Dr's Casebook: Adding extra fibre to your diet reduces the risk of many diseases

A diet high in dietary fibre is advised as a precaution against diseases such as heart disease and diabetes. Photo: AdobeStock

Dr Keith Souter writes: He attributed it to their more basic diet and the fact that they consumed vast amounts of fibre, whereas western diets had negligible amounts.

In 1979 he wrote a popular book about his findings, called Don’t Forget Fibre in Your Diet, which became an international bestseller. Unfortunately many people still do not take enough fibre and so are prone to western diseases like heart disease, colon cancer and diabetes.

I often write about the microbiome in this column. Essentially it is about your gut’s friendly bacteria. It plays an essential role in health and immunity.

Several studies have shown that diet has a profound effect on the diversity of gut bacteria. The greater diversity, the better the overall health.

A number of interesting studies have been done with the isolated Amazon tribe of Yanomami Indians who were first spotted by helicopter in 2008. They seem to be free of most of the diseases of the modern world. They cooperated in research and were found to have double the diversity of the microbiome of the person with the average western diet and they had bacteria that protect against conditions like kidney stones and diabetes and possibly several other ‘modern’ diseases.

Now, further research with remote hunter-gatherer people and people living in rural Africa has shown that they have not only increased diversity of the gut microflora, but their microbiome also have high percentages of ruminocccus bacteria, whereas western microbiomes have very little. The significance is that ruminococcus bacteria produce enzymes that break down the cellulose in fibre. Western diets are fibre deficient and our microbiome could do with having more ruminococcus bacteria.

Increasing fibre would help.

The latest research has found that consuming 10g more total dietary fibre a day is associated with an average ten per cent reduction in risk of colorectal cancer and a diet high in dietary fibre is also advised as a precaution against other diseases such as heart disease and diabetes. Professor Burkitt was right.