Carbohydrates, fats, and proteins are nutrients you need to flourish your body and live healthily. However, regularly including fibre in your diet can help you lose weight, improve bowel function, reduce the risks of diabetes type 2, strengthen bones and live healthier. Adding high-fibre foods such as oats, wheat, and soybeans have more benefits than you can imagine. Here are six reasons fibre is vital in your diet.
1. Reduce Cholesterol Level
You can reduce cholesterol levels significantly by regularly adding fibre-rich foods to your diet. A study on a group of people found that consistent feeding of fibres reduced cholesterol levels to some extent. It can be further reduced when one takes in higher quantities of fibre.
Low-density lipoproteins are molecules that carry cholesterol from extrahepatic tissues to the heart; hence it is also known as bad cholesterol. When this happens, the vessels arising from and leaving the heart can get clogged with cholesterol plaques resulting in hypertension, atherosclerosis and other heart-related diseases. Fortunately, the regular addition of fibre into your diet can help prevent the risks of these diseases and improve good health.
2. Helps To Control Blood Sugar Levels
Diabetes is a critical health condition where the body cannot absorb sugar back into the cells, thereby increasing its level in the blood and causing other effects like hearing impairment, cardiovascular disease, eye, nerve, kidney and foot damage.
However, by including fibre into your diet, you’re helping your body prevent excess sugar accumulation in the blood. The soluble type of fibre is known to slow the sugar’s absorption rate, thereby controlling its level significantly. Overall, you would lessen the risk of getting type 2 diabetes with fibre-rich foods.
3. Enhances Bowel Movements
Humans eat every day for nutritional and satisfactory purposes. However, not all the food content gets absorbed into the intestine; some are eliminated as wastes through bowel movements. Usually, stools should have adequate moisture to pass through the gut smoothly and reach the endpoint. But in some cases, it can be a hard stool depending on the food eaten.
What is dietary fibre, and how does it help digestion? Fibres are essential to easing bowel movements because they are indigestible and unable to be absorbed by the gut. It also works the other way; when one is drooling with loose stool, adding fibre to the diet helps harden it by adding bulk, ensuring smooth bowel movement. If you don’t add them to your diet, you might have a hard stool and constipation.
4. Good For Weight Loss
There are many weight loss and fitness products people use to cut down on excess fat. However, you can achieve this goal simply by eating rightly and adding fibre like Glucomannan to the diet. Because some people have high food cravings, they tend to eat more and become heavyweight.
Fortunately, adding fibre to your diet increases satiety and helps you lose weight. This fact was shown by a study carried out on heavyweight people. They were told to eat a minimum of 30 grams of fibre daily, and after some days, they had a significant loss in weight. With fibres, you would no longer eat bulk high-carbohydrate and fat-rich foods but now get the same results.
Asides from that, fibres prevent high absorption of calories from food. According to a study, people who include fibre in their diet break down between 80 to 130 calories daily. Fibres bind together with the fat and carbohydrate in meals, reducing the actual calories you absorb and eventually helping you lose weight.
5. Promotes Healthy Gut
The human normal flora consists of hundred different species of bacteria that live in the gut and are essential for producing vitamin K, short-chain fatty acids, reducing inflammation, breaking down plant cellulose, reducing obesity and many other functions. With conventional foods like carbohydrates, proteins, and fats that are easily absorbed, your gut bacteria hardly get nutrition to grow.
However, adding fibre to your diet helps these bacteria flourish, thereby making you healthier. According to research at the University of Illinois, consistent addition of fibre to your meals will immediately result in gut changes and improved health. It can help prevent Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis and lousy bowel movements.
6. Reduces Risks Of Cancer
Eating fibre-rich food helps colon health due to its antioxidant nature. Fibres like vegetables, fruits, and whole grains are suitable for this purpose. Although there has not been specific research showing the preventive nature of fibres to colon cancer, scientists have attested that it does reduce its risk. Fibre also contains phytochemicals that further reduce the odds of getting such cancers.
Final Words
According to the institute of medicine, you should take at least 38 grams of fibre for males and 25 grams for females younger than 50 years. Older individuals should take at least 30 grams daily. Adding these foods to your scheduled diet is an excellent way to live healthier without breaking the bank.