Butyrate: Unleashing the Power of Diet for Flawless Skin

What if a simple diet change could drastically improve your skin health? Get ready for an enlightening discussion on the gut-skin axis as we explore the amazing benefits of boosting gastrointestinal and thereby skin butyrate or butyric acid.

The secret to healthier skin might be a pH shift away. We delve into the importance of maintaining an acidic pH for skin health, and how an alkaline pH can lead to skin rashes and dryness. Learn practical strategies to increase intestinal and skin butyrate, such as incorporating fermented foods and prebiotic fibers into your diet. It's time to ditch the skincare products and start focusing on what truly matters - your diet. So, join us on this remarkable journey to achieving healthier, better-looking, and more youthful skin.



For BiotiQuest probiotics including Sugar Shift, go here.

A 15% discount is available for Defiant Health podcast listeners by entering discount code UNDOC15 (case-sensitive) at checkout.*
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Get your 15% Paleovalley discount on fermented grass-fed beef sticks, Bone Broth Collagen, low-carb snack bars and other high-quality organic foods here.*

For 12% off every order of grass-fed and pasture-raised meats from Wild Pastures, go here.

*Dr. Davis and his staff are financially compensated for promoting BiotiQuest and Paleovalley products.

Transcript

William Davis, MD: 0:06

Those of you familiar with the arguments I make in my wheat belly books already know that banishing all wheat and grains from your diet yields often extraordinary improvements in skin health. I call seborrhea, for instance, the red, rough, itchy rash that occurs mainly on the face and scalp, the signature rash of wheat consumption, as it so commonly occurs with its consumption and so often goes away completely with its elimination. Vitamin D and omega 3 fatty acids that we include also yield modest skin benefits. Restoration of the lost microbe from the gastrointestinal tract, lactobacillus rhodorii, also adds a huge advantage to skin health and appearance. But there's another factor that plays a big role in further improving skin health: the fatty acid butyrate. So in this episode of Defiant Health let's talk about how butyrate, yet another facet of a gut skin axis, can be put to work to obtain even healthier, better looking, more youthful skin. Later in the podcast let's talk about Defiant Health's sponsors that include Paleov alley, who provides fermented grass fed beef sticks, bone broth, protein rich in collagen, organic super greens and low carb super food bars, and now 100% grass fed and finished pastured meats. And Bioti Quest, who provides unique probiotics such as sugar shift to support healthy blood sugars and simple slumber to assist in obtaining healthy sleep, probiotics crafted with a unique property of combining synergistic microbes.

William Davis, MD: 1:47

So in the opening comments I mentioned how the diet I advocate alone just the diet alone wheat, grain and sugar elimination yield magnificent effects on improving skin. So many people with seborrhea will get relief from that rash. Other people with other sorts of skin rashes, like eczema, even psoriasis or rosacea, many times have a reduction in their rash, sometimes complete disappearance. So the diet alone plays a big role in skin health and I believe a lot of that effect is from the reduction in skin inflammation and edema. Then we add some supplements that add some modest beneficial further effects, especially omega 3 fatty acids and vitamin D. Omega 3 fatty acids tend to increase skin moisture. Vitamin D makes you more sun tolerant, so it's harder to have sun damage. So that those two things also improve skin health. We replace the gastrointestinal microbes lost by nearly all modern humans, lactobacillus reuteri, because it's very susceptible to common antibiotics so most have lost it.

William Davis, MD: 2:49

But reuteri does two things that benefit skin health. One, it provokes the brain to release oxytocin, the hormone oxytocin, and oxytocin exerts dramatic effects on skin because it increases collagen production in the dermal layer just below the surface, the epidermis, in the dermal layer, and so there's marked increase in dermal collagen. Even if you spent your life damaging your collagen because you had high blood sugars that glycated and made your collagen brittle and disorganized, or even if you're getting older and you've lost a lot of collagen and your skin has been thinned, you can add back collagen, and one of the ways to do that is by getting lactobacillus rhodorite and thereby oxytocin to provoke production of collagen in the dermal layer of skin. And that's what leads to a reduction in skin wrinkles, especially fine wrinkles such as crows, feet and smile lines, larger wrinkles such as forehead wrinkles and the nasal labial fold along the sides of the nose and mouth. Those take longer because there's greater volume of collagen required.

William Davis, MD: 3:51

But L reuteri also has the unique capacity, unlike most other microbes, to colonize the small intestine. Most bowel microbes colonize the colon only, but Rhoaderi is unique in that it colonized the entire length of the small intestine where it takes up residence and produces what are called bacteriocins. These are natural antibiotics effective against fecal microbes. Why do we need a microbe to produce natural antibiotics against fecal microbes? Because at least at least 50% of the US population, because we've lost so many beneficial species such as L reuteri and other species like Lactobacillus gasseri, Bifidobacteria species, Fecalobacterium, Akkermansia. Those beneficial species help suppress the over-proliferation of fecal microbes.

William Davis, MD: 4:40

Fecal microbes, that is microbes in your colon, that's the stuff that you pass out in the toilet. Well, loss of beneficial microbes allows excessive proliferation of fecal microbes, which then have the capacity to ascend in the small intestine. And the small intestine is by design very permeable because that's where you're supposed to absorb nutrients like amino acids, fatty acids, vitamins, minerals. But when fecal microbes invade the 24 feet of small intestine they live and die rapidly. They only live for a few hours and so trillions of fecal microbes in the small intestine live and die and release some of their toxic components. One specific toxin is endotoxin, and endotoxin therefore penetrates the very permeable small intestine where it floods the bloodstream. And when endotoxin floods the bloodstream it's called endotoxemia. So people with endotoxemia from invasion of the small intestine with fecal microbes, or also called small intestinal bacterial overgrowth or SIBO, s-i-b-o. When that happens, the effects of bowel microbes in the small intestine are explored in other parts of the body Brain, muscle, heart, coronary arteries, carotid arteries, liver, etc. So this disruption of the microbiome has broad consequences for health. But one of the consequences is that it inflames skin, and so skin will show redness, itchiness and dryness, and so just restoring lactobacillus rhodorite is a major advantage.

William Davis, MD: 6:17

Now we also add back components of diet that are lacking. This many year low-fat dietary disaster, where we were told to cut total fat, cut saturated fat, right All those things we did in the way of low-fat milk and skim milk and low-fat dairy, and cut the fat off your meat, etc. That was a big mistake, and one of the effects is people abandoned consumption of organ meats, so almost nobody anymore eats brain or tongue or heart or pancreas or liver or skin or kidneys, even though your great-grandmother ate organ meats routinely. It was common, it was done for 99.99% of human existence on this planet, but we gave it up because of the huge blunder called US Dietary Guidelines. Cut your fat, cut your saturated fat, and so we compensate for that. So when you cut organ meats out of your diet, you're going to be leading a collagen-depleted diet and a hyaluronic acid-depleted diet, Because those two things are common components that are abundant in organ meats. So if you don't get collagen, your skin ages faster because you're not replacing collagen. Your joints, by the way, also age faster, as do your arteries. If you don't eat organ meats, you don't get hyaluronic acid richest in brain and skin and some other organs, and that accelerates skin aging, skin dryness, skin thinning, as well as joint aging, because the lubrication in your joints, so-called synovial fluid, is largely hyaluronic acid. The brain, likewise, is mostly has a lot of hyaluronic acid. So we replace those two missing components. You could go back to eating organ meats, but I know most people I talk to say Yuck, I don't want to do that, and so we replace them as supplements Collagen, peptides, collagen hydrolysates or hyaluronic acid. These are pretty much commodity products nowadays. You can get many fine products. Now that all said, you can go further, and one of the things you can do revolves around increasing the amount of butyrate or butyric acid in your skin, in your bowels and in your skin. So some things to know that help you understand these issues.

William Davis, MD: 8:42

The Defiant Health podcast is sponsored by Paleov alley makers of delicious grass-fed beef steaks, healthy snack bars and other products. We are very picky around here and insist that any product we consider has no junk ingredients like carrageenan, carboxymethylsalos, sucralose and, of course, no added sugars. And all Paleo Valley products contain no gluten nor grains. In fact, I find Paleov alley products among cleanest in their category. One of the habits I urge everyone to get into is to include at least one, if not several, servings of fermented foods per day in their lifestyles. Unlike nearly all other beef steaks available, paleo Valley grass-fed beef steaks are all naturally fermented, meaning they contain probiotic bacterial species. And now Paleov alley is expanding their Wild Pastures program that provides 100% grass-fed, grass-finished, pastured beef and pastured chicken and pork raised without herbicides or pesticides. And they just added wild-caught seafood caught from the waters of Bristol Bay, alaska. Among their other new products are pasture-raised fermented pork steaks, chocolate-flavored grass-fed bone broth protein and grass-fed organ complex in capsule form and new essential electrolytes in powder form to add to potassium and magnesium intake, available in orange, lemon and melon flavors. Listeners to the Defiant Health podcast receive a 15% discount by going to paleovalley. com/defianthealth.

William Davis, MD: 10:23

And for the fall season they've brought back the pumpkin spice superfood bars, and I'd like to welcome Defiant Health's newest sponsor, BiotiQuest. I've had numerous conversations with BiotiQuest founders Martha Carlin, an academic microbiologist, Dr Raul Cano. They have formulated unique synergistic probiotic products that incorporate what are called collaborative or guild effects, that is, groups of microbes that collaborate with each other via specific metabolites potentially providing synergistic benefits. They have designed their sugar shift probiotic to support healthy blood sugars. Simple Slumber to support sleep. Ideal Immunity to support a healthy immune response. Heart Centered that supports several aspects of heart health. And Antibiotic Antidote designed to support recovery of the gastrointestinal microbiome after a course of antibiotics. BiotiQuest probiotics are, I believe, among the most effective of all probiotic choices for specific health effects.

William Davis, MD: 11:26

Enter the discount code UNDOC15 for a 15% discount for Defiant Health listeners. It helps to know that healthy skin is acidic, that is, it has a pH of four to five. You may recall that neutral pH is 7.0. So healthy skin should be acidic. Unhealthy skin in people who have skin rashes, dryness, seborrhea, psoriasis, eczema, other forms of skin diseases they tend to have less acidic or even alkaline skin pH is a 5.7, 6.1, or even 7.0 higher and that makes your skin much more susceptible to invasion by unhealthy microbes and skin rashes. So when your skin is no longer normally acidic, a microbe called Staphylococcus aureus you may have heard of because it causes a lot of hospital infections Staphylococcus aureus proliferates and muscles out the normal, healthy skin inhabitant, staphylococcus epidermidis. So when you have that shift, a loss of skin acidity, a rise in pH, you allow proliferation of this unhealthy microbe, staphylococcus aureus, and it suppresses the growth of the healthy microbe Staphylococcus epidermidis. And now you are setting yourself up for skin dryness, accelerated aging and even skin rashes. So we want our skin to be acidic.

William Davis, MD: 12:57

The major acidifying factor in skin is butyrate or butyric acid. So anything you do that increases butyrate production in the body benefits the skin, reduces the P8 that makes it more acidic, suppresses expansion of stathococcus aureus and inhibits other microbes and the appearance of skin rashes. So how do you go about increasing intestinal and thereby skin butyrate? Well, the primary strategy to get this done is to be sure that you include plenty of fermented foods in your diet. If you've been following my conversations, you know that fermented foods include such things as kimchi, kaffirs, yogurts, but not yogurt bought in the store. Yogurt you make yourself, because the stuff sold in the store one has garbage ingredients in it, like sugar and high fructose corn syrup and emulsifying aids like carrageenan and xanthan gum. We don't do that right when we make it ourselves and we also use extended or prolonged fermentation to get higher counts of microbes and we can choose more interesting microbes than the microbes ordinarily used in commercial yogurt, other fermented foods, vegetables you ferment on your kitchen counter.

William Davis, MD: 14:10

This should be easy and almost cost free. So if you're going to ferment, let's say, cucumbers, you buy organic cucumbers and be sure they have no coating like a wax coating. You put in a jar of water that's been filtered or distilled with non iodized salt and you cover it. Make sure the veggies stay below the surface of the water and you come back in a week or two and you've got fermented vegetables. For more instruction on how to do this, see my super gut book. There are recipes. See my DR Davis infinite health dot com. There's some recipes, and my friend Donna Schwank, who has a wonderful website called cultured food health and that she has lots and lots of recipes. It's so easy.

William Davis, MD: 14:50

You can also buy commercially fermented food, but part of commercial production is to go as fast as possible to produce your product, because time is money, right, the companies, and so they use a very abbreviated most companies, we use a very abbreviated fermentation. So what I'll do is, if you buy something that's been commercially fermented let's say sauerkraut and make sure it's fermented, not just pickled in brine. So let's say you have a fermented sauerkraut or fermented kimchi, I leave it covered, of course, on your kitchen counter for additional 48 or more hours, let the microbes ferment further, and then you can refrigerate to stop fermentation. The reason why fermented foods are so helpful for skin health is because the microbes that ferment food these are microbes like leuconostoc mesenteroides, pediococcus pentasaceous, pediococcus acidilactici, lactobacillus plantarum. Don't remember that, right, but these microbes do not take up residence in your GI tract, they simply pass through, takes about six hours. If you consume, let's say, some kimchi or sauerkraut or other fermented veggies, you pass it out in the toilet. You pass out the microbes in the toilet in about six hours or so, or at least they get the colon within six hours. But the curious thing about these fermenting microbes is they produce metabolites, especially lactate and acetate, and there are species in the GI tract, very important species such as fecalobacterium, which is the primary producer of butyrate in your GI tract. So fermented microbes produce lactate and acetate that in turn feed butyrate, producing microbes like fecalobacterium and some others. Now you've boosted the level of butyrate in the GI tract dramatically. Some of that butyrate gets into the bloodstream and thereby to the skin, where the butyrate, the butyric acid, acidifies the skin, discourages stathococcus aureus and increases the thickness of the epidermis, the outer layer of skin. You have smoother, healthier skin.

William Davis, MD: 16:50

Another thing you can do to increase skin butyrate is to be sure you include plenty of prebiotic fibers and related compounds like polysaccharide, such as inulin and fructo oligosaccharides. So you do this by including foods like root vegetables, asparagus, onions, garlic, jicama, dandelion, greens and many other foods. If you want a full list, consult my Super Gut book where I list the of these prebiotic fibers mushrooms, the pectin of fruit and avocados. So prebiotic fibers and related compounds feed those microbes that in turn produce butyrate. So intestinal butyrate levels go up and thereby skin butyrate levels go up and all those wonderful effects are amplified. You can also directly ingest butyric acid or butyrate, but that kind of intake is episodic, right? It's not the continuous production that microbes manage. So taking it orally is not as effective as having microbes do it for you and get a continuous, around the clock, 24-hour day production of butyrate. But you can get small quantities of butyrate from foods like cheese, butter and other full fat dairy and, by the way, this is another example the low fat or skim milk and other low fat dairy products Another example of the blundering made when we cut dietary fat.

William Davis, MD: 18:20

You want the fat because it has butyric acid in it. That benefits intestinal health. It heals the intestinal lining. It has metabolic benefits like reduction of blood sugar and insulin resistance and better sleep and better dreams and better skin. So let's put it all together we start with a diet where we eliminate all wheat, grains and sugars. That alone gets you off to a very powerful start to address better skin health and appearance.

William Davis, MD: 18:48

We restore nutrients lacking in modern life, with omega-3 fatty acids from fish oil and vitamin D exerting most the benefits.

William Davis, MD: 18:55

Among the supplements we replace. We restore this lost microbe, lactobacillus rhodii, for its oxytocin boosting effect. That increases dermal collagen quite dramatically and also reduces the endotoxemia of invading fecal microbes in your small intestine, and you thereby get better skin moisture, less skin roughness and less redness. We replace the factors lost because of the blundering low fat era. So we get collagen peptides. We get hyaluronic acid that adds to skin health, skin moisture, skin smoothness, reduction of wrinkles, as well as joint health and other beneficial effects. And now we add additional strategies to increase skin butyrate and thereby acidify the skin, discouraging the growth of unhealthy microbes like staphylococcus aureus. Put it all together and you have a dramatic formula for regaining skin health, skin appearance and more youthful appearance. Now, if you learned something from this episode of Defiant Health Podcast, I invite you to subscribe through your favorite podcast directory. Post a review, tell your friends, because we're trying to build this movement of self empowerment and health. Keep you as free as possible of the healthcare system. Thanks for listening.