DIY Health #7

When it comes to our health, the most significant impact we can make is through our diet. Everything we eat becomes part of our bodies, influencing our inner chemistry and shaping our physical makeup. Our food choices matter, but so does our digestive system’s ability to process and absorb these nutrients. While sleep, exercise, and attitude are important, let’s focus on optimizing our internal mechanics for better health.

Our final stop is the colon. What’s its purpose? As we learned last time, over 90% of the nutrition we absorb has already happened in the small intestine. So, what’s the big deal with the last 10%? Do we even need a colon? Many surgeons don’t think so. They’re happy to remove yours and replace it with a bag to collect your waste. Doesn’t that sound like a good idea? Well, no! The colon is much more than just a waste collection system. It’s your own personal factory that produces all sorts of vital nutrients, energy sources for the brain, signaling molecules to control your metabolism, chemicals that control your mood, immune modulators, and more. In addition to these functions, it also absorbs water and electrolytes and makes certain vitamins.

What was left by the time we got to the end of the small intestine? Primarily, it was stuff that our enzymes could not break down – fibers. Fibers come in hundreds of types, some we can digest, some our gut microbes can break down, and some that will just provide bulk because they can’t be broken down. Obviously, the fibers we can digest will have already been absorbed in the small intestine. Those fibers get turned into sugar. Generally, fibers that our gut bugs can digest are called soluble fibers because they will mix nicely with water. The last group of fibers is called insoluble because they don’t mix well with water. Wheat bran is an example of that type of fiber. It will pass through our entire system without changing at all.   

As I mentioned in the last newsletter, the good bacteria in our gut thrive on soluble fibers like inulin, pectin, glucomannan, beta-glucans, mucilage, and others. They also love resistant starches, which resist digestion by our gut enzymes. Other soluble fibers include FOS (fructooligosaccharides) and GOS (glactooligosaccharides). These fibers are like Miracle Grow for our good gut bacteria. This is important because of what the gut bugs turn these fibers into – short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs). Examples of these are butyrate, acetate, and propionate. Why do we care? Because it is these SCFAs that the cells in our gut use for energy. Not only do they provide energy, but our brain also uses them for energy. Even our heart loves these guys for energy. These fibers not only provide energy, but they have also been found to reduce inflammation in the brain. People who go on a water fast notice how much clearer their thinking is and how much better their brain feels. This is because of the production of butyrate in the liver to feed our brain. Our liver makes these same SCFAs from burning our own fat while we are fasting. Butyrate has almost miraculous healing powers for the brain, and we can get them from simply feeding our good gut bacteria the right fibers.

What else do these SCFAs do? They’re like superheroes that work wonders in your gut. They affect how your colon moves, how blood flows to it, and even the pH level, which affects how your body absorbs electrolytes. They also play a role in hormones like GLP-1, PYY, GABA, and serotonin, which directly impact your brain. These SCFAs travel through your bloodstream and even up your Vagus nerve to your brain. They also help regulate your immune system, including your white blood cells and natural killer cells. In simple terms, your good gut bugs are essential for fighting diseases and keeping your body functioning properly. Fiber-rich foods usually have a lot of carbs, which can stop your liver from making these important chemicals. But when you follow a keto diet or fast, your liver takes over and makes these important guys from your body fat. SCFAs are basically the same as ketones.

Hey, did you know that when you go on a keto diet to lose fat, the main weight loss happens not from burning ketones? Diet books say otherwise, but that’s not true. Sure, when you burn a lot of fat, your blood ketone levels go up, and your brain uses them for energy like your colon cells do. But most of the energy you get from burning fat comes from beta oxidation. This is the same process we use to burn sugar in our mitochondria, except that the first few steps involve making acetyl coA from fatty acids instead of sugar. That’s why you can still burn fat on a low-calorie diet that doesn’t put you into ketosis. Ketones aren’t needed for burning fat.

Our gut bacteria make hundreds of chemicals, some good for us like B vitamins, and others not so great like NOCs (N-nitroso compounds) and rancid fats (lipid peroxidation). That’s why diet is so crucial. We want to eat foods that our gut bacteria can turn into good stuff, not bad stuff. That’s why we should be worried about highly processed foods. In the past 50 years, the food industry has created over 10,000 new chemicals that they’re putting into our food. Most of these have never been tested for safety. Even the ones that have been tested, new studies are showing that when they’re mixed together, they can turn into dangerous chemicals that damage our DNA and cause all sorts of diseases.

I’m repeating myself, but listen closely: for a healthy colon, you need to eat real foods. Real foods are fresh, plant-based, and animal-based. If a food item has a label with ingredients, it’s been processed. If you can’t find those ingredients in a garden or hunt them in the wild, it’s not good for you. Your body has evolved over millions of years to handle real foods. It doesn’t know how to process new food chemicals into something safe for us to eat and still be healthy. It’s not about the number of ingredients; it’s about the quality of those ingredients. When you make your grandma’s famous minestrone soup, it has many ingredients, but they’re all real food, not things that require food chemists and big industrial plants to make.

Lets be real,

David

Ellen

Contrary to popular belief, Ellen does make it out of the house occasionally for social occasions. Here we are enjoying a birthday party for Sherry. Every week we at least get out to go to Costco. Ellen pushes a cart with her good hand and foot while I push her in her wheelchair. We get around just fine.