Gut Pilot January 11, 2024

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"...You suddenly understand something you’ve understood all your life, but in a new way." Doris Lessing

Prioritizing a whole-food diet with plenty of fermented foods and fiber before taking a bunch of probiotic supplements can and will save you a ton of money. Last week, no sooner after I closed the laptop my wife would later spill a cup of coffee on, I stumbled across a podcast discussing a brand-new probiotic supplement.

I was devastated that I didn't have this nugget for you last week because it's a classic case of what I was referring to on the food-before-supplement subject.

That's why I need to call an audible on this week's topic of Circadian Rhythms and gut health.

For my non-American football fans, "Omaha" was frequently yelled by quarterback Peyton Manning when he was the Denver Broncos signal caller.

We'll talk about circadian rhythms next week, I promise, but this food-before-supplement topic needs to be posterized one more time. (and if you're also not familiar with what it means to be "posterized", it means you've been unceremoniously "dunked on" in basketball).

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Before I get in the weeds dunking on supplements, indulge me with a quick review...

We know that keys to a healthy gut lining are epithelial cells with tight junctions, protected by a robust mucin (mucous of sorts) layer that protects shady characters (pathogens for example) from touching the epithelial cells and loosening the junctions to create a "leaky gut". That's a mouth full I know.

The epithelial cells in your lining love short chain fatty acids (SCFA's), butyrate amongst their favorites. And we know that one of the best ways for your gut bacteria to make SCFA's is by feeding them foods with dietary fiber, specifically resistant starch which is a type of indigestible fiber that makes it all the way to your colon for fermentation.

A key player in a fortified mucin layer is ironically a mucin-degrading bacteria known as Akkermansia Muciniphila (AM for short).

Akkermansia is a weird animal. We know it loves to feed on the mucin layer. There's a lot we don't know about AM but as it feeds on the mucin layer, we think it makes its own SCFA's which helps to regenerate new mucin cells and ultimately helps to thicken the very layer it's eating. And you wonder why I'm so fascinated with this stuff?

So the more Akkermansia in our gut the better. Got it.

Enter the supplement industry.

If they could just figure out if a specific resistant starch made Akkermansia more abundant, they could definitely make a lot of money by making it in a lab and selling it in a bottle. And while they were at it, if they threw some extra, lab-grown strains of Akkermansia in the supplement, they could probably charge more money too.

Now Akkermansia supplements are everywhere.

And since I've done a little research on this topic, the Google cookie bakers have tracked me relentlessly. Every used car salesman on the planet is trying to sell me Akkermansia supplements. That doesn't offend me as a former used car salesman, it offends me as a gut health guy not excited about getting ripped off for a supplement.

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They found that the indigestible resistant starch found in potatoes is wildly successful at bolstering Akkermansia. By the way, AM is present in healthy guts to the tune of somewhere between 3-5% of all bacteria. We all have it in varying quantities, based on our current state of gut health, and that's a good thing.

Which brings me back to the original point.

Can't I just replicate this Akkermansia enhancement project on my own? Do I really need to spend $90 a bottle for a 30-day supply of wonder capsules? I'm not sure how you keep your wallet closed but this is mine.

Couldn't we figure out a way to get resistant starch from potatoes in our systems to feed the Akkermansia we already have?

Afterall, most ingested probiotics (bacteria) sent down the GI tract do not colonize. Meaning we're not really adding to the numbers of Akkermansia by taking a supplement anyway.

Instead, they enter the front door at the top of the GI tract, pass through and hopefully confer some type of benefit to the resident Akkermansia bacteria, before ultimately showing themselves out the back door at the bottom of the GI tract. We can see this through fecal testing.

So, can you try this at home?

Yes. Quite easily actually.

And if I was a contestant on my favorite game show as a kid, Card Sharks, and the venerable host Jim Perry asked me "Jeff, do you want to play or pass?" I would and have said "Let's play Jim."

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Try this instead of committing to roughly $1080 per year chasing Akkermansia via supplements. Grab a 5lb bag of Yukon gold potatoes. I think you can safely buy them for $4.50 a bag, but let's say you get high-grossed and have to spend $5.

Bake or boil the potatoes and let them cool overnight in the refrigerator. This process helps to maximize the resistant starch in potatoes. You can even reheat the potatoes and not lose the resistant starch released from cooking.

The differences between baking or boiling the potatoes before cooling them has negligible differences in results on overall resistant starch quantities so pick your method and go for it.

When they researched this, they found that just 3.5 grams of resistant potato starch seemed to work the best with regard to Akkermansia enhancement. It doesn't take much RPS.

If we can agree that roughly 95-100 grams of boiled or baked potato (one medium or a few of the small, mini potatoes) produces roughly 3.5 grams of resistant potato starch, let's do some math.

Fasten your seat belt folks.

It's going to run you about $3 a day for the supplement I read about. There's our measuring stick. If money is no object to you, just hit the little "x" in the upper right-hand corner, close your browser, email me for the supplement company contact info, and I'll talk to you next week. If you're remotely as cheap as I am, follow me for a couple more seconds.

In my 5lb-bag of Yukon golds, I have 2270 grams of raw potatoes. So, I have 22.7- 100g portions of spuds and we believe this produces roughly 3.5g's of resistant starch. At the conservative cost of $5 per bag of yukes, that's 22 cents for every 3.5 g's of resistant starch. I sat in the back of many classrooms, so let me say that again for those of us who sat in the back....

THAT'S 22 PENNIES- LESS THAN A QUARTER A DAY!... FOR 3.5 g's OF RESISTANT STARCH

(all caps added for "yelling" emphasis according to the Progressive Car Insurance guy)

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I hope this little mathematics exercise helps to explain why I ALWAYS say food before supplements. Always try to get your probiotics from fermented foods before supplements. The non-incentivized experts will largely espouse the same message.

In the spirit of complete transparency, this particular supplement company has done the unthinkable in the supplement space and tested their product. They should be commended because that doesn't happen very often.

Afterall, in the Wild, Wild West world of supplements, why the hell would a company want to spend a bunch of money making an unregulated product and then take a chance that a test could reveal it's not worth a damn? So, hats off to this company and any supplement company for at least making an effort to deliver supporting evidence on what they say is in their product.

In fact, I just messaged a Twitter friend of mine named Kim earlier this week. I'm not saying supplements don't have a place in the world of health. And I'm not saying there won't ever be a time where I decide to supplement,

I just feel strongly that BEFORE you select that route, you maximize your diet first. I'm still working on the former and have been pleased with my results so far.

Food first and THEN supplements is a hill I will die on. It's a hill I've been fighting on for 4.5 years now. I'll never be the science authority on this stuff. There are people way smarter than me in these labs.

No, my sole intention is to pass along my trials and tribulations. I have read and continue to read about this stuff because I have a vested interest. The remaining 2/3rd's of my colon are counting on me.

You probably don't share the same affinity for this stuff as I do. But the results are something that I feel most mortals might be interested in.

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Next week- I promise no more Omaha's. Circadian Rhythm and gut health will not be denied. It's vitally important. I had two major opportunities in my life to endure the wrath of circadian rhythms outside the confines of gut health. First, I flew helicopters in the Army, mostly under night-vision goggles so I wrestled (and so did my gut) with the daylight-darkness reverse cycle frequently.

Second, we lived in Alaska for two years and the daylight-darkness titanic struggle was very real. Just ask my wife. Did I mention we were in the Last Frontier with our two toddler boys...in diapers? Most mornings I left to this....

Many evenings I came home to this....

Your Circadian Rhythm can destroy your gut and we'll talk about how that occurs next week.

Thanks for reading!

Jeff

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