This is the best summary I could come up with:

NPR’s Short Wave spoke to Smith about what the appendix is good for and how a future where appendicitis can be prevented or treated without emergency surgery could be on the way.

Appendicitis is predominantly happening in the industrialized nations of the world — areas where fiber content of the diet tends to be lower.

So one hypothesis is that, with the lower fiber content, we’re more likely to get little pieces of food that’s being digested stuck [inside] the appendix and cut off blood supply and cause this inflammation.

The idea is that these days we do so much oversanitization, with all of our antibacterials and all our antibiotics that we take, that our immune systems are not developing properly because they don’t have exposure to the full range of pathogens that we would otherwise.

People are looking into antibiotics and other ways of treating appendicitis without completely removing it, given the evidence that is accumulating that it is in fact helpful for your health to have an appendix.

Studies have shown that infections with the really bad, nasty bacteria C. diff tend to be higher in people who have had their appendix removed.

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