Transcription
For the past 28 days, I took two tablespoons of psyllium husk three times a day. And if I'm being honest, I wasn't really ready for what happened. So, in today's video, I'm going to share with you my experience max dosing psyllium husk, the good, the bad, and the ugly. And I'm also going to go through an overview of psyllium husk, its benefits, its drawbacks, its side effects, and who should and shouldn't be taking it.
If you want to skip all that and go straight to my personal experience, then you can skip ahead to that part of the video.
So, psyllium husk is a soluble fiber that comes from the seeds of a plant called the plantago ovada. It's been around forever. And when most people think about it, they think about old people and constipation. And yes, at low doses, that is kind of what it is. But here's what most people miss. The dose is everything. At low doses, psyllium husk can become a laxative. In that therapeutic doses, it can become something else entirely.
When you consume a soluble fiber like psyllium husk at higher doses, it absorbs water and forms a thick gel inside your gut. And that gel does several really interesting things simultaneously. Now, to get an idea of this, let me take you to my kitchen.
Welcome to my kitchen. I want to show you briefly what happens when psyllium husk goes into your gut. So, we got some psyllium husk over here. I'm going to do let's do two tablespoons here if you want to see what it looks like. Looks like that. Oh. Oh. Going to pour that in. What psyllium husk does is it forms a gel in your gut and it actually slows digestion. So when we add water to this just like this. Let's go stir it up a little bit. Let's pretend this is like my gut juices are in here. Now, if you look at this right here, you'll see that it's already starting to coagulate a little bit.
>> Two minutes later, >> this is after about 2 minutes. Let's look in here. Look at that. This is what's happening inside of your stomach when psyllium husk gets into it. And this is also the reason why we want to drink a lot of water. You want the water to do a lot of the work instead of having your stomach take all of this coagulation and all of this thickness and try to digest it on its own because you'll learn later that it can be painful. Not being able to walk and thinking what the hell is happening with me right now.
All right, back to my gym. So, the first thing that psyllium husk does is that it slows gastric emptying, meaning that your stomach empties more slowly. This also means that your nutrients hit your bloodstream gradually instead of all at once. And second, it helps blunt blood sugar. And as you saw from what happened in my kitchen, that gel physically slows glucose absorption. So after meals, you're not getting that sharp insulin response that leads to the afternoon slump that most people know all too well.
But the most fascinating part about soluble fiber at this dose is that it triggers the release of satiety hormones, specifically GLP-1 and PYY. Now, these are the same hormones that Ozempic is designed to mimic through the drug. Now, I'm not saying that psyllium husk is Ozempic, but the underlying mechanism of blunting appetite through hormonal signaling is real. And the research backs this up. And think about that for a second. People are paying hundreds, if not thousands of dollars for a drug that mimics something that your gut produces naturally when you eat enough soluble fiber.
Also, research shows that high-dose soluble fiber can improve your lipid panels and also feed the gut bacteria by producing short-chain fatty acids that are involved in regulating appetite and inflammation. And this is not bro science. It is well documented.
Now, even though psyllium husk is one of the safer things that you can put into your body, there are a couple of groups who need to be more careful with it. Number one, if you are on a medication, you need to space out your psyllium husk at least 2 hours away from your pills. And it's due to the fact that fiber slows the absorption of everything, including your drugs. Number two, if you have IBS or gut motility issues or there's anything structurally going wrong with your digestive tract, you have to talk to your doctor before ramping up fiber like this. And I would also advise people who are on GLP1s to avoid using psyllium husk because the GLP1s are already slowing digestion. You don't want to make it any slower than it actually is.
And as always, this is not medical advice. I'm not a doctor. I don't pretend to play one on the internet. I'm just a guy who experiments on himself and reports back. So do your own due diligence.
Now, as for people who would benefit from psyllium husk, it would be people who want to feel fuller from their meals because that's what fiber does. It helps you become more satiated. It is also for someone who is dealing with blood sugar issues and also if someone wants to improve their lipid panels. Psyllium husk has been shown to be a net positive.
And all right, here's what happened when I ran this experiment. And I've been using psyllium husk for years before. I was doing one tablespoon in the morning mixed with water on my Greek yogurt. I talked about it on this video over here, but it didn't do anything particularly notable and I thought that it was just a gut health thing. But around four months ago, I came across some research on high-dose fiber and appetite regulation. And I decided, screw it. I wanted to test this out properly. So, six tablespoons a day across three meals for 28 days.
And I have to admit, the first week was pretty rough. I didn't realize that my gut had to adjust to the new level of fiber I was putting into it. So I had bloating within the first few days. I was also feeling low energy and I was wondering why this was happening. And that's when I realized that I made my first mistake which was not drinking enough water. You see when you get a sudden increase in fiber it can cause digestive stress like things like bloating, cramps and discomfort. And this is physically draining especially when you and your gut are not used to it. Thankfully I learned from my mistake. I increased my water intake and that faded by around day three. And I could already feel the benefits within the first week. I was feeling fuller from each meal. It was almost like the food noise had turned down because of how satiated I felt on a day-to-day basis. And also, I can tell that my poo was getting a lot more sturdier and more regular. But more on that in a second.
Everything was going great. And then I made my second big mistake, and it was a bad one. About 10 days in, I took two tablespoons of psyllium husk right before sitting down to do a heavy dinner where I had around 300 grams of salmon and white fish. Within 30 minutes, I was feeling waves of intense bloating hitting me. And do you remember that movie Alien where the baby aliens live inside the humans and then they start pushing against the walls of their stomach? Well, that's exactly what it felt like. And every time that I laid down, it just got worse because lying down actually removes the gravity that helps gas and contents flow through your gut. And this was made worse by the fact that I could barely stand up and walk. And this lasted for hours. I remember holding my stomach, not being able to lay down, not being able to walk, and thinking, "What the hell is happening with me right now?"
And I actually ran this through my AI nutrition app that I'm building, and here's what it told me. Basically, 2 tablespoons of psyllium husk right before a heavy meal likely pulled a massive amount of water into my gut, and it rapidly swelled into a thick gel, suddenly increasing the volume and pressure of my stomach that had already been loaded with dense protein. And that combination slows gastric emptying, traps the gas, and produces severe wavelike cramps, especially when you lie down. They call it a fiber balloon, and it's one of the worst pains that I felt in a few years. This is when I learned that the correct way to take this is at least 45 minutes to an hour before meals. That is the perfect time to take psyllium husk. And when you take them between your meals, it almost acts like a zero-calorie snack that makes you feel full. I also found that that timing was the best way to optimize the appetite blunting effect.
So, by the end of week two, once I had the timing dialed in, something shifted. My appetite dropped noticeably. I wasn't hungry the way I normally am. Normally, between lunch and dinner, I'm usually a little bit peckish. I'm thinking about what my next meal should be. But during this experiment, I'd make it to dinner without even having any food on my mind at all. And it wasn't just that I was hungry. It's because I was full. And there's a huge difference between not eating because you're forcing yourself not to eat and not eating because the signal just isn't there.
Now, this may be too TMI and you can skip this part if you want, but one of the best aspects of doing this test was the effect it had on my butt. First off, I used to fart a lot and so much so that my wife, God bless her soul, thought that I would just fart all over the house the whole time for the rest of our marriage. After about 3 weeks of being on psyllium husk, I noticed that my flatulence had decreased significantly. And the reason is is that psyllium is mostly non or mildly fermentable viscous soluble fiber and it produces relatively little colonic gas itself and it can dilute or even slow the fermentation of other fibers. So the gut microbiota generates less gas and that makes you fart less. But the coolest part was when I was going to do my number twos. Now if you look at the Bristol chart over here, I went down from a six all the way down to a three. They were harder, a bit firmer, and pushing them out was a lot easier, and maybe a little bit more enjoyable, and everyone knows that eating more fiber leads to better poos.
So, that's what happened. So, enough talking about my poo. Pretty sure I had enough of that already. Let's move on.
At the end of the 28-day experiment, the final benefit I saw was consistent fat loss. I dropped 4 lbs in that window, and it was modest, but directional. My energy after meals was noticeably more stable and I found that my LDL cholesterol moved in the right direction when I did my blood work. Now the only thing that changed was doing psyllium husk.
Now one more thing worth mentioning is that when I stopped the 28 days the effects just didn't vanish immediately. It took around 2 to 3 days for my normal hunger levels to return. And that to me actually says that something real was happening physiologically and it wasn't just a placebo effect.
Now something I have to let you know is that I probably would not do this the same way that I did it. And if someone was thinking about doing the same test, here's how I would do the protocol differently. First, I would make sure I just don't jump into doing a max dose because that proved to be a little bit too much for my gut to take. I would start with one tablespoon per day and then do that for about a week and let my gut adjust. I would then build it up slowly, adding another tablespoon or two every single week until I worked my way up to 15 to 20 grams of psyllium husk. And with each dosage of psyllium husk, I would make sure I'm drinking at least 8 ounces of water. So with that said, do not dry scoop this. You need a liquid for this to work. And lastly, I would spread those doses across three meals, but I would make sure that those doses are between my major meals, not right before them. This way, the appetite blunting effect is working throughout the entire day.
Now, there is a bigger point that I want to make, and it's the fact that most people are dramatically underdosing fiber. The recommended intake is 25 to 35 g fiber a day, but the average person gets about half of that. And even if people are hitting that number, they're usually just hitting the floor and not optimizing. Now, you don't have to just get your fiber through psyllium husk. The best ways to get it are through vegetables, fruits, and legumes, and using things like psyllium husk or even chia seeds as fiber insurance. I want to emphasize that this is not a replacement for eating real food. It's just a tool, and it's a tool that makes eating less a little bit easier.
So, after doing this experiment, I found that I was feeling fuller, my gut health was getting better, and my pooing was immaculate. But I'm not going to continue to max dose psyllium husk. I will be taking one to two servings a day between meals. And the reason is simple. I just don't want more steps involved in my nutrition. I do believe that you have to go to your extremes in order to find your balance. So instead of just taking one tablespoon a day, I'm going to be taking four spread across two meals.
And by the way, I created a free guide on the supplement protocol we use with our clients to help them get lean, boost energy, and get healthy. It's in the description below or you can find it in the first comment. Thanks for watching. I'll see you on the next one.