Fibermaxxing is everywhere right now. And most of the advice will wreck your gut before it helps it.
Here’s the typical advice you’ll see: eat more oats, whole wheat bread, and high-fiber cereals. These are actually some of worst things you can eat if you want a healthy microbiome.
Wheat and gluten-containing grains punch holes in your gut lining. Gluten triggers intestinal permeability (aka leaky gut) in nearly everyone, not just people with celiac. Oats are not the safe alternative most people assume. They contain avenin, a protein structurally similar to gluten that produces the same gut irritation response. Conventional oats also carry a glyphosate problem.
The Environmental Working Group found glyphosate in all but two of 45 samples of conventional oat-based foods. To make matters worse, both wheat and oats give you a hefty dose of phytic acid, an anti-nutrient that strips minerals from your cells, and lectins, which adhere to your gut wall and block repair. The result is an inflamed gut. And your gut health determines everything, so when your gut is inflamed, so is everything else.
Grains aren’t the only problem. Most people trying to eat more fiber reach for packaged ‘high fiber’ products next. The problem is that isolated fiber additives like inulin and chicory extract cause significant bloating and GI distress for a lot of people, especially at the doses in these products.
Fiber source matters as much as the amount.
Here is what fiber actually does when you get the right kind:
Fermentable fiber reaches your colon intact. Your microbiome eats it and produces short-chain fatty acids, specifically butyrate.
Butyrate does the real work:
- Seals your gut lining (less permeability, less systemic inflammation)
- Crosses the blood-brain barrier and fuels neurons
- Tells your immune system to dial back chronic inflammation
- Supports mitochondrial function in gut cells
Fiber is mitochondrial support in disguise.
Most people get about 15g of fiber a day. Meaningful butyrate production needs 25-38g minimum. That g ap shows up as brain fog, low energy, and immune dysfunction.
How to close the gap:
Start with real food from clean sources. Resistant starch drives butyrate production.
White rice cooked with coconut oil and cooled overnight converts a significant portion of its starch into resistant starch. Plantains work too. These are low-toxin, and your microbiome actually knows what to do with them.
MASA Chips are a convenient snack option that provides resistant starch. Yes, I know what I usually say about corn. Conventional corn is bad because pesticide use drives fungal mutations that put mycotoxins directly into the plant. MASA uses non-GMO heirloom corn with no pesticides, and the nixtamalization process further reduces antinutrient load.
If you want to move your fiber numbers more deliberately without building meals around starchy sides, Zbiotics makes a product called Sugar-to-Fiber. It’s the world’s first probiotic that’s designed to turn sugar into fiber inside your gut. It converts a small amount of the sugar you eat every day into levan, a rare prebiotic fiber your gut loves but is nearly impossible to get from Western foods. Use code DAVE10.
The environment has to work too.
Fiber is only as good as the microbiome fermenting it. Depleted gut bacteria means slow fermentation and low butyrate output. Most probiotics die in stomach acid before reaching your colon, which is where fermentation happens. Spore organisms survive the trip. Just Thrive is my favorite spore-based probiotic. Code ASPREY gets you a discount.
You can also skip straight to the output.
Even with solid fiber intake and a healthy microbiome, butyrate production takes time to scale. There is a shorter path.
BodyBio Butyrate skips the fermentation step and puts the endproduct straight to work. You get gut lining integrity, brain energy, and inflammation reduction. Code DAVE15 gives you 15% off your purchase.
Order of operations: ditch the inflammatory fiber sources, eat fermentable fiber from clean sources, build the microbial environment that ferments it well, and supplement butyrate directly for extra support.
This is how you do fibermaxxing the right way.
