Eat Resistant Starches & Prebiotic Fiber For Health, Energy & Fitness

 Ready for a sad fact?

According to the National Institute of Health, only 5% of the population meets the RDA for fiber.

Most people would have to double or triple their intake to experience health, fitness, and performance benefits.

Fiber and food quality are the most important factors that regulate gut health.

To top it off, there's a DIRECT link between the health of your gut and the status of your brain, also known as the gut-brain axis.

As fiber ferments in the gut, a fatty acid called butyrate. Yes-that butyrate-the energetic ketone molecule everyone refers to as a benefit of the ketogenic diet) is produced.  Quite literally, your gut is producing brain food.

Beyond gut health, butyrate aids in the body's natural abilities to:

In addition to it's local benefits to the gut, butyrate can support the body's natural ability to:

• Provide you with energy
• Heighten cognitive function and mental acuity
• Up-regulate brain cell growth
• Support neurotransmitter metabolism (brain chemical messengers)
• Suppress inflammation
• Fight cognitive decline
• Boost insulin sensitivity (help you metabolize carbs better as muscle glycogen)
• Improve mitochondria function (the energy batteries of the cell that fuel everything we do in the inner and outer domains of life)
• Regulate Mood

Eating resistant starches and/or taking prebiotic fiber is key for improving gut health and butyrate levels.  Because butyrate is produced, these carbohydrates aren't fully metabolized the same way other carbohydrates are in the body.

These foods actually 'resist' breaking down into sugars like traditional carbs and passes through your GI tract undigested until reaching the colon-this is where shit goes down (pun intended :) ).

From here, resistant starches can aid in...

• Fat loss
• Improve glucose metabolism (again, how you utilize carbs in lay terms)
• Combat the growth of 'bad' bacteria
• Feed 'good' bacteria
• Provide satiety to keep food cravings in check and regulate appetite

Where do you go from here?  First off, you can eat more resistant starches.  Furthermore, a good idea is a regular dose of resistant starch and prebiotic supplementation.  I think this is a practical way to make it happen for most busy professionals and athletes.

References

[1] Liu, J., Sun, J., Wang, F., Yu, X., Ling, Z., Li, H., ... & Yu, J. (2015). Neuroprotective effects of Clostridium butyricum against vascular dementia in mice via metabolic butyrate. BioMed research international, 2015.

[2] Ryu, H., Smith, K., Camelo, S. I., Carreras, I., Lee, J., Iglesias, A. H., ... & Ferrante, R. J. (2005). Sodium phenylbutyrate prolongs survival and regulates expression of anti‐apoptotic genes in transgenic amyotrophic lateral sclerosis mice. Journal of Neurochemistry, 93(5), 1087-1098.

[3] Patel, P., Nankova, B. B., & LaGamma, E. F. (2005). Butyrate, a gut-derived environmental signal, regulates tyrosine hydroxylase gene expression via a novel promoter element. Developmental brain research, 160(1), 53-62.

[4] Jangra, A., Sriram, C. S., Dwivedi, S., Gurjar, S. S., Hussain, M. I., Borah, P., & Lahkar, M. (2017). Sodium phenylbutyrate and edaravone abrogate chronic restraint stress-induced behavioral deficits: implication of oxide-nitrosative, endoplasmic reticulum stress cascade, and neuroinflammation. Cellular and molecular neurobiology, 37(1), 65-81.

[5] Zimmerman, M. A., Singh, N., Martin, P. M., Thangaraju, M., Ganapathy, V., Waller, J. L., ... & Liu, K. (2012). Butyrate suppresses colonic inflammation through HDAC1-dependent Fas upregulation and Fas-mediated apoptosis of T cells. American Journal of Physiology-Gastrointestinal and Liver Physiology, 302(12), G1405-G1415.

[6] Tilg, H., & Moschen, A. R. (2014). Microbiota and diabetes: an evolving relationship. Gut, 63(9), 1513-1521.

[7] Steliou, K., Faller, D. V., Pinkert, C. A., Irwin, M. H., & Moos, W. H. (2015). Bioprotective Carnitinoids: Lipoic Acid, Butyrate, and Mitochondria‐Targeting to Treat Radiation Injury: Mitochondrial Drugs Come of Age. Drug development research, 76(4), 167-175