Does fiber “unclog” our arteries? Making plaque disappear is possible?

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Is surgery the only way to actually remove the plaque in our arteries?

Fiber from almonds and fruits

In: Biology

5 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

No it does not.

Cholesterol is the linking factor here, through complex mechanisms over years and decades it can clog important arteries to cause things like heart attacks and strokes. It comes from food, if we get less of it in our food, the risk of those things goes down.

If you’ve heard of bile, that has cholesterol in it too. Our body releases cholesterol into our intestines but it gets resorbed again. Fibrous food such as oatmeal actually binds it and we poop it back out. Thus, lower cholesterol and therefore lower risk of heart attack.

The tricky part about the clogs is they aren’t just cholesterol, they have other fats, immune cells which tried to eat/destroy all the fat and are hanging out, irritated vessel wall cells, and so on, and all that took many years to develop. So if I just eat a bowl of oatmeal, maybe it will lower my cholesterol, but that won’t be able to help the big complicated clog that formed.

Anonymous 0 Comments

From [here.](https://www.medicinenet.com/fiber/article.htm#fiber_for_bowel_disorders)

Fiber for preventing heart disease
If we were to sit down and have a “heart to heart,” I would tell you that one of the best things that you could do on your own to protect your heart is to follow a high-fiber diet. Numerous studies have produced compelling evidence to support this. In a Harvard study of over 40,000 male health professionals, researchers found that a high total dietary fiber intake was linked to a 40% lower risk of coronary heart disease, compared to a low-fiber intake. Another study of over 31,000 California Seventh-day Adventists found a 44% reduced risk of nonfatal coronary heart disease and an 11% reduced risk of fatal coronary heart disease for those who ate whole wheat bread compared with those who ate white bread. One minor change in their diets provided a protective effect that could save their lives.

Another strong predictor of heart disease is abnormal blood cholesterol, LDL, and/or HDL levels. It appears that soluble fiber reduces the absorption of cholesterol in your intestines by binding with bile (which contains cholesterol) and dietary cholesterol so that the body excretes it. The oat bran and bean fiber intervention trials where dietary fiber supplementation was combined with a low-fat diet shows that reductions in total cholesterol levels ranged from 8-26%. Other studies have shown that 5 to 10 grams of soluble fiber a day decreases LDL cholesterol by about 5%. All of these benefits will occur regardless of changes in dietary fat. In a trial with low fat and low fat plus high fiber groups, the group consuming high fiber exhibited a greater average reduction (13%) in total cholesterol concentration than the low fat (9%) and the usual diet (7%) groups. It seems that you don’t have to change everything to gain something.

Anonymous 0 Comments

No they are two different systems, perhaps you are talking about hdl, which may help with plaques in the arteries?

Anonymous 0 Comments

no of course it doesn’t. food moves through the intestines, it doesn’t go through the arteries.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Food waste is like thick blended sludge in your gut/colon. Fibre is solid and doesn’t break down, allowing the food to mix with it and move out of the gut instead of as plaque sludge stuck to the walls of the colon. It’s very literally like scrubbing a pot: fibre is the “scrubber” type substance that it sticks to and pulls it off your colon walls.