Fibre for heart health

Learn to love fibre, for your heart’s sake. That’s the message from a recent Medical University of South Carolina study.

Thirty-five healthy adults were randomly selected to consume either the DASH (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension) high-fibre diet (nearly 28 grams of fibre per day) or a psyllium fibre supplement (equivalent to 27 grams of fibre per day) in addition to their regular diet.

After just three weeks, both groups were found to have significantly lowered their levels of C-reactive protein – a protein linked to diabetes, heart disease and hypertension that circulates in the blood when there’s inflammation in the body – by up to 40 per cent.

Researchers were also surprised to find that the effect was more pronounced in the slimmer, fitter subjects than in the more obese, unfit ones.

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