In 2001, 230 members of a previous organisation for DD sufferers (NADD) completed a questionnaire about their symptoms. The results are shown in Table 1. (more…)
Posts Tagged ‘Bowel gas’
Pain with diverticular disease
Thursday, September 9th, 2010Keeping Moving
Thursday, August 26th, 2010African schoolchildren 33 English schoolboys 70
This is not the result of a rugby match but the start of the revolution in the treatment of diverticular disease (DD) in the 1970s. The figures are the average times in hours for food to pass through the digestive system (1) a measurement known as ‘transit time’ The difference in the two figures was attributed to the amount of fibre in the children’s diets. Researchers then tested this theory in adults, for example, adding fibre to a standard diet of five healthy young men reduced the mean transit time from 2.4 days to 1.6 days(2). People with DD had very little fibre in their diets and long transit times (3) (this was the medical treatment at the time so this finding was not surprising) Thus the fibre theory of cause, prevention and treatment of DD was born and dietary fibre has become an institution which has spread throughout medical research. As Dr le Fanu pointed out (4) it has never been demonstrated that those who get diseases eat more or less fibre than those who don’t, nor has it been demonstrated that eating more fibre will prevent diseases.
There is another way of reducing transit time. (more…)