Steak, hamburgers, pork chops. While men may love loading up on red meat, new research is warning that too much could be tied to a painful stomach condition.
American researchers out of Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston are warning men about the risk of diverticulitis, a common inflammatory bowel condition. They warn that too much red meat could increase your risk of the condition.
Diverticulitis kicks in when the small pockets of the intestine get inflamed. The medical community isn’t sure what causes it, but they know that new cases of the condition are on the rise especially in younger people.
To try to figure out what may be the culprit for triggering diverticulitis, the scientists behind the new research looked at the eating habits of 46,500 men who took part in a large-scale study.
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They men were between 40 and 75 years old and joined the study between 1986 and 2012. Every few years they had to answer questions about their eating habits, specifically how often they would eat red meat, processed meat, chicken and fish.
Over the course of the 26-year study, 764 men ended up with diverticulitis.
Turns out, the men who ate the most red meat also relied more on painkillers. They smoked more, they were less likely to exercise and their fibre intake was lower.
If the men said they ate more chicken and fish, they tended to work out “vigorously,” they took Aspirin and fewer men in this group smoked.
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Across the board, the more red meat a man ate, the higher his risk was for developing diverticulitis.
“Compared with the lowest levels of consumption, the highest level of red meat intake was associated with a 58 per cent heightened risk of developing diverticulitis, with each daily serving associated with an 18 per cent increased risk,” the scientists said in a statement.
The risk peaked at six servings per week. After that, it didn’t matter how much red meat they were eating.
The researchers can’t pinpoint just how much red meat is too much when it comes to increasing the risk of diverticulitis in men. But they said that limiting red meat comes with a handful of benefits.
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Eating too much red meat has already been tied to other health issues from heart disease and stroke to diabetes.
Diverticulitis could last for a few hours to a week or more. The symptoms include stomach pain, fever and chills, bloating and gas, nausea and even loss of appetite.
The full findings were published in the journal Gut.
carmen.chai@globalnews.ca
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