Should I eat a high fibre diet?

Should I be eating a high fibre diet?

How do you answer that? I want to say yes. However, increasing fibre in short periods of time can also cause negative negative effects. Fibre is super important for our overall health. It helps support our heart health. It helps to feed the bacteria in the gut. They can support things like our immune system and make up to 95% of our serotonin. It can help reduce inflammation. There are numerous amounts of health benefits from increasing our fibre.

However, when you're dealing with a rather sensitive tummy, high amount of fibre in the diet can sometimes cause worse effect when we first start increasing. So if you think of your sink is full of leftover stuff from your pots and pans, whenever there's rice and veg and onions, it's in the sink. What happens if you have a couple of drops of water and you just leave the sink, it's going to be quite blocked, right?

What you're going to have to do is remove the food. But to clear that area, you need to flush it with a hell of a lot of water to get that kind of clean sink again. So often when we increase the fibre, people forget to increase the water so this kind of solid mass can stick there. And for those dealing with constipation, you may feel that although you're upping your fibre, your constipation isn't really getting any better.

So one thing I highlight is if you're increasing your fibre, always remembers to increase your water intake. But on top of that, go slow. If you have a rather low fibre diet, can you add some nuts and seeds throughout the day and just build on it gradually.

Simone Venner

Nutritionist specialising in IBS

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