High Fiber Diets Not Just A Fad
August 2, 2008 High Fiber Diet
How many of us have been disappointed by a fad diet? So many of us get sucked into what appears to be a diet that cannot fail. When we cannot keep it up we feel like it is us who have failed. But very often it is the diet that fails us. Diets that make promises that seem too good to be true probably are. Losing weight is a process that cannot happen over night. If we lose weight too fast we will put it back on just as fast. Very fast weight loss is a strain on the body. High fiber diets are closer to what nature intended and the fiber is a great help in health and weight loss.
High Fiber Diets Are Cleansing
When people pay any attention to balanced diets they do not think about fiber. They talk about nutrients, minerals, vitamins and even issues that are really too complicated for the man in the street such as amino acids. A high fiber diet will aid your intestines and colon in the excretion of waste.
A high fiber diet helps to keep you digestive system in running order. Think of it as engine cleaner. Not only does it clean your system but it also helps you to burn fuel more efficiently. It makes the contractions of your intestines used to push the food forward more effective in accomplishing that goal. Fiber absorbs water which results in excrement being softer and easier to push out. The absorption of water also leads to the expansion of the fiber. This causes the pushing action of your intestines to be more effective and it collects the buildup on the intestinal wall.
High Fiber Diets Correct Digestion
High fiber diets are regularly prescribed to patients with Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) by dieticians. IBS describes people who have bowel issues that cannot be linked to the malfunctioning organs or conventional diseases. A patient might be constantly constipated or might have regular bouts of diarrhea. You can imagine how uncomfortable and debilitating such a syndrome must be to a person’s social and professional life. High fiber diets bring a semblance of normalcy to people’s lives who suffer from IBS.
Most of the problems that high fiber diets help to prevent are complications that develop over a long period of time due to an improper diet and the symptoms usually only manifest in old age. Two examples are colon cancer and diverticulitis. A big percentage of people actually have diverticulosis. Diverticula are small pouches which develop in your colon. Diverticula are not dangerous by themselves. About a quarter of people with diverticulosis will develop diverticulitis. This is when the diverticula rupture and become infected. This is a serious problem and makes it extremely hard and painful to excrete bodily waste.
Because these problems develop in the long term the urgency is not always there to make fiber a priority. Other elements in food have immediate effects when a deficient amount is ingested. You might feel tired or have headaches when you don’t get the right mixture of vitamins. You might easily develop flue due to a weak immune system resulting from too little Vitamin C. These things are immediate enough to prompt you to make changes in your diet to eliminate them. It is like the parable about the frog in the pot of water that is slowly heated and the frog boils before he realizes that the water is hot. We hardly notice things when they happen gradually, but it is important to look towards your future health by learning more about high fiber diets.