Posts Tagged ‘Fiber’
The Health Effects of Fiber
The Health Effects of Fiber
Fiber is hardly the cure-all some have suggested. But neither does fiber belong at the bottom of the nutritional totem pole, where it resided for more than a century as a nonessential dietary ingredient. There is good evidence, for example, that certain dietary fibers can lower blood cholesterol levels and improve the processing of blood sugar by diabetics.
Although the evidence is conflicting, high-fiber diets have been helpful to many patients with chronic intestinal disorders, such as constipation, spastic colon, diverticular disease, and even Crohn’s disease (regional enteritis or ileitis). And there is some evidence that fiber can help to lower blood pressure and ward off gallstones.
What Is Fiber?
What Is Fiber?
Dietary fibers come only from plants. They are the chemical substances in the cell walls that give plants structure and stability. Fibers in elude cellulose, polysaccharides, hemicelluloses, pectins, gums, mucilages, and lignin.
Different kinds of plants contain different fibers. Even within a species, the fiber content may vary according to growing conditions and maturity at harvest. Bran is almost entirely cellulose; apples, grapes, and some other fruits are high in pectin.
Fibers are not digested by human digestive enzymes. However, many are partially or completely digested by bacteria that reside in the gut, resulting in the production of gases.
Dietary Fiber: A Feast for Your Body
Dietary Fiber: A Feast for Your Body
Today, more than sixty years later, similar high-fiber diets are being advocated as capable of preventing or curing everything from constipation, hemorrhoids, and colon cancer, to heart disease, obesity, diabetes, and schizophrenia. Although many researchers have been studying fiber for years, the current fad was triggered in 1970 by Dr. Denis Burkitt, a British physician.
He reported that countries where large amounts of fiber are regularly consumed had low rates of colon-rectal cancer, benign diseases of the colon (such as diverticulosis), appendicitis, varicose veins, gallstones, and heart disease. Popular books and articles soon followed, vastly exaggerating the health claims for dietary fiber.