What Is Fiber? Recommended Intake, Benefits, Deficiency, More

Fiber is a key nutrient that plays various roles in our health. Here are some examples.

May Improve Digestion

Fiber is like nature’s scrub brush, keeping your body’s pipes clear and reducing carcinogenic activity.

One benefit of sufficient fiber in your diet is a reduced risk of diverticulitis, a condition in which pouches in the colon become infected, per research published in the European Journal of Nutrition in 2020. Fiber keeps food clear of the pouches and moving through the digestive tract. If you’re at risk for diverticulitis, this study suggests aiming for 30 g of fiber per day to prevent the condition.

May Help With Healthy Weight Maintenance

Research suggests that fiber can play a major role in body weight. One study published in the October 2019 Journal of Nutrition found that, among overweight or obese adults, those who ate more fiber while restricting calories had greater weight loss success, and fiber helped them stick to their diet. Other research, in the March 2020 Journal of Chiropractic Medicine, found that fiber supplementation may also support efforts to lose weight. Fiber expands and bulks food in your GI tract, slowing digestion. This can increase your level of satisfaction and stabilize your blood sugar. Foods high in fiber also tend to be lower in energy density, meaning they’ll help you feel fuller without excessive calories, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). This concept is at the core of why a higher-fiber diet is associated with a lower rate of obesity, as the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics says in one paper.

May Lower High Cholesterol and Blood Pressure

Fiber’s wondrous effect on the body is a great example of medical nutrition therapy (MNT), a technique registered dietitian-nutritionists (RDNs) use to improve health outcomes when they counsel patients about healthy food choices.

Here’s how it works: Your body uses bile salts, which are excreted by the gallbladder to break apart the fat content in food. Bile salts are made of cholesterol, per research.

When you eat food with fiber, the fiber binds to the bile salts, preventing them from being recirculated the next time you eat. As a result, your body must produce more bile salts by taking cholesterol from the liver. This is how soluble fiber reduces blood cholesterol. A review in a 2019 issue of Nutrients noted that increased fiber intake complements a statin regimen (common cholesterol-lowering drugs), helping to lower total and “bad” LDL cholesterol levels. Potentially, this interaction may decrease the dose of statin needed.

Fiber has a preventive effect on blood pressure, too, but the reason is more associated with nutrients such as potassium, calcium, and magnesium contained in foods high in fiber.

May Help Prevent or Manage Certain Conditions

As the Mayo Clinic points out, you may improve or prevent health conditions such as prediabetes, diabetes, high cholesterol, obesity, and various digestion-related issues, like constipation and colon cancer, by simply increasing fiber in your diet, research in the October 2020 Nutrients suggests. More specifically, fiber may play a role in warding off colorectal cancer, according to one study.

May Increase Your Life Span

Fiber may actually help you live longer, per a study in the May 2020 American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. Studies note that people who eat a higher intake of fiber tend to have lower rates of heart disease, metabolic disease, mood disorders, and risk of colorectal cancer.

May Help With Other Bodily Functions

If you are not convinced to increase your fiber intake yet, know there’s also data emerging on fiber’s ability to affect the immune system, mood, and memory by the promotion of healthy gut bacteria.