Following Your Gut Podcast #21, Unlocking the SunFiber Secret

Episode Summary:

In this insightful episode of the “Following Your Gut” podcast, host Roland Pankewich welcomes Derek Timm, PhD, RD, from Taiyo International, to explore the fascinating world of dietary fiber. The discussion delves into the nuances of fiber beyond its traditional role in digestion, highlighting its impact on gut health and the microbiome. Derek shares his professional journey, beginning with his academic studies at the University of Minnesota, leading to his current role where he champions fiber-based supplements.

The episode provides an in-depth look at the types of dietary fiber, soluble and insoluble, with a focus on fermentable fibers and their role in promoting a healthy gut microbiome. Derek explains how products like Sunfiber are designed to enhance butyrate production without the common side effects of gas and bloating. The conversation also touches on the interconnectedness of the gut and brain, emphasizing the role of prebiotics in mental health. Using SEO-optimized keywords like “fermentable fibers,” “gut microbiome,” and “prebiotic benefits,” the episode offers valuable insights for anyone interested in advancing their gut health through informed choices.

About the Guest(s):

Derek Timm, PhD, RD
Derek Timm is a distinguished professional in nutrition science, holding both a PhD and a Registered Dietitian credential. He began his academic journey at the University of Minnesota, focusing on nutrition and dietetics. Over nearly two decades, Derek has developed a specialized expertise in dietary fiber, its fermentation, and health benefits, including its impact on the gut microbiome and short-chain fatty acid production. Following his academic pursuits, Derek joined the industry, working with brands like Nature Made and a medical food company. Currently, he serves as the functional ingredients expert at Tayo International, where he supports multiple products, including the renowned Sunfiber.

Key Takeaways:

Types of Dietary Fiber: Derek distinguishes between soluble and insoluble fibers and highlights the significance of fermentable fibers in promoting gut health.

Fermentable Fibers: These fibers are crucial for butyrate production, with Sunfiber being a notable example for its digestive tolerance and health benefits.

Gut-Brain Connection: Fiber’s role in influencing gut health extends to mental well-being, showcasing the bi-directional relationship between gut and brain.

Dietary Recommendations: Incorporating a variety of fruits, vegetables, and grains, supplemented by products like Sunfiber, can enhance digestive health.

Personalized Fiber Consumption: It’s important to start with smaller doses of fiber, especially for individuals with low baseline fiber intake or sensitive stomachs.

“The microbiome of our digestive tract is like the soil of our body." 

Transcript

0:00:03 Roland Pankewich: Welcome back to the Following Your Gut Podcast, where health science meets clinical wisdom. As always, I am your host, Roland, and I’m happy to be with you guys today to talk about something that is rather nuanced and really interesting, even though the average association for the average person is it’s something that helps you go to the bathroom. And to help me understand the nuances of all things fiber, today I have with me PhD and RD registered dietitian Derek Timm from Taiyo. Derek, thank you for being on the podcast today. How you doing?

0:00:35 Derek Timm: I’m doing well, thank you, Roland. I appreciate you giving me the opportunity to be on your podcast today.

0:00:40 Roland Pankewich: Oh, I know you’re such a wealth of information and we’re going to get into the nuances of fiber because the gut microbiome has never been more popular in terms of a topic with people. And your wealth of knowledge is going to be very much appreciated as we go through this podcast and delineate some of the deeper details of fiber. Before we get into the topic though, I would love to know a little bit about your story and your background because being a PhD is not necessarily something that everyone achieves in terms of their academic credentials. So what prompted you to want to go down the route of academia to those depths?

0:01:13 Derek Timm: Yeah, so my story starts at the University of Minnesota. I was a student studying nutrition and dietetics and, and when I was in my junior, going into my senior year, I was just learning more about the profession and kind of exploring what more is there in this area. And it led me to actually start doing undergrad research. So I actually paired up with my former advisor who is a renowned expert in dietary fiber and really liked her as a person and a lecturer and I wanted to learn more about what she did on a day to day basis. So I, I started as a student just helping out with other PhD students and graduate students with their projects.

0:01:58 Derek Timm: And as I progressed through my academic journey, I decided after undergrad that I wanted to go to grad school. And that kind of started me on my journey through academia. After doing my Master’s, I took a little break, did my dietetic internship. I passed the RD exam and then I went back and then finished out my PhD and really my studies focused exclusively on dietary fiber and its, its health benefits. I looked at a wide perspective of things, how it impacts the, the fermentation patterns, in particular the short chain fatty acid production, gut microbiome modulation.

0:02:38 Derek Timm: That was some of the stuff I did earlier on. I also looked at how do different fibers affect the Laxative effects, the digestive symptoms touched on satiety and just how, how it helps keep you full and, or eat less calories, which are all very significant as in today’s terms, in terms of obesity as well as the gut microbiome and all that. That has come since I started almost getting close to almost 20 years ago. I started my journey in the fiber world. So it’s kind of interesting to think back on that.

0:03:14 Derek Timm: After I finished school, I started out in the dietary supplement area working at Nature Made. I did that for several years. Then I moved on to work at a medical food company and did that for several years. And for the last eight years, I’ve been at Tayo International, being the functional ingredients expert there, helping support a plethora of different ingredients, but most notably sun fiber, which is why we’re on the podcast today to talk about it.

0:03:46 Roland Pankewich: Yeah, I love when you make my job so easy. In your introductory description, you kind of lay out potential path of topics we’re going to talk about today. That was amazing. And your background is really admirable because nowadays fiber is something that everyone knows that they should be getting more of and people are taking more interest. But 20 years ago, I mean, people probably just kind of turned up their nose at the idea of becoming an expert in something so trivial.

0:04:12 Roland Pankewich: But it’s amazing how society catches up with, you know, health research and medical research as time goes on. I want to ask you to give us a little snapshot of fiber as you see it and as you describe it, because there’s two major kinds of fibers from my understanding. There’s soluble and insoluble. And I think it’s really important that people know the difference between the two and where the sources of said fibers may come from.

0:04:38 Derek Timm: Yeah, absolutely. So the soluble fiber and insoluble fiber are something that has been a way of classifying fibers for, for a long time. And it’s the way, if you look at a, you know, nutrition facts or supplement facts panel, you’d see them on, you know, you see diet, total dietary fiber, soluble fiber, insoluble fiber. It’s a way of classifying it, but it’s more based on the physical characteristics and it really doesn’t touch on the physiologic benefits or how they actually behave and what benefits they have. So in a way, it’s a bit of an antiquated way of, of looking at fibers a better way. And the way I almost look at it is, are fibers fermentable?

0:05:22 Derek Timm: AKA are they used by the Gut microbiome as a food source and a carbon source and, or are they unfermented or sparsely fermented, I. E. Do they add, you know, a larger amount of bulk to the stool? So it’s almost that that pathway is, is, is one way of looking at it, especially in terms of gut microbiome. There’s also fibers that are, can be classified as viscous and they form gels in the, in the gut, or there’s ones that are a little bit non viscous, so they kind of maybe go through the digestive tract a little bit slower.

0:05:59 Derek Timm: So those are really the ways I think of it because based on those characteristics, you can sort of predict what sort of benefit it would actually have on the whole person. That being said, there’s always exceptions to the rule and sometimes fibers, you know, can play in, you know, one or both of those categories. They’re not necessarily mutually exclusive.

0:06:23 Roland Pankewich: What would a classic non fermentable fiber be a type of or an example of?

0:06:29 Derek Timm: So a classic non fermented fiber, or we’ll call it an insoluble fiber, would be like wheat bran. That’s, that’s really your classic example of a fiber that would be in, in cereals primarily is, is sort of how we eat it. Whether, you know, think of like Raisin Bran, Cornbran, those sort of things. Those are going to be fibers that aren’t really well fermented. They’re insoluble. So they’re. And what they do in the gut is they actually absorb some of the water that’s in your gut and they swell a bit.

0:07:02 Derek Timm: And because they’re not fermented, they stay intact and pass through the whole digestive tract from the stomach to the small intestine and get into the large intestine. And when they’re there, what they do is that bulk and water really help form a pretty significant portion of the stool. And they really help with a, a stool that is bulkier, maybe a little bit softer and easier to pass, which most people appreciate. And that might be some of the reasons why people consume a Raisin Bran for the, in the morning as part of their routine.

0:07:35 Roland Pankewich: Do they do anything beneficial for the gut microbiome in a functional sense?

0:07:43 Derek Timm: They, they, they certainly can. And I always have to take a step back because, you know, when we consume foods or consume a meal, we’re going to be consuming a large variety of fiber or foodstuffs that it’s hard to always delineate or it’s not beneficial to delineate a Single fiber source with the whole holistic diet. But generally the insoluble fibers and the non fermentable fibers don’t have as big of a role in the gut microbiome and, and hence you don’t see as significant of an effect or you don’t see a statistically significant effect. If you were to look at it in the, in the data.

0:08:24 Derek Timm: Usually those more thoroughly fermented fibers are going to have a larger magnitude effect which makes it easier to observe changes in the microbiome but also observe beneficial changes in physiology, whether that be digestive tolerance, maybe less inflammation, better, better immune response, things like that that we know that the gut microbiome does. Because you have either a, you’re just going to be providing more food for them so you really selectively promote the, some of the beneficial bacteria so they can do between good that they do in the gut.

0:09:03 Roland Pankewich: Yeah, that makes sense. I, I actually started using the term functional fibers for those that, that are fermentable just because they become such important things. You know, if you break apart the word prebiotic, pre before biosis is life. You know, they’re kind of life giving molecules for these microbes. So from what I’m gathering that you’re saying is the purposes of the non fermentable fibers that you may find in a variety of cereals, maybe some supplements people are taking, but you also alluded to that natural foods will have a split of these different kinds of fibers within them.

0:09:40 Roland Pankewich: They’re really there to help bulk things move things along and to ease your body in the regular evacuation of waste material through a bowel movement, which is foundationally important when it comes to health. The superstars, it sounds like you’re saying are these fermentable fibers for all the things they do within the gut microbiome when they’re acted upon by the bacteria that live in there, correct?

0:10:05 Derek Timm: Yeah, indeed. Absolutely.

0:10:09 Roland Pankewich: Go ahead please.

0:10:10 Derek Timm: I would add that one of the benefits of the insoluble fiber or just those non fermentable fibers is by providing bulk you actually sort of insulate some of the, the gut lining from some of the harmful things that are in our gut or get formed during digestion or fermentation of other things, whether that be protein, they can kind of create putrefaction molecules which aren’t the best things for our gut. But by having that fiber and that bulk in there, it’s almost like a shield from the gut so it doesn’t interact with it as much and kind of sequesters it and then obviously it gets part of the stool which evacuates out and kind of eliminates that waste. So there is, is some benefit there that isn’t, isn’t always as well noted. But I agree with your statement saying that, you know, the current superstars seem to be those prebiotic fibers. And that’s why you see the category as a whole growing and consumer awareness of these have been growing here for the last decade or so.

0:11:08 Roland Pankewich: I love that. Yeah, it’s a great description. You know, it’s like the insoluble stuff is what people associated with the concept of fiber. Like I think of a, I don’t know if this is a perfect description, like a metamucil or something of that nature that people have been taking to stay regular. But what we really want to get into is some of these more functional fibers, these fermentable things. Can you go into some of the mechanisms of action of how these things get fermented in the microbiome?

0:11:37 Derek Timm: Yeah, I can touch on that a little bit. I mean, yeah, that’d be great. Yeah. So you think of a prebiotic fiber, you know, it obviously is, is a food for, for the bacteria, as you’ve mentioned. And how that works does vary based on the exact prebiotic. And what I think people oversimplify is that prebiotics are consumed and a single, we’ll call it positive bacteria or species of bacteria ferment it and they go up.

0:12:10 Derek Timm: That’s maybe the net result of the process, but really there’s a lot of work here through the whole gut microbiome, which, where certain bacteria have the enzymes to break down certain bonds between the carbon molecules or the oxygen molecules within these fibers or, you know, other, other, you know, different linkages, whether that be, you know, an alpha bond, a beta bond and the different positionings. So really it takes this army of microbiome to do their, each has their own job. They break these down and, and what the net result ends up being, or we hope, we hope it ends up being, is not only food and sustenance for the good bacteria to grow to produce molecules, whether they be things that maybe decrease the bad bacteria or maybe decrease the ph, you know, create a more acidic environment within the gut, which tends to be more favorable for some of the good guys that we think of and less favorable for some of the, we’ll call them pathogenic bacteria there, that’s, that’s kind of one thing.

0:13:22 Derek Timm: But what we hope they produce are, are what called short chain fatty acids. And different bacteria are responsible for producing different ones. But the ones that really we’ve been honing in on and really excited about are ones that produce butyrate or butyric acid. And that one’s really helpful because it’s the preferred energy source for the colonic epithelial cells. Meaning we are used, you know, our, our large intestine primarily is using that to have its optimal fuel. So it is as healthy as possible.

0:13:57 Derek Timm: Which then if it’s healthy, it’s going to be more full, we’re going to have less, call it leaky gut or less gaps between the colonic cells. It’s just going to be a healthier, more robust system. And then also this butyrate can act as a secondary messenger more in the peripheral of the body. So that’s really some of the net results. There’s other, there’s two other short chain fatty acids, acetate and propionate. Those are also going to be used as energy and absorbed into the body.

0:14:28 B: But really, butyrate is the superstar that really gets talked about the most in terms of just true gut health because of its benefit at the gut level as well as elsewhere.

0:14:42 Roland Pankewich: Yeah, there’s been a huge buzz around how beneficial butyrate is also peripherally for the body in terms of regulating things like satiety mechanisms, endocrine signaling even. I think I’ve read something that it influences something like leptin levels in the brain, systemic mitochondrial function. And I know we’re still at the infancy of understanding all those pathways, but, you know, that’s why I always say if you take care of your gut in some capacity, everything else in the body seems to work to some degree better because we are this one ecosystem.

0:15:15 Roland Pankewich: So in speaking about fermentable fibers and butyrate, is that the main premise of the, the fiber that you guys are behind sunfiber, Is that the real intent of what sun fiber’s magic is, Is it only to focus on butyrate production or are there a few more things that you guys are researching in terms of the benefits of sun fiber as it relates to the microbiome?

0:15:39 Derek Timm: Yeah, I mean, I think that where sun fiber comes in is, you know, it’s a very robust fiber that is. Is easy to take it. It doesn’t have a lot of viscosity when you, when you mix it in, in liquid, it’s easy to consume. It doesn’t have a taste, it doesn’t really have a texture. So I think it’s just really pleasant for people to consume it are early. And then we have a lot of the other health benefits that people look for, whether it be showing that it helps promote laxation, it helps attenuate the blood glucose prosperity or blood glucose response, it can enhance satiety, it does increase butyrate. And I think where sun fiber separates itself from some other fermentable fibers that can produce butyrate is that the unique mix of sun fiber and how it promotes the gut microbiome tends to produce less gas, less bloating, which can be also perceived as, you know, abdominal cramping.

0:16:42 B: So it really is a gentle fiber on your system. And some of the in vitro work we’ve done showed that it preferentially produces butyrate relative to some other fibers on the market, which is fantastic, because if we’re taking this, you know, the same amount of grams of fiber, X, Y and z, and one of them is sun fiber. If you’re producing more of the good stuff by unit weight, like that’s a really great benefit of the fiber. And then, you know, kind of moving beyond that, butyrate can help out with, you know, inflammatory responses and inflammation at the gut level, which, you know, that can, that can kind of be the foundation for other, other conditions. So just by reducing that, you can really help alleviate some other things, whether it be leaky gut, just having a more healthy gut gut epithelial level. We’ve seen that and some, several studies are showing that it kind of maybe can promote healing, but that’s. That tends to be primarily in more of an animal type model. It’s sort of hard to study that in a human.

0:17:50 Derek Timm: But just knowing that that mechanism is there there is really, really helpful. Did that kind of touch on what you were.

0:17:58 Roland Pankewich: Yeah, perfectly so. I mean, again, I like that you, you cited that you’re making inferences, so you can’t make absolute claims, but you know, logically, functionally, any time that you can improve the health of the local environment of the gut. The lining, which, you know, is two things. It’s an absorptive layer and it’s a barrier. And it’s sometimes not looked at as, as a very good barrier for obvious reasons.

0:18:21 Roland Pankewich: But anything that leaks through it creates systemic inflammation. And anything that creates systemic inflammation can be the predisposing factor to the development of chronic illness and degeneration over the course of decades. So that’s really exciting that something as simple as a fiber, I should say a strategic kind of fiber, can have all of these positive benefits. Because everyone is suffering from some degree of gut dysfunction nowadays for a multitude of reasons.

0:18:48 Roland Pankewich: And I would assume, and this might be a hard question to answer, but you can hypothesize or however you want to pitch it, I would assume that it’s a uniformly positive supplement for almost anyone or everyone who would take it. Correct?

0:19:02 B: Yeah. I would say, you know, the vast majority of people that are going to take the product are going to have a positive experience. And it, you know, people take the sun fiber for various reasons and I would say for most of the typical outcomes and some things I outlined before it, it, it delivers on that promise and I think that’s really helpful. But obviously each person’s gut microbiome and physiology of their gut can be different. So it’s not for necessarily for everyone, but the vast majority of people should be able to consume it, have a pleasant experience and not really think twice about it.

0:19:39 Roland Pankewich: And you, you mentioned something prior about different kinds of fermentable fibers. So obviously if you health food store, there’s a ton of products on the shelf and sunfiber is its own unique ingredient that finds its way into a multitude of different products, but not every fiber. I wanted to ask you what is it about the chemical composition that makes sunfiber unique versus other fermentable fibers and what might that lend itself as a benefit to having based upon what sun fiber actually is?

0:20:11 B: Yeah. So, you know, one of the other really popular prebiotic fibers that you’ll see in a ton of different products, both food and supplements is inulin or fructooligosaccharides. And what they essentially are are a really long chain, long or short chain of fructose molecules bonded together in a way that our digestive enzymes don’t break down, but our gut microbiome can. And what that does is it’s a very basic structure, we’ll call it, and it’s only a single monosaccharide.

0:20:47 B: So it can be broken down fairly rapidly. And what. And maybe it’s just because of the, the composition ends up creating a lot of gas which people perceive negatively. Nobody, nobody likes having being bloated or having a lot of flat ships, especially if they’re in a public place. So that’s something that is pretty widely known and people that have, you know, know about inulin, but that’s one of the reasons is because it is a single molecule and it’s very fairly rapidly fermented sun fiber. On the other hand, it is a galactomannan fiber.

0:21:20 Derek Timm: So what it is is it’s a long backbone of, of mannose units and it also has a Galactose unit, every other molecule, it’s a long linear chain, but it does have two different monosaccharides and it does have a couple of different bonds to break breakdown. So if you think of it this way, it takes several more players in that gut microbiome. You know, one person does their job, the next one does their job, and the next one does their job. So it takes longer to break it down. And then by having different sugars or different monosaccharides, you’re going to have a little bit different result and transformation based upon the gut microbiome. And then, you know, we see the net result of all this being generally more butyrate, relatively low or at least slower fermentation, which in our bodies and in people that have digestive issues is perceived as less gas, less bloating, less cramping, which is all a benefit. And I think that’s why you see people tolerate it really well.

0:22:24 Derek Timm: And that. And because of that, that’s one of the reasons, because we don’t have any. There’s not a lot, there’s not, you know, there’s not a lot of stuff in it. And we’re able to get that low FODMAP certification too. And I think that can really separate sun fiber from other fibers or fermentable fibers on the market because it isn’t an oligosaccharide, it’s a polysaccharide, it’s a much longer chain.

0:22:45 Derek Timm: So that really is helpful for tolerance, but also just consumer understanding of why it is a well tolerated product.

0:22:55 Roland Pankewich: And I’ve also heard that inulin, the fructo oligosaccharides in some ways can contribute to a furthering of dysbiosis, especially when used in extreme quantities. And that might be indicated by the symptoms people are having or you know, the fact that when you’re feeding something on a regular basis to a pathogenic microbe that multiplies really quickly, those pathogens can actually become more problematic. Although you might think you’re doing something positive for yourself. I’ve heard that sun fiber, because of its, I think the proper term is it’s Dalton weight, it’s molecular, I guess, designation of how large the molecule is.

0:23:36 Roland Pankewich: It doesn’t have the ability to be a direct food source for some of the more common pathogens within the gut. Is that true?

0:23:44 Derek Timm: Yeah, I would say that, yes. By being that bigger, more complex molecule which you alluded to, it is it doesn’t just take a single bacteria to necessarily break it down in, in high proportions and consume it. You know, a bacteria might be able to cleave off the one, the very end of a very large molecule and have it by itself. But that’s, that’s sort of the beauty of it. You have this really long big molecule with many different bonds. So it needs, it takes an army to kind of break it down, or it takes, you know, several different guys breaking it down. And, you know, so you don’t, you don’t have it.

0:24:19 Derek Timm: It can’t be as readily consumed by an opportunistic bacteria. It really needs other people to help out to then be able to do it. So that, that’s sort of the, the beauty of it.

0:24:31 Roland Pankewich: And generally those opportunists don’t play well with the other ecosystem commensals, which is also nice to hear because then you have the idea of what’s called competitive exclusion. You’re, you’re bolstering the microbes within your gut to hopefully crowd out and out populate some of the potential pathogens which really do trigger dysbiosis. So I love that you were able to explain that and get into that.

0:24:55 Roland Pankewich: When it comes to dosing or starting sunfiber, are there any specific strategies that you advise people? You know, because obviously there’s a specific size scooper in a bottle. Most people say, oh, well, I’ll just do the scooper. Oh, maybe more is better. What are your expert pieces of advice regarding using it as a supplement?

0:25:16 Derek Timm: Yeah, I think I’m going to put on my dietitian hat here a little.

0:25:18 Roland Pankewich: Bit and take off the PhD for a moment and go back to the RD.

0:25:22 Derek Timm: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So if a person, you know, if you look at the US the average person in the US population is probably consuming 15 plus or minus a couple grams of fiber per day, which is at least 10 to 20 grams, depending on who you ask and who you look for, less than the recommendations. So if somebody’s starting fiber fresh and they don’t have a large amount of fiber in their diet, it’s probably best to maybe do a half scoop for a week or two and let your, let your gut microbiome, your gut get used to having more fiber. Because if you’re, if a scoop is, let’s say 7 grams and you’re only consuming 14, like that’s, that’s 50 more fiber in one scoop. Let’s, let’s put that, let’s scale that back to 25% and do that for a week.

0:26:14 Derek Timm: You know, also, you always want to consume more water when you take Fibers. That’s just kind of a good general practice and rule of thumb. Plus people tend to be under hydrated anyways. So it kind of, it’s, it’s really this virtuous cycle and then, you know, after a week or two, yeah, let’s get up to that, that full dose to really see the full benefits of the product. So that’s usually how I recommend any person doing it especially.

0:26:38 Derek Timm: It’s especially true in somebody that maybe has, has IBS or just has a sensitive stomach or just, is just, you know, kind of starting out and just want to do it to help their gut. They’re not doing it for a functional reason. They’re just doing it. Hey, I know this is a prebiotic. I know this is good for my, my gut. Even if I can’t perceive the benefit. I just want to have more of that in my body. I think that that’s always a good, good thing to have.

0:27:04 Derek Timm: And yeah, I think a person could, if they wanted, they could do the full scoop. A person that has a kind of iron gut and can take it all. Yeah, that’s, that’s fine to do, but it’s not necessarily, it’s not always, it’s not needed necessarily. Why not? Why not ease your body into it, make it easier on yourself and then, then scale up to that full dose after a, you know, two week period or so.

0:27:29 Roland Pankewich: That’s the exact same guidance I generally use clinically with people. You know, more is not always better and easing yourself into it and assessing tolerance because, you know, every body, every individual body has a different response and you can’t predict something until you experience it personally. So I love that. And because you got your dietitian hat on, I’m going to ask you what are your synergistic lifestyle and dietary strategies that you promote in order to optimize the benefits of what fiber can do for you? Talking along the lines of dietary selections, some synergistic things that one can do for their health to multiply the benefits of what sun fiber does for the gut.

0:28:10 Derek Timm: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So sun fiber, I probably didn’t even mention it earlier. It’s a hundred percent a soluble fiber, not soluble prebiotic fiber. So I usually like to recommend that people consume a wide variety of fruits and vegetables and I personally like cereal grains myself for the, that insoluble fiber. Just because that really kind of helps things moving and really creates a, a good synergistic benefit of having that, that laxative effect as we talked about earlier with inside of fibers. But Also that prebiotic benefit, so you’re really kind of fitting everything together for a more complete picture.

0:28:47 Derek Timm: Also, anything that can help promote the, the gut microbiome, especially if a person isn’t consuming a fiber rich, great diet, you know, a probiotic probably isn’t the, it’s certainly not going to hurt you and it’ll probably help you in terms of just having maybe better tolerance. It can help produce some of those short chain fatty acids. There’s a lot of evidence for, you know, maybe helping promote the immune response at the gut level because about 70 of our gut or 70 of our immune system is actually really at the gut level. So that’s, that’s kind of a nice pairing to maybe help keep us healthier. And then you really add that, that prebiotic, that food with the probiotic. So that’s, that can be a beneficial thing.

0:29:31 Derek Timm: And then also just lifestyle, I think that you know, exercising more and just moving, that really can help stimulate peristalsis for having more regular bowel movements. So that’s good for people. Obviously that can help out with, you know, weight management as well. And you know, just consuming ample water, you know, that’s, that can be a really big thing, especially with people that are maybe constipated and maybe have a, a harder, more dense stool. A little bit extra water certainly isn’t going to help there or it certainly is going to hurt there.

0:30:03 Derek Timm: Yeah. And just you know, you know, whole grains, fruits, vegetables, fiber, probiotics, water, exercise, those are sort of all the things that go together really well, but pretty high level there too. Each individual person would have to have maybe tailored recommendations based on preferences, based on food availability, based upon allergies, etc. So that’s kind of my 30,000 foot view of recommendations for lifestyle.

0:30:33 Roland Pankewich: It’s wonderful that you mentioned that because although people do love the quick fixes nowadays and sometimes you can get those easy wins. You know, you give someone a probiotic or you know, we at Master Supplements, US Enzymes have a wonderful partnership with your parent company. With Tomorrow’s Nutrition Pro, you can try some of those products and for some individuals it’s that almost silver bullet scenario. But the things that really work are the consistent healthy habits that all humans have utilized since the dawn of time to keep the body in good working order.

0:31:08 Roland Pankewich: So I’m glad that you mentioned all of that stuff because it is important to revisit the fundamentals and remind yourself that, you know, it’s cliche to say, but slow and steady in a consistent manner always does win the race when it comes to maintaining health or improving health over the long term. So, Derek, I want to finish off by asking you, is there anything else about fiber that you find so unbelievably interesting that you feel like sharing with people? That’s the first part of the question.

0:31:35 Roland Pankewich: And secondly is if people are really interested about all the information and the research that we’ve spoken about today, is there anywhere they can find more information either about you or the company that you work for so they can do their own due diligence and research on a personal level?

0:31:53 Derek Timm: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, fiber is such a fascinating compound because it’s almost the complete opposite of every other nutrient that we consume. It’s, it’s that it’s not absorbed by our, our upper digestive tract and that’s what, that’s what creates the benefits. So I think it’s, it’s always been a really fun thing to think about. It’s like the anti nutrient but it has really powerful, profound effect on people. So I just find that fascinating.

0:32:21 Derek Timm: But also I think we’re learning more about the gut brain connection and this is really still in its infancy and a lot of it is still in animal models, but we are seeing more of it kind of translating to the human condition. But just it can influence those nerves that kind of go back and forth. And it goes back and forth too. If you think about it, if you’re nervous, you can have digestive problems. So I really try to frame that up to people that are, they’re like, hey, is this actually real? I’m like, absolutely. If you’ve ever been nervous, if you have a digestive issues, that could be why. But it also goes the other way. And I think that, you know, helping promote a good mood and a good mental state. I think that fiber can play in that area too, which can permeate all parts of life. So that’s really an area that I find interesting scientifically and I keep, continue to monitor it.

0:33:13 Derek Timm: And just in terms of additional information, I, I love educating people. I love of talking to people and kind of preaching the, the good about fiber. So my parent company, Tomorrow’s Nutrition is, is a good place to get a hold of me. My email is is Derekomorrowsnutrition.com that can be a way to get, get a hold of me and maybe we can put a link when the podcast and I’m happy to field some, some questions.

0:33:46 Roland Pankewich: That would be wonderful. Thank you for making that opportunity available to listeners. I can’t promise you they’re not going to email you and ask you your favorite food and your favorite fiber, but I’m sure there will be great conversations back and forth. So, Derek, this has been an absolute wealth of information. You made fiber incredibly interesting and even in some cases exciting based upon what you were alluding to as something as lowly, as simple as dietary fiber within your gut having so many amazing benefits peripherally. I want to thank you for taking the time today to be a guest on the podcast.

0:34:20 Derek Timm: Yeah, it’s my pleasure, Roland. Thank you for the opportunity.

0:34:23 Roland Pankewich: And I. I don’t think this would be the last time we have a deep dive. I’m sure I’ll have something else that hits my brain about wanting to know more about fiber. And you’re going to be, you know, speed dial one on the bat phone, so we might have to have you back on later in the year. So it’s been an absolute slice, my friend. And to all the listeners, we continue to apprec your support. Thank you so much for supporting us and doing this podcast. We really hope that we’re bringing the information that you’re desiring out and we will see you and listen to you or hear you rather, next time on the following your gut podcast. Have a great day, everyone. Take care of.