Key Topics:

1) You don’t have to feel “constipated” to be constipated.
2) Unexplained diarrhea (especially if it is explosive, is intermittent or if there is a bad odor) is in fact more often than not due to unrecognized constipation!
3) Just as a heart attack can present in many different ways, so can constipation.
4) Offensive odor almost always means constipation. It doesn’t matter what your stool looks like.
5) Gas is a waste. When you are bloated, this means the gas is trapped inside. Ergo, this is constipation; something is preventing the waste from making its way out.
6) Most fruits and vegetables do not contain the right type of fiber for regularity.
7) I don’t recommend more fiber than what manufacturers and dietitians advise. The difference is that I tell you what that means in the bathroom and how to get there.
8) Not all types of fiber behave the same way in your gut. This book will help you select the fiber that will work best for you.
9) Fiber foods and fiber supplements are very weak laxatives. They are great to maintain excellent bowel habits, but laxatives are often required initially to allow your GI tract to accept the fiber.
10) Osmotic laxatives (milk of magnesia, magnesium tablets, prunes, apples, MiraLax) are “the good guys” that can actually strengthen and tone your colon.
11) The colon often needs a strong initial push. Once it is moving, less intervention is needed. Your body’s adaptation to laxatives is a process that usually takes weeks and often several months or even possibly longer.
12) The fiber program actually lets you expand your food choices, rather than restricting them!
13) Reflux is often caused by or worsened by constipation and excess gas, whether or not you think you have a problem in that department.
14) Most people do not have to learn to live with their IBS!
15) Elie Metchnikoff first proposed autointoxication as the cause of numerous degenerative illnesses more than a century ago.
16) Like an aquarium, your body uses filtration systems to remove toxic waste materials. Dietary fiber scrubs your bile as it circulates in your body, which is second in importance only to your kidneys in ejecting toxins outside your body.
17) The theory that most cancers and Alzheimer’s disease are preventable illnesses (or can be significantly delayed in onset) with a high-quality fiber program should be carefully studied. Prevention is vastly less expensive than treating a problem once it arises.