Imagine eating 12 pounds of food a day — and still staying thin and healthy. That may sound crazy, but it’s exactly what our hunter-gatherer ancestors ate for millennia! And they didn’t have any obesity or chronic diseases like heart disease, diabetes, cancer, or dementia. The key was fiber. And in today’s UltraWellness blog, Dr. Mark Hyman will tell you how increasing your daily intake of soluble fiber can help you reduce your appetite, lose weight, and protect you from chronic illness.
Hi this is dr. mark hyman imagine eating 12 pounds of food a day and still staying thin and healthy sound crazy right well that’s exactly what our hunter-gatherer ancestors ate for millennia and they didn’t have any obesity chronic diseases like heart disease or diabetes or cancer dementia and of course i wouldn’t advise anyone 1080 twelve pounds of food because the
Food in our society lacks one major secret ingredient that all our ancestors ate in nearly all their food fiber fiber has so many health benefits that i’ve made an entire focus of this week’s blog but before i tell you about what fiber can do for you let’s look at a little more at the history of fiber dr. denis burkitt a famous english physician studied the differences
Between indigenous african bushmen and their civilised western counterparts the bushmen seemed to be free of all the scourge –is of modern life like cancer and heart disease and diabetes and obesity is he dr. burkett found that the average bushman had a stool weight of two pounds and the civilized men had a stool weight of only four ounces that’s eighty seven and
A half percent smaller the difference and one word it’s fiber today the average american eats about just eight grams of fiber the average hunter-gatherer ate about a hundred grams of fiber in all manner of roots and berries and leaves and plant foods and the fiber is what helped those ancestors of our stay healthy just take a look at all the good things that fiber
Can do for your body first you need fiber to keep you healthy from top to bottom as well as to provide food for the healthy bacteria that work within you to promote health but how can fiber actually prevent obesity and all the chronic diseases of aging well it’s actually quite simple fiber slows the rate at which the food enters your bloodstream and increases the
Speed at which food exits your body through the digestive tract and that keeps your blood sugar and cholesterol in ideal balance and quickly eliminates toxins from your gut and reduces your appetite now there’s good science to back this up research shows that fiber can lower blood sugar as potently as some dive these medications can lower cholesterol and promote
Weight loss it’s clear fiber is a great ally in the battle of the bulge but it’s also a hero in more serious battles for example one recent study showed how the gut bacteria make butyrate from eating fiber and then they switch on an anti-cancer gene which turns off colon cancer in fact fiber has been shown to reduce the risk of colon cancer by as much as a third and
Breast cancer by almost 40% it also lowers cholesterol and reduces the risk of heart disease by as much as 40% if you have diabetes adding fiber to your diet may even help you use less insulin plus it’s a great natural cure for constipation and irregularity so how much fiber do you need to reap all these benefits well you should shoot for 30 to 50 grams a day and
The type of fiber is important to most people think that bran is the best type of fiber to eat but bran or wheat fiber is mostly insoluble and doesn’t get digested so think of it as more of a scouring pad for your intestines that’s good for getting irregular but it’s also something that can help tremendously with your health you’ll find soluble fiber in vegetables
Fruit beans nuts seeds and most whole grains the bacteria in your gut metabolize the soluble fiber and that’s when the benefits start soluble fiber can help lower cholesterol your blood sugar and insulin prevent cancer down since your hormones removes excess estrogen and reduce the risk of breast cancer it makes vitamins and minerals it provides food for the colon
Cells and much more wow now you can see how crucial fiber is to your health but in just a minute i’m going to tell you how you can increase your fiber intake but first i want to tell you about some recent discoveries about an ancient fiber source that can help you lose weight lower cholesterol reduce your appetite lower your blood sugar more effectively than any
Other fiber i call it a super fiber it’s called glucomannan or gm it’s a soluble for mental and highly viscous dietary fiber that comes from the root of the elephant yam also known as cognac native to asia indigenous to asia the cognac tuber has been used for centuries as an herbal remedy to make traditional foods also cognac jelly tofu and noodles more recently
The purified cognac flower or gm has been used as a food stabilizer and so forth what makes this fiber so super well it can absorb up to 50 times its weight in water making one of the most viscous dietary fibers known and that means that gm can help you shed pounds in many studies doses of 2 to 4 grams of gm per day we’re really well tolerated and even better they
Resulted in significant weight loss in overweight and obese individuals first how does this work well it works by promoting a sense of fullness and it pushes more calories out through your colon rather than letting the meat absorb it also lowers the energy density of the food you eat in other words it bulks up the food in your gut creating a lower calorie content
Per weight of food you eat and since fiber has almost no calories but a lot of weight adding it to your diet lowers the energy to weight ratio of the food that you eat studies show that the weight of the food controls your appetite so the fiber increases the food’s weight without increasing calories the powerful fiber may also control your appetite in many other key
Ways for example it can signal to the brain there’s a lot of food down there and it’ll make you eat more slowly and slow down the stuffing of food there from your plate it also leaves your stomach and small bowel slowly because it’s so viscous and by slowing the rate of food absorption from the gut to the bloodstream it reduces the amount of insulin produced after
Meal which also controls your appetite it also may increase the level of hormones in the gut such as cck which controls appetite in another way and finally you lose more calories through the stool because gm soaks up all those calories and gm can also help your health in other ways in addition to weight reduction it’s been studied for its effects on constipation
Cholesterol blood sugar blood pressure and insulin resistance with all those benefits there’s no doubt you should eat more fiber now you probably won’t be eating 12 pounds like your ancestors but you can increase your fiber intake by just being smart about what you eat so here’s a few simple suggestions for getting more fiber one eat flax to low upon the legumes and
Beans three bulk up on vegetables for eat lots of whole grains five eat more fruit six have more nuts seven start slowly you don’t overload your gut with too much fiber if you’re not used to it eight consider a good fiber supplement and nine consider trying some gm so as you can see fiber has big benefits for your health from encouraging weight loss to preventing
Chronic diseases i hope you’ll start adding more of this important compound into your diet today thank you you
Transcribed from video
The Super Fiber that Controls Your Appetite and Blood Sugar By Mark Hyman MD
