Can jerky affect mental illness? The study suggests that he can

Salty or dried pork meats can aggravate the symptoms of some people with mental illness, researchers reported Wednesday

. were three times more likely to say that they had eaten cured meats compared to people who had no psychiatric disorder.

Researchers are quick to say that they have not proven that eating salty meats causes mental illness, or even Jerky hurts someone with, say, bipolar illness. But they have conducted other experiments suggesting that nitrates in processed meats could affect the mental state of someone. "We are not trying to scare people," said Dr. Robert Yolken of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

"We found that the history of eating nitrated dried meat but not other meat or fish products was strongly and independently badociated with the current craze," writes Yolken and his colleagues in their published report in the journal Molecular Psychiatry. 19659004] "Deli products were generally in the form of meat sticks, dried beef and dried turkey, which are deli products generally prepared with added nitrates."

Yolken said that they took into account the possibility that with mental illness could eat differently. "It was not fair that people with mania have an abnormal diet," he said.

And he has a theory for what could happen. "We think the key is probably inflammation," Yolken said.

Nitrates in foods are linked to cancer, which is in turn related to inflammation. And Yolken says that other studies have shown that people who have manic episodes show signs of inflammation in their bodies. "We want to raise the question of whether inflammatory processes are important in psychiatric disorders," he said.

How to test the potential effects of nitrates or other food ingredients in humans? "It is very difficult to show the cause and effect of feeding in humans," said Yolken

The researchers therefore tried to test rats, in their giving dried beef and loaded with nitrates every other day. rat rats without nitrate.

Rats that ate nitrates seemed more hyperactive, the team reported. "Animals do not have the mania in the sense that people do," Yolken said. But some aspects of rat biology and human biology are similar and it seems that nitrates have altered the microbiome – intestinal bacteria – of rats.

Yolken and other researchers have shown that altering the microbiome can affect the symptoms of psychiatric disorders, including schizophrenia. We do not really know why, but more and more research shows that bacteria living in and on our bodies profoundly affect health.

Yolken believes that the balance of bacteria can play a role in inflammation, which can in turn affect the symptoms of mania in people genetically predisposed to psychiatric illness.

"I think that for people with mania, and perhaps other disorders, there may be environmental triggers that you can control." External experts noted that the work is very preliminary.

"We would need much more evidence of a link before making recommendations to patients or the public regarding the risk of eating meat and mania" Anthony Cleare, Professor of Psychiatry at King & # 39; s London College who did not participate in the study.