Until the past six or seven generations, humans ate a diet filled with vegetable and grain fibre. With industrialisation, our diets changed radically: the processing of foods for commercial sale resulted in the loss of much of the fibre, especially of grain foods.
Comparing the illnesses occurring in industrialised and non-industrialised populations, it is apparent that many common illnesses rarely occur in less industrialised areas where people eat high-fibre diets. Such illnesses include diabetes, constipation, diverticulitis, colon cancer, heart disease, obesity, gall bladder disease and gallstones, pancreatitis, hiatus hernia, appendicitis, haemorrhoids, varicose veins and even breast cancer.
There is, therefore, an unmistakable epidemiological relationship between these diseases and low dietary fibre.
Fibre reduces the conversion of primary bile acids into secondary bile acids which are potential cancer promoters; it absorbs more bile acids and dilutes them within a larger stool mass, thus protecting against colon cancer. With fibre, the bile itself is more soluble and less likely to form gall stones. Similarly, fibre protects against pancreatitis by preventing biliary sludge.
Fibre reduces fat absorption and lowers cholesterol levels. It even helps lower excess oestrogen by speeding up transit time, thus reducing the likelihood that oestrogen will be re-circulated back into the body.
Know your fibre level
A good way to test your need for more fibre is the bowel transit time test. Bowel transit time is the time it takes for food to travel through your system, from when you eat it, to the time it exits your body. All you need to do is eat some food that can serve as a marker when it appears in the stool.
Fresh corn on the cob is one such food. We digest the starch within the kernels but not the kernels themselves, which will be visible in faeces. Simply eat some corn and watch your bowel movements until you see the kernels. That is your bowel transit time. A healthy transit time is 18 to 24 hours. If your transit time is found to be two or three days, it’s a good indicator of the need for more fibre and water in your diet.
Nutrients and colon cancer
Lack of dietary fibre isn’t the only thing that predisposes you to colon cancer; a deficiency of some nutrients can also be a risk factor. For instance, antioxidants protect against all types of cancer and all of the chronic degenerative diseases that plague many cultures, such as heart disease, arthritis and diabetes.
Your first source of antioxidants should be fresh fruits and vegetables. A good multivitamin can give you added protection. The most important antioxidants are vitamins C, E, and A.
Other types of antioxidants can be found in the bio-flavinoids found in fruits, especially berries, and supplements made from grape seed extract, quercetin and green tea extracts. However, these supplements, as powerful as they can be, are no substitute for fresh fruits and vegetables.
The trace mineral, zinc, and selenium are also powerful antioxidants and are essential to the health of the colon. Studies link selenium deficiencies to colon cancer. One study showed a 40 per cent reduction in new colon cancer cases in populations who took selenium supplements. Onions and garlic are great sources of selenium.
Calcium is another mineral that has been repeatedly shown to have a beneficial effect on the colon. It is thought to help prevent colon cancer by binding with bile salts and fatty acids that can damage the colonic epithelium and enhance cell proliferation. Three hundred milligrams of calcium daily, combined with at least 150mg of magnesium, should confer protection against colon cancer.
Milk, while it’s a good source of calcium, should be avoided by adults since it often causes a chronic inflammation of the gut that potentially increases the risk of cancer.
Vitamin D is essential to good colon health and sunshine is the best place to get your daily dose. This vitamin is so essential to preventing the risk of getting colon cancer that the risk of getting it is doubled in those who have the lowest levels. People who can’t get outside much or who live in northern latitudes can take up to 2,000mg daily, although if you take that much, get a Vitamin D test after a few months.
Folate (folic acid) is a B vitamin that is well known for preventing birth defects and I recommend it for preventing and treating cervical dysplasia. The Harvard Nurses’ Study showed that women who supplemented with folate long-term have a significantly reduced risk of colon cancer. A good multivitamin will contain 400 micrograms of folic acid.
Probiotics are the beneficial bacteria found in the colon. There are at least 400 species of these “good” bacteria and hundreds of billions of them live in your large intestine. They keep “bad” bacteria in check and help process waste as it moves through the large intestine.
A lack of probiotics, usually caused by taking antibiotics that indiscriminately kill off good and bad bacteria, can lead to gas, inflammation in the bowels, constipation and poor digestion. If you take an antibiotic, follow it up with a week of eating yogurt or kefir daily, which contain live cultures of the probiotics (it should say on the container that it contains live cultures); or you can take probiotic supplement, easily found at your neighbourhood pharmacy.
It is difficult to imagine a more cost effective way of reducing the risk of colon cancer (and degenerative diseases in general) than to return to a high-fibre diet and eat plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables. I can think of no better example of the axiom that prevention is better than cure.
Mayr therapy (available at the Mart-Life Detox Clinic, Lagos) for between five and 10 days every six months or annually has proved a most useful way of cleaning the colon and ridding it of old, toxic waste of inappropriately digested food and bad eating habits.
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