Wil Bulsiewicz: Why Fiber Is the One Nutrient That Reduces Your Risk of Every Major Disease

0:02This is a Be Well Moment, the most replayed moments from my latest conversation. It's a glimpse into the wider episode, which you can find linked in the show notes below. Because sometimes one small moment is enough to reconnect to living well and being well.

0:22Let's get on to Fibre because I feel like whenever I think of Fibre now, I think of you, which which I hope that you're happy about. I'm very happy about that. That's a dream come true. You know, and I will be, it's like the fiber guru. And you talk about nutrition workhorses in your book, like the four nutrition workhorses. And people always love things that they have structure to, right? And fiber is the first part of that. Now, fiber is a word that has been spoken about a lot. Then the protein kind of phase has come in. And again, it's an important macronutrient, but I don't think they should be going against one another.

0:58I think we need to talk about these, you know, together. They all constitute a healthy diet, a healthy plate. But when people like thinking about fiber, the thing that I have realized within my clinic and within the show, people that write in and, you know, people, the favorite part of this whole podcast is gut, the gut microbiome. Whenever we do an episode of the gut microbiome, our listeners absolutely love it, as you know. And fiber, it's an interesting one because there's different forms of fiber. And then some people will write in the comment section, I looked at our last few videos that had such a high engagement and people were like, but I'm adding in all this fiber and I'm still in pain.

1:37You know, like what's going on? So I thought like, should we just dissect fiber a little bit for to get people to understand it? You know, what does it really look like? What types of fiber should they be eating? And if they are eating a lot of fiber, but still having pain, what do you suggest? Fiber is, to me, the longevity nutrient. It's been shown more than any other nutrient to reduce your risk of disease, including the most dangerous diseases that exist. Heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes, Alzheimer's, chronic kidney disease. I can point you to the studies for fiber. So those studies don't exist with increasing your protein.

2:21I do think protein is important, but it shouldn't come at the expense of our fiber. And we have a fiber problem. We don't have a protein problem. We have a fiber problem. And so addressing this becomes, I think, quite essential. And these four nutrition workhorses that I describe in my book, the way that I landed on these four were that I basically said, okay, I want to know what are the foundations of an anti-inflammatory diet? It needs to be important and powerful, and it needs to be missing for the vast majority of people. Because those are the greatest opportunities that exist for our health from a nutrition perspective.

3:03If you can take the thing that's missing and also powerful and actually address that, that's how you radically transform your health. Fiber is one of them. So the thing about fiber is, first of all, all plant-based foods have fiber. Every single plant-based food has fiber. Fruits, vegetables, whole grains, seeds, nuts, legumes. Mushrooms are technically not plants. Fungi. They're fungi. But I am going to bestow upon mushrooms. They are honorary plants because they have fiber and they also have polyphenols. So that's kind of cool. So, and fiber is a nutrient that is kind of like protein. So protein, you would never say that the protein in fish is the same as the protein in beef or in a bean.

3:45They're unique. different plants have different types of protein, different types of fiber. They have different types of protein too. That is technically correct as well. It's an important point actually that often gets lost is plants have protein too. But the only place that you're going to find fiber is actually in these plant-based foods and each has unique forms of fiber. We tend to break it into like two main categories, soluble and insoluble. Insoluble is the grit. Insoluble is the type that doesn't get digested at all. It's the kinds that ultimately you're going to poop it out. Whereas soluble fiber is the kind that you and I have been talking about where I said like fiber feeds the right colon, fiber feeds the microbes, fiber becomes short chain fatty acids.

4:29That's soluble fiber. You don't need to worry too much about like what contains what in terms of these plant foods. You just need to eat a variety because when you eat a variety of foods, a variety of plant-based foods, they all have fiber. They all have different types. They all have a blend of soluble and insoluble. And ultimately that diversity is going to create harmony and balance within your gut. And that's exactly what you want. Now, some people, they struggle to add fiber. Why would that be? If it's so good, Dr. B, why is it hard? And it's like exercise. Is exercise good? Yes, of course it is.

5:06We 100 % agree that exercise is good. Is there such a thing as too much exercise for a person? Yes. Is exercise hard, especially to get started in the beginning, but eventually it becomes addictive? Yes. If you haven't been exercising, the first couple weeks are challenging. So how do we exercise? We match our capabilities to the work that we do. So whatever it is that your body is capable of, and we have different muscle groups and certain muscle groups might be stronger than others, but you eventually, if you go to the gym enough, you start to figure out, hey, this is what I'm able to do with when I do a curl, when I do a tricep extension, when I do a bench press.

5:53And you have that number. and then you start to work on that number and it starts to slowly increase over time because you're getting stronger. Your body is adapting. You are teaching your body what you want to do, which is to become more proficient at doing these particular exercises. The same is true with fiber. All of that is the way that this works. This is exactly the way that it works. Fiber is exercise for your gut. You should match your fiber intake to what your gut is capable of. Chances are for most people, you haven't really been consuming fiber. So that's kind of like starting from scratch at the gym.

6:25So when you go to the gym, you start really low. When you start adding fiber, you start really low. And then you slowly introduce it because your gut starts to adapt to it. In the same way that we were talking about with the 15-day study, your microbiome becomes adapted. It becomes more efficient. It becomes more capable. It will start producing even more short-chain fatty acids from the same amount but just like exercise you can start to ratchet up so you know if you want to like give a specific number to it i would say something along the lines of like adding three grams of fiber per week what does that look like in terms of food like trying to understand three grams for many people so like an extra three grams of fiber when i say three grams by the way this is like on a daily basis, right?

7:09So like, so that most of us are starting around 15 ish, 15 ish grams. So you add an extra three, if you try to double that, that's like trying to go to the gym and lift the heaviest weights in the gym all at once. Right. You're going to get injury. You're going to get hurt. Yeah. That's not a good idea. You had three grams that could be like, uh, an apple, right? Eating an, eating an extra apple once a day could be a handful of nuts. when it comes to beans, it's actually not that many beans. Beans are so densely packed with fiber. That's the reason why a lot of people struggle with beans because they're so packed that like you just get the four bean chili and next thing you know, it's like you've overwhelmed your system.

7:53Thank you for listening to this Be Well Moment. If it resonated, the full conversation is linked in the show notes and I hope it gave you a small pause to take a moment for you and to reconnect to living well and being well. If you loved it, please do leave a review, follow the show, or share this maybe with someone you love.