Putting Out the Fire Inside
For years, he thought he was eating enough fiber. A salad here, a banana there, the occasional bowl of oatmeal. It felt balanced. But when he began looking more closely at the science, he realized: fiber wasn’t a number on a label. It was a language. And most of his meals had only been speaking fragments.
Most people in the West eat 10–15 grams of fiber a day. Better than nothing - but far below the 25–30 grams recommended by major guidelines, and far from the 35–40 grams linked to stronger microbial diversity in studies. Fiber wasn’t just “roughage” either. There were resistant starches, soluble fibers, polyphenol-rich skins, and oligosaccharides - each one feeding a different guild of microbes, each shaping the metabolic symphony in a unique way.
So he decided to make a change. Not a supplement. Not powders. Real food.
- Breakfast: soaked chia and flax with blueberries and sometimes cooked apple peel.
- Lunch: lentil salad with fennel, purple cabbage, herbs, and olive oil.
- Dinner: beans, Jerusalem artichokes (not his favorite), spinach, and fermented garlic.
Snacks were cold sweet potatoes and green banana chips - resistant starch for the gut’s deepest fermenters.
The first few weeks were rough. His gut rumbled like a storm, gas and bloating signaling a microbial power struggle. But he reminded himself - this was adaptation, not failure. By the end of the week, things shifted. Stool normalized, energy smoothed out, and his continuous glucose monitor showed gentler curves, even with carb-heavy meals.
The effect wasn’t magic - it was metabolism working as designed. Fiber-fed microbes produced short-chain fatty acids like butyrate, calming inflammation, fortifying the gut barrier, and even improving how his cells handled glucose. He felt steadier - not euphoric, just… aligned.
Still, he kept perspective. Fiber wasn’t a cure-all. Stress, sleep, environmental exposures, and genetics all mattered too. But he finally understood: his body wasn’t broken. It had simply been underfed in the way it was meant to be nourished.
Adding fiber didn’t silence every signal - it translated them. His microbes weren’t passive passengers. They were active partners, waiting for the right fuel to do their job.
And for the first time, he stopped thinking of fiber as filler. It was fuel. Ancient, essential, and - at least for him - the missing piece in lowering the fire inside.
Next week: “Cravings Are Clues” — decoding hunger signals through the lens of microbial imbalance and neurochemistry.