Parents, teachers, bosses, and column writers too: You need to understand something disheartening about your jobs in order to be really effective at them. No matter how sound and sensible it is, there’s no way to insure the advice you give will ever be taken.

But you can increase the odds.

Maintain a neutral tone when offering it. Sounding too friendly and helpful makes some people suspicious. Sounding smug and condescending causes many people to focus more on that than your words.

Above all else, be logical and matter-of-fact. And if you fear your advice sounds excessive, give at least one clear-cut example of it working to counterbalance that.

I offered such an example in a column years ago after stating a nutritional truth that clearly comes off as over-the-top. That there are no neutral foods and beverages, that every single food and beverage choice you make either helps or hurts your health.

So I wrote about what happened to me the one time I decided not to consume my normal fuel before a three-hour, ambitious afternoon bike ride, but to treat myself to a seemingly neutral food to eat before exercise, a Philadelphia-style soft pretzel that contained just about the same number of calories.

The last hour of the ride was a total waste of time. Not only did I lose the power in my legs in the blink of an eye, but I also became so lightheaded and shaky that the ride home was downright dangerous. I almost rode off the road twice.

This story merits retelling because there’s new evidence that a few bad food choices can do more than ruin bike rides.

So much so that Dr. Karen Madsen, a professor in the Department of Medicine Division of Gastroenterology at the University of Alberta, told ScienceDaily “this idea that it’s OK to eat well all week and indulge in junk food on the weekend is flawed.” She said this after leading a study intended to determine how long it takes a change in your diet to impact your health.

Madsen and colleagues fed one group of mice a sugar-laden diet for two days while feeding a second group a balanced one. Afterwards, they attempted to chemically create colitis in both groups and found the sugar-laden group more susceptible, as well as more likely to have other gastrointestinal problems.

Since Madsen and her colleagues didn’t expect health problems to emerge after just two days of bad eating, she called the results published in the November 2019 issue of Scientific Reports “really surprising.”

I imagine you, however, might call the results really trivial. After all, there has to be a host of diet-related problems that concern you more than an inflamed colon.

Which is exactly why I need to share the details of this study with you.

In only two days, the sugar-loaded diet significantly increased “bad” gut bacteria in the mice while decreasing the “good” gut bacteria. Madsen found this combination increased the gut permeability in the mice “quite dramatically.”

While some gut permeability in mice and humans is natural, it becomes unhealthy when large cracks or holes in the gut lining develop and partially digested food and toxins in those foods “escape” and affect other tissue. This escape in human beings creates the sort of inflammation that can lead to autoimmune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.

Moreover, an overall increase in bad gut bacteria has been linked to many of the most-pressing health problems today: obesity, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, certain cancers, and chronic depression.

Conversely, good gut bacteria has been linked to preventing weight gain, fighting infection, improving brain function, and regulating high blood sugar levels. But good gut bacteria thrives not on sugar but on fiber-rich food, something only 5 percent of Americans eat enough of.

According to the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, men should get 33.6 grams and women should get 28 grams of fiber every day. Most fall woefully short of even approaching those numbers.

Worse, I tell those who tell me optimal health is their ultimate goal to double those numbers the government’s suggested amonuts.

To illustrate the positive effects of fiber, consider research published in the March 2017 issue of the journal Science. It found the composition of the bacteria in the colons of diabetics changed for the better after following a high-fiber diet for 12 weeks. The total number of the 15 known strains of bacteria that convert soluble fiber into the specific short-chained fatty acids that lower high blood sugar and cholesterol levels had increased significantly.

In addition, the diabetics placed on the high-fiber diet had lower blood sugar levels after fasting and eating - and experienced enough weight loss naturally that the researchers deemed it “significant.”