Even though there’s a thousand or more (Amazon PS purchases) worldwide now on various forms of resistant starch (potato starch, mung bean starch, green plantain, green banana, tapioca starch, and even hi-maize) and so far—in compiling anecdotes for the book—positive experience outnumbers negative better than 9-to-1 in self reporting in comments, there are naysayers. Most of them are VLC and Keto Zealots, though as has been shown, they’re already so fucked with physiologic insulin resistance it doesn’t work very well (and remember who reported this—we did); which is to say, no harm, but not a lot of benefit—though long-term benefits to having a more robust, well fed 100 trillion gut bugs—whether direct feeders, co-feeders or commensals—is unknown, since there’s not a lot of fiber period, anyway.
But as Jeff Leach has suggested by actually testing shit (literally), VLC or Ketogenic fucks up your gut biome.
Jeff’s Gut With Fiber and Without
Yes, you can shift your gut microbiome (dramatically) with diet in a very, very short period of time. Below is my microbial composition – at the phylum level – after shifting my diet. In short, while maintaining a high fat / protein diet, I simply dropped out the plants and fiber. This, in theory, resulted in less fermentation in my colon which shifted pH to more alkaline. Under these conditions, the genus Bacteroides within the phylum Bacteroidetes, were able to bloom as strains of Bacteroides that are pH sensitive and don’t grow as well in acidic conditions created by the productions of short chain fatty acids and organic acids during fermentation of fiber/resistant starch (and fermentation of host-derived substrates. Take home message (IMO): acidity good, blooms of Bacteroides (which is driving the spike in the phylum Bacteroidetes in right-hand side pie), not so good. I will discuss more of this in an upcoming blog post. [emphasis added]
So, like I said, you didn’t have to hear it from some Keto-24/7/365-Zealot that it’s not going to do much for you, you heard it here. They’re physiologically insulin resistant and have a fucked up gut that’s not producing sufficient short chain fatty acids on site—and all the butter in the world isn’t going to help them. SFCA’s are needed to be produced in the colon itself. Again: you heard that here, from myself, Tim, and Marie, with data to back it up—and Marie is a trained PhD physical scientist. If anything, our bias was that it would hopefully work for keto people whereas, the bias of the keto-crowd is that it won’t do anything, and then they dishonestly act like it’s a gotcha.
So, Keto-Zealots, you might want to stop going around pretending like you’re onto something, or that it’s all a sham because it didn’t work for you with your too-fucked-up guts and insulin resistance, and even autoimmune issues brought on by tight-junction malfunction through chronic starvation modeling dietary practices.
But anyway, I have all sorts of Google alerts set up so I literally see everything that’s being said out there about resistant starch. So far tons of articles linking back to various here, 95% open mindedness, estimated 90% positive results in the primary things reported, with the primary negative (though not really a health condition) being flatulence. For most people, including me, it resolves after you un-fuck-up your gut biome. Things like bloating or weight gain (much greater weight loss being reported) are temporary, except in just a couple of instances I know of. Headaches, but several have found that SBOs resolve that quickly. Perhaps the most serious are various autoimmune flair ups, and how do you suppose they got autoimmune issues in the first place? Long term VLC and Ketosis, that’s how. Tight-junction malfunction, like I said above.
Perhaps the funniest lie of all is the pretending that this is all some radical new thing we pulled out of our ass, as the world’s biggest fart joke, or something (that would actually be funny, and we’d probably get a lot more fame out of this deal, if it were true). There’s just one problem: it’s not true. This isn’t a discovery at all, but somewhat of a rediscovery and application. The only thing novel about it is using potato starch, but Tim has explained in podcasts how he came upon that idea. He read a pig study, and guess what they gave them? Potato starch. Soon enough, he saw it on the supermarket shelf.
But let me illustrate how silly and dishonest this notion is. Go to PubMed, search the following three terms and compare the number of results.
- Resistant starch: 8,335
- Ketogenic diet: 1,881
- Paleo diet: 91
Now, for a bigger laf, narrow your results for 1-Jan-2013 to present.
- Resistant starch: 164
- Ketogenic diet: 193*
- Low Carb Diet: 6
- Paleo Diet: 1
*Scan through…99% neuro stuff (epilepsy, Alzheimer’s, etc.), not diet, weight loss stuff.
Resistant starch has been studied for over 30 years now, extensively, so when someone lafs, or says they’re going to try it so they can laf, it gives you insight into the level of ignorance and dishonesty you’re dealing with. And here’s the thing: all of the anecdotes people are posting? Sure, they’re great, but I see them mainly as motivational, to get others to just give it a shot and see how it works for them. But nobody really needs to pay any attention to self-reported anecdotes. Just consult the literature where you’ll find all the same reported benefits in terms of blood glucose control (and other things) in controlled settings, usually using about the same 30 grams per day we’ve been suggesting, equal to 4 TBS of potato starch, taken raw, always. In humans and animals as well. In fact, once I dug into it, it’s probably the most unambiguous, consistent set of clear benefits I’ve ever seen: heads and tails above all the diet war, cholesterol, heart disease studies, etc.
In the book that Tim and I are writing—and Dr. BG-AnimalPharm (link removed) is editing for science mess-ups, as well as adding some nice science sidebars and such—we’re probably at over 400 primary references at this point, tons of them published in 2013 and now, even 2014. I found stuff so new that I’ve had to go back and do edits, such as when I recently discovered that infants aren’t born sterile as has been asserted since 1900, but get an initial gut biome via placenta and amnionic fluid. It was pretty simple to discover. Just sequence the stool of a newborn, immediately, before anything could have had a chance to bloom from the bacteria picked up in the birth canal, from breast milk, or hand to mouth.
And here’s the rub, all this bla-bla from the Keto-Zealots just exposes that they didn’t even bother to consult the literature independently to verify all the above, or even the blog posts I’ve put up summarizing some of the literature.
- Resistant Starch: Now We’re Getting Somewhere (13 study summaries)
- Resistant Starch: An Overall Primer, with References (21 references)
- Resistant Starch: Now We’re Getting Somewhere, Part 2 (35 study summaries)
You’re probably wondering, did we cherry pick these? We did two things:
- Tried to use human studies where possible.
- Excluded all but maybe a couple in part 2 that were funded by National Starch or other corporate interests.
Nonetheless, I’ll have to ask Tim, or he can pipe up in comments, but in all the months I’ve been looking at this, I’ve yet to see a single study find anything but benefit to resistant starch intake.
Also, you don’t have to go dose potato starch either, if you don’t want. It’s merely about the cheapest, easiest way to get it. There’s the other options I list at the top, and here’s a post with a 7-page PDF Tim compiled, and that was a shit ton of work digging up, via tons of references.
Alright, that’s enough dealing with abject ignorance strutting around for one day. We have 16 chapters, about 350 pages fully drafted, and chapter 5 is calling my name for the 1st intense editing pass.
Don’t let the Keto-Zombies get to you.