What Is Dietary Fiber?

Dietary fiber (fibre) is the indigestible part of plant foods that makes stool soft and thus enables smooth bowel movements, prevents constipation and reduces severity of hemorrhoids and diverticulosis. Other effects of fiber depend on the type – soluble or insoluble fiber (see below).

Dietary Fiber and Total Fiber

“Dietary fiber”, as noted on the ”Nutrition Facts Label” of commercial foods, is the original fiber present in the food. “Total fiber” consists of dietary fiber and added fiber – substances that are added to the original state of food to increase the fiber content or to change its physical properties. Pectin, for example, is added to jam to give it a gel form. In fiber content charts “total fiber” means a sum of soluble and insoluble fiber, though.

Soluble Fiber

Soluble fiber (viscous fiber) partially dissolves in water and forms a gel with it. Foods rich in soluble fiber include beans and other legumes (peas, soy, lentils), oats, barley, citrus fruits (oranges, grapefruit), psyllium husk and flax seed. Substances found in soluble fiber are gum, pectin and mucilage.

continue reading Dietary Fiber – Soluble vs. Insoluble Fiber

Normal Bowel Habit in a Newborn and Infant

The main symptom of infant constipation is not a low bowel movement frequency but a hard stool consistency.

Breastfed infants have stool of liquid or paste consistency from once after every feed to about once a week. Formula fed infants have stool of paste consistency once every one or two days. Infants on solid food have paste or formed stools, often containing parts of undigested food; bowel movement frequency depends on the type of the food.

Between the second and sixth week of life, frequency of bowel movements in infants often decreases because of improved absorption of nutrients in their intestines, thus leaving less residue to excrete, and decreased production of breast milk by their mothers. At this time babies also often start to strain before bowel movement and become increasingly irritated. From all this, parents often assume their babies are constipated, while they are really not.

continue reading Infant Constipation – Causes, Remedies for Newborn and Baby

What Are Intestinal Worms (Helminths)?

Human intestinal worms are parasites that live in the human intestine, eat bowel content or suck blood from the intestinal wall.

Intestinal worms may cause severe, life threatening infection, predominantly in children in tropical and subtropical areas where people often defecate on the ground: in rural parts of Africa, Middle East, South Asia, Indonesia and Central and South America. In people from Mediterranean parts of Europe or south parts of North America, they usually cause a relatively mild disease.

Presence of parasites of any kind (including intestinal worms) in or on the body is called infestation.

Helminth is a medical term for intestinal worm.

continue reading Human Intestinal Worms – Symptoms, Pictures, Treatment

What Does “Immune” and “Immunity” Mean?

Immune in medicine means “protected against infection”. Immunity means resistance against certain infections.

What Is Infection and Who Develops Infectious Disease?

Infection is an invasion of harmful microbes in the body. It depends on aggressiveness of microbes and our immunity, if a particular infection will cause a disease or not.

continue reading Human Immune System