Men’s Body Click Diet part 4

Benign Prostatic Hypertrophy and Prostate Cancer

Benign prostatic hypertrophy is an enlargement of the prostate that's called benign because it is not due to cancer cells. Still, the enlargement can be far from benign if it results in a lack of control over functions that we all take for granted, including urinating when you want to urinate and only then. A single urinary accident in front of your classmates in the fir_st grade can constitute a major, unforgettable scar in one's childhood_; a repeat performance, like that of my sixty-year-old patient while standin_g i_n line at the check-in counter at O'Hare Airport, is no joke either. Nor is `benign' the right word to describe the condition that underlies such loss of control. BPH may also involve getting up frequently at night to urinate, with the intense urgency to do so unfortunately combined with a disconcerting hesitancy of performance and a lack of reward in the volume of urine produced.

Although the symptoms of BPH can be severe, it is ironic that men with prostate cancer often have no symptoms. As they age, most men, on biopsy, show signs of prostate cancer. In fact, by the time they are in their eighties, nearly all men have prostate cancer, as defined by the typical cancerous appearance of cells under the microscope. Yet, because this particular cancer grows slowly and spreads infrequently, only a small percentage of men actually become sick or die from the disease. (A man's lifetime risk of dying from prostate cancer is a little less than three per cent.)`'

Given the low odds of illness or death from prostate cancer, it's confusing from a medical standpoint when a 60-, 70- or 80-year-old man has a prostate biopsy and is found to have cancer cells. Because the question of the actual malignancy of the condition — how likely it is that the cancer will grow quickly enough to cause problems — is difficult to resolve, it encourages a more aggressive approach to therapy than might otherwise be warranted. Since aggressive therapy frequently involves either removing testicles or taking female hormones, which can produce dramatic changes in a man's body, this is not a trivial question.

Natural therapies for treating or, more important, preventing illness are not usually studied in the same way as pharmaceuticals, because no one can patent a naturally occurring substance like flaxseed powder and make enough money to justify the enormous expense of carefully conducted, controlled and double-blinded studies. Still, the studies show that consuming soy protein and other isoflavone and lignan-containing foods reduces the risk of prostate cancer. And the cancer data suggest strongly — and there is abundant anecdotal evidence to support it — that the same hormonal environment that leads to the high incidence of cancer in older men inour culture, but not in Chinese and Finnish men, is also associated with the risk for prostatic enlargement.⁵

The simple strategy for preventing the range and frequency of prostate problems is to consume more soy protein, flaxseed powder and rye fiber. If you happen to be a regular bacon, ham or sausage and eggs kind of guy, I urge you to substitute the shake, with its soy protein and flaxseed powder, at least four days a week. It's good that you're eating protein at your morning meal and getting the lift you need at the beginning of the day, but what you're eating will not protect your health like soy protein and flaxseed. (If you don't have time for breakfast, see the section for travelers in the appendix, where you'll find a quick shortcut that will help you get your soy protein and flaxseed every day.

The Body Clock Diet and Heart Disease: It's not Just the Cholesterol

Coronary heart disease (CHD) is the number one killer of both men and women in the United States. Each year, more than five hundred thousand Americans die of heart attacks caused by CHD. Soy intake has been shown to lower cholesterol and decrease cardiovascular disease associated with high cholesterol. There is growing scientific evidence to support this; for example, one recent study showed that a diet high in soy protein reduced cholesterol by as much as 20 per cent. ⁶ Other research has demonstrated that soy protein lowers triglycerides and reduces the oxidation of LDL or 'bad' cholesterol, which contributes to blood vessel problems linked to cardiovascular disease? And flaxseed has also been shown to lower both total and LDL cholestero1. The Body Clock Diet, which includes daily intake of soy protein and flaxseed powder, ensures that you get this important protection.

But cholesterol is not the exclusive evil agent in heart disease. Some people, especially those with complicating conditions of diabetes, tobacco smoking and a strong family history of heart disease and obesity, carry cholesterol-related risks. But most people who have heart attacks and other complications of 'hardening of the arteries' have fairly normal cholesterol levels.

The tide of medical thinking is changing when it comes to heart disease. It looks as if issues related to carbohydrate excess, insulin resistan_ce and homocysteine and its control by folic acid will take center stage away from cholesterol. ⁹ The benefits of substances like flaxseed and soy are not due solely to lowering cholesterol. Soy and flaxseed do indeed lower serum cholesterol, but they also modify carbohydrate and fat metabolism, further decreasing your cardiovascular risk. You don't have to be taki_ngaim at your cholesterol to get benefits from soy, flaxseed and the Body Clock Diet.

Like many men, you may have a tendency not to think about your health, shrugging off warnings from your mother, spouse, doctor and children as well as newspapers and television programs that try to scare or educate you about activities that are dangerous to your well-being. Nor do you want to listen to me when I say that failure to adhere to basic circadian principles may eventually show up as something noticeably wrong with your health. But my advice is simple: there are some painless things you can do to reap what are potentially major rewards for your long-term health.

Men’s Body Click Diet part 2

What I'm giving you here is a chance to climb the ship's mast with me so that from its top we can see far over the horizon of medicine. The view from the masthead is based not so much on my daily activities as a practicing physician but on my mission to search the seascape of scientific research for courses that can help prevent my patients from developing prostate trouble. What I see from the top of the mast is a body of evidence that is solid enough to support these simple changes in behavior, especially considering that there's zero risk in consuming flaxseed and soy protein.

The best evidence is based on studies done in a couple of places in the world, where prostate troubles are rare. Solid epidemiological studies that show a lower incidence of prostate cancer in men consuming foods popular among Finns and Chinese — rye bread for Finns and soy for Chinese.² And he has carried out elaborate chemical analyses and experiments to show which substances in these foods provide the protection.

For years before his research was done, it was assumed that the Finns' genetic history accounted for their lower incidence of prostate cancer. Most modern Finns come from a small number of people who migrated to that part of the world many years ago, so they are a rather distinct linguistic, racial and genetic group. It turns out, however, that it's not their genes but their diet that protects them against certain cancers. And the dietary factor that is most significant is a sourdough rye bread that is eaten by people consuming a traditional Finnish diet. This whole-grain, heavy- duty bread is made out of ground whole rye seeds without anything removed. The leavening is provided by lactobacillus (acidophilus) instead of yeast, which is used to leaven almost all bread consumed in other parts of the world. What's key is that the rye fiber contains lignans that modulate hormone chemistry and reduce the risk of reproductive cancers.

Eastern Europeans have traditionally used flaxseeds as a source of food and medicine. Flaxseed oil, which makes up about one-third of the weight of the seeds, has extremely healthy properties that also provide particular benefits for the prostate gland. But here we're talking about the fiber in the flaxseed. The best way to use the seeds is to grind them in a coffee mill. You can then consume the fine, fluffy powder as part of a shake or add it to a variety of other foods. Your aim is to eat a heaping tablespoon per day.

Besides rye and flaxseed, there are other foods that contain lignans. Some of the best sources include legumes (especially lentils, kidney, fava and navy beans), seeds (like sunflower seeds), seaweed, cereal brans and whole grains.

There is also a solid body of evidence supporting the role of soy protein in reducing the risk of prostate cancer. For example, research has shown that isoflavones, substances contained in soybeans, modify testosterone metabolism, decreasing the risk for both benign prostatic hypertrophy and prostate cancer.³ Incorporating soy protein in your diet doesn't require you to change what you eat, although it's fine to eat more tofu, miso and other soy products if you enjoy them. The simplest, quickest way to consume soy protein is by stirring soy protein isolate, a relatively tasteless substance, into some of the food you are already eating.

Foods like soybeans, flaxseed and rye contain information derived from phytonutrients, which keep animals in synchrony with the rhythm of the seasons and which have profound effects on our own reproductive systems.

Prostate Inflammation or Nonspecific Prostatitis

Your prostate gland usually doesn't speak to you until it's in some advanced state of trouble. When it does, it has only two voices. One is expressed through pain or difficulty with urination and the other is just plain pain, which is almost invariably felt in the midline of your body. The spectrum of difficulties includes inflammation, enlargement and cancer. While there are more or less pure representations of each one, the lines between them are often blurred. All three, but particularly enlargement and cancer, are addressed by the preventive measures included in the Body Clock Diet.

Let's start with inflammation, which is the medical term for some combination of redness, pain, swelling and heat that almost always accompanies infection but may also represent your body's reaction to noninfectious irritants or allergens. The flame of prostate inflammation is experienced as burning with urination. This is as much a result of inflammation of the tube through which the urine passes out of the penis (the urethra) as it is due to inflammation of the prostate, per se, which lies astride this tube, just beneath the bladder. Germs that infect the urethra, such as the gonorrhea germ, may ascend it and get into the prostate gland. There, the alkaline environment and blood supply, which are conducive to bacterial growth, make it much harder to treat the infection with antibiotics than, say, a sore throat, a boil or an uncomplicated pneumonia. Because the germs that infect the prostate are difficult to extract from apatient for a culture it has become a common practice for doctors to treat symptoms of prostate inflammation with antibiotics without knowing what germ, if any, might be there.

The diagnosis in this situation is 'nonspecific' prostatitis, which is a well- accepted medical term. But when you stop to think about it, it's peculiar. According to medical principles, when there is an infection, the perpetrator is almost always a particular germ. The prostate, like all internal tissues, is not likely to be infected by more than one germ at a time. The implication is that if there's an infection, it's quite specific. How then do we come up with the diagnosis 'nonspecific' prostatitis? It's a result of several factors; efforts to recover a germ are to no avail, the prostate acts as if there's an inflammation — with swelling, pain, difficulty urinating and sometimes cloudy or pussy urine — and antibiotics are at least temporarily soothing. But after antibiotic treatment, this problem recurs more often than other infections.

Men’s Body Click Diet part 1

In the summer the men had to cope with constant daylight, so they were missing the normal cues to go to bed. 'When it's daylight, even though it's midnight or one o'clock in the morning, you don't think of it as being the time to go to sleep,' says Dave. 'Your mind just says, hey, there's work to be done. I may be tired but I'm not recognizing the need for sleep because it's daylight.'

Already lacking the strong time-giving effects of light, the men could not set their body clocks by what they were eating, either. 'We had four meals a day. Two of them occurred at noon and midnight, the other two at six in the morning and six in the evening,' continues Dave. 'One of the difficulties in telling what time it was, was that the 6:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m. meals were powdered scrambled eggs and the other two meals were stew. So if you woke up at six o'clock and went into the galley for a meal and you had powdered scrambled eggs, you didn't know whethe_r y_ou were having breakfast or dinner.'

Despite losing the signals that are normally provided by the cycle of light and dark, the timing of activity, intake of food, reasonable work shifts or even simple obedience to the clock, most of the men managed t_oget through without becoming acutely sick or injured. But some of them developed a condition they called Big Eye, in which they became stuck in a sleepless state. Almost everyone had duties that required exhausting physical labor, but even so, the men with Big Eye failed to sleep for days.

The men with Big Eye demonstrated that the body's flexibility is a double-edged sword. The loss of essential time givers easily disrupted their circadian rhythms, probably setting them up for health problems if they continued down that path. On the other hand, proper application of some fairly simple rules for circadian health could have rescued them. And the same rules can rescue you from a potentially perilous state of disorganization.

The Body Clock Prescription reinforces strong circadian rhythms; produces better sleep, enhanced moods, alertness and energy; and reduces the risk for reproductive cancers for everyone. In addition to these overall improvements in health and well-being, there are specific aspects of the diet that have a favorable impact on prostate health, a subject that provokes anxiety for many men.

Prostate Ailments: The 'Male Problem'

There is certainly cause for concern. Prostate ailments are an almost universal threat to men in Europe and North America. Among men in the United States, prostate cancer is the most common cancer; it is also the second leading cause of cancer death.' In addition, countless men suffer from other prostate problems. This phenomenon represents a kind of `male problem' corresponding roughly to what used to be called 'female problems', a much less specific collection of gynecological woes that were lumped under this heading in the mid-1900s. The notion of female problems embraced excessive menstruation, infertility, irregular periods,cramps, vaginal discharge and other kinds of medical mischief that women endure.

The male problem is more localized in the prostate gland, the part of the male reproductive system that secretes fluids that help transport sperm. Nevertheless, it is a fairly complicated picture, which includes inflammations of the prostate, a common condition known as benign prostatic hypertrophy (BPH) and prostate cancer.

What's more, prostate problems may lead you to needing a cystoscopy, where a narrow flashlight is inserted into the hole from which you pee until it arrives in your bladder. On the way, it passes through your prostate gland. Cystoscopy is a procedure that causes 'big eyes' in the bravest of men.

Besides cystoscopy, the other method often used to examine men with prostate complaints is digital rectal examination, in which the examiner can feel the profile of your prostate gland. (Digital refers to the doctor's finger, not his computer.) Both give much less information than you would expect to get from such relatively invasive procedures. Opening your mouth and saying Ah' discloses much more about your teeth, gums, tongue and throat than any rectal exam reveals about your prostate, unless you have a huge lump. Ultrasound, magnetic resonance imaging (MRIs) and computerized axial tomography (CAT) scans are necessary to get a good picture of what's happening to this gland, whose actual location on the floor of your pelvis seems mysterious to anyone who has not studied anatomy.

Diet and Prostate Health

If you look around you, especially as you get older and start hearing stories from men who have prostate trouble, you may wonder if there's something simple you can do to avoid it. I'm not talking about early detection, which is mentioned frequently these days. (Of course, most men's idea of early detection is that early next year or the year after would be just fine.) Nor am I saying that a good history, physical exam, measurements of prostate-specific antigen (PSA), a common blood test used to screen for prostate cancer and other indicators of your underlying health, prostate or otherwise, are not a good idea.

But you're misplacing your priorities if you go through those procedures without making some modest changes in your diet now to prevent troubles in the future. Most men who have a reasonably healthy personal and family medical history and who don't abuse themselves with excesses of drugs, tobacco and alcohol, other risky activities or excessive inactivity can probably remain free of obvious symptoms even if they don't implement all the points of the Body Clock Prescription. Some of these point_sare aimed at people who are trying to get out of serious medical trouble or who have risk factors that call on them to follow the diet very strictly.

Naturally, the more closely you follow the Body Clock Prescriptio_nthe better, but if you do nothing else, I urge you to consume soy protein and flaxseed powder daily to prevent prostate problems. By making these simple dietary changes and keeping your mind open to the possibility that fungal infection, intestinal overgrowth or allergy might have a hand in any prostate inflammation that is not otherwise easily diagnosed by a physician, you can go a long way toward avoiding the possibility of getting prostate cancer, as well as the other problems that frequently lead men to undergo cystoscopy.

Chronic Illnesses and Diet part 3

Visualization and Chronic Disease

To the ten steps of the Body Clock Prescription, I'd suggest adding visualization, another powerful tool for controlling chronic disease. Life consists of moving forward into images. You get to the dry cleaners to pick up your laundry by making a mental picture of the journey and moving forward into that picture. No picture, no laundry. With visualization, you are going to create an inner picture in order to realize your intention, not just in the outside world of the dry cleaner but in the inside world of your immune system.

The first step is to get the knack of meditation so that your mind and body are in a receptive posture for visualization. Let's assume that you've learned to enter a meditative state; riding on the letter M, your mind can enter a new space within your consciousness. From here, you can take one step forward into your imagination and make a picture of what you want to accomplish in your body.

The effectiveness of this approach was initially proven in an experiment conducted with doctors suffering from terminal or advanced cancer. They were shown accurate images of their own cancer cells and of their immune system cells and were asked to create a realistic visualization of the immune system cells attacking the cancer cells. Most of the doctors successfully curbed their cancer — not to the extent of actually curing it, but in most cases there was measurable improvement. Since then, numerous experiments have shown that a less accurate image of the enemy is just as effective.²

About twenty years ago I used to meet one evening every month with a group of other doctors, including Dr. Bernie Siegel, one of the pioneers of visualization. Bernie shared fascinating examples of the kinds of imagery cancer patients chose to promote healing of their illnesses. It seemed important that the image be accurate in its intent; it was disconcerting when patients chose wimpy defensive images that were the imaginary equivalent of trying to beat their cancer with a wet noodle. People who chose aggressive images did better; lions, tigers, sharks, polar bears and knights in shining armor do better work than a little girl gathering up cancer cells into snowballs and throwing them over the fence.

But what's a good image if you have chronic inflammatory disease? In this case, redness, heat, swelling and pain afflict some part of your body as it reacts to an enemy that the doctor hasn't been able to discover or that has disappeared from the scene of the crime, leaving your immune system in a perpetual dither. You need a picture that is soothing but not self-defeating by way of quieting your immune reactions to the point of defenselessness. This is where a chemical or an abstract image may be more appropriate. By chemical image, I mean something along the lines of `Let's put out the fire'. Remember that inflammation is an expression of your body's fire burning out of control. Whether it is in the skin, the digestive tract, the lungs, the heart, the nose or the eyes or, for that matter, whether or not it is producing palpable heat, some kind of uncontrolled fire is at the bottom of a lot of chronic illness. Parkinson's disease, for example, has been characterized as a fire in the brain. And the oxidative damage in the chemistry of autistic children constitutes a kind of fiery injury to their RNA and DNA.

If you are going to employ visual imagery to quench the fire, then why not use pictures that are more effective than merely aiming a fire hose or throwing ice water at it? Instead, try mobilizing your body's powerful natural resources for quenching the inflammation, calling on your body's clouds to release rainwater on the brush fires of the prairie where the inflammation resides. This could be your intestine if you have colitis, your joints if you have arthritis, your skin if you have dermatitis, your lungs if you have bronchitis and so on. You can even get technical and make your raindrops into vitamin C, vitamin E, beta-carotene and other potent antioxidants. Communication between your meditating-visualizing brain and the resources of your body is more dynamic and more specific then you know.

When Bernie Siegel began talking about people's responsibility for their own health and healing in the face of serious illnesses such as cancer, people accused him of 'blaming the victim' by placing an unreasonable burden of guilt on the sick person. But you can't really take control of your health without believing that your health is to some extent under your control. Even a person who has been a victim of some catastrophic accident must believe that he or she can exercise control over healing, to at least a small but critical degree, through the expression of intention in prayer or visualization or by the exercise of sheer willpower.

For people with chronic illness, the lines of causation are more ambiguous than they are in an accident. However irrational it may be, all of us feel guilt for things that happen, like the ill-timed flareup of cold sores just before an important public appearance. Feeling guilty won't get you anywhere, but feeling responsible is the key to taking charge. If you feel like you're the passive victim of the event, you may miss a chance to engage your body's resources for healing. Only by feeling that you can take responsibility for your own health will you be able to make the changes that are necessary for regaining that health in the face of chronic illness.

Healthy weight management through correct lifestyle and supplementation

Obesity, by medical definition, is a disease - a lifestyle disease that holds the grave potential of leading to an untimely death. We often hear of cancer sufferers who claim that they received a wake-up call that caused them to change their thinking, their lifestyles, their diets and their medication. But the truth is often that by the time the cancer is discovered in a body, a series of warning signals have already been sent.

The first symptom of a serious disease often manifests itself in our weight. Just about every diagnostic procedure regards weight loss or weight gain as a symptom of some disease.

Weight fluctuations are never ruled out.

In a sense, the first 5 kilograms you gain can be regarded as the piercing sound of the wake-up alarm. No, this does not necessarily mean you are already ill, but it does mean that unless you start managing your weight healthily, you will be placing yourself in the first line of fire of just about every serious disease in later life. And no, it does not mean that people who are not overweight are not exposed to lifestyle hazards that could lead to serious disease. But it does say loudly and clearly that obesity is the forerunner of most major health risks.

And just like any other serious disease such as heart disease, cancer and diabetes, obesity should be treated holistically. Because lifestyle plays a large part in the cause, it would follow that the cure has to include lifestyle changes. All these diseases share this common denominator, no matter how you argue the issue. In fact, diets suitable for diabetics, heart sufferers and many cancer patients all share the same guidelines: low fat, high fibre and nutrient rich, especially micronutrients, meaning fruit and vegetables.

No matter from which angle you study our main group of lifestyle diseases, their prevention and cure lie in the four cornerstones of proper health management:

Living positively

Whatever comes your way in life, how you react to it is still your choice. You may regard life as a bottle half full, or a bottle half empty. Either way, you are going to drink from it. The only thing you can do is to exercise your right of choice: how you see it. A positive mental attitude can solve most of the world's problems, heal many ailments and repair much emotional damage, whereas a negative attitude has the exact opposite effect. Living positively is a glorious life discipline with many rewards. The only thing it demands is that it should be actively and purposefully practised, every single day.

Lifestyle

Being involved in a healthy, balanced lifestyle every single day, is the most effective way in which to promote excellent health and wellbeing. Enjoying a holistic lifestyle based on balance and variety is perhaps the best way to achieve quality of life. This includes a good social life, enjoying relaxing and stimulating hobbies and interests, regularly practising stress-relief techniques and paying attention to your dreams. The subconscious uses dreams as its communication tool and many health-promoting messages are sent to us through our dreams.

Diet

The food pyramid -the prudent diet- is hailed by the most respected scientific organisations in the world as the eating plan most beneficial for the promotion of great health. By following the right eating plan you can control and regulate many physical functions such as lowering your cholesterol, blood pressure, weight and blood sugar level and controlling your stress levels and mood swings. A good, sensible diet also contributes most effectively to the prevention of serious diseases such as arteriosclerosis, cancer and cardiovascular disease.

Complementary health practices

Taking care of the body means taking care of the soul as well. Practising yoga, tai chi, meditation and/or regular, physical exercise offers immeasurable emotional and physical advantages. Regular massages, manicures, pedicures, facials, acupuncture, lymph drainage, colonic irrigation, hydrotherapy and a host of other health facilities contribute greatly to an increased zest for life. Herbal remedies and food supplements are extremely powerful means of attaining a better quality of health.

How fibre affects the body

The whole subject of food residue is a complicated one because of the variety of indigestible compounds and the different ways in which they influence the digestive and absorption processes in the body. In the simplest terms, dietary fibre acts in the digestive tract by binding or absorbing water and other substances, thus causing 'bulking' of the contents of the gut. It influences the speed with which food moves through the various parts of the digestive tract. However, the ways in which fibre affects digestion, absorption and the movement of food in the digestive tract are diverse, far-reaching and not always well understood. To illustrate this, fibre in the diet may affect blood sugar levels, the production of bile, the transport of cholesterol in the body and your chances of developing colon cancer. It can even affect the hormonal responses to a meal.

A variety of factors influence the effect of a particular fibre or high- fibre food. The chemical composition of the fibre, its particle size, the age of the plant source and methods used in the processing of the food, all affect the physical properties of the fibre. It is these characteristics which account for the different functions of fibre in addition to its main effect of causing in^creased bulk formation in the digestive tract.

Fibre effects are also influenced by the total composition of the meal and the amount of fibre in it. Short-term effects - for example on the blood sugar level - can be seen immediately after a person has eaten a single high-fibre meal. Long-term effects, such as lowering of blood cholesterol levels, occur only after a regular and prolonged intake of fibre. The effect of fibre in the different parts of the digestive tract (stomach, small and large intestine) also differs and may vary between individuals.

Fibre and the diseases of affluence

As already mentioned, research on dietary fibre was initially stimulated by studies which showed that population groups who follow high-fibre diets suffer far less from the 'diseases of affluence' - the medical term used to describe degenerative diseases and disorders which have been linked to a prosperous Western lifestyle. Among these are colon cancer, appendicitis, gall stones, varicose veins and constipation. Their causes are many; what has been established is that a variety of environmental factors, including dietary habits, can trigger these diseases in people who are genetically 'vulnerable' to them. This explains why they tend to run in families and why some people, even though they follow a Western lifestyle, do not develop a particular disease.

Let's look at those diseases which are known to be associated with the amount of fibre in our daily diets:

Constipation

Constipation is probably one of the most common disorders in the world and is also the cause of other diseases (see diverticular disease and colon cancer below.) It can be defined as the relatively slow movement of unduly firm waste matter through the large bowel, which results in the infrequent passing of small, hard and dry stools - often accompanied by straining.

Including enough fibre in your diet prevents constipation in various ways. Firstly, fibre is not digested in the small intestine. It therefore moves to the large bowel where it has a bulking effect, increasing the volume of the bowel content. Because it binds water, fibre prevents the absorption of water from the large bowel to some extent, ensuring that the contents remain large in volume and soft in consistency. Fibre also stimulates the growth of microbes in the large bowel, which contributes to larger, softer stools. The larger volume in the bowel stimulates peristaltic movements and eases the process of defecation so that straining is not necessary. In addition, during the partial fermentation of fibre in the large bowel by microbial enzymes, substances such as methane and hydrogen gasses, water and the short-chain fatty acids are produced. There is now convincing evidence that these acids play an important role in maintaining a healthy bowel.

Diverticular disease

It is now recognised that constipation - and the resultant increase in pressure in the colon (large bowel) because of strained bowel movements - is the underlying cause of diverticular disease. In this disorder, small, blown-out pouches or sac-like swellings (diverticula) form in the wall of the colon and project into the abdominal cavity. Inflammation of these pouches is known as diverticulitis and may cause abdominal discomfort and pain.

Diverticular disease is very common in affluent societies, especially among elderly people. The treatment of constipation with high-fibre diets will not only help prevent the development of the disease, but will also improve - and may even 'cure' - an existing condition.

Colon cancer

Although the role of diet in the development of this disease is still unclear, some scientists believe that high energy and fat and low fibre intakes are important contributing factors (see Cancer - can Your Diet Make the Difference?, page 181). The way in which fibre may protect against colon cancer is probably very complex. It is thought that the rapid movement of a bigger volume through the large bowel shortens the bowel wall's exposure time to substances which may induce cancer (carcinogens).

Because of its bulking and water-binding effects, fibre dilutes the concentration of carcinogens in the gut. It may even bind these substances and help with their excretion in the faeces. New research has showed that butyric acid, one of the short-chain fatty acids produced from fibre fermentation in the large bowel, also protects the bowel against the development of cancer. In addition, changes in colonic pH as a result of the fermentation process may be of importance.