The benefits of adding fibre to your diet

It seems a little fibre can go a long way towards safeguarding your health from certain diseases. The following tips will show you just how beneficial adding fibre to your diet really is.

Yes. Eating the recommended 25 to 35 grams of fibre daily can reduce several risk factors for heart attacks. A number of studies have found that people who eat plenty of fibre tend to have a low risk of heart attacks.

For instance, one survey of nearly 44,000 men found that those who ate 29 grams of fibre a day were 41 percent less likely to develop heart disease. Another large study found that women who ate 23 grams of fibre daily had half the risk of heart attacks when compared with others who ate little fibre. Experts recommend that adults eat between 25 and 35 grams of fibre a day, but most people don't come close.

There are two types of fibre: soluble and insoluble.

Oat bran and oatmeal are perhaps the best known sources of soluble fibre, but it's also found in legumes, peas, rice bran, barley, citrus fruits, strawberries and apples. When you eat these foods, their soluble fibre passes slowly through the digestive tract, gradually turning thick and gummy. This gel binds with cholesterol particles, trapping them so they can't pass through the intestinal wall and into the bloodstream. Instead, they're whisked out of the body as waste.

Even so, soluble fibre's effect on cholesterol is small. Eating three bowls of oatmeal a day will lower total cholesterol by only about five points, which would reduce the risk of heart disease by about four percent. That means that a high-fibre diet must provide some other heart benefit. One possibility: people who eat lots of fibre — both soluble and insoluble, the kind in fruit skins and most vegetables — eat less high-calorie food, period, probably because fibre is filling.

Fibre helps keep your weight down, too, which in turn helps to control several risk factors for heart disease that have been linked to obesity, including high blood pressure, low levels of HDL ("good") cholesterol and elevated levels of blood fats called triglycerides.

Yes. Many high-fibre foods can help prevent surges in blood sugar that can raise the risk of type 2 diabetes. When you eat an apple or a carrot, it takes awhile for your body to digest it. The story's completely different when you eat a slice of white bread: almost magically, it's dissolved. In general, foods that are digested slowly cause a smaller rise in blood sugar than foods that are digested quickly. The less a meal raises blood sugar, the less insulin the body must churn out to get that blood sugar into cells.

Insulin resistance, a problem at the core of type 2 diabetes, happens when the body must repeatedly produce a lot of insulin to handle meals full of fast-digesting carbohydrates — usually carbohydrates low in fibre. While several studies have shown that people who eat high-fibre diets are less likely to develop insulin resistance, soluble fibre — found in oatmeal, legumes and barley, among other foods — may offer the most protection. The gel formed by soluble fibre creates a barrier between the digestive enzymes in your stomach and the starch molecules in food; as a result, it takes longer for your body to digest the meal and convert it to blood sugar.

As these guidelines show, adding the right amount of fibre to your diet is key to maintaining good health.