Boost Your Gut Health

We all know that a well-balanced diet is the key to our weight goals. That means a solid balance of protein, carbs and fats. Most people see or hear the word carbs and automatically picture that as a negative thing and something to avoid. I’ve covered the benefit of carbs briefly in other posts, but I wanted to dive a little deeper in to some of the benefits of carbs in this week's post. The thing that surprises most people about carbs is that they can actually assist in a healthy gut and reduce inflammation, this is because certain carbs contain something known as resistant starches. Read on below to see what I’m talking about.

Understanding Resistant Starches

Simply put a resistant starch is a starch that resists digestion while passing through the small intestine. After passing through the small intestine it reaches the large intestine and colon where is slowly broken by the healthy bacteria during the digestion process.

What Is The benefit?

The flora in our guts outweighs other cells in our body by a ratio of 10:1. Other foods tend to only “feed” 10% of our healthy bacteria, but resistant starches feed the other 90% that normally get forgotten about. By feeding those other 90% your flora produces short-chain fatty acids which are essential to a healthy intestine and colon lining. This has been shown to reduce colorectal cancer as well as reduce other major digestive disorders such as inflammatory bowel disease, Crohns disease, and Ulcerative colitis to name a few.

Other studies have shown that resistant starches can improve insulin sensitivity. It’s also been shown to reduce blood sugar levels after meals. In addition to all of the above it’s believed to assist in weight loss as resistant starches have been shown to increase the feelings of fullness.

How to Get Your Resistant Starches?

You can add resistant starches to your diet through supplements or by adding certain foods to your diet. Take a look at the list below for some easy to add options.

• Green Banana Flour

• Raw Potato starch

• Unripe Bananas

• Raw Oats

• Cassava Root

• Shirataki Noodles

There are many other options but the above are some of the most common and easiest to integrate in to a diet.