It isn’t just the poop benefits, this is solid results from long-term fiber research
The following written content from Elana Spivak
Dietary fiber can do wonders for your health. Numerous studies show that increasing fiber intake improves everything from bowel movements to heart health.
Science shows that those who eat a balanced diet that’s high in fiber have a lower risk for chronic diseases later in life. But for the first time, there’s evidence that one particular diet can prevent hereditary cancer, thanks to a 10-year follow-up on an international trial.
A recent paper published in the journal Cancer Prevention Research presents a decade-long follow-up on an international trial called CAPP2. The researchers from the Universities of Newcastle and Leeds examined the effects of two interventions in those with an inherited syndrome that makes them prone to some cancers, and the findings show promise.
This paper builds on 30 years of research, beginning with a worldwide study of nearly 1,000 people with the disease Lynch syndrome. In this illness, a person inherits a defective copy of a gene that encodes for proteins that repair our DNA. As a result, those with Lynch syndrome accumulate DNA damage throughout the body. DNA damage is a fundamental cause of cancer, so those with Lynch are more susceptible to some particular cancers, including colorectal, uterine, stomach, ovarian, pancreatic, and prostate.
In 2020, a paper published in the journal The Lancet demonstrated that taking 600 milligrams of household aspirin daily over 10 years was associated with a significantly lower risk of colorectal cancer in those with Lynch syndrome. This recent paper looks at adding another treatment in addition to aspirin: resistant starch.
Resistant starch is a type of dietary fiber found naturally in legumes, potatoes, oats, rice, and slightly under-ripe bananas. For this paper, participants were split into four groups and each group received one of the following treatments: starch and aspirin, starch and a placebo, a placebo and aspirin, or two placebos. This way, the researchers could see both starch’s and aspirin’s effects separately as well as compounded. Participants took their interventions for an average of two years.
“When we designed the study, we hoped to see an effect on bowel cancer,” John Mathers, director of Human Nutrition Research Centre at Newcastle University and the paper’s first author, tells Inverse. “But there was absolutely no effect in bowel cancer. The numbers of bowel cancers were almost identical in the two groups.”
Instead, they found that in groups who took resistant starch, the incidence of other types of cancer — mostly those in the upper gastrointestinal tract, such as stomach cancer — was reduced by about 50 percent. This effect persisted even 10 years after participating in the trial.
“We [had] no idea that was going to happen,” Mathers says.
The team had good reason to look at resistant starch in the first place, but their hypothesis wasn’t quite right.
“There was quite a bit of evidence that resistant starch had biological effects that we thought would be protective against cancer,” Mathers says. His team initially thought these benefits came from the possibility that resistant starch produced a molecule called butyrate in large amounts. Read more from Inverse
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