Adding more fiber to your diet has long-term health benefits

So you want to feel better, look better and be nicer? Eat more dietary fiber.

"Fiber has a major benefit in reducing obesity and constipation," says Dr. Mike Roizen, co-author of "You: The Owners Manual" and founder of RealAge.com, a popular health website.

While those factors alone can make you a better person, the overlooked benefit of fiber is that to get more you need to eat healthful food.

"You're not only adding fiber to your diet, but you change from eating chips to eating fruit," he says. "You not only have the healthy food, but you get rid of the lousy food.

"It's like walking with a friend. Not only do you get the benefit of the walking, but you get the benefit of the friendship."

Fiber comes in two varieties, insoluble and soluble, explains Dr. Charlene Prather, a gastroenterologist with SLUCare and St. Louis University School of Medicine.

Insoluble relieves constipation by pushing waste material rapidly through your system. The result is you feel better. It's found in the indigestible parts of plants that we eat grain husks, skins of fruits and vegetables, the brown in brown rice, outsides of beans, peas and berries. It's also called roughage or bulk. Soluble fiber often gets forgotten. But it's the one that lowers cholesterol and reduces the risk of heart disease and is associated with reversing obesity. Soluble fiber turns up generally in the pulp of fruits, vegetables, grains and beans. Rather than using stomach acids and enzymes to digest soluble fiber, your body uses bacteria, which digest it slowly. The slow digestive process keeps food in your stomach longer and deters your hunger longer especially if you drink a lot of water on top of it.

Soluble fiber becomes a spongy, watery gel that moves through the system sponging up cholesterol that wants to get into your bloodstream.

Food labels generally say "fiber" because most fiber-rich foods carry both forms of fiber, although some foods carry more of one and less of the other.

Fruits have lots of each. The skin has the insoluble fiber while the pulp carries more soluble fiber for example, a medium pear will have 5.1-grams fiber, a fifth of a woman's daily requirement of 25 grams of fiber and a sixth of the 30 grams of fiber men need. The daily requirements vary by a person's size, weight and age.

Unfortunately, people get only about half their daily fiber content, Prather says.

Supplements can compensate for a lack of fiber in the diet, Prather says. However, "We prefer you get fiber from a healthy diet. But supplements are an excellent substitute. They're no longer the yucky, icky stuff you'd stir into something."

Still, she says, "A healthy diet has the vitamins and nutrients and things we don't understand. I recommend eating whole fruits and vegetables, but in this fast-paced life, it's sometimes not practical."

Jeannie Gazzaniga-Moloo, a spokeswoman for the American Dietetic Association, agreed that food sources are preferable because the best that a packaged supplement can offer is to be bundled with some vitamins.

"If a person were to bring more whole grains, fruits, vegetables and legumes into their diets, it's going to help boost the fiber content of their diet."

Some people stay away from high-fiber diets because of gas, Prather says. Gas comes from bacteria digesting increased volumes of soluble fiber. It takes a week or so for your system to adapt. To prevent gas, start increasing your fiber content slowly, Prather says. Diets high in red meat can make the transition challenging. The alternative is to stay away from friends and family for a week.

Prather says if you're going to load up on fiber anywhere, do it at breakfast. That means higher fiber cereals, bread and fruit. The effect can hold down your appetite through the day, she says.

She recommends getting five grams of fiber in your breakfast. But she stresses, "Read the labels." The fiber content of bread and cereal often doesn't stand up to marketing claims.

For example, while heavy, dark, dense loaves of bread claim to be high in fiber, the lighter, fluffy, whole grain, whole wheat bread can have more fiber and fewer calories per slice.

Some cereals can provide a lot more than 5 grams of fiber in a bowl, she said, "But that tastes like cardboard." Sometimes, however, you can mix tasty cereal with high fiber cereal.

Fiber mavens tout the cancer-fighting ability of fiber. However, experts say the cancer-fighting properties are a byproduct, not a direct cause and effect.

The old story was that by pushing waste material through the body faster, the toxins didn't have time to irritate the intestines and that fiber wasn't an irritant or a toxin.

The fact is, say Prather and Roizen, when you switch to fiber-rich foods, you're no longer eating foods associated with cancer and cardiovascular disease foods with more saturated fat, salt, preservatives, dyes, refined sugar and bleached flour.

Also, obesity, which fiber addresses, has been associated with cancer and especially cardiovascular disease. A high-fiber diet "is generally a more heart-healthy diet," Prather says.

NOVEL WAYS TO INCREASE FIBER

When grandma makes that apple or peach pie, save the peels. Freeze them, pop them into a blender with some milk, yogurt or even apple cider and make a smoothie. Add a pinch of cinnamon to get an apple pie essence. Sweeten with a teaspoon of honey or Splenda. Switch yams for white potatoes or eat baked potatoes with the skin on rather than mashed potatoes with the skin removed. If you must mash, chop first with the skins on. Mix in or use whole-grain flour for cooking. Start to increase the amount of whole-grain flour in your recipes, even making homemade pasta or pie crusts. You may need practice, or you may find a blend that works, even for pasta. Whole wheat flour also mixes with instant flour mixes such as Bisquick. Use fiber supplements. This is one of the few nutrient supplements that actually works. Most food labels don't distinguish between soluble or insoluble fiber because most fiber-rich foods have both. But if your idea of vegetables is corn-fed beef and the hops in your Michelob, consider buying pills or powders. Dietitians don't like this because the package in fruits and vegetables are better for you. But even they admit that supplements are better than nothing.

WHAT FIBER DOES

Lessens the pain of diverticulitis. As you age, the walls of your large intestine soften in spots, like a soft-spot in an inner tube, and allows waste matter to bulge. About half the people over 60 get this. It can cause pain, constipation, infection, aggravation of hemorrhoids and bleeding. A fiber-rich diet softens up the waste materials enough to lessen the effects of diverticulitis. A fiber-rich diet over a lifetime prevents it. Eases irregularity and constipation. The undigestible fiber keeps waste material from hardening. Digestible fiber also helps increase volume and soften the texture by carrying a lot of water. Fights obesity. Most foods rich in digestible fiber require more chewing, which helps signal your body that you're eating. Then it stays in your stomach longer to help you feel full longer, especially if you add water. Reduces cholesterol. Directly, digestible fiber mops up cholesterol in the digestive tract. Indirectly, if you're eating food high in fiber, you're eating less food with high cholesterol content.

WHAT IT DOESN'T DO

Prevent cancer. No scientific proof associates fiber with reducing cancer risk. However, eating a high-fiber diet often means you eliminate food and conduct associated with cancer. Rid your body of toxins. The body's digestive system is designed to remove toxins from the body. Fiber helps the system work more efficiently.

Moderator: Thank you very much for coming. Please talk about the first release of the digestive system of children gastrointestinal tract are the characteristics?

Fanghe Song: children or the characteristics of the digestive system is very obvious, is a feature of the growth and development of children in the stage, and we need more nutrients relative, the second feature is in the developmental stages digestive system, the function is still not perfect. Here there is a paradox, the nutritional needs of great quality, and its function has not become perfect, so sometimes some of the impact of the disease can easily cause gastrointestinal dysfunction, such as diarrhea caused disease ...n

Netizen: children growing up there is not the symptoms of abdominal pain, this is the need for or letting nature take its course?

Fanghe Song: abdominal pain symptoms is not normal, normal child should not be in pain. Because abdominal pain, in the past and it is not the liberation of the same early. Abdominal pain in the early liberation of many children, when we first think of a stomachache ascariasis, with roundworm it will be easy for stomach pain ...n

Moderator: Many netizens said that many babies have gastrointestinal not very good, would like to ask how to adjust your baby can have a good stomach, the spleen and stomach, as you said, and not many netizens also mentioned, then what are the ways can conditioning?

Fanghe-song: for the protection of children s gastrointestinal function, the most important thing is for him a reasonable diet, within the general four months of breastfeeding their children the best eating.

Breast milk is the best diet, the children eat breast few gastrointestinal problems, we can not eat breast milk can also eat. Step by step ...n

Dilute final Nien-deep copper material, it does not apply after mitigation, generally in the evening and the morning of the day, less often at night, sometimes a meal that is not applicable to the stool, at least twice a day, up to March 5 th, I would like to ask is how matter how treatment

Fanghe Song: I do like this child his stool although less than normal, may be affected by the digestive function, and watch his water samples it is not, nor is it mucus Nongxue may have digestive problems such circumstances can holding the stool to the hospital laboratory. We often say that, the WBC stool in the streets as the police, the police can not do on the road, but the road can not be piled up on the police, ...

Additional information :

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