Getting The Best From Your Gut Flora
What is Gut Flora?
Your gut flora plays a significant role in the body. It is an essential component of many vital body functions that help to determine favorable health outcomes—much of a person's gut health forms in the first two years of life. In early development, much of the intestinal lining becomes more effective at protecting us from pathogens while adapting to supporting healthy gut flora.
What Does the Gut Flora Do?
Gut flora protects us from pathogens, affects our metabolism, supports immune health, and plays a role in facilitating molecular signaling that happens within the body. Research has shown that gut flora communicates visceral pain (think headaches, neuropathic pain). Science has also shown what is in your intestinal tract can significantly influence your diet and behavior.
How to Keep Gut Flora Healthy?
Healthy gut flora comes from the foods that you consume. Prebiotics are good for gut health. Fruits, vegetables, and plants--food that contain complex carbohydrates--are prebiotics. Dietary fiber and resistant starches are types of complex carbohydrates that are essential for a healthy gut. Gut health research aligns "bad health" with type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, colon cancer, obesity, and other non-communicable diseases. Studies show that these "bad health" outcomes are associated with low fiber-content diets.
There are noticeable differences between the fiber content of diets of various cultures across the world. There are parts of the world where people's diets tend to be low in dietary fiber. People's diets contain more dietary fiber in places where people typically have better access to edible fibrous plants.
How Does Gut Flora Affect Digestion?
One way to describe gut flora and digestion is to discuss one particular dietary fiber type: resistant starch. It is a type of starch that resists digestion in certain parts of the digestive tract. This type of starch can withstand enzymatic digestion in many parts of the digestive tract. It can exist throughout much of the digestive tract without being changed all that, unlike other foods. It is also often called dietary fiber. Resistant starch reduces many health risks typically associated with the colon, and it has prebiotic effects.
Resistant Starch
There are four types of resistant starch. In literature, you will see them referred to as RS 1, RS 2, RS 3, and RS 4. Grain legumes are the first type, RS 1. RS 2 are unripe bananas and raw potatoes. Stale bread is a RS 3, and potatoes that have been cooked, then cooled, are also RS 3. RS 4's are typically modified starches that are chemically altered and found in various processed foods.
It Ain't Just Carbs, Its Your Macros
Interestingly enough, if you usually count your carbohydrate intake, you may notice that resistant starches may have varying insulinogenic effects on your blood glucose levels. The concept of resistance starches is where the rubber meets the road as far as the nuance in macronutrient counting strategies is concerned. In an ideal world, you would digest 1 gram of carbs the same way year after year. I would contend that gut flora diversity would have a favorable influence on how your digestion operates. Consuming a variety of fiber-rich foods would be one way to maximize your ability to extract the most amount of nutrients from your food.
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