Eating lots of hot dogs and beef jerky is perhaps not the wisest choice for physical health, but until recently, doing so seemed fine as far as mental health was concerned. But a new paper, released Wednesday in Molecular Psychiatry, has raised concerns about the connection between eating nitrated dry-cured meats and mania. One author of the study, Johns Hopkins pediatrics professor Dr. Robert Yolken, is here to set the record straight.
In the study, Yolken and his colleagues conducted a ten-year analysis of health and nutrition data on 1,101 people with and without psychiatric disorders, including mania, bipolar depression, major depression, and schizophrenia. The analysis showed that a history of eating nitrated dry-cured meat is linked to an increased likelihood of being hospitalized for mania — a complex and poorly understood characteristic feature of bipolar disorder. The link only applied to people hospitalized for manic episodes in particular — not bipolar disorder in general — and no causal relationship has been established. The researchers hypothesize that the underlying cause of the connection is the the consumption of nitrites and nitrates.
Nitrate-Cured Meats Like Jerky Linked to Hospitalization for Mania | Inverse