Tag Archives: fiber

Maybe Slow Guts Need Poked

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Everyone tells you its simple.  Everyone tells you, “Oh, if you’d only try this, then…”

You don’t know whether to feel stupid or insulted and mad.  Then, rashly, you fork out money to try X, Y, or Z sometimes–which fails–and then you feel stupid AND mad.

I’ve got today’s post and one more on my personal story on severe, chronic, idiopathic constipation.  I’m not here to tell you it’s simple or even that I know what I’m talking about when it comes to constipation.  My blog is not for medical advice anyhow.  (It’s to make you wonder what kind of person would type about this.  Is she normal?  Or not normal?  Hmmm…)  If you missed them, I wrote this post first and this post second in my personal update series on trying to cure my refractory, lifelong constipation.

512px-Tea_in_different_grade_of_fermentation

Smooth Move Tea and Laxatives

A few years ago I went to a gastroenterologist for my constipation.  She recommended that I stop the magnesium preparation that I was taking and sip Smooth Move Tea (a senna product). I didn’t like this recommendation so I didn’t do it.  I’d tried senna products before, and they never worked for me.  I felt the doctor clearly wasn’t listening to my story, so I found a different doctor.  I mean, I’d told her I had given up pizza and bread and ice cream to try to beat my severe, chronic constipation–did she really think that sipping a simple tea was going to work?  Like she blew me off, I blew her off and did not try that blasted tea.  Last year, however, after having the baby, my constipation had some bad spells.  So I decided to get off my high horse and try the stupid tea.  The tea did nothing but cause severe cramps. (Point: Patients usually know their bodies.)  I also tried some other OTC laxatives, but they also did nothing but cause cramps and create no bowel movement.

Bottom-line:  These products don’t work well for me.  They never have, and they still don’t.  I get terrible cramping and little to no bowel movement.  To get a bowel movement, I have to take like 12 or more pills of whatever.  I’d better stick to giving up pizza.

Herbs and Spices

I use a lot of herbs and spices when I cook, both fresh and dried.  I’ve tried increasing these over the last several months.  Nothing has seemed to jump up and shout that it is making my gut move specifically.  But they taste good and have many great properties.  Could they be doing slow magical work?  Sure.  I’ll keep using my herbs and spices:  turmeric, Ceylon cinnamon, cardamom, fresh-pressed garlic allowed to sit ten minutes, coriander, allspice, nutmeg, saffron, fresh cilantro, fresh parsley, rosemary, and so on and so forth.

Bottom-line:  Herbs and spices are worth adding in for overall health even if they don’t clearly seem to make a definable difference in my GI motility.

Diverse Fiber

I’ve read some fascinating anecdotes about people who tanked up on diverse fibers and reversed their GI, SIBO, and food issues.  (Fiber is a VERY complex term.  Please consider reading about it here.)  Fiber in the forms of legumes, Metamucil, and whole grains has never worked for me.  But as I’ve researched, I’ve come to find that I’m not needing the “skin” fiber of foods that I thought I needed for bulk–or even “soluble” or “insoluble” fiber.  There are other, less definable, carbohydrates that the bacteria in our guts may chomp on to produce by-products that stimulate and repair the gut.  So I devoted a couple of months to trying high dose “fibers”:  glucommannan (cramping), FOS/inulin/beta glucan (no change), psyllium (no increase in movement but more bulk), and oatmeal/blueberry/potato starch smoothies three times a day (no change).  I had no significant set-backs from these attempts, but I still needed tons of magnesium.

The “fiber” that seems to do me best is resistant starch “fiber” via green bananas (in smoothies), cold cooked rice (as in rice salad), and cold cooked potatoes (great over a salad topped with vinaigrette).  I also occasionally pop a bit of raw potato.  I do feel these “fiber” foods help me if consumed daily.

Also, over the summer I inadvertently upped my raw vegetable intake with delicious Israeli-inspired salads a good friend taught me to make.  Raw vegetable intake at the beginning of my journey killed my bloating problems.  Not anymore.  Once a gut’s environment is improved, I think raw vegetables and fruits are important.  Maybe the addition of these salads helped.

Bottom-line:  I can’t be 100% sure, but I do think that the resistant starch foods eaten daily and the salads play a role in the recent progress of my gut.  (And these are amazing salads!  Not the kind boring ones I used to make.)  The powders and supplements I tried didn’t work for me. (Too easy.)

Triphala

I tried some triphala.  No luck.  Nothing bad.  But nothing improved, and although it is listed as safe in some places for nursing (and other places not), I thought my baby had looser stools when I titrated up the dose.  So I ditched triphala.

Essential Oils

Oh man.  I love the way these smell.  Some people swear success in helping their constipation with essential oils.  I’ve tried two different times and no go for me.

 

Acupuncture

Japanese_kudabariI told a medical school friend, who is married to another medical school friend, that I was trying acupuncture for my gut.  She laughed and jokingly said, “I won’t tell Jeff that you’re trying that.  He’d never let me talk to you again…”

Anyhow, I have received acupuncture now for about 5 months (with some quite extended breaks for traveling).  When those tiny needles poke me, you can hear my gut start rumbling.  It’s a little embarrassing.  Sometimes after a treatment, I will have to go to the bathroom.  Usually not.  However, in the several months of acupuncture I’ve had, my gut has improved. The acupuncturist I go to only does acupuncture, but he draws on chiropractic, ancient Chinese medicine, Ayurvedic principles, and kinesiology.  When we first started, I asked him, “So, do you think you’ll be able to fix me?”  He was super honest and said, “Well–you’ve had this a long time–but we can try.”  I love that answer!  I have the utmost respect for what he does, but I do have to say it feels like “voodoo” at its finest to a conventional doctor.

I think that acupuncture has been a piece of the progressive improvement of my gut (but only as a part of the plan).  For the first 6 weeks, treatments were weekly.  Then, he spaced it to every two weeks.  And then slowly we are stretching it out further.  It does seem to help.  On the down side, it is not cheap.  In fact, it’s expensive.  Some insurances pay for acupuncture, but mine does not.

Here are some links to check out about acupuncture and constipation:

Efficacy of acupuncture for chronic constipation: a systematic review.:  This is an abstract to a positive Chinese study on acupuncture for constipation.

Use acupuncture to treat functional constipation: study protocol for a randomized controlled trial :  Here is a full-text summary of the study protocol for the above-linked study, in case you want to take it to your acupuncturist to see what points were used.  🙂

Acupuncture for functional constipation: protocol of an individual patient data meta-analysis : And here it looks like the British Medical Journal is gearing up to explore acupuncture for functional constipation.

Bottom-line:  Acupuncture definitely seemed to add some motility to my gut.

Closing

I will try to wrap up this long story in the next post which will cover things like yoga, acceptance, meditation, getting up early, and my favorite topic–diet.  It seems like a lot of stuff to try–and it is–but I know these things will impact my marriage, my parenting, and my life forever.  Here is a funny thought:  I am a better person because of my constipation.  Oh, my.  Did I just type that?Insane.

I appreciate the comments you’ve all left.  And I like to hear of people doing well and what and who they used to achieve that.  Have a super week.

Terri

 

 

 

 

Butyrate Series, Part 5

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It’s only voodoo until you understand the sense (science) behind it…so what’s the sense for fiber?

Introduction:

Part 4 of the Butyrate Series summarized naturally occurring sources of butyrate in food.  Today’s post explains another source of butyrate in the diet: fiber. (More correctly, fiber is a source for our colon’s bacteria to make butyrate for us.) Today we will cover:

  • What fiber is
  • Different kinds of fiber
  • Fermentability of different kinds of fiber
  • Which fibers bring about butyrate

(And if you think this sounds boring, you are probably quite right.)

There is a book out there called Fiber Menace by Konstantin Monastyrsky which demotes fiber.  I’ve not read it, but I’d have to say in my former Caterpillarseating life, I tried adding in high amounts of fiber: peas, hummus, beans, lentils, Shredded Wheat Cereal, Grape Nuts Cereal, Metamucil, and Fiber Con. I always swore in my head that this fiber did nothing but make my GI symptoms worse; however, this seemed like an insane fragment of my overactive imagination until 2011. In 2011, I read a little blurb in my American Family Physician journal about fiber not helping slow transit constipation and then found sources stating fiber may actually worsen slow transit constipation.  From a World Journal of Gastroenterology article:  “Muller-Lissner emphasized that a diet poor in fiber should not be assumed to be the cause of chronic constipation. In contrast, they found that many patients with severe constipation deteriorated when dietary fiber intake was increased.” (1)  Hmmm. Is that right?

In the past, I’ve tried high fiber and I’ve tried low fiber; I didn’t know what to think. Guess I still really don’t. Today, studies say that fiber helps this or that. Tomorrow they will say that it doesn’t. Depends on the wind. But considering how important short chain fatty acids (including butyrate) are, I’m thinking fiber may be pretty helpful, but not in the way I was trained to think.  It has nothing to do with the bulk or the drawing of water into the gut.  It has to do with good bacteria, what they like to eat, and what they make for me when they eat.  So for myself, in order to increase my butyrate naturally, I will keep vegetables and some fruit a priority.  I will watch my symptoms closely and adjust as indicated.

What I want you to know (because the rest of this post is like broccoli with no dip—pretty dry):

  • “Fiber” is an oversimplified, generic word for a hodge-podge of substances from plants. The words soluble and insoluble do not even come close to explaining the types of fiber.
  • Fiber is basically carbohydrates that humans cannot digest. There are many kinds of fiber which get “eaten” by the bacteria in different amounts and at different rates in our colon.  (More below.)
  • Some fiber, like cellulose (think of the stems of broccoli and the peel of an apple), gets fermented very little and very slowly.  Other fiber, like inulin (think onions) gets fermented very completely and very rapidly.
  • Each vegetable or fruit will contain several types of fiber, not just one type. Broccoli is not ONLY cellulose! Each vegetable or fruit has its own complex fiber identity! Find some that you tolerate.
  • I think to optimize butyrate production throughout the entire colon, it is good to eat a mix of vegetables and fruits. The quickly fermented fiber will bathe the first part of the colon in short chain fatty acids, and the slowly fermented fiber will make it to the end to bathe the final part of the colon.
  • Please don’t buy fiber in a box or plastic container. Please? Eat the real deal. Why? Because remember that vegetables and fruits contain multiple kind of fibers in one package, and they ferment at different rates. This provides valuable short chain fatty acids throughout the whole colon. In addition, different fibers have been found to influence the fermentation of other fibers, promoting more butyrate production than the given fibers alone. Not to mention all the vitamin C, vitamin A, magnesium, calcium, and other nutrients.  Again I say, find a mix of vegetables (and fruits) that you tolerate.  (2) (3) (6)  (And I still say, vegetable, fruits, and meats.  Wheat is a treat. Don’t get your fiber from wheat. My personal opinion.)
  • Good bacteria can be cultivated. Drugs that cultivate good bacteria are called PREbiotics, but foods can do the same thing. Vegetables and fruits carry fibers that are prebiotic. By eating vegetables and fruits, you are not just allowing the bacteria you have to make butyrate, you’re actually promoting their growth.  (4)

Caterpillar making attachmentReminder: All the information in this blog is information I have gathered and assimilated for my own purposes. I enjoy sharing it, but I certainly expect you to use it as fodder for learning and questioning, not as diagnosis and treatment.  Every individual is unique and may react differently (and badly) to what others find beneficial and helpful.  For your safety, present the information to your favorite trusted healthcare provider before making any changes. 

You know it’s bad when there’s a glossary:

Carbohydrates:  Carbohydrates are made up of polysaccharides, oligosaccharides, and sugars.

Sugars:  Sugars are monosaccharides or disaccharides.  Examples:  glucose, fructose, lactose, sucrose. They are usually completely absorbed in the small intestine. (But if they are not, they can continue to the colon to be fermented.)

Polysaccharides:  Polysaccharides are complex carbohydrates made by linking many, many, many sugars together. They can be starch polysaccharides or non-starch polysaccharides. Starches are commonly used as energy storage; amylose and amylopectin are two very common starches.  Non-starches are usually used for structure, like cellulose.

Oligosaccharides:  These are smaller chains of sugars linked together. They’re bigger than sugars and smaller than polysaccharides. They can be found in onions, jicama, and wheat. They are things like inulin and fructooligosaccharides (FOS—often a part of prebiotics).

Starches (amylose and amylopectin):  Starches are polysaccharides, which means many sugars strung together. Common starches in plant matter include amylose and amylopectin. Amylose has its glucoses linked linearly in a very compact structure, making it digest more slowly. Amylopectin has its glucoses linked in a large, branched structure, allowing more easy penetration of digestive enzymes. We used to think that all starch was digested and absorbed in the small intestine. We now know this is false.  Starches are in things like flour, potatoes, and sweet potatoes.  (Aside for SCD followers:  Breaking the Vicious Cycle’s explanation of amylose and amylopectin is incorrectly reversed.)

Non-starch polysaccharides:  A very hodge-podge group. It’s what you think of as classic fiber. Cellulose, pectins, gums, and more fit in this category. They often provide structure to plant cells. The small intestine can’t digest them.

Fiber:  Usually defined as plant matter that escapes digestion by the small intestine and continues undigested to the colon. But a true definition is evasive because calling something “fiber” is like saying a shoe is a shoe is a shoe. Well, stiletto boots are a far cry from my New Balances. Non-starch polysaccharides make up a huge chunk of “fiber.” Also included, depending on who is writing the definition, are resistant starch and oligosaccharides.

Resistant starch:  There are several kinds of resistant starches, but basically they are all starches that manage to escape digestion in the small intestine, and therefore they act like fiber. (5)

Eating for butyrate production by bacteria

Ok.  So the goal is to produce butyrate by eating food.  (The bacteria will do the work for me.)  Let’s take a moment to remember why anyone should care.  Studies indicate butyrate may—

  • Heal leaky gut, and therefore improve food intolerances
  • Stabilize blood sugar responses, even to carbohydrates
  • Lessen hunger and help weight loss
  • Stimulate bowel motility
  • Help damaged nerve cells to function again
  • Cure and fight cancer
  • Other unknown functions (7)

(I take a butyrate supplement. I have noticed a huge improvement in my peristalsis and in my ability to eat nuts and eggs baked in pies. Although my supplement seems okay, a person can never tell what impurities are in their supplements or how much of the nutrient the body needs!  Too much of a good thing can potentially turn on you. So I want off of my supplement, and this is where this butyrate series came from.)

What foods do bacteria use to make butyrate?  Fiber and resistant starch are the best ingredients for bacteria to make butyrate in your colon.  (Bacteria can make butyrate from proteins, mucous, and sloughed cells, but these ingredients lead to the formation of chemicals detrimental to your colon, like ammonia.)  We will talk about fiber today and resistant starch next time.

Fiber: 

You’ve heard of fiber. But what is fiber? Do you want functional fiber? Physiologic fiber? Soluble fiber? Insoluble fiber? Resistant starch “fiber?”  Caterpillar made cocoonViscous fiber? Fermentable fiber? Microfiber???? (No.)

Fiber is a hodge-podge (word of the day) of chemical substances.  Like my shoe analogy up there in the glossary: work boots, snow boots, running shoes, basketball shoes, platform shoes, and stiletto heels. They all go on the feet. They all have a similar function. They are all shoes. But you can break them down into boots and shoes. Or active wear and formal wear. Or open-toed and closed-toe. Or open-toed formal and closed-toe formal.

Fiber may be fiber, but it can be classified many ways.  My little ditty of a definition for fiber in the glossary– “plant matter that escapes digestion by the small intestine and continues undigested to the colon”—keeps it about as simple as it can get. (Shoe. Fiber.)

Maybe you have heard of soluble and insoluble fiber, this is NOT the only way to classify fiber.  (In fact, experts are trying to phase out the terms soluble and insoluble. They have come to realize that the function of the fiber does NOT depend on its solubility.) (8)

Bottom line: Fiber is a complex issue. The Paleo Mom has a great fiber series that she published recently:  The Fiber Manifesto.

Let’s look at the types of fiber—the ways to categorize fiber.  I’ll warn you, categories overlap.  Just remember that fiber is plant matter (usually) that makes it to the colon undigested:

Fiber can be classified based on solubility, fermentability, viscosity, whether or not it is a starch, or whether it’s a synthetic fiber with physiologic function.

Different ways to classify fiber:

Soluble fiber:
Pectin, mucilage, gums,   psyllium, wheat dextrin		 Insoluble fiber:
Cellulose, lignins, some   hemicelluloses, some pectins
Fermentable:
Oligosaccharides like FOS and inulin, gums (guar), pectins, wheat dextrins		 Non-fermentable:
Cellulose, hemicellulose,   lignin
Viscous (gel-forming) fiber:
Pectins, gums (guar gum), psyllium		 Non-viscous (non gel-forming) fiber:
Inulin
Resistant Starch:
Polysaccharides made of starch		 Non-starch   polysaccharides:
Celluloses, hemicelluloses,   pectins, and gums
Functional fiber (designed or extracted fiber):
Inulin, psyllium, FOS, some   resistant starch		 Dietary fiber (fiber found naturally in food)

(9) (10)

Now, you can take just about all of those and mix and match them!!!  For example, you can have:

  • Soluble, fermentable (example:  pectins)
  • Insoluble, fermentable  (example:  resistant starch)
  • Soluble, non-fermentable (examples:  alginates, carrageenans)
  • Insoluble, non-fermentable (examples: cellulose and lignin—cellulose is actually a bit fermentable, see below)
  • Resistant starch, fermentable  (example:  resistant starch)
  • Non-starch polysaccharides, fermentable  (examples:  FOS and inulin)
  • Non-starch polysaccharides, non-fermentable  (example:  cellulose)

You can keep going with this, but I’m stopping. Just remember, foods are composed of several types of fiber in one package—so a banana is NOT completely made up of soluble fiber! It also has (at least) resistant starch (an insoluble fiber!), pectin, and hemicellulose.  And it gets even more complicated than this because a ripe banana will have a different fiber composition than a green banana. Ahhhh!)

To make butyrate, we are mostly concerned with the fiber that is fermentable.  Solubility has nothing to do with it.

The table below summarizes the fermentability of the different fibers mentioned above. Percent of fermentability is important. Butyrate isn’t made unless the bacteria in the colon have something to ferment. Less butyrate will be made from cellulose (20-80% fermentable) than inulin (100% fermentable). HOWEVER, all the inulin will be probably be used up early in the colon, as soon as there are bacteria to feast on it. Since less cellulose will be fermented early on, more will be available throughout the whole colon, not just the beginning—like a “slow release” formulation.

Please note that our bacterial microflora are exceptionally unique and therefore our tolerability to different fibers will be unique. In a study on the fermentation of cellulose in the cell wall of spinach, one group of people fermented the spinach with one group of bacteria–while the another group of people fermented it with another kind of bacteria. (11)  Since we have different bacteria with different capabilities and metabolite production (such as gas), perhaps this is why some of us do well with fiber and not others?

Colonic fermentability of dietary fibres in humans

Dietary   fibre

Fermentability   (%)

Cellulose

20-80

Hemicelluloses

60-90

Pectins

100

Guar gum

100

Ispaghula

55

Wheat bran

50

Resistant starch

100

 Inulin, oligosaccharides

  100 (if they are not in excess)

(12)

So now you know that fermentable fibers make butyrate best. You can see above which fibers are fermentable (remember it’s probably good to mix and match high and low fermentable foods). But which fibers make a higher percentage of butyrate? Cellulose, inulin, raffinose (in beans), and resistant starch made higher percentages than guar gum, lactose, pectin, and sugar beets sources.  Oat beta-glucans were pretty high and so was wheat bran. (6) I’ve not tried to tease out grains, mostly because I don’t eat them. They are problematic for me and for many other people as well  Studies using them for fiber sources give so many mixed messages too.

Fiber acts as a prebiotic for good bacteria and also inhibits the growth of bad bacteria:

By eating vegetables and fruits with fiber and resistant starch, you are also promoting the growth of “good bacteria.”  Many of the good bacteria make butyrate for your body. You have commonly seen the term PREbiotic (not to be confused with the closely related term PRObiotic). All prebiotics are considered fiber. For a fiber to be a prebiotic, it must have the following characteristics:

  • “Resists gastric acidity, hydrolysis by mammalian enzymes, and absorption in the upper gastrointestinal tract;
  • Is fermented by the intestinal microflora;
  • Selectively stimulates the growth and/or activity of intestinal bacteria potentially associated with health and well-being.”

You can buy prebiotic supplements, and some probiotics come with prebiotics mixed in. However, prebiotics occur naturally in foods such as leeks, asparagus, chicory, Jerusalem artichokes, garlic, onions, wheat, oats, and soybeans. (Eat real food.)

(By the way, have you ever wondered what makes a bacteria a “good” bacteria? I have:  “Generally, bacteria having an almost exclusive saccharolytic metabolism (i.e., no proteolytic activity) can be considered potentially beneficial. Such a metabolic profile is typical for lactobacilli and bifidobacteria.”  Quote is just basically saying that good bacteria can’t break down protiens.) (9)

Prebiotics (including types of fiber) also inhibit the growth of bad bacteria! As the good bacteria ferment fiber, they produce short chain fatty acids and make the inside of the colon more acidic. A more acidic environment in the colon reduces breakdown of peptides (proteins), resulting in less formation of toxic compounds such as ammonia, amines, and phenolic compounds. Also, the more acidic environment decreases the activity of undesirable bacterial enzymes. So again, looks like eating real food that is fermentable will act as a prebiotic to encourage the growth of good bacteria and discourage the growth of bad.  (9)

What I wish I understood more:

1. The Inuits lived on a primarily fat and meat diet. Yet they had low rates of disease. Where did their butyrate come from? Did they forage enough when possible to get some? Did they ferment some of the plant matter when it was available for use later when it wasn’t available? Did the fermented meats they made provide them with butyrate? (Here we go again; I just can’t find good information on quantification of fermented food content. Anyone?) Does subsisting only on high quality animal protein and fat change the environment of the colon and body such that lower butyrate production is needed? Did their unique diet cultivate a unique micro flora that maximized butyrate production?

2. If grains and isolated fiber are removed as fiber sources from studies, how would this affect results?

Closing:

Man. Thanks for reading. If you have FODMAP problems and you just can’t tolerate any vegetables, come back next post. Next post we will move on to resistant starch, a huge producer of butyrate.  Only about two butyrate posts left to go. As always, comments, constructive criticism, and pointing out of typos is always welcome.

Terri

Part 6

Sources:

1.  http://www.wjgnet.com/1007-9327/13/4161.pdf

2.  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1374147/?page=6

3.  http://gut.bmj.com/content/34/3/386.full.pdf

4.  Starches, Resistant Starches, the Gut Microflora and Human Health.  Bird, Brown, and Topping.  Curr. Issues Intest. Microbiol.  2000.  1(1):  25-37.  http://www.horizonpress.com/backlist/ciim/v/v1/03.pdf

5.  Health properties of resistant starch.  Nugent.  Nutrition Bulletin.  2005.  30: 1(27-54)

6.  Short-chain fatty acid formation at fermentation of indigestible carbohydrates.  Henningsson, Bjorck, and Nyman.  Scandinavian Journal of Nutrition.  2001.  45:165-186.

7.  Review article:  the role of butyrate on colonic function.  Hamer, Jonkers, Venema, Vanhoutvin, Troost, and Brummer.  Alimentary Pharmacology and Therapeutics.  2008.  27: 104-119

8.  http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/69/1/1.full

9.  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3705355/

10.  http://lpi.oregonstate.edu/infocenter/phytochemicals/fiber/

11.  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20662929

12. http://www.fao.org/docrep/w8079E/w8079e0l.htm

Related articles

Butyrate Series, Part 2

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It all sounds like voodoo until you can find the sense (science) to understand it.

Miscellaneous Info

A Working Goal of my blog:  Inspiring all people, but particularly parents with school-aged children, to understand that it is a true medical necessity to return our diets to a whole foods diet, free of processed foods, and lower in overall sugar (sugar, honey, maple syrup, agave, juice, corn syrup, date sugar, rice sugar, we-can-make-sugar-out-of-anything-sugar, and we-can-make-anything-taste-good-with-enough-sugar sugar).

What the upcoming series of posts will be about and why it is important to you:  The upcoming series of posts is going to be about butyrate.  It is a very important chemical that our body needs to function properly.  You probably haven’t heard about it, but it is important.  I guess if I had to try to compare it to something that you did know about, I’d liken its importance to vitamin C.  I am not saying it is vitamin C, but I am trying to relay the importance of the stuff.  The best source of butyrate comes, not from food, but from bacteria in the colon working on vegetable and plant matter.  It comes from bacteria that live naturally in your colon which ferment vegetable and plant matter and turn it into butyrate, which your body in turn uses to maximize health and function in many splendid ways.

Butyrate, then, is one specific retort to the statement and question:  “I don’t like vegetables.  Why do I have to eat my vegetables?”  You now have something concrete to say besides, “They’re healthy.”

Try this for a change:  “Aw, sweetie.  I know you don’t.  But the bacteria in your colon do!  And they will gobble them all up for you and turn them into butyrate.”

Or, “Tough.  I don’t care.  Eat them anyway.  Your bacteria do (like them).  You’ll be low on butyrate if you don’t.”

Short Chain Fatty Acids Overview

Recap from Part 1 (Part 1):  Yesterday we talked about how we need the bacteria in our colon and how we want to help keep the “good” bacteria thriving.  Plant matter, like vegetables and fruits, feed the good bacteria and allow them to make important substances, like butyrate, which we absolutely depend on, see “Butyrate is Important for YOU.”  Sugars and processed carbohydrates can feed the growth of “bad” bacteria in our colons.  Bad bacteria are more likely to make chemicals that can be harmful to us, like ammonia, methane, hydrogen sulfide, and others.  Butyrate is a short chain fatty acid made by favorable strains of bacteria in the colon.  This series is honing in on butyrate because it seems to be a strong healer of the GI tract.  (1,2)

Butyrate is a short chain fatty acid:  There are several types of short chain fatty acids (SCFAs) besides butyrate, and each SCFA, in its own way, looks vitally important to the positive functioning of our bodies.  The most important way we get SCFAs is by eating food that comes from plants.  The “plant food” itself doesn’t give us SCFAs!  The bacteria ferment the plant-based food to make SCFA.  (Later we will learn that SCFAs are made best from certain types of plant foods, but for now we will just lump it all together.)  A brief explanation of digestion is needed to later understand which foods butyrate can be made from.  Allow us to deviate.

Line art drawing of an intestine

Line art drawing of an intestine (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Brief explanation of digestion of carbohydrates up through the small intestine:  For butyrate’s purposes, we are concerned with carbohydrate digestion (even though butyrate is a fatty acid—forget that for now).  Let’s look at an apple.  Bite apple.  Chew apple.  Your saliva starts working on digesting the apple.  Swallow apple.  Apple goes to stomach.  Apple moves to small intestine where the bulk of digestion is done. The apple has some simple sugars (fructose, glucose, sucrose), a small amount of starch (starch is an energy form for the plant and is made up of glucose strings), and some fiber (and other stuff, but we’re focusing on the carbohydrate component for the purpose of this butyrate series).

  • The sugars of fructose and glucose get completely absorbed in the small intestine by most people.  The apple’s intrinsic sucrose sugar is broken down and then completely absorbed.  (Simple.  Simple sugars!)
  • The starch needs to get worked on by an enzyme called amylase, which is made by the salivary glands and pancreas.  The pancreas dumps its amylase into the small intestine (specifically the duodenum).  The amylase breaks down the apple starch into smaller units so it can be made into glucose by more small intestine enzymes. The glucose is then absorbed by the small intestine.  Nearly all of the starch in the apple will be broken down and converted to glucose to be absorbed.  More complex, eh?  Complex carbohydrates! (Even more complex is the fact that not all starches get completely digested and absorbed, although we used to learn that they did!  That will be explored later and is very important.)
  • Any kind of fiber in the apple (pectin and cellulose for example) doesn’t get broken down or absorbed.  We don’t have enzymes to do anything to the apple fiber.  It moves into the colon (large intestine) for the bacteria to feast on and make SCFAs.

The lovely colon (Aside:  I see it like a Star Wars world down there.): After the small intestine absorbs what it can, leftover foodstuff travels to the colon for further processing. The colon was not designed to function alone; it was designed to work in concert with billions of bacteria that naturally and ideally live there.  (You are not alone…)  The bacteria make many products that we humans absolutely rely on, such as B vitamins and vitamin K, but here today we will be looking at SCFAs.   The colon’s bacteria ferment what they can of the leftover foodstuff; that’s a fancy way of saying they eat the leftovers and turn it into energy for themselves.  They like to ferment starches, sugars, and fiber the best.  When they “eat” the fiber or starch, they make the necessary SCFAs for us to use and the colon absorbs them.  (The bacteria do care about us, by the way.  Don’t think they don’t.  Without us they’d die.  Is the feeling reciprocal?  I’m poking.  Grin.)

(Key point:  We have to have SCFAs, and we get them from the bacteria in our colons who make them best from plant-based foods.)                

Summarizing through highly sophisticated pictures: 

Small intestine as it relates to SCFA

Drawing of colon and SCFA

                                                                                                                      

“Sillily” simple structures:  SCFAs possess simple, simple structures that any high school chemistry student could draw, but their functions are so complex that even our most trained professionals are challenged to give us answers about them!

Scan

 

(Please note:  I STILL have not had time to upload the figure with the corrected structures for the SCFAs.  The structures you see are the alkanes.  Correct structures should show the final carbon on each as a carboxyl group, which is a COOH.)

No, you can’t just eat sugars and make these wonderful SCFAs:  Now I know at this point you’re thinking, “Whoo-ha!  Free ticket to eat sugar and starches.  She just said the bacteria like sugars and starches (oh, yeah—and fiber) the best!”

(Shout)  “NO!”  Because if you remember when we talked about the digestion of carbohydrates in the small intestine, I told you that most sugar and starch is broken down and completely absorbed by the small intestine.  So most of the processed foods, candy, soda pop, donut, what-have-you—those sugars and starches are for you.  They provide your calories (which many of you don’t want), not the helpful bacteria’s calories.  And, by chance, any simple sugars that do make their way down the intestines, they promote the overgrowth of “bad” bacteria and a decline of “good” bacteria.

Fate of the SCFAs after they are made by the bacteria:  Each SCFA has its own path once absorbed by the body.  Acetate mostly goes to the liver and to the blood to be circulated on to the peripheral tissues of the body.  Propionate gets sent to the liver.  Butyrate is immediately used as fuel and support for the lining of your colon (colonocytes; epithelial layer) and is also sent to the liver.  (I am focusing on butyrate because it is so vital to the maintenance and restoration of the GI tract.)  Valerate and caproate have not been quite sorted out yet.  We do know that valerate is poorly recovered in fecal matter, and so it may be highly used up like butyrate in the colon. (3)

(Key point:  SCFAs have different destinies in the body, and they are all important.  However, I’m focusing on butyrate because studies show that it hugely affects the function of the gut.  It may help so much more in the body, though!!  What starts in the gut–benefits or detriments elsewhere!  Acne, headaches, reflux, skin rashes, food intolerances, yada, yada, yada, can all be a sign of a disordered gut!!!)

Stop:  Okay.  We’re stopping here today.  The next post will discuss why a person would be low in SCFAs and butyrate and discuss some problems with this.  Then we’ll talk about how to get butyrate from food.  Which will lead us to resistant starch.  Thank you for reading.  Butyrate–it’s great.  🙂

Terri

Part 3

Sources:  All of these are available free on-line in full text.  Let me know if the links don’t work.

(1)  Targeting Enteric Neuroplasticity:  Diet and Bugs as New Key Factors.  deGiorgio and Blandizzi.  Gastroenterology.  May 2010.  138(5):  1663-1666.  http://www.gastrojournal.org/article/S0016-5085(10)00377-X/abstract

(2)  Review article:  the role of butyrate on colonic function.  Hamer, Jonkers, Venema, et al.  Alimentary Pharmacology and Therapeutics.  2008.  27:  104-119.  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17973645

(3)  http://arno.unimaas.nl/show.cgi?fid=16226  Chapter 3 page 62

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