- Inulin and butyrate are two great things to know about,
if you're on the gut healing path,
or you're just trying to optimize good health
as a long-term health strategy, which is a great idea.
So starting with inulin, it is a type of a soluble
plant fiber and it acts as a prebiotic,
meaning it feeds the beneficial bacteria in your gut.
It can come from a lot of places, it's found in
over 36,000 different foods,
some you may be familiar with would be wheat, onions,
bananas, garlic, onions, Jerusalem artichoke,
but it's more commonly when you see it in food,
it's more commonly coming from chicory root.
It has a little bit of sweetness to it,
it has about one tenth the sweetness of sugar,
and it has a minimal effect on blood glucose, which is good,
meaning is probably not gonna be feeding a lot of the bad
things in your body that like to feed on sugars.
And it's also not gonna be causing all the negative effects
of blood sugar roller coasters you get
from other forms of sweeteners.
But you can't really rely on this as a sweetener on its own
because it's just not that sweet, the sweetness is so faint.
It doesn't act as a laxative
in the same way that psyllium does,
but it has still been found, in numerous studies,
to help with constipation.
So it's great.
It's used also in foods a lot of times,
in kind of a processed-foods world, it's certainly
been used a lot more to create
lower fat foods.
For better or for worse, usually in processed foods,
they're usually using really crappy fats,
so it's probably a good, in that case,
because it creates a creamy mouthfeel.
So they're able to get a creaminess factor
without having to use trans fats,
and, you know, PUFAs and things like that.
So that's good.
You know, it's great that's making its way out there
to more and more people because
the domino effects
of improving one's gut health
are so huge.
Now jumping over to butyrate.
Now that are two names common, butyrate and butyric acid,
they are ever so slightly different
in their chemical makeup,
the difference is only one proton,
but in terms of their health effects,
pretty much the same thing.
So for all functional purposes, you can pretty much think
of them as being used interchangeably.
So butyric acid or butyrate is found in butter, ghee,
raw milk and in some animal fats and certain plant oils.
But the best way to get it is ghee.
That's what contributes so much to the soothing,
and healing and nurturing properties
that ghee has been known for for thousands of years.
You also do make some of your own butyrate or butyric acid
internally in your colon.
It's made when the bacteria in your gut,
the beneficial bacteria, are fermenting
and processing down dietary fibers
and as a byproduct they produce butyrate.
So you can certainly make your own,
but it never helps...sorry, never helps,
never hurts to have a bit extra,
going a little too fast, powered by butyrate.
(laughs)
What does butyrate do?
It supports the health of cells in your small intestine
and large intestine.
And it helps healing them,
it's preferred fuel,
in fact, for these cells.
So in terms of providing fuel and energy to the cells
in your gut, the lining of your gut, which is so important.
Because to have a health gut, you want healthy cells
in the lining of the gut, and you want to have these
tight junctions, where the one cell meets another cell
that the junction is tight and not just letting
food particles and other things through
that shouldn't be allowed through.
You want to be selectively permeable,
not excessively permeable.
So it's great for gut health, specially in cases of
IBS, Irritable Bowel Syndrome and Crohn's Disease.
So for people dealing with those things, it's great to be
looking at having good prebiotic fibers in your diet,
that your bacteria can actually turn into butyrate,
and also to be consuming foods like ghee that
are gonna get you an exogenous source of butyrate.
So these two things
are great areas to be looking at
in terms of a long-term gut health strategy
or rebuilding your gut, or whatever stage you may be at.
So it's a great question, I'm glad you asked.