The Relationship Between Calcium Intake and Physical Activity to Abnormal Bleeding in the Lower Gastrointestinal Tract

Résumé du livre

The primary purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between daily calcium intake and abnormal bleeding in the lower gastrointestinal tract in individuals over 40 years of age. A secondary purpose was to determine if there were significant differences in physical activity levels between individuals with occult blood in the stool and a comparable group of men and women who were free of bowel disease. Thirty adult patients from three separate family practice clinics who tested positive for occult blood in the stool on Hemoccult II analysis as the result of documented premalignant changes in the distal colon comprised the experimental group. This group was matched by age and sex with a healthy group of controls for comparison of daily calcium intakes and physical activity levels. A semiquantitative food frequency questionnaire, specific for dietary calcium intake and a physical activity index adapted from the Lipid Research Clinic's Prevalence Study served as the instruments. Adjusting for age and sex differences, group means for daily average calcium intakes and levels of physical activity were analyzed using a general linear models procedure of analysis of variance. Proportional differences in three levels of calcium intakes between the groups were assessed by chi-square analysis. A canonical discriminant function was conducted to further identify those variables that best separated the diseased group from the controls. No significant difference was noted between the groups for daily calcium intake. However, men and women in both groups exhibited mean daily calcium intakes that were significantly lower than the recommended dietary allowance for calcium. A significant difference (p