David García Broto, 51, has a degree in Telecommunications, a computer engineer and has a postgraduate degree in artificial intelligence (AI). He is also a businessman, athlete and a champion of healthy living and eating: “Digestion begins in the mouth. Take your time to eat and salivate correctly. Failure to do so subjects the digestive system to overexertion and harms health.” He knows it too well...
30 years ago, in his second year of college, David began to feel unwell. He had had digestive discomfort for some time and did not pay attention to his mother when she asked him to go to the doctor because she attributed it all to nerves about the exams. “I'll go when I can,” she said. And when he could, it was too late. Ulcerative colitis. Two weeks admitted to the Hospital Clínic in Barcelona. He had three subjects left for September.
Ulcerative colitis is a chronic autoimmune inflammatory disease: the body's defenses become uncontrolled and mistakenly attack the intestinal tissue, affecting the colon and rectum. Abdominal pain, ulcers, bleeding, repeated visits to the bathroom and weight loss, “among other stories to keep you from sleeping.” Conventional medicine combats it with corticosteroids and immunosuppressants, which are effective, but with side effects.
Immunosuppressants counteract the body's abnormal response by artificially reducing the defenses with drugs, which on the one hand works well but on the other hand opens the door to other possible infections and complications. Medications combat the symptoms, yes, but how to prevent them? David asked countless specialists if diet and lifestyle habits could help him in his daily life.
Many of his interlocutors responded with a shrug, although he is by no means the only patient interested in this issue. Every day, Google registers 3,000 searches from Internet users asking what to eat or stop eating to treat inflammatory bowel disease: 3,000 a day, 21,000 a week, 1,095,000 a year... So David, who runs marathons and climbs four thousand , he thought of Hippocrates.
The father of health sciences was born in the 5th century BC. To him we owe the Hippocratic oath and phrases like this: “Let your medicine be your food and food be your medicine.” David had his second hospitalization just after finishing his degree. Then he was quiet for twenty years, until 2017, when the third attack occurred, the most serious, because he did not warn him and left him on the verge of a colostomy and the removal of part of the colon.
Surgery was not necessary, fortunately. The doctors were even surprised by the recovery capacity of the patient, who was still young, but no longer a child. David attributed this to his passion for the sport, which he records on his YouTube channel. He runs, climbs, hikes and snowshoes. He also takes extreme care of his diet and his example confirms the excellence of the Mediterranean diet.
Eat a lot of fresh vegetables and fruit (whenever you can, with skin to promote intestinal transit). At midday, meat or fish in moderation; and at night replace animal proteins with those from legumes. And always gives the table the importance it deserves. No eating quickly and badly. He is doing so well that he thought about putting his experience as an entrepreneur and software engineer at the service of others.
It is not about discovering garlic soup or the truths of truisms. The benefits of exercise and healthy eating are indisputable, but he believes that “AI can help our microbiota.” He tried to convert his personal learning into scientific knowledge. In 2001 he won the InnoBIT award with his company, Imagiam, capable of creating images with the illusion of movement and 3D with printing technology.
If technology opens up so many possibilities, it was said, why not study with AI the impact of nutrition and lifestyle on the intestinal microbiota (the bacteria in our intestine) and its therapeutic effect on inflammatory diseases? It was the moment in which David, who already knew how right Hippocrates was (“Let your food be your…”), discovered how right Larra was also: “Come back tomorrow.”
He spent his time and money on research. Two years ago he created a website and contacted the Higher Center for Scientific Research (CSIC), to which he presented his project. He wants to develop a data model that investigates with artificial intelligence the impact of nutrition and lifestyle on the bacterial flora of our other brain, the stomach, and its therapeutic effect on intestinal diseases.
Ascensión Marcos Sánchez, director of the CSIC immunonutrition group and former president of the International Society for Immunonutrition, among other positions, applauded the idea, along with experts from the University of Oviedo, the Complutense of Madrid and six hospitals: Clínic (Barcelona) , Virgen Macarena (Seville), HUCA (Oviedo), Gregorio Marañón (Madrid) and Santiago de Compostela.
The objective is to find effective tools to control health without depending exclusively on drugs. One of the first steps would be an accessible digital platform with a dietary record of users. Another step would include analyzing the stools of patients from the six hospitals mentioned above in search of links between nutrition, lifestyle, microbiota and biomarkers of inflammatory activity.
With the information collected, users could receive advice on dietary changes and improving daily habits to reduce the symptoms associated with the disease. This could translate into fewer sick leave and visits to the emergency room, among other advantages. But, the researcher laments, “the recommendations cannot be patented or sold in pill form: they are not of interest to the pharmaceutical industry.”
His project, which has tried three times to obtain subsidies without success, remains on hold. He has clashed with bureaucracy, limitations on public funding and the prioritization of other initiatives in the private sector (“more interested in little pills than in advice”). The desperation of his promoter, who can no longer deplete his savings, led him to Change.org, where he has already collected almost 55,000 signatures of support.
Christmas is approaching and David, who has received siren songs from the University of Lausanne, does not rule out trying his luck in Switzerland. He wants to give a gift to his family. To his mother, his sister and his two nephews, aged five and seven. The gift is this: “I love you. I will continue fighting wherever and until the end so that no one in my situation receives a shrug of the shoulders when they ask what alternatives they have.”
