Increase Dietary Fiber

High blood pressure has many facets to its development; the major ones are excess weight, excess salt, and stress. However, there are secondary factors that don't necessarily cause high blood pressure but clearly contribute to its development and make it worse once it is established. Inadequate dietary fiber consistently shows up as a complicating factor. Indeed, in some studies, simply increasing dietary fiber to over 30 grams reduced blood pressure by a few percent.

Our bodies produce many materials that are eliminated in urine, or by the gallbladder through the intestine itself. Fiber both moves food along the digestive tract and selectively binds waste matter and removes them from the system. it is absolutely essential that the digestive system should available adequate dietary fiber to bind up these materials and flush them from the body. Generally, this means that each day a person weighing 120 pounds should get 25 grams of dietary fiber, and a person weighing 200 pounds should get 35 grams.

There are about five or six types of fiber, all of which have properties we require. Insoluble or hard fiber, the type found in wheat brain, is the water carrier that helps to produce regularity. It produces stool consistency and regularity. As a water carrier, this fiber increases stool bulk and gives it consistency while maintaining softness. Soft but firm stools are important to regularity and the prevention of a number of intestinal problems like appendicitis, diverticulosis, and hemorrhoids. The added water passing through the intestinal tract helps to dissolve and remove unwanted and sometimes toxic materials. This important function helps to reduce the risk of cancer and other illness. Hard fiber is found in all plant food, but mostly in the high-fiber cereals and grains, as well as most vegetables, beans, and tubers such as potatoes. These food are essential for adequate fiber and the results are obvious whenever a person includes them in their diet.

In contrast to hard fiber, the soluble forms of fiber, such as pectin, gums, saponins, and others, are the best at selective absorption. For example, pectin helps to reduce cholesterol by binding the bile acids produced by our liver from cholesterol and removing them in our stools. Oat bran also removes these materials even better, and guargum better yet. It also binds the dietary cholesterol and fat and helps to carry them through the system.