Something Personal

I made a decision this weekend to speak frankly to you, trusted readers, about a very personal issue in my life that may make a few of you out there very uncomfortable. It was a difficult decision, however, this wouldn’t be the Damm Truth if I was afraid to lay a few things on you that might be hard to deal with. I may pay dearly for writing this.

Everyone has skeletons in their closet, things we don’t want to face about ourselves or things we feel we should absolutely be ashamed of but in reality, if we are just honest with ourselves and those of us around us, perhaps the Damm truth wouldn’t be so damn bad.

So gather around and hear the good news. It’s a cautionary tale that bears repeating to everyone you know. I’m going to hip you to some serious stuff that may make your life happier and filled with joy. It certainly has made me happier, healthier and…cleaner.

I’m speaking of course about your lack of dietary fiber.

(Okay, timeout! I’m going to do my best to make this funny without being overly gross, but there will be just a couple well placed, tasteful, poop jokes here. Technically there are no tasteful poop jokes, because we all know, taste is linked to smell. But if I promise that last sentence is the grossest of the bunch, can you promise to read to the end? There really is good info here.)

Why do I feel I must pass on this knowledge of dietary fiber? Because it can make a huge difference in your life balance, your energy level, your cholesterol numbers and your comfort, yes, your comfort. Fiber is “nature’s broom.” I don’t know who first told me that, but I much prefer that term to “Doo-Doo Drano,” or worse, the “Rectal Rooter.” I’m sure I didn’t just make those terms up either (there’s nothing new under the sun).

Fiber moves things along in the body, but it also absorbs things like toxins and bad fat, making room for the good stuff to happen in your body. I’m not a nutritionist, but this is the basic stuff anyone with a little nutritional knowledge can attest to. Fiber is like the responsible clean-up crew that every event needs. In this case an event would just be a meal being digested.

Personally, I found that fiber could help me lower my risk for heart-attack and stroke. Since those two items are waiting for me like a couple bullies at three o’clock by the flag pole, I need to find a way to fight them off. My numbers are down and fiber has helped.

My point is, dietary fiber is the “stop and frisk” bodily law enforcement program that effectively rids the lower intestinal tract of loitering material and toxic elements you find on the way out of town. It’s unpleasant to talk about, but in the end, the area is cleaner and ultimately safer, but in order to have that, you’re going to have to make a sacrifice. You’re going to have to make a conscious effort to eat more fiber.

Let’s all be adults and admit that you’re not getting enough. Well, maybe 1% of you are getting enough, but the rest of us, including me, are not. How could I possibly know that? I just do. You may know you’re getting some, but most of you do not know if you’re getting enough.

Here’s how I know you’re not getting enough fiber. The recommended amount of daily dietary fiber is between twenty-five and thirty grams, some say thirty-five. (Side note: if you know how much 25 to 30 grams weigh and live inside the United States, you may have or had a cocaine problem. Get some help.) Hopefully none of you (In the U.S.) understand metric measures, but it is how our nutrients are displayed on the side of our packaged food thanks to a tragic Rock, Paper, Scissors loss between President Jimmy Carter and Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau—not the Doonesbury guy.

The average American gets about fourteen grams a day. Now, doing some calculations in my head, that is about half the recommended amount of daily fiber.

Thirty grams of fiber doesn’t seem like that much to ingest in a day, but take a look at the fiber content of the food you eat in a day. I’ll help you out with some.

An eight inch banana has about three grams of fiber in it. That means, and marvel at my math skills here, that you would have to eat ten of those things to get the fiber you need every day. That’s 80 inches of bananas. That’s six feet, eight inches worth of banana.

Some of you are undoubtedly asking the questions: “Wait, how are these eight inches of bananas measured?” “Are we correcting for the banana’s natural curve, like on a Mercator Projection Map? Or are we just measuring from tip to tip? Because when you factor in the arc of the fruit, you technically end up with more banana than eight inches.” The answer is: “Shut up! You’d never eat ten bananas!”

You could eat seven and one half “medium” apples. That means nine large apples in Kansas and six small apples in Washington. Seven-and-a-half apples a day, keeps the gastro-intestinal specialist away; or so the old Civil War era plantation rhyme goes.

You could eat a quart of chopped carrots. That’s the size milk you buy when you are single or are a character on a sitcom. Even spaced out over three meals, that’s a tedious amount of orange to be confronted with ingesting.

You could eat a pint and a quarter of black beans. Not refried, but husky, inconsistently textured black beans. The kind that will inevitably spread out over one of your front teeth at a business lunch, giving the illusion that you are either a meth addict or a member of a fight club.

Or you could face the other, opposite danger, by eating just nine dried figs, just nine. But heed this warning friends: If you start eating dried figs, it is easy to lose count, and if you happen to eat all nine or more in one sitting, they will rumble their way through your small intestine like the boulder that chased Indiana Jones in the opening scene of Raider’s of the Lost Ark. Remember… that boulder stopped short at the exit.

So this is a dilemma! How on Earth do we get enough fiber during a day? It sounds difficult because it is difficult. I have found that my answer lies in a mixture of two pieces.

First, I try to eat fibery foods, I know what foods have lots of fiber and I seek them out: lots of veggies if available, fruits, beans…figs. (Who the heck has figs readily available?) But I know it isn’t enough. The point is, I try to get foods naturally full of fiber somewhere into my daily diet.

The second part is my secret weapon. I use supplements based from crushed up psyllium husk. Psyllium is a plant that produces a fiber filled seed husk that when ground up, can be ingested with water to add that fiber into your diet. It’s the main ingredient in mild fiber laxatives like Citrucel and my personal favorite, Metamucil. It aids in providing excellent soluble fiber that just happens to regulate a healthy bowel movement. There, I said it.

Laxatives like these should not be confused with the more urgent or impatient laxatives that are the subject of practical jokes and used for “quick escapes.” They aren’t the ones used inappropriately for weight lose or in comedy films. They simply move things along in a steady, natural manner.

I have a couple doses a day, spread out to keep an even pace. Sometimes I will send some down ahead of a meal that I know will be particularly greasy or buttery. I’ve found my evenings go much better that way, no pun intended. Holiday dinners are much more enjoyable, AND they help me feel fuller through the day, which helps me control my appetite and leaves me less hungry. I also travel with it, to keep it apart of a daily routine.

I preach on this subject and am proud of it. I feel like people misunderstand the idea and if they just had a little more information, would be willing to try something new. I’m always eager to share some with anyone who will give it a shot.

I have had some instances of social awkwardness with my fiber laxatives. The first one was at the supermarket, when I was picking some up with other odd grocery items.

I know some checkers have to look at what you’re buying and try to make sense of it. If a person buys a loaf of bread, bologna, mayonnaise and a six pack of beer, the checker would naturally think, “overnight babysitter.” But if a person buys two different sized lightbulbs, six onions, a short can of Sprite, aspirin, shoelaces and a box of baking soda, you wouldn’t know what the heck was going on.

I had wandered up to the checkout counter with one of the second group of items. When she got to the big can—I always buy the big can—of Metamucil, she held it up to me with an inquisitive look.

“This is…?” She asked in her medium-thick Ukrainian accent.

“Embarassing,” I thought, “this is…embarrassing.”

“What this is?” she asked before hazarding a pretty good guess, “is drink, Mehbe? Or cleanser?”

“Yep,” I said, “it’s a bit of both.”

She looked at me because she wasn’t putting it together.

“It’s fiber,” I said, making a motion with both hands down the front of my lower digestive tract before reaching the bottom and, realizing how weird my crude sign language was, attempted to recover by spreading my fingers and jetting my hands out quickly before moving them back up in front of my head like jazz hands/spirit fingers. Yes, it was awkward for both of us. But she understood, and now we both were standing there thinking about my colon.

Next up in my basket, tampons and condoms, ask me about those lady. If you thought my sign language was weird before… I didn’t have those other two items.

The next awesome Metamucil moment was when I was returning home from a business trip to Miami. While I was there, I had run out of fiber and had hit the drugstore to replenish. The drugstore didn’t have any of the handy pre-packaged travel pouches that I can add easily to a bottle of water and shake up. But they did have a really big can that was on sale for an excellent price. I could simply buy that and then take it home and use it there. It didn’t have to be travel size, and the dollar to psyllium husk ratio was so excellent, how could I NOT?

The problem came at the security checkpoint. It’s just a bunch of brownish powder in an unassuming half-gallon canister. What could go wrong? At worst, they could think it was anthrax, at best they would mistake it for heroin. Either way, I was clueless as I slid the bag through and then slogged through the metal detector to wait for my bags on the other end.

“What’s this?” hollered a large airport security screener, holding up my huge cylinder of Metamucil for everyone flying Delta, Alaska, and Southwest to see.

Everybody looks when the security line stops. Everybody. Because everyone wants to see if there’s a bomb or a piece of lingerie. So everyone’s head was pointed at the extra-large Orange embarrassment, held aloft as if it was the conclusive evidence of a kangaroo trial. I heard snickers and stifled laughter toward the poor bastard that had his laxative humiliation on display for all to see—soon to be revealed by my raised hand as me.

I heard one mother directly behind me whisper to her college-aged daughter, “Wow, that person must really have to go,” followed by giggling from the both of them.

I seized the moment and caught the mother’s eye and held it with a stone cold face, as I raised my arm beckoning the agent over to me, “Over here, that’s me!” maintaining eye contact, really drilling in the shame to the mother, before breaking it off with a smile and a wink.

When confronted with this situation, I immediately wanted to answer, “Oh, that, yes, well that is colon Kool-Aide.” However, I looked just past the large TSA agent and saw the “absolutely NO JOKING” sign and thought better of saying that. “It’s powdered poop,” I said, thinking it was less funny, but technically true.

“Excuse me?” said the agent, giving me another shot at staying out of airport jail.

“It’s a fiber laxative. It’s technically just a dietary fiber supplement,” turning to the mother and daughter, “everyone here should try it.”

“Oh, alright, well, we’ll just run it through again.”

“So will I,” I thought.

I chatted the security agent up about it. He had questions about the health benefits and I gave him what little I know. “You can have that can if you take it home and give it a shot for a week or two.”

“I’m not allowed to,” he said, though I could tell he was tempted.

“What do you mean?” I asked with a deadpan face, “Are you saying you aren’t allowed to accept an open container of an ingestible laxative as a gift from someone you are screening for nefarious activity?”

“Yeah, that’s about right,” he said.

“What is this world coming to?”

The guard smiled and waved me and my fiber laced carry-on off to my gate.

Just two of the opportunities I’ve had to introduce strangers to the wonders of regularity. There will undoubtedly be more. Who knows? In a few years there will probably be a study that says fiber is what has been killing us all, and we need to try to find a 100% fiber free food. That’s how it always seems to go, but for now, I really am delighted at how a high-fiber diet has made my life better, and that’s the Damm truth.