This Doctor Says Fiber Is The Closest Thing To A Nutritional Holy Grail with Dr. Karan

Dhru Purohit Show

Dhru Purohit

Medicine, Health & Fitness, Alternative Health

4.7 • 3.4K Ratings

🗓️ 20 August 2025

⏱️ 73 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This episode is brought to you by Vuori, One Skin, Momentous, and LMNT. Fiber is one of the most overlooked nutrients in the modern diet, and most of us aren’t getting enough. Lower fiber intake is linked to increased risks of chronic disease, digestive problems, and poor metabolic health, but boosting your intake can be simple and enjoyable. Today’s guest shares the unique benefits of different types of fiber and how gradually increasing intake can support gut health, cholesterol levels, liver function, and other health benefits. Today on The Dhru Purohit Show, Dhru sits down with Dr. Karan Rajan to unpack the critical role of fiber in our diets and why most of us aren’t getting nearly enough. He shares his personal health journey and how increasing his fiber intake transformed his well-being. Dr. Karan discusses the different types of fiber, their science-backed benefits, and simple, practical ways to work more high-fiber foods into your day. He also explains the hidden dangers of fiber deficiency, its link to chronic diseases like colon cancer, and the surprising potential of fiber to help flush out microplastics from the body. Dr. Karan Rajan is a doctor and one of the biggest health & science creators on social media. Since 2020, he has amassed over 11 million followers across TikTok, YouTube, Instagram & Facebook with his refreshingly frank medical myth-busting and health advice videos which combine education, entertainment, and generous servings of dark humour. In this episode, Dhru and Dr. Rajan dive into: The fiber deficiency crisis (00:10) Understanding fiber's role in gut health (1:29) Types of fiber and how to increase our intake (05:55) The evolution of dietary choices (13:23) Navigating fiber sensitivities (17:20) Essential high-fiber foods (25:42) The consequences of low fiber intake (33:10) Fiber and colon cancer risk (37:23) Understanding the role of fiber in removing microplastics (40:06) Fiber's impact on cholesterol and heart health (45:47) Optimizing liver health (50:53) Rethinking the 10,000 steps myth (53:40) Patterns over perfection in health (59:05) The importance of sleep in health (1:00:42) Smart supplementation strategies (1:05:01) Final thoughts and takeaways (1:09:09) Also mentioned in this episode: Dr. Karan’s Blog Post on Pantry Staples For more on Dr. Rajan, follow him on Facebook, X/Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, LinkedIn, or visit his Website. This episode is brought to you by Vuori, One Skin, Momentous, and LMNT. Right now, Vuori is offering my listeners 20% off their FIRST purchase. Get yourself some of the most comfortable and versatile clothing on the planet at vuori.com/DHRU and discover the versatility of Vuori Clothing. Right now, One Skin is offering my community 15% off; just go to oneskin.co and use the coupon code DHRU to save 15% and give your skin the scientifically proven, gentle care it deserves. Optimize your energy and mental clarity with the purest form of creatine, made by and used by the best, now available in convenient single-serve lemon flavor packets. Head to livemomentous.com and use code DHRU for 35% off your first subscription. Right now, LMNT is offering my listeners a free sample pack with any purchase. Head over to drinkLMNT.com/dhru today. Sign up for Dhru’s Try This Newsletter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Essentially, I like to look at who else is eating high volumes of fiber or what are other
0:05.5	healthy cohorts out there that we can study. And we have studied them. If we look at modern
0:11.9	day hunter gatherers, indigenous tribes, and a lot of populations across the world, and what we
0:18.6	like to call non-industrialized populations who are eating,
0:22.6	you know, whole foods that are minimally processed. So the closest one that we have to our
0:28.0	ancient hunter-gatherer ancestors who are considered a modern-day version of that is the
0:32.3	Hadza tribe in Tanzania. These guys are eating upwards of 100, 120 grams of fiber a day. I'm not getting
0:40.4	anywhere near that, obviously, but they also correlate that fiber intake with probably the lowest
0:47.2	comorbidity index across any other populations across the world. They have the lowest
0:53.0	incidence of chronic disease, metabolic
0:55.0	disease, and the other vices that we associate with modern lifestyle. A lot of that we can attribute
1:00.4	down to their lifestyles, their movement, their sleeping habits, community, but also importantly,
1:05.5	the fiber as well. Let's zoom out a little bit and help us understand the role that fiber plays in the body.
1:12.1	You talked a little about these hunter-gatherer tribes that are out there, but what about modern-day
1:17.4	research and what it tells us about fiber and its relationship to keeping us full and even
1:23.7	things like gLP, which so many more people are familiar with these days.
1:28.5	Yeah. So if you think about fiber at its most basic level, humans physiologically,
1:35.9	with the enzymes that we've got and the way that our digestive processes run physiologically,
1:43.0	we can't do much with fiber in its, you know, in and of itself.
1:47.5	It is essentially just a substrate for our gut microbiome and the microbes and specifically the bacteria,
1:54.3	which reside in our colon, to ferment them and then produce short-chain fatty acids from the fermentation. So essentially,
2:02.6	we thrive on bacterial byproducts. You know, we, this bacterial poop is gold for us.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Dhru Purohit, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Dhru Purohit and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.