BUTYRATE – A New Horizon for Your Health – with Dr T! – your SV Ayurveda Newsletter Sept 4, 2025 – #33, Vol 14

SV Ayurveda offers us great and profound insights into the workings of the body to help us heal, balance, and restore wellness and bliss in our daily lives. Even though modern science has supplied us with priceless discoveries about the workings of our bodies and minds, scientific research still is and remains always a “work-in-progress” that slowly gets its bearings through trial and error. That is why it is even more joyful when the latest research and health findings coincide with and confirm the ancient precepts of ayurvedic teachings. In this newsletter, we cover one such new discovery: the crucial role of Butyrate. Protein is such an important building block for our health – whether from animal or vegetarian source. But did you know what a crucial role plant fiber plays in the health of our gut and our entire body? Scroll down to discover a whole new level of scientific confirmation of ancient ayurvedic dietary knowledge with Dr Teitelbaum. Namaste!

~ Butyrate ~

New Findings on the Health Benefits of Plant-based Diets!

Dr Marianne Teitelbaum

There’s a lot of talk about butyrate these days. Let’s see why that is and also let’s discuss some important things you need to know about this very important compound.

When we eat fiber, much of it is indigestible which means that it makes its way undigested through the small intestine and then into the large intestine. But in the large intestine or colon, we have friendly bacteria which eat these fibers and release what are called short chain fatty acids, or SCFA’s. There are several of these that get produced, like acetate, propionate and butyrate, and some others, but we especially focus on butyrate since it has some special capabilities above and beyond what the others can do. We ourselves can’t make these so we depend on our gut bacteria to make these for us. 

BUT…we must eat fiber in order to make these! Our ancestors ate mostly plant fibers because they can’t run away from you, unlike animals, which they did eat, but it was only occasionally, since they are hard to catch. So the friendly bacteria in our gut evolved to eat these plant fibers — from fruits, vegetables, grains, and legumes. 

However, in modern cultures much of the diet now is lacking fiber, so what happens? The butyrate producing bugs starve to death. 

So why do we need to be concerned about how much butyrate we make in our gut? What exactly does butyrate do for our health? 

Well, for one thing, butyrate keeps the junctions tight in the gut lining. Why is this important you might ask? Because with stress, and antibiotic use, the junctions loosen, causing leaky gut, creating an intense immune response as infections start to grow and leak into the bloodstream along with dangerous toxins which were meant to go into the bowel movement. Both of these conditions create inflammation, leading to every disease you can think of. 

And if that’s not enough, the butyrate helps the immune system determine whether it needs to launch an attack or not. Butyrate is one of those signals that our body has evolved which works by communicating constantly with our immune system. It’s called cross-talk and it is one of the compounds that can talk to the bacterial strains to determine is everything is ok, or if an immune response needs to be launched. In other words, it determines if there are enough good strains there and if not, is there a disaster in the making where the gut becomes overrun by pathogens that could cause infections which could kill you.

And it gets even better!

Inside our gut we have a thick barrier of mucus called the mucin layer which protects us from pathogens that would love to get through the gut lining and into the blood to infect us. There is a very specific species that lives inside the mucus called Akkermansia Muciniphila (this means mucin lover). These live in the mucus layer and they produce acetate, propionate and butyrate. So when you eat plant fibers which travel undigested all the way through the small intestine to the colon you will be feeding the butyrate producing bugs. 

The butyrate bugs release the butyrate and the butyrate soaks from the lumen (the inner part of the intestines) into the mucus layer. But it can go even deeper…it can soak down even further and reach the blood where the white blood cells are. And the white blood cells have evolved receptor cell sites specifically for…butyrate!

This is astonishing because our body cannot create butyrate so why would our white blood cells have a receptor for something we don’t make? Because we co-evolved with these butyrate bugs. For thousands and thousands of years people have been eating plant foods so we’ve had this constant supply of butyrate which allowed our immune system to evolve to the point where the white blood cells have these receptors specifically for butyrate. 

Now here is a very important point: pathogens do not make butyrate so this means that if there’s plenty of butyrate present soaking down into the blood then this tells your body that everything is going OK — there’s no pathogens and all the good guys are in place which release butyrate.

But what would happen if the butyrate levels were to drop down to the point where they’re not saturating the blood.? They’re not then telling the immune system that everything is going OK. This triggers the immune system because it now starts to think that there must be a problem. Because if there is no butyrate there and butyrate is only made from the friendly guys, that you are being overrun by pathogens that have overgrown. 

So basically we have this alarm system to tell your immune system that if the butyrate begins to drop then it means you are overrun with problematic bugs. 

Our human evolution never counted on the fact that humans would stop eating fiber-rich foods. So now, in this modern era of processed and fast foods, we are basically turning on the immune system because by accident we are taking away the alert system that tells the immune system that all is well. 

We’re starving out all the butyrate producing bugs which not only keep our junctions tight but also alert the immune system that there’s a problem. 

Because the body is now on constant alert the inflammatory response kicks up and the immune response also revs up, causing a self-inflicted immune response. 

But butyrate also does something else that’s incredible! Researchers have now discovered that it turns on the production of mucin, the very barrier that we need to keep harmful pathogens from seeping into the bloodstream. Butyrate literally keeps up the mucus barrier which supports the Akkermansia. The mucin, a slippery secretion which is the key component of mucus, supports Akkermansia so this entire system of gut mucus, tight junctions and signaling to the white blood cells are all made possible by one thing: plant-based foods: fruits, vegetables, grains, and legumes. 

Here is a list of foods which are butyrate-friendly: 

1. Pectin: in this category are apples, grapefruit, carrots, blackberries, plums, apricots, cherries, raspberries, long berries, currants, beans, peaches and sweet potatoes.
2. Cellulose: broccoli sprouts, bok choy, yams, jicama, beets, sunflower seeds, alfalfa sprouts, squashes, sweet potatoes, cassava, taro root, turnips, parsnips and radishes.
3. Resistant Starches: navy beans, kidney beans, black beans, lima beans, legumes, pearl barley, chickpeas, peas, barley, lentils, rye and millet.
4. Anthocyanins (purple and red foods): blackberries, blueberries, cherries, plums, purple sweet potatoes, black currants, arena berries, pomegranate, raspberries, Maqui berries, purple cauliflower, purple asparagus, dragon fruit, red onions and black beans
5. Oat bran

In addition to these butyrate producing high fiber foods, you can also produce lots of butyrate by consuming raw honey and ghee. 

One final and important note! Do NOT take all the butyrate supplements which are out there on the market. They are synthetically made and do not contain the life energy that is found in foods and herbs. As a result, they have an unintelligent effect on the cells of the body and are somewhat toxic to the liver since they are the synthetic toxic version of the real thing found in food and herbs.

I hope you found this information useful to help you understand a little more about the gut microbiome. I will be writing about this and much more in my upcoming book on Ayurvedic child rearing, which will be out early 2026. 

Thank you,

Dr. Marianne Teitelbaum

Cinnaminson, New Jersey

856-786-3330

drrmteitelbaum.com