Butyrate - Great addition to New Year's weight loss goals & protector of your gut!
How best to get these. Differences between supplements.
Butyrate is pronounced, “byoo-ter-ate”.
Butyrate plays an important role in overall health. And especially in digestive health.
Remember, the gut is the “mother-ship” of our health so butyrate helps this along with many other aspects.
So butyrate is a powerful player in achieving unstoppable wellness.
How? Butyrate provides the main energy source for colonic cells (enterocytes) that make up your gut wall.
You rebuild your gut wall every 4-5 days. Gut wall cells need a lot of energy to do so. Butyrate helps provide about 70% of those daily energy demands.
Butyrate provides other health benefits, including immune system support, reducing overall nasty inflammation, and preventing diseases like cancer.
I recently wrote an article for the Townsend Letter on the Fat cell and described the science that shows that butyrate helps white fat (that stores energy) be morphed into brown fat (which burns energy). (This is also one of the most in-depth up-to-date summary on why it’s harder to lose weight in 2023 than it was in 1983 - and what we can do about it).
The healthier and more brown fat we have inside us, the less challenging it is to lose weight. In this way, butyrate supplements help your body maintain a healthier weight!
Thus, you might add butyrate supplements to your New Year’s health and weight loss program.
You can take butyrate supplements.
There are two types – Sodium Butyrate and Calcium / Magnesium Butyrate.
Sodium butyrate is the standard and is the most widely used in research studies.
Yet, many people should be avoiding extra sodium.
Who? For example, those with hypertension, pre-hypertension, severe kidney issues, and most heart conditions (not all, for example, Congestive Heart Failure patients have “not” been proven to do better on low sodium diets, see below).
In a systematic review of nine studies recently published in JAMA Internal Medicine, only limited and inconsistent evidence was found supporting any benefit of salt-restricted diets for non-hospitalized people with heart failure.
The evidence for salt restriction was “in-conclusive” in patients admitted to the hospital for heart failure.
This was a well-done study; only nine of the 2,655 studies evaluated were rigorous enough to include in the review.
So much confusion in nutritional medicine, let alone general medicine, right?
But if you know the science you are more armed to face what shows up.
Back to Butyrate supplements.
There is virtually NO difference between the two types of butyrate supplements except for the small amount of minerals used to bind the butyric acid.
Sodium and calcium/magnesium are mainly the “buffers” that allow the butyric acid to reach your gut.
However, some especially sensitive individuals may notice subtle energy differences between sodium and calcium magnesium butyrate.
Sodium can be more energizing,
Calcium and magnesium are calming minerals.
But never say always or never. We are all different.
Keep in mind, the mineral content in a standard dose is extremely negligible.
These differences amplify if you are taking butyrate supplements at higher doses. As some functional oncologists recommend to new cancer patients. Remember, your immune system mainly lives inside your gut.
Foods that enhance your body’s own production (though we never know how much) of healing butyrates:
Fruits like apples, apricots, bananas (but contemporary bananas have been genetically altered to contain excessive sugars, drat), kiwis, pears, and raspberries. I will share my fav raspberry smoothie sometime.
Veggies like all leafy greens, artichokes (almost a miracle food like pomegranates), asparagus, broccoli, carrots, chickpeas, garlic, green peas, onions, potatoes (especially cooled), rice (especially when cooled).
Fats like butter, ghee, cheese, and all milk products from all animals.
Resistant starches from potatoes and organic raw green bananas are especially useful. Especially for patients that need to start producing a lot of butyrate to heal themselves of things like inflammatory bowel disease and other autoimmune issues where the gut is part of the “root cause”.
Take home point you have to consume these foods on a “regular” basis.
Butyric acid production happens SLOWLY OVER TIME.
Still, a healthy, diverse, plant-based diet - over time - is the best butyrate-boosting program.
Food is medicine.
But it is not a quick fix.
However, if you have cancers, autoimmune diseases and long to lose weight, elevated CRP levels in your blood, diabetes, or cognitive decline, butyrate supplements are a great addition to your tool bag.
Some bodies are less able to produce and absorb butyrate due to certain medications (antibiotics) or gut issues like dysbiosis or other diverse chronic diseases, like MS, Type 2 Diabetes, or having consumed a long-term junk food diet.
Butyrates help us in many ways:
Improve insulin resistance to help pre-diabetics as well as diabetics.
Reduce gut inflammation
Reduce overall inflammation.
Help lose weight.
Protect your brain.
Protect your heart.
Promote more restorative sleep.
Knowledge is power.
Especially to promote gut cell-wall health (enterocytes).
Dr.B.
Reference:
Thank you for this enlightening article. Do you mentor practitioners at all? I would love to be one of those people!