I’ve heard people say, “if you’re constipated, you need more fiber in your diet.” and I’ve also heard people say, “if you’re having diarrhea, you need more fiber in your diet.” does fiber really help with both? and if so, how? I would think that fiber would help with diarrhea but make constipation worse. (TMI) >!but multiple times, eating fiber-heavy foods like flax seeds has caused diarrhea for me.!<
TLDR: how does fiber work to influence your bowel movements??
In: Biology
Fiber binds moisture. Think of it like little sponges. A sponge can absorb water where there’s too much of it, and release water if it touches something that’s dry.
If you’re constipated it’s because your stool is too hard and can’t get around all the twists and turns in your guts so you need something that will add moisture to your stool. Eating fiber will help bind liquids and move through your digestive tract to dampen all the stuck stool. Like putting a wet sponge on a piece of paper – the paper will draw moisture out of the sponge and the liquid will make the paper come apart.
If you have diarrhea there is too much liquid in your digestive tract. If you eat fiber it will absorb some of that liquid to make everything a little less runny. Like cutting up a ton of sponges and throwing them into a soup – everything becomes less like water and more like a spongy mess.
In a more detailed sense, what really happens is that the dietary fiber coats the inside of your intestines and makes the stool move through your system slower, so the fiber and the lining of your gut have more time to absorb any excess liquids. This is why eating too much fiber too quickly can jam up your digestive tract and cause constipation if you’re short on liquids.
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