David García Broto, 51, has a degree in Telecommunications, is a computer engineer and has a postgraduate degree in artificial intelligence (AI). He is also a businessman, athlete and champion of healthy eating: "Digestion begins in the mouth. Eat slowly and salivate well. Not doing it harms us...".
His digestive problems started in the second year of his degree. It wasn't nerves, as I thought. He was hospitalized for two weeks and had three subjects left for September. Ulcerative colitis is a chronic autoimmune inflammatory disease: the defenses get out of control and attack the intestine. Pain, ulcers, repeated visits to the toilet, loss of blood, weight... Corticosteroids and immunosuppressants are effective, but they have side effects and open the door to other possible infections and complications.
Drugs fight the symptoms, but how can they be prevented? David, who runs marathons and climbs four thousand, thought of Hippocrates, the father of medicine, who was born in the fifth century B.C. This phrase is his: "May your medicine be your food and food your medicine". Many experts to whom he consulted the question did not know how to give him an answer.
He had his second hospitalization just after finishing the race. Then he was quiet for twenty years, until 2017, when a third attack, the most serious, left him on the verge of having part of his colon removed. Fortunately, the colostomy was not necessary. The doctors were surprised by his recovery, which he attributes to his passion for sports and healthy eating.
Eat lots of fresh vegetables and fruit (whenever you can, with skin to promote intestinal transit). At noon, meat or fish in moderation; and at night replace animal proteins with those of legumes. It's not about discovering garlic soup. The benefits of exercise and the Mediterranean diet are indisputable, but "AI can help our microbiota". If these advances open up so many possibilities, David thought, why not use them to study the impact of nutrition and lifestyle on the bacteria in our gut? And from Hippocrates ("May your food be yours...") to Mariano José de Larra: "Come back tomorrow".
Two years ago he created a website (Nutribiota-ibd). He also exhibited his project at the Superior Center for Scientific Research (CSIC). He wants to develop a data model that investigates with artificial intelligence how the table and lifestyle influence the bacterial flora of the stomach. Ascensión Marcos Sánchez, director of the immunonutrition group of the CSIC, applauded the idea, together with experts from the University of Oviedo, Complutense de Madrid and six hospitals: the Clínic (Barcelona), Virgen Macarena (Seville), HUCA (Oviedo), Gregorio Marañón (Madrid) and Santiago de Compostela.
The aim is to find effective tools to control health without relying exclusively on drugs. One step would consist of an accessible digital platform with a dietary record of users. Another would include the analysis of patient stools from the six hospitals mentioned in search of links between nutrition, microbiota and biomarkers of inflammatory activity.
With the information collected, users could receive advice on dietary changes and daily habits to try to reduce symptoms associated with the disease. But "the recommendations cannot be patented or sold in pill form and, therefore, are not of interest to the pharmaceutical industry."
The project has collided with bureaucracy, limitations in public funding and the prioritization of other initiatives in the private sector ("more interested in pills than advice"). The desperation of its promoter, who can no longer use his savings, led him to Change.org (Inflammatory Bowel Health), 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, especially his mother, his sister and his two nephews, aged five and seven. The gift is this: “I love you. I will continue to fight wherever I am and until the end so that no one in my situation ever again looks for alternatives and does not find answers".
