Your gut microbes ferment dietary fiber into butyrate, a compound that reduces inflammation and improves insulin sensitivity. Eat diverse plant fibers, not animal sources, to build a resilient microbiome that supports metabolic health and weight management.
But we can agree that there is a resilient microbiome. And a resilient microbiome is a healthy microbiome, something that can bounce back after an illness, after traveler's diarrhea, anything, you know, or a trip to Mexico, you come back and you're able to handle it, that becomes that resilient microbiome. And a resilient microbiome is a microbiome that is rich in diversity. You have a lot of species richness and species evenness. And by that I mean lots of different species of microbes, bacteria, fungi, and also you don't have an overgrowth of any one particular kind of microbe. So we, it's, it's. I, I usually use a garden analogy. Instead of 100 tomato plants and one poor zucchini plant, you just want a little bit more evenness in the garden. And for that, from an evolutionary standpoint, we have handed over the digestion of fiber to our microbial partners and they look at it as fuel. So when we eat anything, and I have been asked this, you know, where do you get your fiber from? It's plant sources does not come from the animal kingdom, it comes from plant sources. So anytime you eat any vegetable or bean or lentil or anything like that, there's an undigested part of the plant source, which is fiber. And the microbes, it goes undigested through your entire digestive tract to the colon. And these microbes are excited and waiting for, for their fuel. They eat it and they produce metabolites. These metabolites, especially butyrate, is fantastic for us. They, it really helps us in so many different ways, decreasing inflammation, helping us with, since insulin sensitivity, even metabolic, you know, conditions really, it really does help with that. I have seen in my practice that increasing that buty really, really helps with keeping that weight off and in weight management. So yeah, they do a lot of behind the scenes for us and fiber is the main source. And I think most of the research is showing that you need to have a diversity of these fiber sources. And by that I mean like soluble, insoluble prebiotic fibers, because not all fibers are prebiotic in nature. So you want prebiotic fibers that help you grow bacteria that support you. So.
