Dhru Purohit Show
The Nutrient Most of Us are Under-Eating That Boosts Brain Health and Fights Inflammation and Visceral Fat
Mon, 31 Mar 2025
This episode is brought to you by Birch Living and Levels. When you think of blood sugar regulation, weight loss, or boosting cognition, fiber may not be the first thing that comes to mind. But this essential nutrient does far more than just relieve constipation. It feeds our gut microbes, keeping them happy and thriving—and in return, they produce anti-inflammatory, anti-cancer, immune-supporting metabolites that help us stay healthy, happy, and thriving. Today on The Dhru Purohit Show, we’re bringing you a special compilation episode featuring Dhru’s conversations with top experts on fiber and its powerful benefits for gut and whole-body health. Dr. Will Bulsiewicz breaks down the signs of inadequate fiber in your diet and shares his top four tips for improving bowel movements and incorporating fiber into your daily routine. Dr. Mary Claire Haver explains how optimizing fiber intake can help reduce visceral fat—especially during perimenopause and menopause. Dr. Brad Stanfield highlights psyllium husk as one of the most underrated supplements for boosting fiber intake and supporting overall health. Dr. Will Bulsiewicz is an award-winning gastroenterologist and New York Times bestselling author of Fiber Fueled and The Fiber Fueled Cookbook. Dr. Mary Claire Haver is board-certified in Obstetrics and Gynecology and is a Certified Culinary Medicine Specialist. Dr. Brad Stanfield is a primary care physician hailing from Auckland, New Zealand who has garnered over 200,000 followers on YouTube for his video segments related to longevity-promoting strategies. In this episode, Dhru and his guests dive into: Signs of inadequate fiber in your diet (02:20) Four tips for improving bowel movements (05:20) How beginners can increase fiber intake and manage gas (17:27) Key behaviors that harm gut health (21:37) How fiber supports gut health and the microbiome (29:15) The benefits of eating a diverse range of plant foods (35:07) How fiber helps combat visceral fat (38:43) The optimal daily dose of fiber (40:38) How to increase fiber intake with psyllium husk (44:50) Recommended water intake when using psyllium husk (48:31) Final thoughts (50:09) Also mentioned: Full episode with Dr. Will Bulsiewicz Full episode with Dr. Mary Claire Haver Full episode with Dr. Brad Stanfield This episode is brought to you by Birch Living and Levels. Get 25% off your Birch Living mattress during their Flash Sale—just head to birchliving.com/dhru today! Right now, Levels is offering my listeners an additional 2 FREE months of the Levels annual Membership when you use my link, levels.link/DHRU. Make moves on your metabolic health with Levels today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: What is the main topic of this episode?
Hi everyone, Drew Proat here. Last year, I made a conscientious effort to up my fiber intake. Why? Well, in addition to wanting to improve my gut microbiome, which I know a lot of you guys want to do when it comes to cardiovascular health, I'm also a hyper reabsorber of cholesterol.
So fiber is one of the best tools I can incorporate to help improve my diet, but also keep my ApoB levels lower from the naturally high place that they like to find themselves. In fact, fiber is so powerful that it has the ability to regulate blood sugar, lower cholesterol, fight constipation, increase weight loss, promote cognition, and so much more.
But unfortunately, most of us are not getting enough. In fact, 95% of Americans do not meet the daily fiber requirements. And for most people, it's hurting them. And I say most because there are some situations where people's guts are so messed up that they actually would do better by lowering some fiber and working with a practitioner to get to the root of why there's microbiome imbalance.
But we'll save that for another episode. episode. Today's episode is all about how most individuals would benefit greatly by including some more fiber in their diet. So in today's compilation episode, I'm excited to share with you a portion of my conversations with Dr. Will Bolshevich, an award-winning gastroenterologist, internationally recognized gut health expert, and best-selling author.
We discuss all things fiber, how do you know if you're getting enough, and how to have better and more complete bowel movements, which everybody secretly wants or maybe not so secretly wants, and how to incorporate fiber supplements. And Dr. B, as his patients call him, shares his own journey to heal his own gut.
I also talk with Dr. Mary Claire Haver, who's a board-certified OBGYN doctor and a certified culinary medicine specialist, about the key role that thyroid plays in targeting visceral fat after menopause in particular. And finally, you'll hear from Dr. Brad Stanfield, a
primary care physician based in New Zealand who has garnered over 200,000 followers on YouTube for his video segments related to longevity promoting strategies. And on today's episode, he's going to talk about the fiber supplement that he's most excited about. But first, let's dive into my conversation with Dr. Will B.
What are one, two, or three signs that somebody doesn't have that adequate amount of fiber in their diet? Something that they're experiencing, risk factors, daily stuff that they're going through or not going through. What are some signs that they don't have enough of that fiber?
I think the most obvious sign that you're not getting enough fiber is if you're not eating enough real plant food. If you're not really sure where the plants are in your diet, then you're clearly not getting enough fiber because fiber is found in plants. The average American, only about 10% of our calories are actually coming from plants. Unfortunately, the number one plant is potato.
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Chapter 2: What are the signs of inadequate fiber in your diet?
When you're talking about a high fiber diet, I've seen different sorts of ranges. Sometimes you'll hear people talk about, you know, 15 grams of fiber, 15 to 20 grams of fiber for every thousand calories that might be in the diet. So if somebody's having, you know, Around 2,000 calories as part of their diet or 2,500, you know, you're probably targeting around 30 to 45 grams of fiber a day.
Is that what you recommend to your patients? How do you help them sort of navigate what does high fiber diet look like?
That's absolutely right. The meta-analysis that I'm referring to suggests that ideally people want to be having at least about 25 grams of fiber a day. But there is the caveat though. I've mentioned irritable bowel syndrome already.
Some people who have irritable bowel syndrome, they can't tolerate a high fiber diet because a lot of the times when you're trying to digest that fiber, it causes fermentation. So it worsens bloating, it worsens their symptoms. So again, just make sure that you speak with your own doctor.
But that's again, where I'm a big fan of psyllium husk because of the type of fiber that psyllium husk is, it's actually used to treat irritable bowel syndrome. So it's a type of fiber that's very, very well tolerated by the body. And it seems that the more you have it, the better off you are. The caveat that if you start to really boost your dosages, they can actually make the constipation worse.
So it's important that if you do choose to use psyllium husk, you start at a low dose and you slowly work your way up and you make sure that you're having plenty of water on board.
Yeah, the water part is key because psyllium, from everything that I've understood about it, it absorbs a lot of water inside the body. So you have people that are chronically dehydrated taking psyllium, and they're already dealing with maybe some constipation, and now they feel even more constipated because they haven't had enough water as a whole. How much water should people be targeting for?
Again, there's different activity levels. You know, there's, you know, gender differences, which typically relate to body size that's there. You know, is there a general rule of thumb, in particular, if people are having psyllium of like, what is the sort of amount of water they should be targeting in the day?
There's no hard and fast rule. But what I would say is that if you are having psyllium husk, just make sure to have a glass of water with it. And ideally, the best way to assess your hydration levels is the color of your urine. So you want it slightly yellow. And that is a great way to figure out if you're having enough fluid or not. And when people are...
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Chapter 4: How can beginners increase fiber intake?
And because you mentioned it, helping people poop better. You made a fantastic video. This is a few weeks ago. You had four tips that you presented inside of that video to help people poop.
poop better and have better more complete bowel movements i have them here in front of me if you want me to tee you up and if you want to bring up another four or whatever you want to get into feel free but could you share some of those tips for improving constipation
All right, Drew, how about we do this? You bob them my way and I'll try to crush them. Because I don't remember the exact four tips that I did.
I got them for you, brother. I did my homework. Don't worry. So the first one was coffee. And I'd love for you to talk about coffee and what its benefits are in terms of helping with bowel movements. And also, is it ever a concern that some people need coffee to actually have a full evacuation or full bowel movement in the morning?
Chapter 5: What behaviors harm gut health?
let's talk about coffee first yeah so i i coffee clearly helps people poop the vast majority of people when they consume coffee on a routine basis they're going to notice that they um often will have a bowel movement that comes shortly after that and it can be a part of that really healthy daily routine that you build in the morning
um that really gets your day started i mean i honestly believe that having a good uh complete evacuation in the morning is part of stepping into a great day so what is it about coffee there's a couple of things coffee is very rich in polyphenols polyphenols are antioxidant compounds an example would be chlorogenic acid that the research suggests may help us to move our bowels
Coffee, believe it or not, even without adding fiber to it, actually contains some dietary fiber. And so this is soluble fiber. The soluble fiber is not grit. You would never know that it's there, but it is fiber and it is feeding your gut microbiome. And so that's one of the other things that potentially helps. Now, I will say there are some people that coffee just is not a great fit.
And so there's about 10% of the population that will drink a cup of coffee and it will actually trigger urgent bowel movements. With those people, I would consider adding a fiber supplement to your daily coffee, which by the way, I kind of recommend this for everyone. I do this myself. I did it this morning.
Adding a soluble fiber supplement to your coffee on a daily basis is a great way to amp up the microbiome support. So examples of fiber, acacia powder, partially hydrolyzed guar gum, wheat dextrin. These are examples of ones that will dissolve. You won't even know that they're in there. And I would try that if you're having some urgency after you drink a cup of coffee.
Some people it will trigger anxiety. Coffee may not be a good choice for them. It's, I think, the caffeine in that particular setting. And then you have to be careful about this causing insomnia. So for some people, they're very caffeine sensitive. So you want to be careful about coffee in the afternoon.
For me, I could drink it at nine o'clock at night and go to bed at 10 o'clock and I'll be perfectly fine. That's just the way it is for me, but for others, it will be potentially different. So I think from my perspective, coffee is good for the microbiome. We actually have research that indicates that there are specific microbes that thrive when we regularly consume coffee.
And it's a rich source of prebiotics, both polyphenols and fiber. And I think it's a good part of the morning.
I love it. To extrapolate further on my second part of the first question, is it a challenge that some people feel that they can't go to the bathroom first thing in the morning without having coffee? Or as a gastroenterologist, you're like, look, coffee's generally good for you. Sure, would we like it a particular way? That might just be their body's just used to it.
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Chapter 6: What are the benefits of a diverse range of plant foods?
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No, I don't think so. I don't really have concerns if you feel that you're having better bowel movements because you drink a cup of coffee. I actually experienced that myself. So from my perspective, I don't see that as a red flag.
Chapter 7: How does fiber help combat visceral fat?
Awesome. All right. Number two that you went into, which is often underrated – is movement. Tell us how movement actually can help us with not being backed up and relieving constipation.
There's this expression that exists called the runner's trots. Basically, these are distance runners, people who are training for marathons and things of that variety, where when they run, they have to poop. When they're on their legit marathon run, they find interesting ways to do that. What we know is that movement actually stimulates motility within the intestines.
Chapter 8: What is the optimal daily dose of fiber?
When you move, your bowels will move. And our bodies really were designed to move. So this sort of lifestyle, coming back to the lifestyle thing, Drew, this lifestyle where we're sitting at a desk and working from nine to five or something like that, and then going home and popping down on the couch, this is not the way that we were designed as humans. So it doesn't have to be a run.
It could be a walk, a good brisk walk. You will notice the difference. This can help you to have a good regular bowel movement.
The second one that you went into and you kind of covered this a little bit and we'll be talking more about it was just high fiber foods, right? The importance of fiber in the first place to make sure that you are – well, actually, I'll let you say it in your own words. High fiber foods, how does pre – like having them in our diet help us not get constipated in the first place?
Well, I think there is some nuance to this particular topic. I'm not here to say that the solution for every person who is constipated is to crank up their fiber. I think that there's a little bit more to the story than that. But what I will say is this, that when your bowels are moving, as your bowels are moving through, fiber is your friend.
So for people who are constipated, as a gastroenterologist, my goal, the way I always tackled this issue is I want to get your bowels moving first. And there's a number of ways that I would do that. And then once I have them moving, then I want to bring the fiber on board because the fiber is going to help us to keep them moving.
So I sort of see, I think the key learning here for the audience at home is that it's not so much that I wean into fiber to treat constipation. It's more so that I get your bowels moving and then I bring the fiber on board to keep the bowels moving.
I love it. The last one was a supplement recommendation. And this can be helpful for people who kind of feel a little bit stuck and need things to kind of get moving. And it's magnesium citrate. How do you use it? How do you recommend it to patients? And then you have some dosages that you suggest that people could start off with to help them with relieving constipation.
Yeah. And this is actually something worthy of us unpacking beyond what I did in the actual post. Because when I did this post, I was talking about a bottle of magnesium citrate. And many people tried to correct me. And I think part of it is sort of trying to educate on complex topics through social media. So let's just kind of unpack this together.
Magnesium citrate, you can buy at your local drugstore. It's typically about the size of a can of soda and carbonated, lemon-lime flavor. It really does not taste good. But when you do an entire bottle of magnesium citrate like that, The intent of this is to jumpstart your bowels.
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