Myocardial Monday: Fiber

A few days after Christmas of 2008, Michael’s Mommy suffered a heart attack. By the grace of God, she lives to tell the tale. As a continual reminder of how your diet can affect your body, we here at Being Michael’s Daddy have declared this day to be “Myocardial Monday.” Here we’ll offer information about food and nutrition in hopes that it will help others avoid facing what could be a fatal condition.

Today we’re going to present some info about fiber.

What is it?
Fiber is a complex carbohydrate that makes up the structural parts of plants. It’s a polysaccharide. Remember that? Same stuff. Only thing is, the kinds of polysaccharides that make up “dietary fiber” are not digestible; your body won’t absorb a bit of it.

That’s right, this carbohydrate is Calorie Free.

If you’re interested, you can read up about complex carbohydrates here. Suffice it to say that this long chain of sugars is structured with branches and is more complex than your digestive system can figure given the tools it has on its own, so it basically just passes it along. “I don’t know what to do with it. Here, you have it,” it would say. Should your digestive system ever gain the power of speech. What a horrible thought.

Why do I need it?
Fiber is an essential part of a healthy diet. It is not nutritive, it doesn’t add calories and it gets eliminated entirely. But it plays a vital role in the absorption of nutrients, the elimination of not-so-healthy items and the overall health of your digestive tract.

Is it a laxative?
Not exactly; at least, not the way most people would assume. Fiber isn’t some magical solution to a problem that pops up in certain kinds of people once in awhile. The problem requiring a laxative wouldn’t be a problem if people stuck to a diet with a proper amount of fiber and water.

Soluble fiber, the kind that you find in foods like apples and pears, helps to add water to the stool and make it easier to pass. Insoluble fiber, like in oat bran, helps to give your digestive system a good scrub and workout, making it more able to do what it’s supposed to do.

Is it going to give me diarrhea?
Most people get this idea that you take fiber when you’re “irregular” and that it helps get you going. This is further complicated by the notion that eating lots of fiber will turn you into a veritable geyser of excretions. Comedy bits like SNL’s “Colon Blow” commercial aren’t exactly helpful in this regard.

The fact is, too much fiber intake when you’re not used to it can cause some serious diarrhea and other gastro-intestinal discomfort. From UCLA’s “FactsOfFiber:” “Cramping, diarrhea and intestinal gas are some of the problems associated with a sudden increase in fiber intake.” (italics mine)

The thing to remember is just step into a higher fiber diet gradually; a little increase every day over a multiple-week-long period. Your body needs to have time to adjust to an increase in fiber, to develop the necessary flora and gastric cadence to be able to process the fiber correctly.

And as with anything you consume, it’s possible to get too much of it. An excess of fiber can cause it to bind with certain essential minerals and make it such that they are not absorbed at all.

How does it help my heart?
Excellent question! And, thanks for asking. One particular kind of soluble fiber, beta glucan, has been shown to reduce LDL (the “bad” cholesterol) significantly. Here’s the scoop: your body produces bile to aid in the digestion of fats. Bile hooks up with cholesterol and distracts it before it can be absorbed into the blood stream. Then the beta glucan comes along and binds them both and gives them the bum’s rush (so to speak) out of your body. Lowering your LDL is a very important thing to avoid inflammation and buildup of plaque in your arteries. You’ll get a good dose of beta glucan in that great old favorite, oatmeal. And I don’t mean the instant kind. I mean the old fashioned kind, particularly the steel cut oats that you have to cook for 15 minutes. We eat oatmeal for breakfast three or four times a week. It’s that good. The other cool thing that fiber does is that it helps fill you up. So by eating a meal that includes the right amount of fiber, you are fooled into feeling full from eating less. Neat trick, no? Yes? Yes.

Where do I get it?
From non-processed fruits and vegetables that are as close to their original, natural condition as possible. While I don’t advocate hunkering down in the potato field, clawing Earth-encrusted tubers out of the ground with your bare hands and chawing on them right there, it is best to get things fresh from the farm. Our bodies were designed to use all the stuff we get from the foods we eat as they’re made, and that includes fiber that gets processed right out of most prepared food these days. That squishy, yummy white bread, for example, is made from grains that were stripped of their fibrous goodness.

Whole wheat is a much better choice. Not as yummy, perhaps, but there have been great strides in the last few decades in the areas of making whole wheat and sprouted grain breads much more tasty. And if you don’t like that, you can eat a sandwich made with white bread – and have a side of oat bran. Mmmm! Fibery good!

Anyway, here are some good sources of soluble fiber:

• Apples
• Pears
• Figs
• Strawberries
• Bananas
• Broccoli

And these are some good sources of insoluble fiber:

• Kidney beans
• Bran cereal
• Oat bran
• Oatmeal (the old-fashioned kind)
• Baked Potatoes (with skin)
• Corn on the cob

Go easy on the butter and stuff with these things; this is where the calories go through the roof and the nutrition of these lovely foods disappears. On their own, potatoes, rice and corn are nutritious and relatively low in calories.

So eat your roughage. Your grandma was absolutely right about that.