Posted by brandonb 8 hours ago
> You can’t improve what you don’t measure. If you’re trying to get more fiber—or to optimize other heart health nutrients like saturated fat, sodium, and potassium—Empirical Health is designed to make tracking very easy.
You can’t improve what you can’t measure and our product coincidentally helps you measure this.
If the goal is to attract readers without providing any value at all, it's extremely easy to do that nowadays with AI. And luckily it's just as easy to identify low-effort articles written by AI.
You can track nutrition for free within the iPhone/Android apps.
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".
>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 supplement, Spirulina & Chlorella, and it was moving through me so fast because I noticed I had no bulk from a low fiber diet. It made a huge improvement in bulking and slowed my bowel movements.
I also noticed before adding the fiber that I just would feel acidic, rude, or short-tempered in a different way, and my stomach was really acidic. Adding the fiber really did help, and it's cool to see articles and research backing it up.
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.
There are plenty of foods rich in fiber that you don't need to consider supplements. The article itself mentions - Foods high in soluble fiber including avocados, whole grains, chickpeas, apples, lentils, broccoli, brussels sprouts, certain seeds, and artichokes. Most fruits and vegetables also have varying amount of fiber, as does some variety of rice, millets and wheat (that are common in some Asian diets). See https://www.cancer.org/cancer/survivorship/coping/nutrition/... for more.
I've tried it and it is hard.
Let's say you need 38g of fiber per day and you need to make up half of it.
You could eat 6 cups of brussel sprouts, or sprinkle 6 packets of benefiber on your food as you eat throughout the day.
Also, a lot of natural fiber in quantity has some unpleasant gastrointestinal side effects.
I'm not saying it is impossible, but it can be quite challenging to get all your fiber from natural sources in our society.
I also have plain psyllium husk, and I avoided it because I liked the sugar of the Metamucil. But I have been focusing on lowering my sugar, so I'm switching to the plain psyllium husk, and it's just as easy to drink; it was really a little mental game of how it would taste, haha.
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.
what does that mean?
Near as I can tell Benefiber is basically a placebo. People feel good for adding “fiber” to their diet but it has none of the effects of psyllium husk or oat fiber.
Psyllium husk by itself (power, not capsules) is utterly disgusting by the way. Tastes like dirt. You can hide it in protein shakes or similar but I personally struggle to get it down with just water.
“Gel-forming psyllium is good for both softening hard stools and firming up loose stools. It is effective in preventing or relieving constipation. Research shows viscous fibers like psyllium or the fiber in oats can have some impact on improving blood sugar control and lowering blood cholesterol levels."
“Fermentable wheat dextrin does not form a gel with liquid, so it is not helpful for constipation or diarrhea. Nor can it help lower cholesterol or control blood sugar. It does, however, serve as a prebiotic, providing nourishment to the gut microbiota. When microbiota ferment fiber, they release gas, so wheat dextrin may cause bloating and flatulence."
https://www.nutritionletter.tufts.edu/gi-health/psyllium-vs-...
Contempt without prior investigation and denial of my mortality is the true reason.
But once I started taking it I was sorely disappointed in myself that I did not start at least 10 years sooner.
Perhaps un-branded supplemental fiber is unburdened by the old people connotation? I probably still would have resisted.
I just got past the Metamucil to plain psyllium husk. I felt the plain version was going to taste bad, but it was just plain and not sugary. It's funny the concepts that can lead to certain small behaviors.
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 brain, but that is not the kind of explicit measurement that people would demand based on this saying. Some other examples that you can improve without an explicit measurement:
- Camera stability (you can usually "see" it immediately, without an engineering metric)
- Large changes in customer satisfaction (for fine tuning you probably need a metric, but for large changes, it will be obvious)
- Kindness
I'm not saying that measurement is purposeless. Just that it is not always necessary. Not everything needs to be measured. Also, why do generally smart people buy this platitude, when others will obviously not be taken as law? I don't see engineering orgs living by "closed mouths don't get fed", or "tidy desk, tidy mind", or "if momma ain't happy ain't nobody happy". But somehow "You can't improve what you don't measure" became law.
I realize this is only tangential. I guess I've been saving this rant for a while.
Partly we use mechanistic evidence to separate cause from effect--that's part of why the article goes into detail about, e.g., how soluble fiber binds to bile in the liver. If there's an association between A and B, and a known physiological mechanism where A causes C which causes B, it makes it more likely that ultimately A is the cause of B.
In an N=1 intervention study, I too found fiber to be health supporting, but that wasn't randomized or controlled.
Fiber lowers LDL cholesterol, slows digestion, makes you feel full longer, and helps with regularity, so increasing your fiber intake is probably worth it anyway.
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."
Some of the most beautiful turds ever made, some would even the most beautiful