Your Doctor’s Orders A blog by Terry Simpson, MD, FACS

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For a while it seemed that everyone was talking about the importance of fiber,  and its role in preventing a variety of diseases.  After much speculation, we now have a few answers about  what fiber really does, and what makes it an  important component of good nutrition.

Fiber is simply things that humans cannot digest.  Many vegetables and fruit have methylcellulose – the stringy stuff– and we, as humans cannot digest it.  Cows can, horses can, deer can – but not humans.  This is why it is better to cook vegetables – because by breaking down some of the fiber our bodies can get to the nutrients that are locked into the vegetables.

What we do with it is simply pass the material through our body.  If you don’t have enough fiber you can become constipated – and develop things like hemorrhoids or diverticulosis.  Fiber is also good if you have chronically loose bowel movements – it will help bulk up the stools.

Years ago a group of people thought increased fiber would lead to less colon cancer – -with the theory that fiber acts as a broom to sweep out the colon and thus keep the colon from being in contact with toxic stool.  Well- that has been tested in a number of places and just isn’t the case.  Even people with high fiber diets have no lower incidence of colon cancer than those with an average fiber diet.

Some thought fiber would increase the metabolism – so by taking more fiber in you would be able to loose weight.  That was proved to be incorrect also.

What is known is that the more bulk fiber you have- from fruits and vegetables- with higher fiber — the longer the sense of feeling full is.

This is why we recommend to patients to increase green vegetables, or squash, or beans – to increase their fiber – and to keep them feeling full for a longer period of time.

So- if you want to lose weight- increase your fiber and decrease your processed food.  If you suffer from chronic hemorrhoids – see your doctor- but before then start on a high fiber diet (I recommend to my patients they take a scoop of fiber in 12 ounces of water followed by 12 more ounces of water).

Find yourself hungry mid-afternoon — consider a high fiber snack – like fruits.

So fiber has a lot of advantages – and the best source of fiber — vegetables

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 14th, 2010 at 5:57 pm and is filed under Videos, healthy eating. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.