GutPain

Resistant Starch and Your Gut

After last week’s Memos on resistant starches, I received a couple of emails asking me to talk about related topics. I think they’re both important, so here we go.

The first was something I mentioned but didn’t focus on. You may remember that I said that resistant starches can act as prebiotic to produce short-chain fatty acids. The process is by fermentation, so that means it will produce gas. For some people, the gas production is so uncomfortable, it can negatively impact their life; they have to avoid some resistant starches. The good news is that the variety of foods that contain resistant starches is vast, so there are some foods that are less intrusive.

That leads to the second question about resistant starches and leaky gut syndrome. One of the issues with leaky gut is that the mucus layer on the inner gut is not as developed in some areas, and that leads to problems with nutrients and bacteria entering the blood stream directly. Resistant starches have been shown to be beneficial for leaky gut. However, the same issue with fermentation may happen until the bacterial colony grows sufficiently. The approach would be to slowly increase resistant starches to prevent over-fermentation.

There have been many questions, but I’ll wrap this up on Saturday and keep some questions for another time.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet