Gut Bugs Eating your Gut?

We don’t believe in cutting out carbohydrates from your diet. There are so many different types of carbohydrates so let’s be more specific. Yes, reduce those refined carbohydrates in junk food etc but not carbohydrates you find in grains, fruit and vegetables. Why?

Your gut bugs love carbohydrates that we call MAC’s (or microbiota-accessible carbohydrates). These are dietary fibres that are non-digestible polysaccharides (e.g. prebiotics and vegies) which is why fibre is so good for your health in general.

If you don’t eat enough fibre gut bugs such as Akkermansia muciniphila have nothing to eat and will start to eat the mucus lining of your gut. This gut bug is a very prominent producer of butyrate, one of the short chain fatty acids we need to keep our gut healthy. If this bug starts eating the lining of your intestine it can lead to more health issues which is why you should be very scared when we see no carb diets or very low carb diets. Eating from all food groups is the way to go.

If you want to read more about it there's a nice paper here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5427073/

Image sourced from: https://pixabay.com/photos/bacteria-medical-biology-health-3658992/