Diverticulosis involves abnormal outpouchings from the wall of our colon, affecting most people

by the time they reached their 60s, whether they know it or not.

In as many as 10 to 25 percent of individuals, these outpouchings can become inflamed and turn

the diverticulosis into diverticulitis, resulting in hundreds of thousands of ER visits

and hospitalizations and sometimes even leading to perforation of the colon, which may have

a fatality rate as high as one in five.

But it wasn't always like this.

Diverticulosis only became a problem in the 20th century.

What is now a massive epidemic didn't even start showing up in medical textbooks until

1920.

Diverticulosis appeared to be a deficiency disease of Western civilization.

Just like scurvy is a deficiency disease caused by lack of vitamin C.

Diverticulosis may be a deficiency disease caused by lack of fiber.

Boul movements should be effortless.

But when we don't get enough fiber-containing foods in our diet like whole grains and beans, we have to strain to push unnaturally firm stools.

The pressure necessary to force along small, hard stools may essentially blow pouches out of

the wall of our colon, like when you squeeze one of those gel stress balls.

As we got better and better refining grains and stripping away the fiber, diverticulosis

rate shut up to epidemic levels, what about populations like those in rural Africa,

where they were eating up to the triple-digigrams a day that we as a species were meant to get

based on Paleolithic diet estimates and

paleo-phosolized feces, diverticuloses remained almost completely absent in areas that continued

...