Option to ignore inline Markdown formatting

I’m trying to use FT3 to take notes for statistical analyses. The problem: code frequently contains the * symbol. When this happens, adjoining characters sometimes. become italicized or bolded, when I want them to be just plain text. I know that I can clear inline formatting after the fact (with ⌃C), but I’d like an option to ignore it altogether. I do want to keep the # header formatting, because it’s needed for folding.