Research

Mixed

High adherence to the Mediterranean diet is associated with higher defecation frequency and more pronounced gastrointestinal symptomatology (pain, bloating) compared to low adherence.

If you increase your adherence to a Mediterranean diet, expect your bowel movements to become more frequent. However, be prepared for a potential increase in gastrointestinal symptoms, specifically abdominal pain and bloating, which were significantly higher in high-adherence groups in this study.

ModerateQualifiesMEDIUM confidence
Subjects in the high-adherence tertile reported greater total number of evacuations during the 7-d period compared with the low-adherence tertile (P = 0·028)... scores of pain (P = 0·029) and bloating were higher (P = 0·028)... in the high compared with the low tertile.
Evdokia K. Mitsou et al. · British Journal Of Nutrition · 2017

Why this rating

Cross-sectional data; symptom scores are self-reported and subjective.

Source

Adherence to the Mediterranean diet is associated with the gut microbiota pattern and gastrointestinal characteristics in an adult population

Evdokia K. Mitsou et al. · British Journal Of Nutrition · 2017

DOI 10.1017/s0007114517001593

cross_sectional · n=100Cited 320×
Read the paper
DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10

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