some entrepreneurs developed highly specialised machines for these farmers. Unfortunately, more and more farmers decided to work in factories. Now, the government subsidises the remaining farmers and considers them landscapers.
The primary sector, an important element for climate change
With the growing awareness that ongoing climate change needs adaptation, some farmers realise that they are an important element in this process. Unfortunately, many urbanites see traditional farmers as users of deadly pesticides that need to be banned.
Innovative farmers are distancing themselves from state administrations. They are growing new forms of food and vegetables. In the USA, small farmers are already selling organic vegetables through online shops under the slogan “Food is medicine”.
Corona caused an economic crisis for many people. This inevitably leads to new ideas and lifestyles in the post-Corona era. In such times, most governments try to keep the money flowing through the economy with various programs. Besides the pandemic, we are also experiencing climatic changes with huge impacts on the entire global population. Governments are investing huge amounts of taxpayers’ money to reduce the impact of climate change and boost the economy.
We know from all previous economic disasters that governments initiate change and adaptation. But soon entrepreneurial people will step in with innovative ideas and new technologies to spread the growing momentum around the world.
In emerging economies, there is not only poverty but also wealth in the form of accumulated knowledge and indigenous resources. Huge sums have been invested in training and research over the past 25 years. Today, there is a well-educated class of people everywhere who would like to earn higher wages in the western economies. In fact, those educated and skilled people are necessary to move their own country forward. The West should learn from history and not participate in controlling their resources. What is needed now is bilateral trade and mutual exchange of knowledge so that a wide diversity of food and beverages can be produced and exchanged bilaterally in an environmentally friendly, resource-efficient and productive manner.
With growing global populations, more efficient methods are needed to provide the necessary inputs ( clean water, clean air, pesticide and mycotoxin-free products). The West has a lot of experience but not yet cost-effective processes. By working together, there is pressure on both sides to find pragmatic solutions. This helps both sides to shape the world of tomorrow.
In the West, we must import food crops with high phytochemical diversity. We must find a way to strengthen our microbiome to reduce major diseases. We must also insist that high-quality standards are maintained.
Trade ensures broad distribution of wealth. With growing prosperity in emerging economies, Western farmers also have an opportunity to export locally produced specialities or to participate in bilateral trade. This will increase their importance in society. As successful entrepreneurs, they can gradually escape state control.
Now is the best time to forge a happy future
Dear chromatographers, we are on the way to a new world. In this process, there will be people who try to cheat and hack the system. But there will also be people who participate awake and honest. In which direction we are going is not yet clear.
We chromatographers know that analysing and measuring facts and detecting and fighting fraud is a very important component in this mix. Plants have complex chemical profiles that need to be analysed before a product leaves the manufacturer.
Natural products attract microorganisms. Some produce dangerous mycotoxins, others can be used to control insect infestations. Some benefits and hazards need to be measured and evaluated.
To make plants exportable, the physical properties need to be transformed to increase their stability or value.
There are huge growth opportunities ahead! Chromatographyshop provides the tools to help you achieve your goal. As an entrepreneurial company, we have the skills to make it work with global partners.
Please visit our website www.chromatographyshop.com and take a look at our systems. We also offer technologies for all types of industries. With our technologies, you can produce high purity products with unique and desired properties.
If you want to work from home, we offer the right system to start as a basement start-up to systematically grow into a productive business.
If you have ideas and a clear goal to build a new future, contact us immediately!
With kind regards
Willi Glettig
Co-owner Chromatographyshop.com