The things we eat in our everyday life could matter in certain diseases and might be affecting us about which we don’t know. Our diet specifies how much nutritional value we are intaking and how smoothly our system is working.
People are now more into being vegan and completely diverting their food habits into fruits, vegetables, and other healthy plant-based food resources, rather than relying on meat or poultry-based food products. There are several reasons for it, amongst which one of the most prominent ones is believed to be meat’s consumption linked with several diseases.
Dietary habits define us and our health in so many ways, and we might not know how a specific food might be promoting something profound in our body. Asthma, which is one of the most widely occurring respiratory diseases, has proved to be hazardous to so many of us, specifically since COVID-19 impacted the lives of people worldwide.
The various research groups in several prestigious medical centers and universities try their best to bring out the ultimate cure to asthma, but nothing so far. A disease like asthma poses a threat to our respiratory tract infection, especially during changing weathers or a particular environment. Although the condition has treatments, it could not be entirely cured till now.
Based on how an asthmatic patient turns severe with time, several theories are proposed. One of the recent ones is linked with asthma during childhood, which becomes deeply rooted to only grow as one advance in age.
New data found in a study by the researchers at Mount Sinai indicates an association between higher meat consumption in childhood and asthma symptoms. Meat contains pro-inflammatory compounds known as advanced glycation end-products (AGEs), and AGEs are mostly linked/responsible for wheezing in children or adults.
Wheezing is one of the main symptoms in an asthmatic person; the more meat consumption, the more problems reported related to wheezing. The lead study author, an assistant professor of pediatrics and pulmonary, critical care, and sleep medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, Dr. Sonali Bose, told a source about the study.
Dr. Bose says that their study framework follows the relationship between dietary health with airway infection and respiratory disease in people. In their study, the researchers tend to observe previous extended research, which says that high pro-inflammatory foods involving meat and saturated fats are positively linked to asthma cases during childhood or adulthood.
These researchers mentioned a need for further in-depth study to accurately make any changes to the children’s daily diet to reduce asthma during childhood.
The Research: the outlook of Meats and Asthma symptom relationship
The National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), a survey evaluation done for adults and kids’ health and nutritional status via interviews and physical exams, is an initiative by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The researcher’s group with the study lead author Dr. Bose collected a sample from NHANES of about 4,388 children between ages 2 and 17. The data had two groups; one with kids diagnosed with asthma previously and those who did not have asthma. The data collected from NHANES was based on a food frequency questionnaire with 139 items on it.
The questionnaire recorded each child’s consumption of red meat, poultry, processed meats, etc., as well as any respiratory symptoms shown by these kids. The researchers then controlled the extraneous variables like age, gender or asthma in these kids to analyze the ACE compound after the meat consumption.
The analysis recorded showed that the children with higher ACE showed more wheezing signs or, at times, so severe that it required medication or immediate medical attention. Most of the time, wheezing reported in kids was observed before bedtime or while performing any exercise.
A source mentions that on secondary analysis, it was followed that higher consumption of meat had a significantly more chance of reporting severe wheezing leading to sleep disturbances as compared to the people who are fewer meat-eaters or none at all. One of the sources, Everyday Health, mentions that AGE compounds are higher in foods that are grilled, baked, fried at high temperature where the compound attaches itself “to a receptor in the lungs that mediates airway inflammation”.
The lead study author Dr. Bose also mentions that even children with a healthy diet, measured through their BMI, have a higher level of ACE.
The Conclusion
Several researchers pose a doubt and skeptic attitude towards this study, saying that it is a helpful framework to develop further findings on it and know where to develop a cure. Still, the review is not strong enough to recommend low meat intake in children so that there isn’t any approach to asthma in a child.
An expert also mentioned that the relationship requires a lot more work to understand why it is happening and its cause. Parents who cook their meat in high temperatures with extra oil and flames might harm their children. Meat consumption, especially red meat, involves a significant amount of saturated fat that could harm any way possible.
For now, Hene, more evidence and close observation for an extended period, are required to reach a more scientifically firm conclusion and validate to everyone collectively worldwide. Do visit an expert if your child suffers from any respiratory symptoms to better diagnose, advise, and treat.
