Gut Pilot December 28, 2023

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"Slow and steady wins the race." - Aesop (we think)

Preparation- it really is a wonderful thing. Something as a simple as a lunchbox can have remarkable results for staying on course. Evaluate your situation and see where the difficult times of the day are and implement some controls to hit your dietary goals.

Just prior to Christmas, I had a particularly good follow-up visit with my primary care physician, a diabetic re-check we call it. I clocked in with the lowest HbA1c blood test I've recorded in 7+ years of tracking my results, 6.4 to be exact. This is the test used to measure a 90-day average of your blood sugar.

In my last 90-day interval, I had my own son's and two other weddings, smashed a couple holidays, and had a few other notable gatherings where gut health wasn't exactly top of mind awareness. If you commit to doing the right things most of the time, you can still enjoy life. I promise.

I always say your story is not my story, and it's not. But my results can be a shot in your arm as evidence that this stuff can work for you too. Whether it be weight loss, blood sugar management, cholesterol management, improving mental health, you name it, focusing on gut health by properly fueling your body is a winner.

Back to business...

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Gut health revolves around a robust, diverse collection of trillions of microbes standing watch over countless pathogens trying to kill us on a daily basis. We need these dudes to interact with our immune system. And let's not forget, we also need microbes to send signals to and from our brains.

Pretty important stuff, right?

Like anything else, they need to eat, and they are banging their forks and knives on the table for FIBER!

Now I'm not a very "medical guy". I can't and won't speak to the chemical and biological machinations of fiber molecules, saccharides, covalent bonds and all the other interactions at the cellular level. I'm going to talk to you in very basic terms.

I'm a visual guy and I need examples that I can understand. Hopefully it will give you just a basic understanding of the importance of fiber and what it does when it enters your body.

The basics are this:

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Since everything we care about in this space centers around gut health, fiber's number one job is to feed our good bacteria. Think of it this way, fiber is an Academy Award winner- the Best Supporting Actor to bacteria.

All the way at the bottom of the digestive tract, fiber feeds good gut bacteria, allowing the bacteria to ferment its otherwise indigestible structure. This process of fermentation creates short chain fatty acids (SCFA's). And SCFA's, butyrate specifically, help our gut lining remain strong. The gut lining keeps everything corralled inside our digestive tract to prevent a leaky gut from allowing those nasty pathogens from entering our blood stream.

The other way fiber works for us is at the top of the digestive tract- when we first eat it. This is where most of our other health markers begin to improve. We eat to fuel our bodies. Digestion is the way food is converted into fuel our bodies can use. Think of fiber as a large drogue parachute in the digestion process.

Maybe you've never heard of that term, but I'm sure you've seen drogue parachutes in action.

Yep, they are the big parachutes deployed to slow things down. Things that are typically going very fast.

When it comes to digestion, speed is a double-edged sword. If you're a high-performance athlete, a bodybuilder, or even a diabetic person in dire need of food to arrest a blood sugar descent, we need food to enter our bloodstream as quickly as possible to refuel.

Take some polar opposites for example. If someone is a couch potato, maybe overweight, or worse yet, obese, and of course diabetics, the speed of food entering our bloodstream can have very detrimental effects.

The type of food we eat directly impacts the speed said food enters the blood stream. On the one hand, highly processed, refined carbohydrates (AKA sugar) enter the bloodstream almost as soon as we eat them. There is no mechanism in place, no drogue chute to slow down this process.

Fiber on the other hand slows down the digestive process. It pumps the brakes on digestion and runs interference between food entering our bloodstream. This delay allows for longer periods of time for digestion, it slows everything down, it even allows for hormones to be released telling our bodies we're full.

All of these delays contribute to less weight gained, lower blood pressure, lower blood sugar, lower cholesterol, and damn near anything else you can think of! And yes, depending on the type of fiber which we'll touch on in a minute, it also ensures healthier bowel movements and bulking of stool. Afterall, fiber has always been associated with constipation and other bathroom habits.

That is important, but we're only now realizing that is only one part of many functions aided by fiber. A 2021 study comparing fiber and fermented foods showed an increased microbiome diversity from fiber and fermented food intake, as well as reduced inflammation markers. And more of both resulted in improved results. This was pretty staggering research for fans of fermented foods and fiber.

This is the million-dollar question. And here's my million-dollar answer. It depends on how much you can tolerate. Most recommendations use a 25g and 38g for females and males accordingly. But let me back up for a second. You will hear plenty of folks clamoring that fiber is not needed for the human body, it's not essential, and life is just fine without it. This usually comes from a couple circles.

First, their diets don't allow for it. That is, the way they've chosen to eat excludes some or all carbohydrates. Another popular segment are the folks that don't eat fiber so when they start, they do it in massive quantities sending their bodies into "fiber shock" and the fiber is promptly dispatched. (that's as clean as I can describe explosive diarrhea)

And in other cases, there is an identified and diagnosed condition where fiber is just not tolerated. I use the terms "identified" and "diagnosed" because all too often, the former group is confused with the latter. People not used to eating fiber assume they have some sort of Irritable Bowel condition simply because their systems are not used to fiber in their diet.

If you have a true intolerance to fiber, then of course medical attention and supervision is encouraged and often required.

Proper fiber intake should be intentional and gradual. When I started, I probably added an additional 10 grams or so. Today, I average about 50 grams per day. Some days I'll see as much as 70 grams. But the key point is I worked my way up to that level and I have enjoyed improvements in just about every measurable health marker.

Now this is where I'm going to be intentionally simple. Your head will spin right off your neck when you read about the molecular interactions of the different types of fiber. For our purposes, let's keep it very simple. Fiber comes in two forms, soluble and insoluble. Basically, does it dissolve in water or not.

Soluble fiber dissolves in water and insoluble does not. Soluble fiber becomes viscous, it thickens up and acts like a gel-barrier that slows or prevents nutrient absorption. In a nutshell, this is how our health markers are affected.

Insoluble fiber is the indigestible bulk that helps stool passage and also ensures safe travel all the way to the colon where colonic fermentation happens. It's where the heralded SCFA's are produced.

Both forms of fiber are extremely useful in different ways. How's that for condensing volumes of science into a few short paragraphs?

Fiber can be an incredible tool in the toolbox of health. But fiber needs to be done right. It should be intentional, gradual, and done at your pace, not mine. My role in this whole discussion is to share what I've learned from making fiber a part of my daily diet.

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Next week- When we talk gut health, why I'm a much bigger fan of food before supplements. (I didn't say instead of, just before)

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Thanks for reading,

Jeff

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