Improving your gut biome with prebiotic fiber
- Gavin
- Apr 14, 2020
- 7 min read
Updated: Jan 6, 2022
Hi Friends! I hope you’re all keeping well. Today, I want to touch on a topic that is getting greater and greater attention, across many areas of healthcare – the gut microbiome.
Quick summary: The gut microbiome is incredibly important for health, and you can likely alter it for the better by taking a prebiotic fiber supplement, which effectively feeds the beneficial bacteria in your gut, allowing them to proliferate. This is a very simple yet potentially very beneficial 'biohack.'
Full post:
Intro to the gut microbiome
The gut microbiome refers to the entire constellation of microorganisms – mostly bacteria, but also fungi and viruses – that lives in the human gut. The human gut microbiome consists of up to 100 trillion microbes, outnumbering our own cells by roughly a factor of 10, and possesses at least 100 times more genes than are present in the entire human genome.
More and more evidence is accumulating for the incredible importance of the gut biome for health and fitness. The bacteria living in our guts conduct and assist with a wide range of critical functions, including those related to digestion, metabolism, vitamin production, and immune function. In turn, research has linked the gut biome to:
- Gut health and inflammation
- Body composition and obesity
- Diabetes
- Cardiovascular health, blood pressure
- Depression, anxiety, and general brain health
among many other things… To give you one example, the gut biomes of clinically obese individuals have been shown to be systematically different from those of leaner individuals, and fascinatingly, there is even evidence suggesting that our gut bacteria drive our decisions about which foods to eat (e.g., carb cravings), which may help to explain why it can be so difficult for overweight or otherwise unhealthy individuals to change their diets. Another fascinating example: women's gut biomes predict their likelihood of developing breast cancer. And, we are still in the early phases of research into this topic. Discovery and understanding of the gut biome could end up being the single most important development in our understanding of human health in a generation, if not longer.
Improving the gut biome
So, what can we do to “improve” our gut biomes? First, not surprisingly, diet can play a role. I’ll be discussing diet in one or more future posts, but for now please see my opening blog post where I offer a quick overview of what a healthy diet looks like. Like much about the gut biome, the interplay between it and diet is highly complex and still being studied, so it is difficult to offer firm recommendations at this point. However, the four most common recommendations that I've seen are:
1) reduce sugar intake
2) avoid foods containing pesticides, especially GLYPHOSATE (i.e., Round Up, which is sadly in a large proportion of US crops); research shows that they can substantially disrupt your gut biome. The best way to do this is to eat organic, and especially avoid non-organic corn, soy, canola and wheat.
3) eat fermented foods (e.g., sauerkraut, kimchi, natto; slowly, and if you handle them well).
4) eat foods containing 'polyphenols' - such as berries, spices, dark chocolate, green tea, and high quality organic coffee
Second, there are a wide range of probiotic supplements available, which literally contain the strains of gut bacteria thought to be beneficial for our health. These can be helpful, and as someone who once suffered from severe digestive disease, I have supplemented with probiotics for much of the past 13 years and have tried many different formulas, a couple of which I link to below. The issues here are: 1) we are still just scratching the surface with respect to learning which specific bacterial strains are most beneficial; 2) probiotics often don’t survive the journey down into the large intestine, and even if they do, they may be overwhelmed by the existing trillions of species they encounter; 3) the effects can be idiosyncratic – i.e., the specific strains that benefit one person may not be as helpful for another.
A third category of things you can do to try to alter the makeup of your gut biome for the better is to supplement with prebiotics. Prebiotics are food for the beneficial bacteria in your gut: you yourself don’t digest them or turn them into calories; rather, your gut bacteria consume them. And when they do that, they produce beneficial compounds like vitamin K and butyrate, and they proliferate.
Supplementing with prebiotic fiber
Based on what I’ve read, and personally experienced over the past few months, prebiotic fiber may be the most effective way that we currently know of to foster a healthier gut biome. Indeed, a recent review showed a strong link between fiber intake and "all-cause and cardiovascular related mortality, incidence of coronary heart disease, stroke incidence and mortality, type 2 diabetes, and colorectal cancer."
How do you increase prebiotic fiber intake? You can try altering your diet to include more vegetables, which can be helpful in other ways as well. However, much of this fiber is insoluble, which means that it won't feed you gut bacteria. Other fiber-containing foods, such as grains and beans, can be problematic for many people for other reasons (I'll touch on this more in a future post on diet). So, in addition to eating a healthy diet, the easiest way to increase healthy fiber intake is to take a prebiotic fiber supplement.
This is the best prebiotic supplement that I have found so far. It's completely natural -derived from trees - and specially formulated to include the exact kinds of 'food' that your healthy bacteria (such as the Bifidobacterium phylum) thrive on. It's very simple to take, you just spoon some out into a smoothie or hot beverage and it dissolves almost instantly and is tasteless.
I myself have seen substantial improvement in my digestion over the past few months, which has tracked closely with my increasing intake of this prebiotic fiber. Others have used the testing service Viome, which provides detailed information regarding the makeup of your gut biome based on a stool sample, and have observed substantial increases in the diversity of their gut biomes before and after supplementing with this (for several months). And at this stage of our understanding of the gut biome, diversity - simply, the total number of different species living in the gut - is the best broad metric of overall quality that we have available to us.
The conclusion that I draw from all of this evidence is that pretty much anyone would benefit from adding this to their regimen/diet (unless they already have a very high fiber diet - it is possible to have too much). It's easy, with very low risk and high upside. And it is apt to be especially beneficial to anyone who has gut or digestive issues, is looking to lose weight, suffers from carb cravings, has inflammatory/autoimmune/allergic conditions, or has taken antibiotics (recently or in the past), as well as, potentially, those experiencing mood disorders.
Unfortunately, it is not available on UK Amazon or iHerb, so if you are outside of the US, you could try seeing if you can order direct from the company that makes it: https://shop.bulletproof.com/products/innerfuel
Alternatively, you can buy pure Acacia Fiber on Amazon, which is a cheaper alternative that includes the most important of the three ingredients of the Bulletproof brand blend. For those of you outside of the US, you can buy Acacia Fiber on iHerb. To balance efficacy and cost, I personally take both the blend and the pure Acacia Fiber.
Importantly, you need to start slowly with these - otherwise, you are likely to experience some gas and bloating. Alterations to the gut biome are best undertaken gradually. I would suggest trying at most 1/2 teaspoon of each to start, and then increasing gradually, up to a maximum of 2 tablespoons per day (the best dose for you will depend on various factors including the amount of fiber you get in your diet, so it may take some experimentation).
Don't expect immediate results - again, your gut biome will shift gradually, over time.
One other category of prebiotics that is worth mentioning is 'resistant starch,' which can come in the form of things like potato starch and plantain flour - for example, you could add a tablespoon of organic potato starch to a smoothie (again, start with less). I've personally had greater success with the prebiotic fibers I describe above, but there are also many purported benefits to resistant starch. Please read this in-depth article if you want to learn more.
Probiotics
In addition to prebiotic fiber, some people (such as those with the issues I mentioned above) may still want to consider also taking supplemental probiotics. Until I learned about and experienced the benefits of prebiotic fiber, this is generally what I suggested to people with gut issues. In fact, prebiotics and probiotics can be synergistic with each other; the first feeds the second, helping them to survive and proliferate. In a sign of the growing mainstream acceptance of the importance of the gut biome, many healthcare professionals now recommend following a course of antibiotics with probiotics, to help limit the damage done to the gut biome (which, unfortunately, can be substantial, even from just a single course).
As I mentioned, finding a probiotic that works well for you can take some experimentation. Here are three blends that I and others I know have had some success with. As one example, I personally know multiple people who had success addressing their recurrent urinary tract infections (UTI) using the second of these (that is not to say that first one might not also help with this issue, my guess is that it would). Note that it is fairly common to experience a little gas or other mild GI symptoms for a few days after introducing a new probiotic - if you are especially sensitive, you can start with a smaller dose by actually opening up a capsule and pouring out a fraction of it into some water.
It is also worth mentioning a yeast, Saccharomyces boulardii, that has been shown to be helpful for rebalancing the gut biome and, in particular, for treatment of diarrheal diseases caused by bacteria. You can find additional info and links to S. boulardii supplements on my Gut Health page. It is cheap and definitely worth trying for anyone with gut issues.
Ok, I know this has been a fairly long post, but this is such an important and complex topic. Thank you for reading, and to your health!
Gavin
Additional resources
Measure your gut biome. Viome and BIOHM are two solid testing services that will give you quite detailed information on the make-up and health of your biome, as well as recommendations regarding dietary choices, etc. Cost is around $120-$150.
And, here are some excellent articles and books to check out if you want to learn more about the gut biome:
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