Dr. Trisha Pasricha

Psyllium husk does a really good job.

It's kind of the great equalizer of just finding a nice neutral spot for that poop to land.

Ideally, you'd get up to about 10 grams a day of psyllium.

And that actually can be a lot if you go from zero to 100 really quickly.

So there's two things I tell people about psyllium when they're just getting started, which is one,

because it's a soluble fiber, you got to drink it with a lot of water, like a full 10 ounce glass of water per teaspoon.

That's one, because you want that water to hit it in your small bowel and form a gel.

Two, go slow.

So start at even

half of one teaspoon, a fourth of one teaspoon.

See how you do for a couple of days and then ramp up.

Because like a lot of things, if you were to just suddenly start on a high fiber diet, even from just the foods that you're eating, if you do too much too quickly, I'm seeing a lot of this with our fiber maxing social media trend, you're going to feel sick within the next two days.

And you're going to say, I give up.

This is horrible.

I don't feel good.

But if you just ramped up slowly, given your body time to adjust, you could hit that high dose over time.

And actually just realize how wonderful life is once you're that regular.

Okay.

I'm so glad you asked that question because yes, you should be doing some of these anyway.

And I think that's the whole issue here in gut health is that sometimes people think some of these interventions are just for people who have a problem, who identify as feeling ill or having symptoms.