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Eating too much cured meats like salami, chorizo and bacon can worsen symptoms of respiratory diseases like emphysema and chronic bronchitis and lead to a trip to the hospital, says a new study.
Published in the European Respiratory Journal last week, a team of Spanish researchers say they've found a link between the consumption of cured meats and the increased number of hospital admissions among people suffering from chronic pulmonary disease (COPD).
The umbrella term is used for a number of respiratory illnesses caused by inflammation in the lungs.
For their study, researchers worked with 274 COPD patients from their first hospital admission and monitored them for the next two years. Participants also provided information on their cured meat consumption.
Their conclusion? People who eat large quantities of cured meats -- identified as more than a slice of ham or equivalent a day -- were more likely to experience exacerbated symptoms and be admitted to hospital.
Researchers believe the problem lies in the nitrites which act as preservatives and anti-bacterial agents in the meats -- substances which have also been shown to cause a reaction and damage tissue in the lungs.
While previous research has shown that increased consumption of cured meats like hot dogs and salami can lead to an increased risk of developing COPD, the Spanish researchers say theirs is the first to show that eating processed meats can also inflame and worsen symptoms.
Processed and cured red meats, which are high in sodium and nitrites, have also been linked to the development of Type 2 diabetes, heart disease and bowel cancer.
WASHINGTON: Eating a portion of processed red meat daily can boost a person's risk of dying young by up to 20 per cent, said a long-running US study of more than 120,000 people released on Monday.
While the research by Harvard University experts offers more evidence that eating red meat increases the risk of heart disease and cancer, it also counsels that substituting fish and poultry may lower early death risk.
"This study provides clear evidence that regular consumption of red meat, especially processed meat, contributes substantially to premature death," said Frank Hu, senior author of the study in the Archives of Internal Medicine.
Researchers gleaned their data from a study of 37,698 men who were followed for 22 years and 83,644 women who were tracked for 28 years.
Subjects answered surveys about their eating habits every four years.
Those who ate a card-deck-sized serving of unprocessed red meat each day on average saw a 13 per cent higher risk of dying than those who did not eat red meat as frequently.
And if the red meat was processed, like in a hot dog or two slices of bacon, that risk jumped to 20 per cent.
However, substituting nuts for red meat lowered total mortality risk by 19 per cent, while poultry or whole grains lowered the risk 14 per cent and fish did so by seven per cent.
The authors said between seven and nine per cent of all deaths in the study "could be prevented if all the participants consumed fewer than 0.5 servings per day of total red meat."
Processed red meat has been shown to contain ingredients such as saturated fat, sodium, nitrites and some carcinogens that are linked to many chronic ailments including heart disease and cancer.
"More than 75 per cent of the $2.6 trillion in annual US health care costs are from chronic disease," said an accompanying commentary by Dean Ornish, a physician and dietary expert at the University of California, San Francisco.
"Eating less red meat is likely to reduce morbidity from these illnesses, thereby reducing health care costs."
A separate study, also led by Hu but published in Circulation, an American Heart Association journal, found that men who drank sugar-sweetened beverages daily faced a 20 per cent higher risk of heart disease than men who did not.
The study tracked more than 42,000 men, most of them Caucasian, over 22 years and found higher heart risks, as higher levels of inflammation and harmful lipids known as triglycerides in daily sweet-drinkers.
The effects were not seen in men who drank as many as two sugar-sweetened beverages per week.
According to Hu, the research "provides strong justification for reducing sugary beverage consumption among patients, and more importantly, in the general population."
Heart disease is the biggest killer in the United States and top risk factors include obesity, smoking, lack of exercise, diabetes and poor eating habits.-AFP/ac
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