William Atkins
Wednesday, 27 August 2008 20:31
Science -
Health
Page 2 of 3
Strate and her colleagues published the results of their study in the Tuesday, August 27, 2008 issue of the
Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). Its title is “
Nut, Corn, and Popcorn Consumption and the Incidence of Diverticular Disease.”
Strate’s team used the Harvard University (Massachusetts) School of Public Health’s
Health Professionals Follow-up Study (HPFS) to study 47,228 men aged 40 to 75 years with respect to incident diverticulitis and diverticular bleeding.
At the beginning of the study, all of the male subjects did not have the medical condition diverticulosis, and did not have any incidences of cancer or inflammatory bowel disease.
After eighteen-years of study, the Strate researchers found there were 801 incident cases of diverticulitis and 383 incident cases of diverticular bleeding.
However, the researchers report,
“We found inverse associations between nut and popcorn consumption and the risk of diverticulitis.”
The subjects who ate nuts, corn, or popcorn frequently were found by the researchers to have no more risk in developing diverticulitis or diverticular bleeding than men who rarely ate such foods.
In fact, the Strate team stated that men who ate nuts at least twice a week had a 20% lower risk of diverticulitis than men who ate nuts less than once a month.
In addition, they found that men who ate popcorn at least twice a week had a 28% lower risk of diverticulitis than the men who ate popcorn less than once a month.
Page three continues the team's findings.
