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Considering what you've been hearing from
all quarters for so long, dropping fiber from your diet may be a serious
concern. To help you along, here are the answers to the
most frequently asked questions about this subject and Fiber Menace.
They range
from its veracity in questioning fiber's role in nutrition to Katie Couric's
opinion about colon cancer, and everything in between.
Q. Give me ten reasons why should I read Fiber
Menace?
Imagine feeding a rare white tiger a high-fiber diet
because it curbs the tiger’s natural aggression and makes it safer for
handlers. Though the motive may be admirable, this diet will quickly
kill the tiger, and that’s something no zoo can afford.
Thus, unconstrained by human nutritional dogmas,
zookeepers simply observe tigers in the wild, and feed them accordingly.
Lo and behold, most captive animals live close to their natural age
limits, while their human captors barely manage to last two-thirds of
their allotted life span.
Less fiber may not help you celebrate your 100th
birthday, or turn you into a tiger — but living a long, healthy life
free from flab, pain, drugs, and degenerative diseases may not be such a
bad deal, either. If that’s what you are after, here are the top ten
reasons why you should read Fiber Menace:
1. To learn why dietary fiber causes chronic
digestive disorders and irreversible colorectal damage — even though
your menu choices, conventionally speaking, may be impeccable.
2. To protect your body from accelerated aging and
degenerative diseases, such as diabetes, obesity, or atherosclerosis —
all of which stem from digestive and endocrine disorders caused by fiber
consumption.
3. To get off lifestyle medicines used to manage
common digestive complaints, caused or made worse by fiber, such as
heartburn (GERD), gastritis, irritable bowel syndrome, diarrhea, and
constipation.
4. To save a bundle of money otherwise spent on
drugs, co-pays, and deductibles to treat digestive disorders related to
fiber consumption.
5. To withstand the enormous pressure coming from all
quarters to conform to the one century-and-a-half old medical doctrine regarding the
'health benefits' of fiber. If you study morbidity charts, so far the
increased consumption of fiber has brought neither 'health' nor
'benefits.'
6. To avoid becoming a victim of medical error. Acute
digestive disorders related to the consumption of fiber — such as
appendicitis, ulcers, cholecystitis (inflammation of the gallbladder),
intestinal obstructions, hernias, and ulcerative colitis — are the
leading causes of hospitalization and surgical intervention among people
under fifty. Sadly, you’re six times more likely to die from a medical
error while hospitalized than from getting killed in a car accident.
7. To speed up your recovery from most medical
conditions by simply improving the quality and efficiency of your
digestion. Even supplements are useless when their assimilation is
blocked by the ill effects of fiber on the stomach and intestines.
8. To improve your appearance, vitality, and outlook
by getting rid of the chronic abdominal pain, bloating, and flatulence
caused by fiber, and the side effects of drugs used to treat the
underlying digestive disorders.
9. To maintain a stable weight. If you’re overweight,
this book will empower you to lose weight without failure and side
effects. If you are underweight (because of diabetes, digestive, or
eating disorders) this book will help you to regain your weight.
10. To teach your family, friends, and associates the
elements of prudent nutrition. Nothing improves the quality of one’s
life as much as a healthy family and happy work environment.
Finally, once you accept all of the above, there are
also important practical considerations. Just as with caffeine or
nicotine, fiber is an addictive substance, and it won’t let you out of
its “deadly embrace” without putting up a tough fight. To prevent a
“hard landing” from fiber withdrawal, you're better off learning how to
get weaned off of it in advance.
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Q. Is this book really for me, and not my doctor?
What if I am okay?
It's best to read this book while you are still young,
healthy, and vibrant. If you're no longer young, but still healthy, your
risk of getting hit with digestive disorders caused by fiber grows
exponentially. You may as well get to know fiber “up close and personal”
before it has the chance to harm you.
If you’re already affected by diabetes, obesity,
digestive, or colorectal disorders, you’re living proof of fiber’s
menace. I believe, however, there isn’t anything wrong with you, but
with what you've been eating all along. If your problems haven’t yet
convinced you of that, hopefully reading Fiber Menace will.
If you’re a committed vegetarian, the odds of remaining
a “healthy vegetarian” are about as good as beating Russian roulette. I
was one myself, and it was fine for a while; I accepted all of the pros,
and I dismissed all of the cons. That’s human nature. If you still
prefer a vegetarian diet, reduce the fiber content in your diet so
you’ll be able to enjoy your lifestyle longer. This book will tell you
why.
Finally, Fiber Menace is a must-read for anyone who is
responsible — directly or by example — for other people’s health
(especially children and seniors). Here's a list of people who would
benefit from learning from it:
Doctors. Medical doctors enjoy
reverence and respect from the general public. For this and other good
reasons, physicians exert an extraordinary influence over patients’
choices regarding health as well as disease. In addition, doctors and
their families are affected by the same plagues that affect their
patients. I believe doctors genuinely want to see their patients and
themselves get well, and this book may help them achieve this goal. In
no way is Fiber Menace anti-doctor, anti-medicine, or
anti-establishment. On the contrary, it acknowledges the crucial role of
doctors in diagnosing and treating disease. But nutrition isn’t a
clinical discipline, and you shouldn’t expect doctors to teach you when,
how, and what to eat — just as you don’t expect a chef in a restaurant
to wait on you.
Nurses. The real brunt of patient
care falls on the shoulders of nurses. It’s my belief that nursing is
one of the most honorable and esteemed professions a person can
undertake. I myself couldn’t do it. If you’re a nurse, particularly in
the ICU, pediatric, oncology, genitourinary, or gerontological fields,
the application of this book will have a great impact on your work,
because it may substantially reduce some of the most troubling and
difficult conditions you treat. I’m speaking of diarrhea, constipation,
fecal impaction, intestinal obstruction, nausea, and vomiting. That’s in
addition to speeding up patient recovery, reducing post-surgical
complications, and improving the mental outlook of patients.
Nutritionists and dietitians. If
you’re up in arms about this book and boiling over just from reading its
title, I ask you to please read
Fiber Menace without prejudice. Check out the same sources that I
did, and then judge it on its merits, rather than on your first
impression. I believe after reading this book you’ll come to the same
conclusions as I did. Remember, I didn’t set out to write it because I
was a healthy and vibrant vegetarian, but because a high-fiber,
high-carb diet almost killed me.
Parents and grandparents.
Children, particularly infants and toddlers, are damaged by fiber more
than any other age group, because their digestive organs are small and
undeveloped. If fiber can cause irritable bowel syndrome in over 40
million adult Americans, imagine how ruinous it is for little kids.
Medical researchers and scientists.
Please approach the findings in this book with an open mind. You have
the power to shape the attitudes that will help millions of people
improve their health. Your health, too.
Teachers. Healthy students are
good students, and good students reflect well on great teachers. Kids
who enjoy a low-carb, low-fiber diet don’t suffer from attention
deficit/hyperactivity disorders, and don’t ruin the atmosphere of your
class. Everyone wins.
Public health officials in federal,
state, and local governments. Diseases cost money. When the average
life span was under 50, fiber was okay. With the average life span today
approaching 80, fiber means treating tens of millions of obese and
diabetic individuals until they die from heart attack, strokes, or
cancer. (And, in between, treating chronic GERD, ulcers, IBS, colitis,
and Crohn’s.) Medicaid is bankrupting the states already, and Medicare
is breaking the Treasury. Less fiber will not solve all of these
problems, but it’s a good start.
Insurance executives. Fiber in
the diets of your clients erodes your profits. For the sake of your
shareholders and your own bonuses, read this book and laugh all the way
to the bank.
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Business owners. The money for medical insurance
and disability premiums is coming out of your own pockets. The money for
lost productivity, absenteeism, and employee turnover is coming from
your own pocket. Your business is as good as your staff's health. And
your own, too. If I were a business owner worth my salt, I would make
Fiber Menace mandatory reading for all of my employees. From all of
the investments you can make, the investment in the health and
well-being of your employees — a backbone of any enterprise — would be
the least expensive and the most rewarding endeavor.
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Congressman and Senators. Honorable People's
Representatives: You are the ones signing the checks for hundreds of
billions of dollars wasted on health care for self-inflicted diseases.
Deal with this issue now, and you won’t have to raise taxes later.
You'll have more money left for other important projects. Please protect
your constituents from this plague!
The list is far from all-inclusive, but it’s
representative. If you aren’t on the list, but still believe in the
benefits of fiber, this book is for you, too.
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Q. Does this site repeat Fiber Menace?
No, it doesn’t at all, except when noted! This site
expands on Fiber Menace with practical advice related to colorectal
disorders caused by fiber and disbacteriosis. It also provides
additional background information, answers frequently asked questions,
and provides detailed information about supplements, recommended to
overcome fiber dependence and reverse related colorectal damages.
Some of the materials on this site are excerpted from
my forthcoming book entitled Gut Sense: How To Reverse Bowel Diseases
And Escape Colon Cancer. This book takes up where Fiber
Menace left off to answer questions, as presented in the subtitle. I
started working on Gut Sense in 2003, and have been researching
and writing it along with my other projects ever since.
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Q. But what if you are still dead wrong about
fiber?
It's not like I am asking you to jump off a cliff, am
I? Continue “enjoying” fiber, and if and when any problems pop up after
a colonoscopy or whatever, just consult the list of fiber-related
disorders on the right. To find this site in the future, please create
the “I told you so” folder in your browser's Favorites list, and
bookmark this site.
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Q. Why isn't my doctor telling me about
your
approach if it is so simple and effective?
The answers to this question are complex, and range from philosophical
to practical. I go into them in greater depth in my book, and
here, and
here. Still, there is a common
thread to all these answers:
First, it's true, that after you
have read about my approach here, it appears simple and obvious. But so
do paper clips, microwave ovens, cell phones, and all the other “simple
and obvious” things after someone else has developed them.
Second, your doctor simply doesn’t know about this
approach yet because it wasn't written up in the medical journals or
taught in medical schools and continuous medical education (CME) courses.
Refer your doctors to this website, so
they don't have to wait.
Third, doctors are trained to use conservative—which
literally means “resistant to change”, “old-fashioned”—treatment
protocols based on drugs, tests, and invasive procedures. It takes just
a few minutes to prescribe a drug, test, or procedure that matches your
symptoms. But a physiological approach, such as this, takes time to learn, and
even more time to explain to uninitiated patients. That’s not what
doctors commonly do, or are allowed to do by the freakonomics of
medical business.
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Fourth, according to this article (Training
Daze, Why do doctors fixate on diagnosis, not treatment? by Dr.
Darshak Sanghavi, assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of
Massachusetts Medical School), physicians in the United States are
notoriously shy on treatments. Interestingly, this article refers to
www.UpToDate.com
as “the cookbook for medical treatment[s]." I reviewed several
selected recommendations for treating common colorectal disorders, and
found them not just out of date with already published research in the
field of clinical gastroenterology, but also exceptionally damaging to
patients. In essence, you are better off ignored by a backward hack than
overtreated by an enthusiastic, take-charge, and well-intended
specialist, who relies on this outdated resource.
Finally, medical doctors are
trained and paid for to take care of acute conditions. What’s happening
in the privacy of your own kitchen or bathroom isn’t your doctors’
business until an ambulance takes you to a hospital. If you expect
otherwise, you may as well quit this page, update your will, and hedge
your bets by investing in a prepaid funeral.
If all this still surprises you, I recommend
reading
How Doctors Think by Jerome Groopman, M.D., a prominent
professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. When Dr. Groopman
describes his first disastrous encounter with a critical patient, he
explains that he ran into problems because he was actually thinking
about what he should do, rather than reacting instinctively.
He doesn’t directly answer the question “how doctors
think?” raised in the title, but after reading his book cover to
cover, the answer is self-evident — doctors are trained not to think,
but to react. So if that’s what guides routine diagnostics and
medical advice — a reaction — then don’t be surprised to hear more of the
same: irregularity—fiber, IBS—fiber, constipation—more fiber, or
what is aptly called “a knee-jerk reaction” to a common stimuli,
in this case a patient complaint.
As an aside, Dr. Groopman’s account of his disastrous
travails to obtain treatment for his own medical problems is really
something. Think about it: if a professor of medicine at an elite
University — with access to the top medical minds in the country, and
whose wife is also a prominent physician in her own right — ended up
having unnecessary procedures, suffered pain for years, and was
repeatedly misdiagnosed for obvious conditions, then what are your
chances?
How Doctors Think was one of the scariest
health-related books I have read in a long time, and I am not one who
gets scared easily. I was also shocked to the core by the astounding
gullibility of Dr. Groopman and his physician-wife, whose blind trust in the “top doctors” myth has resulted in so much misery.
I realize these answers may not completely satisfy you,
but there it is, so deal with it. Otherwise, wait until a few years from
now when your smiling doctor will hand you a booklet with the verbatim
description of my approach, except by that time you'll be facing even
more hardship than today.
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Q. But I am
still scared to get off fiber. What should I do?
That's okay— it's a human nature to
be afraid. Talk to your family physician, talk to GI specialists.
Ask
them to review Fiber Menace and the information on this site. Both are
thoroughly referenced. Both rely on mainstream sources of medical
information and textbooks approved for doctors and medical students in
the United States.
Your doctor won’t find anything objectionable in my
book or on this site, or anything that contradicts the tenets of
mainstream allopathic or naturopathic medicine. The only things that are
missing here are the style of writing and jargon, typical for medical
journals and references. (Well, some may object to occasional puns and
pictures, but I poke fun at myself just as much as at everyone else. In
other words, I am dead serious, but would rather not bore you to death.
Also, give me credit: writing so prolifically about stools without once
resorting to bathroom humor is an art in itself.)
Medical doctors love to learn new treatment methods.
When you feel well, your doctor feels well too, and gets more referrals
from grateful patients. Don’t be embarrassed or shy to discuss this
approach with your doctor. Nowadays, doctors are no longer freaking out
when patients show up with reams of Internet printouts because they
themselves research the Internet just like you and I do.
This site and my book contain more up-to-date
information about the harms of fiber than any other available source.
Your doctor will appreciate learning this unique information because
similar problems confront doctors themselves, their spouses, their
children, their parents, and their other patients just as much. I know
for a fact that many people read my book and this site on the
recommendation of their doctor, so neither is 'radioactive.'
Finally, doctors are people too, and they hate to deal
with someone else’s stale stools—particularly before and after a lunch,
dinner, or date. Doctors nowadays don’t even have viable drugs to
prescribe for the non-infectious side effects of fiber consumption. The
last two—Propulsid and Zelnorm—were yanked from the market
by the FDA, Zelnorm just recently. Do you recall those nice
smiling people with Zs written across their flattened bellies in
Zelnorm’s TV commercials? Well, some of them are already smiling in
heaven. And it wasn’t a Zorro’s sword that sent them there, but
'conservative' treatment with presumably a 'safe' drug. What a farce...
I realize you may find that this answer contradicts my
answer to the previous question, but that's the whole point — doctors in
the United States are the best trained, the hardest-working, and
probably the smartest in the world. Unfortunately, the system that
trained and rewarded them is so out-of-date and out of touch that they
themselves are becoming victimized by it, just as badly as the rest of
us. But thanks to the Internet, a disgraceful medical orthodoxy will
soon become a thing of the past. This evolution will be driven by a new
generation of doctors, who are no longer limited to acquiring new skills
from references, textbooks, slick 'academic' journals, and CME courses
produced, subsidized, or owned by Big Pharma.
As far as the “what should you do?” part of this question, I may
only suggest this: study (don't simply read, but study) this site, study Fiber
Menace, and talk to a doctor you feel comfortable with. Then, try it. Observe how
well you feel, and how well your body functions. From this point
on, it's either success breeds success, or return
to your previous diet.
And always keep this in mind—fiber is an indigestible substance and
fiber has zero nutritional value. In this respect, staying off
fiber for a few weeks or even few months will impact you just as
much as changing from Coke to Pepsi. In other
words, if you are still alive with all that fiber inside your
gut, a few weeks or
a few months without it aren't going to kill you either.
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Q. I am
confused about what I should eat?
Here is what Fiber Menace recommends for people who do
not have any prior digestive disorders:
“If your daily consumption of fiber exceeds 15 g,
first identify those foods that have the highest fiber content in your
diet. These are usually processed foods, such as anything with “bran” in
it, cereals, whole-wheat bread, muffins, bagels, and the like. Ideally,
you shouldn’t eat these, because nutritionally speaking, all processed
foods are unwholesome, loaded with carbs, and hard to digest..
If you aren’t
inclined to make any changes in your diet, at least replace high-fiber
food with low-fiber analogues: corn flakes instead of fiber-fortified
cereals, white bread instead of whole wheat, regular muffins instead of
bran muffins, green peas instead of lentils, pine nuts instead of
peanuts, zucchini instead of broccoli, and so on.”
That's all there is to it. I don't recommend anything
radical or extravagant. If someone tells you that I do, they aren't familiar with my book.
If you already have some preexisting disorder(s), I
recommend that you follow all of the above guides and read Fiber Menace
for more background and details. The book recommends a balanced
low-fiber diet, no different from what most people eat anyway. The book
may recommend that you don’t eat wheat bread if you are allergic to
gluten, or avoid dairy if you are sensitive to lactose, or that you
further reduce fiber consumption if you have acute diverticular
disease—but it's all common sense, not “medical” advice.
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Q. Where do I
find the fiber content of common food? Why don't you have this information?
There are close to 40,000 food items on supermarket
shelves. By law, each of them must have a prominent Food Facts label.
And by the same law, this label indicates the exact fiber content per
serving. Read the labels—that's all you need to do to determine the fiber
content.
These two PDF tables, prepared by the USDA, list fiber
content for over 1,000 common foods, in
alphabetical order by food and by total fiber content per portion.
If you would like to learn the total nutrient content
(i.e. water, carbohydrates, proteins, fats, ash, vitamins, minerals,
microelements) of most popular foods before leaving your house for
the supermarket, just visit the
USDA National Nutrient Database for Standard Reference. It’s a great
resource.
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Q. I
went to my
doctor, and he told me that if I stop taking fiber, he'll drop me as a
patient because he can't take these risks.
I doubt that very much! It's quite possible that your
doctor may have told you that following the suggestions in my book “it’s
a risk I wouldn't take myself”, or that “I don't know if I'll be
able to help you if you run into problems.” But that's a normal
reaction, because your doctor isn't familiar with my book, and has no
obligation to you or anyone else to study or follow it.
Unfortunately, some patients may interpret this
explicit and reasonable response as an implicit threat, when actually it
isn't. That's why I said I doubted it. No sane medical professional will
risk his or her license, reputation, and livelihood over a patient's
stool size.
If you really wish to get unambiguous advice, then
educate your doctor first, following the approaches suggested in prior
answers.
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Author's note:
If you have a question related to my book, and it isn't
answered here, please send me a note, and I'll reply in kind. If
your question is sufficiently broad, I'll be glad to add it to this page.
Konstantin Monastyrsky
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