| An article scheduled to appear in the May 2010 issue of the journal Brain, Behavior, and Immunity reports the finding of researchers at the University of Illinois, Urbana that soluble fiber reduces inflammation and strengthens immune function. University of Illinois College of Medicine professor Gregory Freund and colleagues gave mice low fat diets containing insoluble fiber or soluble fiber from citrus pectin for 6 weeks, after which the animals received an injection of lipopolysaccharide, which elicits the effects of bacterial infection. "Two hours after lipopolysaccharide injection, the mice fed soluble fiber were only half as sick as the other group, and they recovered 50 percent sooner,” study coauthor Christina Sherry reported. “And the differences between the groups continued to be pronounced all the way out to 24 hours. In only six weeks, these animals had profound, positive changes in their immune systems." Dr Freund explained that soluble fiber increases the production of the anti-inflammatory protein interleukin-4. "Soluble fiber changes the personality of immune cells—they go from being pro-inflammatory, angry cells to anti-inflammatory, healing cells that help us recover faster from infection," he noted. The University of Illinois researchers recently discovered that hormones produced by fatty tissue could help compensate for some obesity-generated inflammation. "There are significant anti-inflammatory components in fat tissue and, if they were strategically unleashed, they could potentially protect obese people from further inflammatory insults, such as a heart attack or stroke,” Dr Freund stated. “In obese animals, you can see the body compensating in an effort to protect itself." "Now we'd like to find a way to keep some of the anti-inflammatory, positive effects that develop over time with a high-fat diet while reducing that diet's negative effects, such as high blood glucose and high triglycerides,” he remarked. “It's possible that supplementing a high-fat diet with soluble fiber could do that, even delaying the onset of diabetes." Christina Sherry noted that it is easy to obtain the recommended amount of daily fiber of 28 to 35 grams per day, however, the majority of food labels don’t differentiate between soluble and insoluble fiber. Soluble fiber can be obtained by consuming oats, apples, barley, nuts, seeds, citrus fruits, strawberries, lentils and carrots, or by using powdered supplements. |
