A Practical Framework for Supporting Gut Health

The next question was submitted by Matthew, and Matthew asks if I can summarize the foods and supplements that have been proven to be beneficial for the gut, and I kind of— or the gut microbiome, but I sort of extended that to just the gut itself because the gut is more than just the microbiome. I mean, there's different cell types in the gut, and the health of those cell types are also very important. Matthew had listed off some foods and supplements, but I'm going to go ahead and go through, you know, so kefir, that's fermented yogurt. There's been human studies showing that kefir is beneficial for the gut microbiome and can increase butyrate-producing bacteria, can increase— or sorry, it's also been shown to lower biomarkers of inflammation as well.

Kombucha, another one, has been shown to benefit the gut microbiome. Sauerkraut is another one. Sauerkraut, kimchi. So the fermented foods, that's the theme here. Kefir, kombucha, sauerkraut, these are all fermented foods. So fermented foods have probiotics in them, but some of these fermented foods like the sauerkraut and kimchi also have prebiotics in them, right? So they have fermentable types of fiber. So they're kind of like a double dose, right? You're getting the probiotics and you're getting some of the fermentable fibers as well that's allowing your own microbiome to then generate beneficial compounds for the gut.

There's the foods that are also high in the prebiotics and I would say the major— one of the major compounds that's really beneficial for the gut that's produced by the gut microbiome by, you know, several different bacterial types of species in the gut is butyrate and the reason for that is because butyrate is a— it's a short-chain fatty acid and I'm going to get into organic acids in a minute and it's very similar to butyrate actually but the short— the butyrate is a short-chain fatty acid and it's a source of energy. It's the major, major source of energy by many different colon cells. And so, it's so good to have bacteria in your gut making butyrate for your gut. Like, that is going to help your gut out tremendously.

Foods that have prebiotics that can form and have been shown to form butyrate or increase butyrate-producing bacteria in the gut include beta-glucans. So beta-glucans are found in oats and they're found in mushrooms. Pectins are another type of fermentable fiber found in fruits like berries. It's found in blueberries, raspberries, strawberries. It's also found in citrus fruit and spinach. Specifically really, really highly concentrated in like the peel, which no one really eats, but just FYI. So there's gums. Gums are another type of fermentable fiber. They're found in a lot of seeds.

So different types of seeds, pumpkin seeds, for example, gums are found in that. Inulin is another type of prebiotic that is found in onions, garlic, artichokes. They're all really high in inulin. And then there's resistant starch, another type of prebiotic or fermentable fiber, and that is found in a variety of legumes. So you'll find resistant starch in some beans, but green bananas are a great source of it, or cooked and then cooled potatoes are probably a lot of people's favorite source because a lot of people like potatoes. So basically you just cook and then the potatoes have to be cooled. So all of those food types increase butyrate-producing bacteria in the gut, which means more butyrate for your gut cells, which means drastically improved gut health.

And all those different types of prebiotics I mentioned are affecting different species of bacteria, and it's really good to have that diversity. And so it's one argument for food diversity, right, is that a lot of people aren't thinking about like the prebiotics, like I did, you know, like I sort of know this. So I'll think about, oh yeah, I want to get my— I want to get some beta-glucan. So I'm going to eat some oatmeal today or mushroom. I'm going to do some sautéed mushrooms, right? But just having a more diverse type of diet, you're automatically just going to be getting all those different types of prebiotics and you're going to be benefiting your gut microbiome and your gut for that reason. So that's another— those are all foods that are beneficial for the gut.

Now, going back to the organic acids. So I mentioned butyrate. Butyrate is a short-chain fatty acid. It gets into your gut cells and it's definitely the preferred source of energy for your gut. But organic acids are also short-chain fatty acids and they act like butyrate. They are a source of energy for the gut. So organic acids that you may be familiar with that you can also find in foods would be, for example, malic acid. There is an acid-base reaction happening inside your body, where an acid is basically donating a proton to the substrate, and so malate, which you may have seen in like supplements, you may a lot of times you'll find malate is sort of as a chelator.

So you'll find magnesium supplements, for example, or you know, often bound with— because magnesium has a positive charge, so the malate kind of buffers. It's like going, you know, it's buffering the positive magnesium, and so you'll find magnesium malate. Well, malate also kind of, when you eat it, it gets interconverted into malic acid. Okay. So malic acid is very— I would say the fruits that it's highest in would be green apples. So malic acid is kind of like that tart flavor that you'll get with fruit. So if you have a tart blueberry, like blueberries have malic acid in them, particularly when they're a little more on the tart side.

Any tart apple, so anyone that has their own apple tree at home, like you'll probably notice that a lot of apples are a lot more tart than you buy at the grocery store, but green apples of course are also tart. So green apples are high in malic acid and you'll find again different berries will be high in it as well. Malic acid is good for the gut for that same reason. It gets into mitochondria inside your gut cells and is a very energetically favorable source of energy. Another one would be lactic acid. So lactate, lactic acid, right? So that's obviously something that would be in fermented foods as well. So like yogurt, yogurt has lactic acid, kombucha, sauerkraut, all those things have lactic acid because the probiotics themselves make lactic acid.

So eating yogurt, eating the fermented foods is another way to get lactic acid and I'm just sort of giving you a mechanism here. Lactic acid is a short-chain fatty acid. It can be used as a source of energy but also lactic acid can change the pH, you know, in the residential area of your gut where like the distal part where the colon is, right? That's where a lot of your— most of your microbiome bacteria reside. When lactic acid is there and it's made by bacteria in the gut as well, right? It basically— the pH is such that there's quite a few pathogenic type of bacteria that just can't survive in that atmosphere with lactic acid, the pH change that lactic acid makes. And so it's beneficial in that respect as well. Citric acid or citrate is another one.

Again, you take in the citrate, like that's also something that's chelated with something like magnesium or other minerals such as zinc. So citric acid, obviously found in a lot of citrus fruits. Pretty much all the citrus fruits have citric acid— lemons, limes, oranges, grapefruit. So those are all the organic acids. Those are also really beneficial for the gut, whether it's beneficial for the gut cells themselves, but also like in the case of lactic acid, it's also changing the pH of the environment as well. Leesa is saying, sauerkraut often causes me discomfort from bloating. Does this go away if I continue to eat it regularly? I think that dose also plays a role. So like eating a very small portion of sauerkraut can be beneficial.

But when you start to like, you know, like you will— part of the bloating is the microbiome responding, right? They are fermenting the prebiotics and stuff. And so that's in the sauerkraut. And so a big bolus of that can cause the bloating and stuff. So I would try cutting the dose down dramatically and just really just a tiny little portion of it is beneficial. Like you don't need to go crazy and eat a ton of it. And also eating the sauerkraut with other foods to kind of like dilute it out a little bit so it's not like this just huge bolus just hitting your microbiome and that's the only thing hitting it. I think also may help a little bit. Apple cider vinegar does also have some of these organic acids I've been talking about. So Jody's asking in the chat.

So I think that also is another one that would be beneficial. And there's been some evidence that people with— I don't remember if it was IBD or IBS, so irritable bowel syndrome, were taking apple cider vinegar and they did improve symptoms of their gut disorder. Then let's see, what are the last items here? Okay, the last ones would be probiotics. And there's another question about probiotics that we'll get into a little in a minute. But I think that yes, so there are some probiotics that are beneficial like Visbiome sachets, which have 450 billion probiotics in them. And those can be beneficial, particularly for people that have a gut problem. Whether or not someone with a healthy microbiome— so I kind of stopped supplementing with it.

I just don't— my gut's pretty healthy. I haven't had any antibiotics in a really long time. I do a lot of all the foods, all the prebiotic foods I was talking about. I drink kombucha like almost every day. I do kefir almost every day. Like I'm getting, I just like, there's not any real need for me to take the Visbiome. So, but a lot of people do need to take, they do have gut issues and Visbiome really does help them. Glutamine is another one that's interesting and I don't take glutamine, but I did when I was having a lot of stress-related gut issues when I was in grad school. Glutamine is also a very energetic—it's like it's not an organic acid, but I'm just kind of drawing a parallel here because, like butyrate, like malic acid and lactic acid, it gets into mitochondria.

It's very—it's a very easily used source of energy. And so it just makes it easier on your gut. It doesn't have to work as hard to get energy and that for someone that's having like IBS or IBD or Crohn's or fill in the blank gut disorder makes a difference. It makes a difference in symptoms as well. The caveat here is glutamine because it's such a good energy source. When I say good energy source, it's just like you bypass a lot of the things that glucose has to go through to like make it used by the mitochondria. Which all require energy to get there. So glutamine is like big time favored by cancer cells.

And so I think anyone that has a gut polyp, you know, a colon polyp, you know, any type of precancerous polyp in their gut, certainly if they have colon cancer, uh, or even liver cancer, um, as well, it's very— it can be a dangerous thing because glutamine is like fuel for the fire for cancer. It is definitely fuel for the fire. That doesn't mean that short-term people with— so I would say that, you know, people like myself that don't have gut issues, I don't take glutamine for that reason. But people that do have gut issues and they're in the trenches, right? You know, they're fighting the battle. They're trying to put out fires. They're trying to get to a healthier point.

You know that glutamine can help, and so it's one of those things that it's like a temporary sort of thing as you're taking all the little steps to get you know improved gut health. Glutamine could be one of those things to try, but again the caution knowing that glutamine it's not something you know while it is beneficial for the gut again it's one of those well. How do I know that I got cancer? I mean, most of us don't, but like, you know what I mean? So you could do a GRAIL test. And in fact, I'm gonna be looking into— maybe someone can submit a question about GRAIL, G-R-A-I-L. It's like a universal— it basically can detect if you have any type of cancer, blood cancer, solid tumor, and it's really kind of accurate.

So I'm in the process of actually getting— I'm going to invite the guy who actually discovered it. He used to run the National Cancer Institute. But I don't know the price. I haven't looked into it, but I'm thinking about doing it yearly. So if it's affordable, I don't— it might be crazy, so I don't know. But anyways, that would be an option. It's like, okay, well, I know that I don't have cancer. I did my GRAIL test, or I know that I likely don't have it. So I can take the glutamine. Like that, that would be like the safest thing to do. I didn’t do that, but, you know, again, I was younger, you know, I was having the gut issues and the glutamine did help me when I was taking it.