Why Fiber Is Good For The Health Of Your Heart

Food Fibers Are Essential - A Realization Through Ages

The importance of fibers in foods is not understood recently but the reality is that all schools and groups of medicines including the Greek sages of Aristotelian Era, Ayurvedic yogis of Ancient East India and the medieval practitioners of medicines all over Arab World, Muslim Spain and Central Asia, called "Tabibs", fully acknowledged the significance of  fibrous material as an essential part of a man's food. It is worth knowing that throughout the Indian sub-continent and Middle East Asia the Ispaghol Husk is used extensively to control bowel movements as well as to lower the blood cholesterol. Similarly, it is also interesting that the use of fine white flour - after sieving out the husk - was religiously forbidden during those olden days when the occurrence of silent killers like diabetes, hypertension and coronary ischaemia was very rare.

How Food Fibers Protect The Cardiovascular System

The relationship between eating fiber rich-foods and a healthy heart needs to be understood. Logically speaking, fibers in the food are indigestible and therefore may never take any direct part in the metabolic chemistry of the body. In more simple words they never enter into the blood stream and, therefore, do not reach to the cells of any organ of the body unlike proteins, carbohydrates and fats. In fact, this constituent of the edibles remains inside the gut / alimentary canal of a man throughout the process of digestion and comes out of the body, as such, with faeces. Still the food fiber is so important for the overall health of an individual, in general, and the health of his heart, in particular. Why?

Alimentary Canal or Digestive Tract - starting from the mouth and ending at the anus - is the long passageway or channel of food that decides many things in the life of a man. One must understand that it is not only the presence of enzymes, chewing and mastication inside the mouth and further the churning movements all over the stomach and intestine that decide about the digestibility of the food but much more than that it is the composition of the food itself that determines the size of bulk that is to be excreted out of the body in the form of faeces. This indigestible bulk is in fact another major way of excreting out the body impurities and toxins after primary excretions through urine, the air exhaled from the lungs and the sweat.

The fibrous bulk, moving inside the digestive tract, works as a highly absorbent sponge. This sponge not only cleans and maintains the walls of the gut but mainly absorbs whatever fatty and non-fatty toxins, surplus drops of lipids as well as any undesirable metabolic product that is thrown into the gut by the network of thin blood capillaries surrounding the intestine.  All these harmful and life threatening materials become a part of human excreta thanks to the adsorption and water retaining capacity of food fibers. We must realize that the affinity of fibrous bulk with the fatty materials especially the sticky cholesterol and triglycerides, inside the human intestine, is such a great blessing for the protection of the whole cardiovascular system from the scourge of immense plaque that could had otherwise deposited and blocked the blood circulating vessels. The presence of extra salts and saturated lipids in the blood affects all parts of the body but it mainly poses danger to the heart and its vital activity. Any harm to this vital organ would mean nothing less than the starvation and suffocation of the whole body after a certain disruption in the flow of oxygen and food supplying blood. The resulting failure of this king of all viscera is defined as the death.

The Sources Of Food Fibers

Now in the present age of health awareness who can abhor eating fiber containing foods like vegetables and fruits. However, it is necessary to take the whole fruit and vegetable instead of its juice as apple cider is certainly better than the transparent refined apple juice. The other good sources of food fibers are legumes or pulses, whole grain cereals, nuts, pop corns and of course all brans and husks as food supplements.