Maintaining Cholesterol Levels
Soluble fibre helps in lowering the "bad cholesterol" levels. Research suggests this happens due to fibres' ability to reduce the amount of bile stored by our intestines. When fibre interferes with the absorption of bile by the intestines, the bile is excreted with the faeces. Due to this loss of bile, the lives needs to make more bile salts, for which the body needs cholesterol. To obtain this cholesterol, the liver produces LDL receptors whose only job is to pull cholesterol out of the LDL molecules stored in the blood stream. Thus, the more bile salts that need to be made, the more cholesterol is pulled out of the blood.