Chapter 4 - “Hay”, What About Fiber?Want More Diabetes Info? Search HERE
If we can’t digest it, then why on earth would fiber be such a good thing for us to eat? Because it’s this very quality of indigestibility that gives it value. One of the most important qualities of fiber is its ability to attract, absorb and hold water. When we have chewed-up fiber in our digestive tract, it does just that. It attracts, absorbs and holds water, which, in turn, keeps our stools soft and moist. That keeps bowel movements easy and prevents constipation. And since it attaches to cholesterol, fiber also serves as sort of a “broom” to “sweep” the colon clean. Without adequate fiber, the food passing through the digestive tract can therefore become too dry, making the stools that pass through it dry and hard – prime contributors to chronic constipation, hemorrhoids and colon cancer. The American diet, which is typically sorely lacking in adequate amounts of water and fiber, adds significantly to the danger of long-term or frequent constipation. So you can understand why fiber is such a vital part of the daily diet for a healthy colon. Please allow me to digress for a few paragraphs to emphasize some points about water. It’s very important to understand that soft drinks, tea, coffee or fruit juices, don’t count as water. It’s absolutely vital to understand this point. In fact, for every ounce of soft drinks or coffee that you do drink, you should drink that much more water that day to dilute their effects. A healthy human body is more than 95 percent water. Dehydration contributes significantly to a plethora of human ailments. How much water is enough? Research published in the form of an amazing book called, “Your Body’s Many Cries For Water,” by Dr. F. Batmanghelidj suggests that we need a half an ounce of water every day for every pound of body weight. So if you weigh 150 pounds, you’d need seventy-five ounces of water daily. The old suggestion that you drink eight, 8-ounce glasses of water daily (sixty-four ounces) would be the right amount for people who weighed how much? That’s right only 128 pounds! That may have been a good ball-park, generalized figure for the public at large in 1945 when that
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