Fiber's health benefits are many. In addition to reducing your risk of heart disease and diverticular disease and making you less likely to experience constipation, it also likely helps to prevent diabetes, according to the Harvard School of Public Health. Unfortunately, Americans tend to consume about half as much fiber as they should each day. Fortunately, with careful meal planning, you can get more fiber into your diet.
Fiber Definition
Fiber is a type of carbohydrate. But unlike other types of carbohydrates, such as sugars and starches, fiber is not digestible by humans. Children and adults generally should consume ate least 25 g of fiber per day from food, not supplements, according to the American Heart Association. Plants that people eat, including vegetables, fruits, legumes and grains, contain fiber. Animal products have no fiber.
Diabetes Definition
Diabetes is a problem of insulin, a substance the body uses in converting glucose to energy. In a diabetic, either the body produces too little insulin, or the cells ignore it, according to the American Diabetes Association. In people with diabetes, glucose can build up in your blood instead of going to your cells, where it belongs. A host of complications can result, including heart disease, which can lead to heart attack or stroke.
Effects
High-fiber diets appear to correlate with a low risk of developing type 2 diabetes, which is the most common form of the disease and generally arises in adulthood, according to the Harvard School of Public Health. At the same time, a diet low in cereal fiber--the type that comes from grains--and high-glycemic foods, which cause sudden surges in blood sugar, seem to be "particularly bad," according to Harvard. A definite cause-and-effect relationship, though, has not been proven. It is not yet clear whether the anti-diabetes benefit is coming from the fiber itself or from other nutrients in the whole grains.
Theory
One hypothesis to explain fiber's effects on diabetes risk is that it helps your body to be more sensitive to insulin. Dr. Martin O. Weickert and colleagues tested this notion in research published in the journal Diabetes Care in 2006. They studied 17 overweight or obese subjects who had normal glucose metabolism, giving some of them regular white bread and others fiber-enriched bread. They found in laboratory tests that after three days, those who had consumed the higher fiber amounts showed "significantly improved whole-body insulin sensitivity."
Increasing Intake
Adding fiber to your diet is not difficult. You can, for example, choose whole grain bread rather than white bread for your sandwiches. Other ideas, according to the University of California San Francisco Medical Center, include adding fiber-rich kidney beans, garbanzos or other fiber-rich beans to your salad and adding chopped dried fruits to muffins, pancakes or breads before baking them.
