First, a little background: I’ve always been a pretty healthy eater. My family had an organic farm where what we ate was pretty much what we grew. We didn’t call it organic back then, it was just really old school farming. Unfortunately, besides the huge vegetable garden and the orchard, we also grew animals. Playing with the little chickens and baby pigs and little calves with their curly heads and soft noses was great fun in the springtime. Seeing them turned into supper in the fall, not so much. I ate what I was given, I had no choice, but once I became an adult and could choose my own food I stopped eating meat. I had a family to feed so I did a lot of research and made sure all our nutritional needs were met. Diet For a Small Planet was my bible. Lots of vegetables, fruit, homemade soup, homemade bread. Lots of fresh air and exercise. You’d think that would be the recipe for a pretty healthy life and it is, mostly. I rarely get sick, my weight has always been stable, my skin is clear and my hair is shiny. Despite this I have had two recurring health problems all my life. 

 

Number one is constipation. Even as a little kid I had problems. I think it was partly due to stress. I had a very confusing childhood and went through some pretty tough times as an adult. The last thing I needed was to be dealing with that on top of it but it was just something I had to live with – I thought. Then a couple of months ago I came across a blog by Dr. Michael Gregor where he cited a study by Dr. David Jenkins and colleagues that involved putting men on a plant-based diet of 150 grams of fiber per day. The general recommendation is 25 to 30 grams which was about what I was getting. Two control groups ate starch-based and low fat diets, respectively. All the groups ate the same amount of calories. At the end of the study the men on the high fiber diet had actually lost weight, their cholesterol levels had gone down significantly and they reported the highest level of satiety compared with the controls.  

 

We’ve all been hearing a lot lately about the importance of the microbiome and how probiotics can keep it healthy. I eat some form of fermented food at just about every meal but I’ve also been reading a lot about prebiotics, the high fiber foods that feed our gut flora, so I decided to devise a little experiment of my own. Now, no way was I going to eat 150 grams of fiber a day. It sounds like a lot of work, plus so much food! What about 50 though? It might be a bit of a challenge but I thought I could pull it off. I researched all the foods that were highest in fiber. I found a brand of sprouted whole grain bread that had 5 grams per slice. I started adding ground flax and various seeds to my oatmeal and berries. I’ve never been a big fan of breakfast and I stopped eating it a few years ago so all this had to be done in two meals a day. I planned for 30 grams at lunch and 20 at dinner. It was pretty challenging for the first week. I was constantly googling fiber content and estimating grams and I felt like I was eating way too much food. I was stuffed. The other challenge was that my digestive system went crazy! I won’t get into the gory details but let’s just say I’m glad I live alone. Not completely alone but the cats didn’t seem to care. 

 

The second week things started to settle down. I had a better idea of how to get the amount of fiber I wanted without gorging myself and no longer had to google everything. Two pieces of toast with half an avocado mashed on each with a squeeze of lemon and a bit of salt and pepper: totally delicious and 23 grams! Add a cup of oatmeal with ground flax and blueberries and I’d surpassed my 30 grams and had a very nice lunch. Some nuts and a piece of fruit in the afternoon: 8 grams. A big bowl of bean or lentil soup with lots of veggies in it and a couple of squares of dark chocolate for dinner and I’d had my 50 for the day. It was actually quite pleasant. I hadn’t put any limits on snacks or dessert but I was so full that I rarely wanted them. AND, I started pooping every day! Sometimes twice a day. You normally regular people out there can not know what a joy that is. It freed my brain. I stopped thinking about it all the time. 

 

Which brings me to week 3. Remember at the beginning when I told you I had two problems? The other one was insomnia. I have never slept well. Even as a baby my mother said I rarely slept more than two or three hours at a time. Sleeping in as a teenager? Nope. As an adult I would sometimes go for months on 4 or 5 hours a night. I read all the articles on sleep hygiene. I tried everything. Eventually I just told myself that I was one of those people who is meant to have more hours in their day. Hey if Martha Stewart can do it, it must be okay. Once in a while though, I would go through a brief period, maybe two or three days, of sleeping well, around seven hours a night. It felt amazing! I would wake up with so much peace and gratitude and be filled with energy for the day to come. Then I would go over the previous day obsessively, trying to figure out what I had done right, or differently. It never lasted though. Thank god for coffee is all I can say. 

 

So anyway, week three. I was finding it increasingly easy and enjoyable to incorporate extra fiber into my favorite foods, often even exceeding the 50 grams. I felt better, lighter somehow although the numbers on my scale hadn’t changed. Then I slept. I slept for seven hours one night. Then I slept for seven hours a second night. Then a third. What was happening? I started researching and couldn’t believe what I found. In all the articles I’d read about sleep hygiene not one ever mentioned that around 90% of the serotonin in our bodies is manufactured in our gut. Did you know that? I certainly didn’t. It is also responsible for the production of GABA, which helps us relax by inhibiting stress. Melatonin, the “darkness hormone” which is responsible for making us sleepy, is also produced partially by the gut. A gut microbiome which is not in balance, a state called dysbiosis, can cause stress, anxiety, insulin resistance and, yes, insomnia. The gut microbiome operates on a circadian rhythm just like our brain and can be disrupted by lack of sleep. 

 

So here’s my theory: I had colic when I was a baby, really bad colic. I was the end result of a difficult and protracted breech birth and had to be dragged out with forceps so I kinda came into the world stressed. Didn’t sleep. As a child from a very restrictive religious family I was bullied constantly at school and had few friends. Didn’t sleep. By the age of 22 I’d been married for five years and had two babies. Didn’t sleep. Add in a couple of divorces and a few more bad relationships and several years of shiftwork. You see where I’m going here? All the exercise and good food in the world aren’t going to fix that. 

 

I stopped doing shift work about five years ago and practice meditation and yoga daily and have been happily single for a few years now but I still wasn’t sleeping because my microbiome was not in balance and my microbiome was not in balance because I wasn’t sleeping. So how was something as simple as eating more fiber able to fix that? I’m no scientist and I don’t have all the answers to that question but you know the old Cherokee fable about the good wolf and the bad wolf who are battling inside you and the one who wins is the one you feed? I feel like I was being the good wolf in as many ways as I knew how but I wasn’t feeding it. 

 

That might sound rather spiritual for a story about adding fiber to your diet but the results are undeniable. I’m six weeks in now and my gut is happy and I’m sleeping well every night. I always thought of myself as a pretty healthy and energetic person but I truly had no idea what that meant until now. I open my eyes to gratitude every morning. I certainly can’t promise that it will do the same for you but if you’re doing all the right stuff and it’s still not quite working it might be worth a try.