Health Bud

An estimated 30 million Americans have diverticulitis flare up. At least 200,000 of these persons are hospitalized each year because of this disease–at an annual cost of approximately $ 300 million. Persons younger than age 40 are rarely affected. The prevalence among those in their 50s is about 5%; nearly half of all those in their 90s are affected.

Interestingly, just before the beginning of this century, the presence of colonic diverticula in members of industrialized western populations was considered a pathologic curiosity. The continuing increase in the prevalence of this disorder seems to correspond to the introduction around 1880 of the roller milling of wheat. In other words, before processes were developed for the refining of flour and sugar (eg, the removal of fiber), diverticulosis was an infrequent occurrence, even among persons in western societies, and its frequency remains low today among populations (in the Orient and in Africa, for example) who consume a high-fiber diet.