Butyrate:
Key Fat for the Gut and Everything
Butyrate is a fatty acid that compares in importance with other key fats:
DHA from fish oil
Cholesterol as the building block of adrenal and sex hormones, among many other roles).
Butyrate is the main fuel for the colon and thus crucial against diseases from leaky gut to colon cancer.
Butyrate beyond the colon plays a role in too many things to even list and acts like a regulatory hormone.
The main source of butyrate is fermentable fibers like from fruit and oat bran.
There is butyrate in butter but that might be absorbed through the small intestine to be used for system wide purposes, not utilized in colon, so might not be a complete source for everyone.
In the Colon, Butryate:
- Is essential to the gut lining as the defense against pathogens and transporter of nutrients:
- Controls healthy absorption of nutrients without the holes of leaky gut.
- Controls inflammation, oxidative stress
- Helps motility against constipation.
“For example, butyrate is capable of upregulating the expression of mucin 2 (MUC2), which is the most prominent mucin on the intestinal mucosal surface and can reinforce the mucous layer, leading to the enhanced protection against luminal pathogens….
One of several mechanisms in which butyrate enhances barrier function is through activation of AMP-activated protein kinase in monolayers (77).”
From:
Butyrate: A Double-Edged Sword for Health? Hu Liu, Ji Wang, Ting He, Sage Becker, Guolong Zhang, Defa Li, Xi Ma Advances in Nutrition, Volume 9, Issue 1, January 2018, Pages 21–29, https://doi.org/10.1093/advances/nmx009 Published: 09 February 2018
Systemically, Butyrate Helps With:
Blood sugar regulation. insulin sensitivity
Cancer control, especially in colon
Immune boosting
Parasymapethic fuel parasympathetic system secretes acetylcholine
Brain functioning
Electrolyte balance
Dna synethesis
Energy production
Cell growth and apoptosis to prevent cancer
Leptin regulation
Reduces appetite
Helps liver make other fats instead of make sugar out of non carb sources.
Growth hormone
Cholesterol synthesis when not available in the diet for hormones, brain, skin, etc.
The roles of butyrate are so numerous and complex it’s impossible to explain briefly.
How to get enough cannot always be achieved with supplements that may backfire when taking too much since butyrate has regulatory effects that could lead to imbalance with excess.
Butyrate fermented from good clostridium butyricum and other good bacteria in the colon to be used just in time in a self regulating manner.
The problem is many people are lacking bacterial balance in the gut from antibiotics or even colonics that sometimes immediately make people worse long term, so it’s not just keto, but washing out probiotics most likely.
Butyrate is best produced with numerous fermentable fibers.
A lack of butyrate production likely represents a larger imbalance or dysbiosis as the balance between good bacteria and yeast versus bad ones and parasites that requires a broader strategy.
Butter can be part of a solution for people who don’t have the bacteria to fermented fibers in their guts and therefore might not even tolerate fibrous foods, but that might mainly be absorbed in the small intestine for systemic uses.
I have tried a raw butter suppository type small enemas, but it’s a mess when it leaks out and I didn’t really need it so did not continue, so nothing to report.
I personally like a variety of fruits and oat bran.
This is partly why I prefer a moderate carb diet, not low carb, after I gave up grains and starches. Fruit for carbs, minerals, vitamins and antioxidants.
Butyrate is also a source of synthesizing cholesterol in the liver for people who don’t eat enough cholesterol. Thus vegetarians who are healthy must have the bacteria and fibers, and healthy liver to synthesize butyrate.
Cows that eat nothing but grass ferment butyrate in cholesterol in milk, but they have multiple stomach fermentation chambers and throw up the food to chew again in mid process.
Cows also ferment the other fatty acids that we also make, acetate and propionate.
So it’s harder for humans with damaged guts to make enough butyrate and cholesterol.
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