Latest Research Links Nitrates In Beef Jerky, Hot Dogs And Cured Meats To Manic Episodes
There’s a new Johns Hopkins Medicine study that showed nitrates which are preservatives used to stop the growth of bacteria and are found in foods such as jerky, hot dogs, and more cured meats have been linked to manic episodes.
What is mania?
Mania is a serious neuropsychiatric condition that’s commonly identified with the so-called wild part of a bipolar mood swing and the symptoms include euphoria, insomnia, hyperactivity, risk-taking behavior, and also detachment from reality.
This study was conducted on humans and rats as well and the experts and researchers found out that the rats have shown hyperactivity which is similar to mania in humans.
The study was conducted over 10 years with more than 1,000 participants split between people who have a history of mental illness and without any mental conditions.
Here are the study’s main results
36% of the study group were African American. Johns Hopkins reported the following:
“A study of their records between 2007 and 2017 showed that, unexpectedly, among people who had been hospitalized for mania, a history of eating cured meat before hospitalization were approximately 3.5 times higher than the group of people without a psychiatric disorder.”
The study went on and explained that “cured meats were not associated with a diagnosis of schizoaffective disorder, bipolar disorder in people not hospitalized for mania or in major depressive disorder. No other foods about which participants were queried had a significant association with any of the disorders, or with mania.”
Researchers found more interesting details. They discovered that consuming meat sticks such as beef jerky, or turkey jerky increase the odds of being in the mania group.
On the other hand, it seems that consuming salami or prosciutto. Cured meats which have been prepared through dehydration didn’t influence in any way the odds of being in the mania group.
More research is needed to find out cause and effect details.
Rada attended the courses in the Faculty of Letters, Romanian-English section, and finished the Faculty of Theatre and Television, Theatrical Journalism section, both within the framework of Babeş-Bolyai University of Cluj-Napoca. Up till now, she reviewed books, movies, and theatre-plays, enjoying subjects from the cultural niche. Her experience in writing also intersects the IT niche, given the fact that she worked as a content editor for firms that produce software for mobile devices. She is collaborating with online advertising agencies, writing articles for several websites and blogs.
