gut health foods
How to Cultivate a Healthy Gut Microbiome with Food
Check out this new video
on the microbiome. And if you want more, just go to
NutritionFacts.Org/Topics/Microbiome for all my videos on good gut health. "How to Cultivate a Healthy
Gut Microbiome with Food" When we eat meat,
dairy, eggs, seafood, our gut flora can take certain
components in them (carnitine and choline)
and produce something that ends up as a toxic
compound called TMAO, which may set us up for a
heart attack, stroke, and death.
So, give people two eggs,
and you get a spike of TMAO in your bloodstream
within hours of consumption. Because gut bacteria play a critical
role in this process, though, if you then give them a week
of antibiotics to wipe out their gut flora and refeed them
two more eggs, nothing happens. No TMAO in their bloodstream
because they have no egg-eating
bacteria to make it. But give it a month for their gut
bacteria to start to grow back, and the eggs start to cause
TMAO production once again. The same thing with meat. Give people the equivalent
of an 11-ounce steak, and TMAO levels shoot
up in the blood.
But feed them the same amount
after a week of antibiotics and nothing happens. So to run into problems, you need both the meat and
the meat-eating bugs. That's why you can
feed a vegan a sirloin, and they don't produce
TMAO within their body. They just don't have the
meat-eating bugs in their gut. Okay, now this should all be
old news for those who've been following the science. The
reason for this video is to show that this phenomenon happens
the other way around, too. When we eat whole plant
foods, like fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and beans,
along with nuts and seeds, our gut flora can take
certain components in them (fiber and resistant starch) and
produce short-chain fatty acids which can set us up for the
prevention of human diseases.
Short-chain fatty acids like butyrate
can help seal up a leaky gut, fight inflammation, prevent weight
gain, improve insulin sensitivity, accelerate weight loss,
and fight cancer. But these benefits
rely on two things: eating fiber and having
fiber-feeding bugs, just like the detrimental effects
from TMAO required not only eggs, dairy, or meat, but also the eggs, dairy,
or meat-munching bugs. Check this out. If you give people whole
intact grains — in this case barley kernels,
also known as barley groats — three servings a day, like I recommend in
my Daily Dozen app, within just three days of eating
that extra 30+ grams of fiber and resistant starch, their gut bugs were so happy
and produced so many short-chain fatty acids that people's
insulin levels improved by 25%, which means their bodies
needed to produce less insulin to take care of the same amount
of white bread, while still dampening the blood sugar spike.
But this was on average.
Some people responded to all that
extra fiber with beautiful dips in blood sugar and insulin responses,
but in others, the same amount of fiber and resistant
starch didn't work at all. Why? Because you don't just
need fiber, but fiber-feeding bugs like Prevotella.
How do you get more Prevotella so you can take full advantage
of the health benefits of plants? Eat more plants. Prevotella
abundance is associated with long-term fiber intake.
If you look at rural African children eating 97%
whole food, plant-based diets, their Prevotella is off the charts
compared to kids eating standard Western diets,
and this is reflected in the amount of short-chain
fatty acids they are churning out in their poop. In the industrialized world,
it's those habitually eating vegetarian and vegan that
promotes the enrichment of fiber-eating bacteria
in the gut. Here's the relative Prevotella
abundance between those who eat meat,
no meat, or all plants. This may help explain the
worse inflammatory profile in omnivores
than in vegetarians. Based on the findings relative
to bacteria abundance, the researchers suggest
that exposure to animal foods may favor an intestinal
environment which could trigger systemic inflammation and
insulin resistance-dependent metabolic disorders
such as type 2 diabetes.
And it's the reduced levels
of inflammation that may be the key factor linking a
plant-based gut microbiota with protective health benefits. Yeah, but can't meat-eaters
eat lots of plants, too? Omnivores have constraints
on diet-dependent gut microbiome metabolite
production. In other words, it's the flip side of the
vegan eating a steak. They can eat all the fiber
they want but may be lacking in fiber-munching machinery.
At low levels of fiber intake, the more you eat, the more
of the beneficial short-chain fatty acids are made. But at a certain point,
your available fiber-feeders are maxed out, and there's
only so much you can benefit. But those habitually eating
a plant-based diet have been cultivating the growth
of these fiber-feeders, and the sky's the limit,
unless, of course, you're eating vegan junk. But a whole food, plant-based diet
should be effective in promoting a diverse ecosystem of
beneficial bacteria to support both our gut microbiome
and our overall health..
Video Transcript – As found on YouTube