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Child: Welcome to my mommy’s podcast!
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Katie: Hello and welcome to the Fit Bottomed Zone Podcast. I’m Katie from fitbottomedzone.com, and I am back today with Shefaly Ravula to talk all things gut health and especially all about fiber soluble fiber in soluble fiber resistant starch, what their similarities and differences are, why we need them, why some people cannot seemingly consume them.
And so much more. She even dives into the link into natural GLP production within the body, as well as kind of typical things to aim for when it comes to gut health and fiber and much more beyond that. She is a wealth of knowledge and a joy to talk to. So let’s join her now. Shefaly, welcome back. Thank you for being here again.
Shefaly: Thanks. I’m excited to chat with you. Thank you so much for this opportunity to be with you.
Katie: I am excited too, and I will link to our first conversation in the show notes because we talked about vitamin C and not the one that you’re thinking when you think of vitamin C and vitamin J. And I feel like it cannot be overstated how important those things we talked about are to health. And in this conversation, I am really excited to dive into another pivotally important aspect of health. You are an expert in all things gut and I’m excited to learn from you about the similarities and differences and nuance around all types of fiber because I know that word is getting a lot of attention lately. We’re hearing a lot about protein and fiber. And from paying attention to even to social media, I have now noticed like it is more difficult than you might expect to get all of the amounts of fiber that social media tells you that you’re supposed to get on a daily basis.
And I’m really curious to go first principles with you and learn the basics of what are the differences of different types of fiber, like soluble, insoluble, resistant starch, of course, gets a lot of attention. What do they do in our body and how do we use them most effectively for our health? So I know that’s a broad topic. Maybe can you jump in by defining for us the different types of fiber and what they do?
Shefaly: Yeah, great. Okay, so, so soluble fiber is, so we have soluble fiber and insoluble fiber and insoluble fiber is kind of what it sounds like. It’s not going to be easily dissolved into. like in the gut. So think about an apple is kind of the best way to think about an apple skin is going to have the insoluble fiber and the pulp is going to be more of a soluble fiber. Now, most foods like most of the plant foods, that are fiber rich are going to have a mix, usually of both soluble and insoluble fibers. So it’s not like, you know, there’s like a dedicated list of only insoluble fiber and a dedicated list of only soluble.
Not that many foods. A lot of foods have both. But then there are some foods that have more of one category than the other. And so fiber’s purpose. I mean, it’s just so amazing what fiber does. And I know, you know, most fibers are plant or their plant foods, right? And so, um, the roles of fiber include, you know, helping the gut ecology, the ecology of your microbiome, to be in balance because they’re food for some of that.
The ecosystem that’s happening in the gut. And there’s a very complicated, um, you know, series of events that happen from prebiotics to probiotics and the actual organisms of the gut to what they produce, which are the postbiotics. And so, and then it’s much more complicated than that because it’s include includes other foods and ingredients that can help facilitate some of these reactions that are happening at the system in the gut.
But then we also have the effect of fiber just mechanically like. How it helps with having good bowel movements and having motility and having a proper evacuation and, you know, out of the body. So we have a lot of different functions not only with the gut ecology, but also with structural and motility and things like that.
So, to give you some examples of, you know. Foods that fall into these ranges, of course, and this is probably, you know, common sense for a lot of people, but it’s really all the plants you can think of, like berries and legumes and lentils and okra and peas and asparagus and apples, like I just mentioned, all kinds of vegetables, leafy greens, oats, barley.
So these are all different types of insoluble soluble. So I would say lentils and legumes really have a lot of good insoluble fiber, but some of them also have good soluble fiber. And then some vegetables are going to have more of one category than the other.
Resistant starch is a type of an insoluble fiber. And those are pretty specific. So that’s a category of things like potato, sweet potatoes or white potatoes, rice. Now those in those foods, if you have cooked them and then cooled them down, then you’re going to have a really good development of resistant starch. And I’ll talk about why resistant starch might be really, really helpful.
Um, but the foods are, are those foods plus plantains, um, oats again, barley, chestnuts, um, you know, like chestnuts that you can eat in the winter, chestnut flour, coconut flour, Just a whole assortment there of different types of resistant starch foods. And so resistant starch is a prebiotic, but what it’s doing is it’s specifically really great for what I talked about, which was postbiotic.
So when we have prebiotic foods, these are the foods that are feeding our gut microbiota. And then that gut microbiota needs that to produce what they produce, which is short chain fatty acid production. Short chain fatty acids are fuel for the colon cells, the enterocytes. And what are they useful for?
What are these short chain fatty acids useful? Well, they’re a fuel. So they’re going to really contribute to great colon wall health, but also systemic health because we have a connection with the gut to the rest of the body, right? I mean, this is why nutrition matters because we need those nutrients to get to the rest of the body.
So we have a lot of connection and role of these short chain fatty acids. Butyrate is one of the big ones. You can even take butyrate as a supplement. Yes, but you know, we want to get it with food ideally. And so butyrate helps with a, a wide variety of amazing properties in the body of down to metabolic, a hormonal regulation, you know, gut brain access connection, et cetera. And you can get really more specific about this, but I want to keep a high level here.
So bottom line, resistant starch is a type of fiber, a type of prebiotic fiber that helps with this short chain fatty acid production, particularly butyrate, but other ones as well. So that’s kind of a high level overview. Do you have any followup questions on that so far before we get into, you know, other foods that are super helpful for gut ecology as well?
Katie: I feel like that was a great primer on the starch category. And then, yeah, if there are other things that are synergistic with that, or that are also really vital for gut health, I feel like that’s an important piece as well. So yeah, let us teach us all of it.
Shefaly: So more foods, more classified classifications of foods, if you will. Bitters. So bitter foods are great. And some of those foods are bitter foods. Again, we’re talking about combining things. So like artichoke, arugula, dandelion, radish. These are bitter foods, so bitter tasting foods. So I think we’ve kind of, as a society, gotten away from bitter foods because we used to grow up taking medicines as kids in the old days before, you know, medicines got convenienced, I guess, into sweet tasting medicines for kids.
They used to taste bitter, right? And we used to have a knack to eat bitter foods. We’ve gotten away from that. When we have bitter taste receptors, we’re supposed to be able to taste bitter foods on our tongue. And there’s a reason for that because it really primes the pump of the gallbladder, the liver connection into the upper gut.
And that really helps this entire digestive cascade. And we talk about going north to south in the gut. Mouth starting with the saliva and salivary enzymes. esophagus as purely more of a motility agent, not really a digestive organ per se, but right when you get to the stomach from the top to the bottom, you have, it’s divided into sections and has so many key functions of, of digestion, secretion of hormones and breakdown of proteins and secretion of acid.
Starting this whole cool, amazing process. You guys, like, I think it’s really fascinating and you know, I’m a gastroenterology provider traditionally like conventionally trained gastroenterology. And like you, you don’t think about that as much when you’re treating someone in a conventional GI practice.
You’re treating someone more as like almost band aid medicine. Like, let me treat the symptoms, but we’re not thinking about like, Oh, what are we breaking in this north to south? Like, how can we assess this? And I know I’m going off on a tangent here, but what I mean is, let’s go back to bitters.
Bidders are really crucial in that North to South, connection and that cascade of hormones and that cascade of things that are happening. So I think better foods are really important to start incorporating in your diet and an easy one, you know, that if you’re not used to bitters, like is dandelion.
No, not sorry. That’s not easy. That’s hard. Uh, chocolate, dark, dark chocolate, 75%, one square. Just have it after dinner. Let it dissolve in the mouth. Treat it like a cool chocolate tasting experience. You will notice the bitter at the end. And some people do have bitter taste receptor genes that are like, they’re like, I cannot do better foods and we have tricks for those people, but, I think chocolate’s a good one.
And then coffee, um, you know, or, or dandy, dandy, the brand as a brand of dandelion root powder that you can. You know, mix into make a look hot cocoa chocolate. Sorry. A hot cocoa caffeine-free coffee alternative beverage or dandelion root tea, which is going to taste quite better. So that’s one category. And then I have two other categories.
Katie: Let’s do it.
Shefaly: So fermented foods. Um, those are also like, we do a dietary recall on all our patients to see like, okay, how much of this are you getting? Like bitters, polyphenols, fiber, uh, fruits and vegetables, proteins, you know, plant proteins, fermented foods, processed foods, sugars, you know, water, all the things.
Like it’s a whole list and they fill this out in terms of how much they get every week. And by and far, the fermented food is the one that’s deficient in most people. We’re just don’t have that. We don’t think about putting that in our diet. Um, now if you eat yogurt, you’re probably getting some, if you eat cottage cheese, you’re getting a little bit, but a lot of people are dairy free.
You know, and so the dairy free yogurts will have some, but be thinking about kombucha, which, yes, has a lot of sugar, so keep that in control. We don’t want to overdo anything. Um, sauerkraut, kimchi, tempeh, Cultural foods like from my one region in India that my husband’s from dosa and idli, I mean, those are fermented foods and they’re naturally fermented foods because when you make the dosa batter or the idli batter, if you make that, you are fermenting it from the natural yeast in the environment, but you can eat that at restaurants.
If you go to Indian restaurants and you can order that, you know, gluten free, by the way. So fermented foods are big. Now, I mentioned all these foods, the fiber, the fermented foods, there is a small, you know, group of people and that group of people is a large group of people that I see the ones that can’t tolerate these foods, they gas them up, they blow them up, they cause them diarrhea, they cause them constipation.
So that’s a separate issue. We need to fix your gut. We need to address what’s going on there. Go through a protocol and then you can usually be able to eat some of these foods again.
And then I have another last category that I want to talk about, which is polyphenols. And that is not to be, this is a, this is kind of a fun class because it’s really easy to do herbs and spices, colorful fruits and vegetables.
Rotate your fruits and vegetables, you know, rotate your berries, rotate your fruits, rotate your colors, think outside the box, go to the farmer’s market and think about, oh, is there a weird looking cabbage or carrot? Let me get that. Let me do purple cabbage instead of green cabbage. Let me do a beautiful heirloom tomato instead of this Red tomato. Thinking outside the box with the colors of the fruits and vegetables is a great way to do polyphenols, but also herbs and spices like dried herbs and spices. So even those 3 jars of spices that you buy, those have so many polyphenols in them, and there are certain spices that have even more.
So there’s something called the ORAC score. O R A C. You can Google that or maybe put that in your show notes, Katie. But, some spices have off the chart OREC scores, which is a good thing because the polyphenol content in just a smidgen of that spice is so profound for your gut health. Rosemary is one, marjoram is one, we know about turmeric, cinnamon is one, so there’s some pretty amazing spices out there that you should just be liberal on.
Katie: I love that. And I love that coffee got a good grade and is like beneficial to the gut selfishly, because I really enjoy coffee some days, um, but also the fermented foods, when I’ve heard that, that especially in America, we, they’re getting very low amounts of those and how impactful that can be for the gut. I could rotate a lot more but one thing I do at my house is have at least a few different versions of things like sauerkraut and kimchi or just naturally fermented pickles and I try to just always get those out at every meal and have them on the counter so even at breakfast I’ll just add a little scoop of sauerkraut to whatever I’m eating. And my kids have started picking up on that too. Um, so I feel like that can be an easy shift, but it’s just not one we always think to do. So I love that you a reminder on that.
I’m also curious because I saw a note in your work about these foods and their effect on GLPs, which are of course getting so much attention right now. And I feel like it sometimes gets missed that our body naturally produces GLPs, and we’re not talking enough about that part, but I would love for you to dive into the gut connection of that, ways to support our body’s natural production, and or is there any gut interplay or issue with people doing exogenous GLPs? Is that? beneficial or negative or does it have an impact?
Shefaly: Yeah, okay, so our innate GLP is really short acting. Right. So, the pharmacotherapy versions are just, they last longer. So we don’t really know, I guess, you know, honestly, like we, we know the safety data. We know they work. We know that they’re, I believe they’re a great tool in the toolkit for certain people that reach a metabolic set point for their weight and have tried a lot of things.
You know, there’s multiple psychosocial reasons and rationales for why one should consider using GLP1s as a medication in the right way, by the way, in the right way. Like we do this in our, we do this as a program, but it is a very Holistic program. I think we see a lot of problems with not enough fiber, not enough protein and a real problem with muscle mass loss and that, that really is quite problematic when you’re really thinking of longevity, because if you’re thinking about weight, that’s great, because that does help with longevity, but if you don’t have muscle mass, and if you don’t support your bones and your structural organs, well, you are maybe affecting your metabolic health negatively in the long run if you don’t take care of doing your GLP-1 medication the correct way. So that’s on one side.
Now, to support your innate GLP-1 production, um, It’s all the foods I just talked about because that relationship in the gut ecology that I was talking about where you have prebiotics and then feeding that microbiota with, you know, and then those micro, those good, that good balance of microbiota and there’s no, I don’t want to say, good and bad, because you can have an overgrowth of good bacteria, and you can have an overgrowth of bad bacteria, too.
And then it’s not just bacteria, we’re also looking at other organisms in the gut, too. But, we now, you know, we know that the microbiome is very much a metabolic organ. It’s not an organ, but it’s like an organ. And so, that relationship of what the microbiome is producing, to produce those short chain fatty acids and butyrate production requires some of these, like Akkermancy is a big one.
Uh, which now is a probiotic that you can now purchase and take, um, for a long time couldn’t be grown in a lab because of the way it needs to be grown in anaerobic conditions. But I’m not saying that you need to go on these. I think, you know, ultimately we want to do food as medicine. You can help boost your innate GLP-1 by doing all these foods because it is helping these, this reaction have to happen where you have these key drivers of the GLP 1 production process.
Like I said, the short chain fatty acid production with the Akkermansia with the polyphenols and that helps this whole reaction to happen.
I think if we’re, if we’re just eating these foods and these well balanced foods and we’ve healed our gut, if we have gut issues and we are eating these foods, I think you can do a really good job of boosting your innate GLP1. But it’s not always enough for everybody. And so that’s where it gets really nuanced and personalized, I think.
Katie: Makes sense and it makes sense it would be a both and like even if you were going to go the route of exogenous GLP 1s also supporting your gut also especially supporting your muscle tone and making sure you’re getting all those factors dialed in to like get the benefits and minimize the downsides. Um, you also mentioned in passing a little bit that some people have trouble with some of these foods that are beneficial for the gut. And I’m curious if that’s also true in relation to fiber as well. Like I know some people seem to have like some negative physical reactions to fiber. Like, are there people who it is not helpful for, or at least that there’s more nuance and caveat around how they have to approach that?
Shefaly: Yeah. If you are somebody that’s listening in and you’re like, I can’t tolerate fiber, specific types of fiber, there’s something going on. I would say like. Your body innately is usually able to handle fiber, and if you bloat up or get distended or have changes in bowel movements that are pretty significant when you eat fiber, and it could be either the prebiotic fiber or the probiotic fiber, so it could be.
And we can go into that if you want to, but, in a specific case of SIBO, SIBO patients, which is what we see a lot of, we do see a lot of people that are not able to tolerate the prebiotic fibers. So that’s going to be like onion and garlic and leeks and things like that. And they really just, the moment they have that, they bloat up or they get distended and they just are uncomfortable and they look, they might look pregnant and these are things that I used to see in conventional GI and honestly, it was, it was a little bit shaken off and I don’t like that and so I don’t want people to feel like they’re getting medically gas lit.
So if you feel like these foods bother you, you know, they bother you and you listen to your gut. You know your body the best and so trust your gut. That’s the name of our newsletter. And you know, listen to yourself and fight for yourself. Vouch for yourself within reason. You know, you always want to trust your medical provider too and have a good rapport with them, but I think there are things that allopathic world cannot always address in the time limits that insurance companies restrain them on. And so, yeah, I think if you can’t tolerate fiber, I want you to dig deeper.
Katie: Yeah, that seems like an important caveat to know, like the body is meant to digest this. It’s probably sending a signal if you’re not, and that’s good. That’s also a good information. Um, but not to just accept that at face value and not do anything to like dig deeper onto what the root cause might be.
I’m also curious in light of talking about fiber, what your thoughts are on the popularity of things like the carnivore diet or keto diets that largely exclude a lot of plant foods.
Shefaly: What I’m very proud of in our practice is that we’re diet agnostic because you can come to me on a carnivore diet and you can come to me on a vegan diet and I will work with you because I think that there’s diets for everything. Some diets are prescriptive therapeutic diets that are meant to be short term and I think carnivore and keto can fall into those.
They can have roles and they can be really beneficial for a specific type of person. I think partly the reason the carnivore diet helps some people is because it really seems to be very low inflammatory because it’s taking away these plant foods, but those plant foods happen to be inflaming these people, but they’re not figuring out why.
So I think getting to the why is really, just make sure someone’s looking at you big picture like prenatal history. All the way to now and really being your detective and looking at everything that has been the inputs in your life to why you have food sensitivities now, or why you needed to be on the carnivore diet.
Now, I forgot to mention one other area where fibers not tolerated well is like someone that’s really inflamed from perhaps colitis, inflammatory bowel disease, you know, That is definitely like, if you’ve got a known diagnosis and you are having a flare, you won’t be able to tolerate fiber. And you know, your GI doctor will tell you low fiber diet or low residue diet because those foods really, because they are fiber rich.
And your mucosal lining is kind of just really torn up and inflamed and maybe even bleeding. You can’t tolerate those fibers. And that’s, that’s an appropriate reason to not have fiber and not have too much fiber. Again, hopefully in the short term only. I have patients that come to us on the keto diet because they feel great and they lost weight and they’ve lowered their blood sugar.
That’s all great. But then at the end of the day, if you’re on it for a year or two, depending on how the keto is done, like, is it clean keto? You know, you can still do clean and green keto. I think Dr. Anna Cabeca or some of the other menopause specialists do focus on a clean and green keto Um for certain times in your life and that’s doable.
That could be a healthy way to go. So it’s good good to look at okay. You’re on a keto. Well, where are those fats coming from? So are they all bacon and eggs? And what kind of eggs? Are they grass fed eggs? Are they, you know, what kind of meat? Is it a lot of red meat? Um, what’s your family history? Do we have heart disease in the family?
What’s your LDL? What’s your APOB? What are your inflammation markers? I like to look at a lot of labs that help inform your cardiovascular status because let’s not forget, yeah, I may be a gut health practice, but, um, what is the number one cause of mortality in men and women worldwide? It’s heart disease. So, we have to look at that too.
Katie: That makes sense. And I know your focus, your practice is gut health. And so for anyone who has especially very specific things or want to dive into their own root causes, um, telemedicine. Where can people find you, connect with you and keep learning from you? And keep learning from you?
Shefaly: Absolutely. We serve the state of Texas right now and, for seeing patients in the state of Texas. We can help with nutrition coaching. We’re happy to help anybody telehealth. We’d love to help you and you can find us at precisionguthealth.com. We do a lot of work with local Texas area GI offices and they often refer patients to us when they’ve got these patients that really need a more deep dive, a holistic approach. And so they’ll send us patients our way for helping them with that as well.
And I will say that once we help fx their gut and they’re in our initial program, a lot of patients do opt to stay in our membership to then work on their metabolism and their longevity. So, I’d say a quarter of our practice is working on that. So, you know, you don’t have to have gut health issues to work with us by any means.
If you’re interested in health optimization. Personalized nutrition, metabolic health. We can help you with that too.
Katie: Amazing. Well, I will put those links in the show notes as well. And I loved that we got to learn so much about all things gut related fiber and beyond today. This is fascinating conversation and I certainly understand it better after getting to learn from you. Thank you so much for your time and for being here today and for all that you shared.
Shefaly: Thank you. I just love that you do this and I’m happy to contribute to helping your audience like in any way that I can. I love, I love doing podcasts. So thank you so much for having me.
Katie: And thank you as always for listening and sharing your most valuable resources, your time, your energy, and your attention with us today. We’re both so grateful that you did. And I hope that you will join me again on the next episode of the Fit Bottomed Zone podcast.
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