Fiber reduces overall mortality by 23%
empirical.health
empirical.health
Humans effectively co-evolved with Barley drink, it's insane we try all this other stuff.
The benefits of barley and beta glucan are well established.
People don't seem to appreciate that it aids in more thorough digestion while protecting your digestive tract.
Eat roughage and greens all you want, but barley in a spice grinder is 100% the base layer for everything else and it takes 3 mins a day to microwave and drink.
Incidentally this also helps regulate the water content in your colon, so hydration curves improve as well.
Bulking with greens without laying down a soluble fiber base is why people get the salad shooter expierence, the greens don't stay in your digestive tract long enough.
All these lesser grains have to have ad campaigns and health fads, barley is the goat and always in demand and so people over look it.
> You can’t improve what you don’t measure. If you’re trying to get more fiber—or to optimize other heart health nutrients like saturated fat, sodium, and potassium—Empirical Health is designed to make tracking very easy.
You can’t improve what you can’t measure and our product coincidentally helps you measure this.
You can track nutrition for free within the iPhone/Android apps.
If the goal is to attract readers without providing any value at all, it's extremely easy to do that nowadays with AI. And luckily it's just as easy to identify low-effort articles written by AI.
the hard part is that there may be legitimate benefits to fiber, but a claim that there is almost a quarter difference in mortality strains credulity.
obvious snake oil is obvious, but this is likely snake oil masquerading as real
The combination of fibers then leads to a given packet of calories traveling further down the jejunum as it gets absorbed, which makes more of the bacteria living along the length of the intestine happy with you, as well as protecting from blood glucose spikes that come with concomitant "crashes".
I mean, what he prescribed is fine. Eat "real food". But how he comes to that stance is rather opaque to me. He is obviously literate, but checking some sources in the book very few of them strongly supported the claims he made with that reference.
But even if the margin is not quite as wide as the back-of-the-envelope calculates, it's still bigger by a decent margin, right? For instance [1] estimates with more detailed methodology that it's $2.9T over 3 years or ~$1T/year, with at least 44% of that attributable to obesity, so like ~$400B/year, whereas [2] talks about $240B/year cigarettes, $250B/year alcohol.
Of course Lustig would say "TOFI people exist, obesity isn't the problem, obesity is just another symptom of metabolic syndrome, so 44% is an underestimate for the costs of bad nutrition." Not sure I agree there but he'd defend higher numbers even if we agreed to use these sources as kicking off points.
And yeah I agree that the question of "what do we do about it" is something that he appears to have a very opinionated take on, but I'd like to see more hard data. Like I'm happy for him that he had a big study that showed reversal of metabolic syndrome symptoms just by switching sugary food out for starchy food while holding weight and calorie consumption constant, but how we get from there to "eat real food -- the problem is not what's on the nutrition label but all of the antibiotics and adulteration that they don't have to tell you about on that label" stuff seems a bit opaque.
[1] https://www.americanactionforum.org/research/the-economic-co...
[2] https://www.cdc.gov/chronic-disease/data-research/facts-stat...
I hate the way this saying is commonly used today. I think a literal interpretation is untrue, but many people feel that a literal interpretation is true. For instance, humans get better at speaking whatever language they are surrounded with, even though that is not being actively measured by some metric. It is probably being measured by some implicit cycle in the human brain, but that is not the kind of explicit measurement that people would demand based on this saying. Some other examples that you can improve without an explicit measurement:
- Camera stability (you can usually "see" it immediately, without an engineering metric)
- Large changes in customer satisfaction (for fine tuning you probably need a metric, but for large changes, it will be obvious)
- Kindness
I'm not saying that measurement is purposeless. Just that it is not always necessary. Not everything needs to be measured. Also, why do generally smart people buy this platitude, when others will obviously not be taken as law? I don't see engineering orgs living by "closed mouths don't get fed", or "tidy desk, tidy mind", or "if momma ain't happy ain't nobody happy". But somehow "You can't improve what you don't measure" became law.
I realize this is only tangential. I guess I've been saving this rant for a while.
>Insoluble fibers have fecal-bulking characteristics that may promote regular bowel movements and avoid constipation.
>"Specifically, soluble fiber binds to bile acids in the intestine"
I have started to take Metamucil more frequently because I was taking an algae supplement, Spirulina & Chlorella, and it was moving through me so fast because I noticed I had no bulk from a low fiber diet. It made a huge improvement in bulking and slowed my bowel movements.
I also noticed before adding the fiber that I just would feel acidic, rude, or short-tempered in a different way, and my stomach was really acidic. Adding the fiber really did help, and it's cool to see articles and research backing it up.
The thing about metamucil is that it has either added sugar or artificial sweeteners. the main ingredient is psyllium husk.
I like benefiber better - no taste, just sprinkle on food. But I don't know how wheat dextrin compares to psyllium husk (or other fibers)
A nurse I talked to takes psyllium husk by itself, and I wonder if that is better than metamucil.
Then, about a year later changed my diet and started tracking macros. Was able to stop taking Metamucil after balancing them properly.
I’d consider Metamucil a bandaid, it is easier to supplement than rehaul your entire diet. But the latter is better in the long run for sure.
what does that mean?
Near as I can tell Benefiber is basically a placebo. People feel good for adding “fiber” to their diet but it has none of the effects of psyllium husk or oat fiber.
Psyllium husk by itself (power, not capsules) is utterly disgusting by the way. Tastes like dirt. You can hide it in protein shakes or similar but I personally struggle to get it down with just water.
“Gel-forming psyllium is good for both softening hard stools and firming up loose stools. It is effective in preventing or relieving constipation. Research shows viscous fibers like psyllium or the fiber in oats can have some impact on improving blood sugar control and lowering blood cholesterol levels."
“Fermentable wheat dextrin does not form a gel with liquid, so it is not helpful for constipation or diarrhea. Nor can it help lower cholesterol or control blood sugar. It does, however, serve as a prebiotic, providing nourishment to the gut microbiota. When microbiota ferment fiber, they release gas, so wheat dextrin may cause bloating and flatulence."
https://www.nutritionletter.tufts.edu/gi-health/psyllium-vs-...
I also have plain psyllium husk, and I avoided it because I liked the sugar of the Metamucil. But I have been focusing on lowering my sugar, so I'm switching to the plain psyllium husk, and it's just as easy to drink; it was really a little mental game of how it would taste, haha.
There are plenty of foods rich in fiber that you don't need to consider supplements. The article itself mentions - Foods high in soluble fiber including avocados, whole grains, chickpeas, apples, lentils, broccoli, brussels sprouts, certain seeds, and artichokes. Most fruits and vegetables also have varying amount of fiber, as does some variety of rice, millets and wheat (that are common in some Asian diets). See https://www.cancer.org/cancer/survivorship/coping/nutrition/... for more.
I've tried it and it is hard.
Let's say you need 38g of fiber per day and you need to make up half of it.
You could eat 6 cups of brussel sprouts, or sprinkle 6 packets of benefiber on your food as you eat throughout the day.
Also, a lot of natural fiber in quantity has some unpleasant gastrointestinal side effects.
I'm not saying it is impossible, but it can be quite challenging to get all your fiber from natural sources in our society.
I think you're right about diet. When I asked my first doctor about diet - what should I eat and not eat, he told me something counter-intuitive. He said "it changes back and forth every year, but one thing is agreed upon - eat a variety of foods".
A lot of my indian colleagues behave quite differently from the general population. They frequently cook at home and/or for themselves and bring the food in, and they generally use whole/individual ingredients. I've also heard that indians don't get alzheimers because of turmeric.
That said, as people age or become more sedentary I think proper fiber becomes very important.
Contempt without prior investigation and denial of my mortality is the true reason.
But once I started taking it I was sorely disappointed in myself that I did not start at least 10 years sooner.
Perhaps un-branded supplemental fiber is unburdened by the old people connotation? I probably still would have resisted.
I just got past the Metamucil to plain psyllium husk. I felt the plain version was going to taste bad, but it was just plain and not sugary. It's funny the concepts that can lead to certain small behaviors.
Partly we use mechanistic evidence to separate cause from effect--that's part of why the article goes into detail about, e.g., how soluble fiber binds to bile in the liver. If there's an association between A and B, and a known physiological mechanism where A causes C which causes B, it makes it more likely that ultimately A is the cause of B.
In an N=1 intervention study, I too found fiber to be health supporting, but that wasn't randomized or controlled.
Fiber lowers LDL cholesterol, slows digestion, makes you feel full longer, and helps with regularity, so increasing your fiber intake is probably worth it anyway.
This happens all over the place. You're just supposed to know in investment that a price-to-earnings ratio is measured in years, or people will say "the Buffett indicator is 200%" not "the Buffett indicator is 2 years."
Some of the most beautiful turds ever made, some would even the most beautiful
Or do healthy and wealthy people with active lifestyles and excellent healthcare happen to also eat more fiber?
Part of the reason we expect fiber to reduce mortality, rather than simply being a marker of other factors correlated with mortality, is that we can identify physiological mechanisms. For example, for cardiovascular mortality, fiber reduces LDL cholesterol / ApoB which lowers heart attack and stroke risk.
I despise studies that do not take genetics into account. Fiber made my cholesterol worse! The only thing that lowered my LDL and riased my HDL was a seafood only diet. Fiber flares my IBD, most likely from my NOD2 genetics[1][2].
[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/35079107
[2] https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/14/22/4775
"IBD patients show that microbiota dysbiosis and diet, especially dietary fiber, can modulate its composition. These patients are more at risk of energy protein malnutrition than the general population and are deficient in micronutrients"
In my late 20s and 30's I was going to the bathroom (urgently) at least twice a day if not more. My gut was bloated and my mental health was much much worse.
[1] https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/microbiology/articles/1...
However, the actual answer is that all population studies are only gross generalizations that may not apply to you. They are often quite useful because the odds are generally good that they do apply...but it's never certain. Even if you are a member of the studied population your specific circumstances may overwhelm your populations norms.
If the meta analysis showed population differences, why did the article not bring it up? This is what is wrong with nutrition research, then never account fro genetics despite the huge about of evidence that it is extremely importnat.
The truth is that fiber does not reduce mortality for everyone by 23%. I would rather not be guessing with science and health. I lived through that and it took me years to get out of it.
Interesting: what is the evidence for causality there? Might you have antibodies/allergies involved, for instance?
Location is only used, in context, to help find healthy meals near you. (You can use the app with or without enabling this location-based feature; if you don't use it, then we don't ask for location.)
Where are you seeing messages? We don't track messages, so this is probably a mistake in our metadata.
Sorry for being pessimistic, it's just whenever I see a health related app I immediately look at the data collected and data shared sections and get concerned. Especially if it's being shared with insurance companies.
Quick edit: That "messages" part might be only in-app ones. Google does not word that well in the summary.
Your data isn't shared with insurance companies.
You'd think we'd have been supplementing almost all sugary foods/drinks with it for years, since it's a cheap and healthy sweetener.