Fiber and Its Impact on Your Life

Fiber is a nutrient that's close to being a superstar. It can assist you with maintaining a weight that's healthy, assist with lowering your cholesterol and might even play a role in the prevention of colon cancer. Here's a quick look at why you need to ensure you're getting enough of it.

Supplements Help

If you happen to be having issues when it comes to hitting your fiber goals, try supplements, like fiber gummies. These are great for when you aren't getting enough of the nutrient in your diet. Also, if you want to stay away from unpleasant things, such as intestinal gas, try increasing your intake of fiber and make sure you're drinking enough water during the day.

Many Don't Get Enough

Many of us strive to have healthy habits, but even so, the society we live in consumes more of the processed food products than ever before, and because of this, most of us end up falling far short of our daily fiber needs. If we have an average diet, we get an intake of between 18 and 25 grams of the fiber we need each and every day. The problem is that we need more than twice that amount - as much as 50 grams each day for men and 35 a day for women.

Maintaining Your Weight

Fiber provides bulk, and because of this, it can assist by engendering a feeling of satiety or of being full following a meal. It can lead to ingesting fewer calories, which can then have a positive impact on our weight.

Blood Sugar

When it comes to healthy eating, fiber should never be left out. Soluble fiber can be found in things like flax seeds and nuts, oatmeal, beans, and many fruits and vegetables.

This type of fiber in particular has more of a positive impact on blood sugar and diabetes because it tends to slow down the process of digestion.

Cholesterol

When it comes to cholesterol, it can help with lowering your cholesterol. This is because cholesterol itself is bound by certain types of fibers and soluble fiber can assist with lowering the LDL (the bad type of cholesterol) levels.

Prevention of Colon Cancer?

As mentioned above, there have been indications that fiber can help with the prevention of colon cancer, although a lot more research needs to be done on this. Certainly, there are real benefits to the colon though. See, bacteria help in the digestion of fiber, and this leads to the production of healthy ingredients for your colon, like short-chain fatty acids.

In closing, let's talk a bit about what fiber actually is - now that we've covered some of its benefits.

Fiber is the portion of plant-type foods that isn't digestible by the human body. Even though we can often find it being added to foods that have been processed, it's incredibly simple to find it in foods that haven't been processed. Veggies and fruits, nuts, beans, and whole grains all have fiber.

Also, you might have noticed above that we talked about soluble fiber and just fiber. That's because they're two different things. Soluble fiber is known to soak up liquids and can be found in fruits, oats, and beans. Just think of how beans in particular expand when they're cooked in water. This type of fiber slows down digestion. Insoluble fiber isn't so quick to absorb liquids and is what adds bulk to your digestive waste. It keeps things moving in the digestive tract. Both types are necessary for your overall health, and now that you've read this, you know a few reasons why.