Psyllium may also help you lose weight, according to George Blackburn, M.D., Ph.D., chief of the Nutrition/Metabolism Laboratory at New England Deaconess Hospital in Boston. High-fiber foods take longer to digest, so your stomach feels full longer and you eat less.
Just don’t take that as license to eat anything you want as long as you follow it with a few teaspoons of fiber. “There’s a rumor going around that you can lose weight on ice cream and candy bars as long as you send them down the hatch with some fiber,: says Dr. Blackburn. “The claim is that the fiber will escort a large portion of the calories out the back door. That’s a wild exaggeration.”
When you’re ready to lower your cholesterol, the first step is to switch to a low-fat diet and to include some oat bran in our meals. Then says Peter Kwiterovich, Jr., M.D., author of Beyond cholesterol: The Johns Hopkins Complete Guide for Avoiding Heart Disease, if your cholesterol level is still borderline high (200 to 240) or high (over 240) ask your doctor if you should be taking one teaspoon of powdered psyllium three times a day to achieve and additional reduction. Metamucil is probably the best-known psyllium product, but there are dozens of brands of psyllium in powdered and tablet form at pharmacies and health-food stores. Dr. Smith of Mount Sinai recommends stirring powdered psyllium into an eight-ounce glass of water before meals.
If you begin your by with a high-fiber breakfast ( a one ounce serving of Kellogg’s Heartwise cereal, which contains psyllium, gives you close to a teaspoon of soluble fiber), you can skip your morning teaspoon of psyllium and take only two teaspoons later.