To be slightly obtuse, I've never understood these studies because overall mortality is 100%.
Fiber reduces overall mortality by 23%
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Re: Fiber reduces overall mortality by 23%
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why not just start eating foods with more fiber in them?
I had chronic digestive issues which almost completely disappeared after taking Metamucil. Then, about a year later changed my diet and started tracking macros. Was able to stop taking Metamucil after balancing them properly. I’d consider Metamucil a bandaid, it is easier to supplement than rehaul your entire diet. But the latter is better in the long run for sure.
> started tracking macros
what does that mean?
Re: Fiber reduces overall mortality by 23%
#73To be slightly obtuse, I've never understood these studies because overall mortality is 100%.
Yes, here "overall" is being used as a synonym for "from all causes" not "over the full length of your life," and there's this frustrating thing for those of us with physics educations where people frequently leave off a unit of time: so like if it's a 5 year study, and your all-cause mortality is lower by a factor of 20% over those 5 years, that means 80% survived and you should compute the fifth root 0.8^(1/5) to find that 95.6% survived per year on this account, and then you can say "reduces mortality by 4.4% per year," and that sounds much more reasonable.
This happens all over the place. You're just supposed to know in investment that a price-to-earnings ratio is measured in years, or people will say "the Buffett indicator is 200%" not "the Buffett indicator is 2 years."
Re: Fiber reduces overall mortality by 23%
#74Super interesting to read! I have noticed a huge benefit from just adding Metamucil to my diet. The following lines from the article really resonate. >Insoluble fibers have fecal-bulking characteristics that may promote regular bowel movements and avoid constipation. >"Specifically, soluble fiber binds to bile acids in the intestine" I have started to take Metamucil more frequently because I was taking an algae suppl…
I kind of wonder what the best form of added fiber should be. The thing about metamucil is that it has either added sugar or artificial sweeteners. the main ingredient is psyllium husk. I like benefiber better - no taste, just sprinkle on food. But I don't know how wheat dextrin compares to psyllium husk (or other fibers) A nurse I talked to takes psyllium husk by itself, and I wonder if that is better than metamucil…
inulin? beneficial if your gut microbiome is functioning well. There have been some recent studies that found dietary fiber is protective of the liver as well by preventing fructose fat deposits from building up.
It also doesn't taste too bad. A tiny little bit of something semi-sweet.
Re: Fiber reduces overall mortality by 23%
#75> You can’t improve what you don’t measure I hate the way this saying is commonly used today. I think a literal interpretation is untrue, but many people feel that a literal interpretation is true. For instance, humans get better at speaking whatever language they are surrounded with, even though that is not being actively measured by some metric. It is probably being measured by some implicit cycle in the human brai…
I agree with what you're saying; in the most extreme scenario you end up with the McNamara fallacy, and it's bizarrely common on e.g. HN. But I also think the platitude is appropriate in this case – I probably eat a decent amount of fibre, but is it enough? I don't really know. I'd need to measure it (and it's very possible I could be vastly under- or overestimating some things about my diet).
Actually I don't even think the platitude is appropriate in this case, although perhaps this is due to differences in acceptable performance. Do you really need to measure the health impact directly on your body to be satisfied that you are doing something right? I think you can take studies that say "X mg of fiber a day improves outcomes", eat slightly more than X mg of fiber, and likely get 90% of the benefit as compared to the "ideal" amount of fiber, all without a personalized measuremnet. Even if you did have a measurement, there would be confounding factors like "how much did you exercise?" / "how stressed were you?" / "is your body 'just getting old'?"
Re: Fiber reduces overall mortality by 23%
#76I don't know about my physical health, but mentally I feel more calm / content when I eat fiber rich food. I partly understand that this is because fiber rich food ensures slower release of sugar, from the food you eat into your blood, preventing the sudden spike and fall you get in sugar levels from food with low fiber (most retail snacks and junk food). I can also assert that bowel movement does feel "good" with fi…
Yep! Lustig has a book, Metabolical, that goes into kind of a simple explanation of the underlying mechanism here, and it's roughly like this: fiber-rich foods contain a combination of soluble and insoluble fiber, the insoluble fiber basically forms a sort of "net" of chunks and strings and such that you can't digest, and the soluble fiber forms a "gel" which gets stuck in the net and traps other foods. This gel is infused with various enzymes to break down foods in the duodenum, and then passes to the first and second half of the "zig-zag" parts of the small intestine -- the jejunum and the ileum.
The combination of fibers then leads to a given packet of calories traveling further down the jejunum as it gets absorbed, which makes more of the bacteria living along the length of the intestine happy with you, as well as protecting from blood glucose spikes that come with concomitant "crashes".
Re: Fiber reduces overall mortality by 23%
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
I had chronic digestive issues which almost completely disappeared after taking Metamucil. Then, about a year later changed my diet and started tracking macros. Was able to stop taking Metamucil after balancing them properly. I’d consider Metamucil a bandaid, it is easier to supplement than rehaul your entire diet. But the latter is better in the long run for sure.
> started tracking macros what does that mean?
I'm not the original commenter, but it stands for macronutrients. The breakdown of the daily intake of food by understanding the protein, carbs, fats, and fiber.
Re: Fiber reduces overall mortality by 23%
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
(OP here) - no affiliation with Olipop. But we've tried all the fiber supplements around the office, and we found Olipop is a pretty palatable option compared to, say, psyllium husk (which forms a gel when combined with water).
Worth noting that Olipop's fiber comes from inulin, which can be purchased as a supplement and dissolves in water nicely. I'm very curious why inulin is such an unknown product - its a polysaccharide, so it tastes mildly sweet despite having minimal to no impact on glucose levels. You'd think we'd have been supplementing almost all sugary foods/drinks with it for years, since it's a cheap and healthy sweetener.
Very interesting!
Re: Fiber reduces overall mortality by 23%
#79Fiber internet? Much happier outcomes, less stress, probably less death? :)
Re: Fiber reduces overall mortality by 23%
#80I don't know about my physical health, but mentally I feel more calm / content when I eat fiber rich food. I partly understand that this is because fiber rich food ensures slower release of sugar, from the food you eat into your blood, preventing the sudden spike and fall you get in sugar levels from food with low fiber (most retail snacks and junk food). I can also assert that bowel movement does feel "good" with fi…
Yep! Lustig has a book, Metabolical , that goes into kind of a simple explanation of the underlying mechanism here, and it's roughly like this: fiber-rich foods contain a combination of soluble and insoluble fiber, the insoluble fiber basically forms a sort of "net" of chunks and strings and such that you can't digest, and the soluble fiber forms a "gel" which gets stuck in the net and traps other foods. This gel is…
I am not saying that is wrong, but there are many mysterious claims in that book. I especially found the claim that "the most expensive burden to society is sugar" by a large margin was pretty astonishing. It lacks wide support in literature. As do many other claims in the book. Like refined carbohydrates being the main cause of weight gain through a rise in insulin. That is - at best - generally disputed, but is touted as fact.
I mean, what he prescribed is fine. Eat "real food". But how he comes to that stance is rather opaque to me. He is obviously literate, but checking some sources in the book very few of them strongly supported the claims he made with that reference.