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June 28, 2007
Diverticular shift
Medical knowledge is shifting sand and many have estimated the frequency of the cycles as 5-15 years. Diverticular disease has undergone at least one shift in my careerlife from high fiber to no fiber and back again.
Now there is a study that reverses the dogma of no seeds for diverticular disease. Popcorn and nuts might not only not cause or aggravate diverticular problems. They actually were shown to decrease the risk of diverticulitis.
I only have the news blurb and don't see that the study was published but the way I read it, they found almost 1200 cases of bleeding or diverticulitis over 18 years in 47,000 men. Back-calculating means 1/4000 risk over two decades. A reduction of 20% means that eating seeds lowers the risk from 4/16000 to 3/16000, meaning that 1/16000 are helped by eating seeds.
The big point is that it never really mattered and like much of preventative medicine, it is much ado about nothing.
| By Robert Maddox | 11:15 AM