High-Fiber Diet May be Effective in Treating Asthma

A diet rich in fiber may be effective in treating asthma, according to Stuff.

Fiber typically consumed in fruits and vegetables seems to help the immune system activity that leads to certain conditions such as irritable bowel syndrome, Chron's disease, and possibly even colon cancer. When people consume a lot of fruits and vegetables as part of their daily diet, the bacteria that naturally occur in the intestines help digest the fiber. The microbes in the body take soluble fibers such as apples, pears, berries, citrus fruits, and onions and ferments it into specific types of fatty acids that then interacts with immune cells. This aids in keeping inflammation monitored.

Immunologist Benjamin Marsland of the University of Lausanne and his colleagues put a group of mice on a low-fiber diet to test their hypothesis. After two weeks, the scientists had the animals sniff an allergen derived from dust mites, a known trigger of human allergy and asthma. The mice showed exaggerated asthmatic responses, including inflammatory compounds in the lungs and the constricted airways that cause the wheezing and shortness of breath common among asthma sufferers.

A second group of mice that received a diet rich in pecrin for two weeks before getting the dust mite extract showed a reduced inflammatory response. The scientists involved in the study also analyzed the feces of mice on normal, low and high-fiber diets. Kinds of bacteria that best able to produce anti-inflammatory fatty acids were about twice as prevalent among mice that were given pectin. They also found proportionally higher amounts of fatty acids not only in the stool of the pectin-eating mice, but also in their blood.