Fiber: Why it's important and how to get more of it | Dr Will Bulsiewicz

[Music] hello and welcome to Zoe shorts the bite size podcast where we discuss one topic around science and nutrition I'm Jonathan wolf and this week I'm joined once again by board certified gastroenterologist and Zoe's U.S medical director Dr will bulswitch and today's subject is fiber this is a topic that I love talking about it's one of my great Passions fiber is one of the most misunderstood nutrients and despite its potential health benefits the majority of people in the United States and the UK they don't have enough fiber in their diets and I'm glad we could get the world's most passionate man about Fiverr onto this podcast well so why aren't people eating enough Fiber Well we think there's a clear answer this question and there's also a very solid research evidence to back it up fantastic so let's get started and let's start with what is fiber this may shock people fiber is a type of carbohydrate that the body simply isn't able to digest and most carbohydrates they're broken down by the body and they're they're made into their pieces which is glucose sugar people have heard about this fiber can't be broken down into sugar molecules and because of this it passes all the way through your body undigested um and there's two main types of fiber that people need to know about one is soluble fiber and the second is insoluble fiber soluble means that if you were to put it into a drink and stir it it would dissolve and research shows that's why it's called soluble yeah it's it's implicit and it's nice when science actually the words make sense so it doesn't always happen exactly so research shows that soluble fiber can lower our glucose levels and our cholesterol and there's a number of other health benefits that we'll talk about Foods can we find fiber in well the good news Jonathan is that fiber really is not hard to find you can find fiber in plant Foods I mean like literally all plants contain fiber so fruits vegetables whole grains seeds nuts legumes and then there's one exception to this rule which are mushrooms mushrooms technically are not plants they're fungi but they can also be a great source of dietary fiber and I'm sort of nominating them to be honorary plants because I think they're great and they also can provide these same benefits that you find in Plants that's fantastic my son often complains about all the plants that I want to give to him and now I'm really like ah eat the mushrooms they're not even plants so I'm going to use that now let's deal with maybe the elephant in the room when it comes to fiber so I think a lot of people are listening to this and thinking yeah but fiber is really boring you know it's that thing that you use to like regulate your bowel movements if you get constipated and in fact I remember back to you know when I was speaking to to doctors 20 25 years uh ago who were a gastroenterologist and they told me look fiber is roughage I remember that word that helps you to go to the toilet more often and so I think for a lot of our audience that's basically what we're what they're thinking when they when they hear about this so I think you know can you clear that up I I totally get it I understand where people are coming from fiber has a boring reputation this is the stuff that grandma would stir into her drink so that she could have a bowel movement and so you know we associate dietary fiber with having bowel movements but it's actually far more complicated than that simply consuming fiber in our diet can actually have massive health benefits and it's so much more than your bowel movements so you know what traditionally has been thought of as being boring there is new science around fiber that has fiber sort of becoming this exciting new thing and there's a Renaissance occurring around fiber well look well before everyone switches off this podcast because they're like oh my God I don't want to hear about Fiverr anymore it's so boring tell me about why in fact this new science has you so excited okay I'm going to jump straight to my favorite fiber study of all time this study had over 135 million person years of data think about that Jonathan like humans have only been on the planet for three million years so it's an amazing amount of data yeah and it's great because it's taken the bias out of the equation like let's not just cherry pick the study that tells us what we want to hear let's look at the whole picture so here's what they found when people increase their dietary fiber they reduce the likelihood that they will be diagnosed with heart disease several types of cancer they are less likely to have a stroke and they're less likely to be diagnosed with diabetes and then the 58 randomized controlled trials in these studies they found that people who consumed more dietary fiber lost weight lowered their blood pressure lowered their cholesterol these are risk factors for heart disease so ultimately what we're talking about is that we can reduce our exposure to four of the top 10 causes of death in our countries by simply eating this boring nutrient this is pretty amazing right because you know there are all these arguments about like which milk to use to go with your cereal where you know we discussed this on a recent podcast when Sarah was explaining you know the health impact of this is is unknown there's really no data to show the differences and yet here the data on how fiber can actually extend your life is incredibly strong so I think that is really striking just to stop for a minute and think about that now beyond that you know amazing uh results what about other benefits of fiber and I think there's there's a common thought probably also with much with many of our listeners that if you eat more fiber you're going to feel Fuller for longer now is that true or is this just another food myth no this is true fiber fiber can affect many different aspects of our body including our metabolic health and it certainly can affect how full we feel after a meal um it also improves our blood sugar control it helps to regulate our blood lipids and it also has an effect on our immune system and what about the effect that fiber has on our gut microbes it's a powerful effect dietary fiber is unique because we as humans we lack the enzymes to digest fiber but that doesn't mean that it actually just goes through the body undigested what that means is that fiber makes its way to the large intestine without changing and when it arrives there this is where the gut microbes that's where they live it comes into contact with your gut microbiome who have literally tens of thousands of enzymes specifically designed to break down fiber which is sort of amazing right so what you're saying is we don't have any of that and the enzymes are just like these special like scissors aren't they that sort of cut things up that's as much as I understand so we don't have them you're saying so it passes through our sun like you know the bread or you know the oil or burger or whatever we can break that down but this Fiber goes all the way through because we haven't got any of these and then you're suddenly saying wow in my gut I've got like 10 000 of these things that are sitting in my microbes waiting to break it up yeah I mean the number the number is sixty thousand that's how many unique enzymes they think these microbes have and you know like take this for example I mean this is crazy so I am a very large human I am six foot four so about two meters tall and I weigh over 200 pounds so about 100 kilos a little less than 100 kilos and um I don't have these enzymes but a single cellular bacteria that is invisible to the naked eye could have hundreds of these enzymes so this is Mother Nature provides for us but in a unique way where the gut microbes are basically supporting our body in a way that we're not able to do ourselves well as someone who's a lot less than six foot four I feel good about the idea that you know just being really big isn't always the optimal outcome well there's a there's advantages and disadvantages Jonathan so you know the the there we could we could do a pro and con on that but nonetheless um you know these microbes they actually these they use these enzymes to transform the fiber the fiber truly emerges as something different which are called short chain fatty acids perhaps people have heard of butyrate as the classic short chain fatty acid butyrate ends up being this like amazing anti-inflammatory molecule which is the primary source of fuel in your in your colon it supports the good microbes it actually directly suppresses the bad microbes it repairs the gut barriers like people want to know how do I fix leaky gut I'm telling you right now so this fiber is so good this is why fiber is so good for our gut and it's also why fiber is actually good for our entire body because these short chain fatty acids don't just affect the colon they actually spread throughout the entire body and they have healing effects everywhere they go so all sounds amazing well are there any downsides to fiber I mean of course you know we have to keep it real so there are people who have digestive issues that will struggle to process and digest fiber that's just being honest and in that setting they may experience gas and bloating and flatulence and and perhaps abdominal discomfort and my message to these people what I want you to know is that you're struggling with the digestion of fiber because your gut has been damaged and these microbes they're struggling to keep up with what you're asking to do so it's just important to understand these limitations because they can be overcome the the benefits of fiber can be enjoyed by all it's just that some of us need to work through a process to get there and I know that this is quite a big topic but if we kept it really simple you know what is that process how would you approach this with a patient I I would I would treat this like we're doing rehab for a bodily injury so like pretend that you hurt your knee Jonathan you know you have choices on how you fix that problem and one of them could be that you just stop walking permanently but you would never do that because your knee would get weaker and so would the rest of your body what you would do instead is that you would ultimately put yourself into a rehabilitation program where you challenge your knee ever so slightly like not aggressively and by challenging your knee it's slowly gets stronger and you incrementally increase the challenge until the knee is completely back to healthy that's actually what we need to do with our gut when it comes to dietary fiber if you struggle with dietary fiber don't eliminate fiber start low and go slow reduce the amount of fiber intake that you have and then slowly over the time increase it and what you'll find is you're able to tolerate more so does this mean it's as simple as saying the more fiber you eat the better uh so generally yes but like all things in nutrition Jonathan we know that there is no one-size-fits all fiber is a very broad term describing many different types of fiber so they're biochemically unique and understanding like how our body is going to react to these unique forms of fiber is something that we are in the process of sort of working through and so fibers are great why in fact aren't we all just munching down on much more of it the first you know I don't think most people have heard the exciting new science with fiber that you know talks about gut microbes and shortchain fatty acids I mean if you're using the outdated information you think fiber is boring while I'm sitting over here basically saying fiber is damn sexy yeah but interesting idea of what sexy will I think we also have to keep it real right a lot of unhealthy food just tastes amazing um and that's not by chance you know if we're we're buying it from the store it's probably been designed by some very smart nutritional scientists to just trigger you know the exact Bliss point you know of sugar and fat it's also going to give us probably like an immediate Sugar Rush so these things are are incredibly tasty and you know again I always look at my kids you know as soon as you start to open them up to these sorts of ultra processed foods they're quite reasonably don't want to eat any of the healthy food you've given them before and they're three right they're not thinking about anything other than what tastes best yeah no that's really true I I've experienced that with my kids as well it's like Pandora's box once they've had a taste it's like if you bring it into the home that's all they're going to want so um it can be quite challenging uh you know fiber rich foods the sort of the way that I see it in terms of the benefit is they're the ones that have you feeling great for hours but they don't necessarily give you that like Punchy like hey man I felt great for five minutes the way that you would with some of these Ultra processed foods but personally I I don't really like when my food leaves me feeling hungover so well we've we covered a lot of ground here for short what's the conclusion is fiber that boring old nutrient we don't like to think about fiber is exciting fiber is the new science that is unfolding um you know it's quite amazing Jonathan when I dig into the medical literature how often you will see fiber and short chain fatty acids popping up in terms of being beneficial for our health so given all of this we did a little research about how much fiber we actually are all eating um in the UK the national diet and nutrition survey says that Brits on average consume 18 grams of fiber a day intake in the US is slightly less at 16 grams a day so equally bad given the recommended daily intake is is 30 grams so it's quite a shortfall will yeah I mean it's you know from my perspective I consider this uh a public health problem of the highest urgency I mean this is disturbing to me but you know the important thing that I want people to understand is that for those who are deficient in their fiber consumption which frankly is most of us they would really improve their health by increasing their fiber consumption and that doesn't mean that there's any sort of hard rule of like how fast you have to increase it or how high it needs to be you simply need to learn wean into this process of slowly increasing your fiber intake and then your body can tolerate it and also you're getting the health benefits that come from that amazing I think that's a wonderful place to to end today if you've enjoyed today's podcast and you're curious about what high fiber foods are best for you specifically or if you just like to know more about your own body do try Zoe's personalized nutrition program you can get 10 off by going to join zoe.com podcast I'm Jonathan wolf and I'm will balsawitz join us next week for another Zoe podcast foreign [Music]

Channel: ZOE

Views: 45,852

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Length: 15min 0sec (900 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 10 2022