Steady Belly
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Reading list
A short, honest list. Every clinical source here is linked so you can check it yourself rather than take our word for it — and where something has real limits, those are written down too.
Start here
If you read nothing else on this page, read the study that overturned the advice you were probably given.
47,228 men followed for 18 years. The men who ate the most popcorn had a 28% lower risk of diverticulitis; nuts, 20% lower. Corn showed no link either way. This is the paper that retired the "no nuts, seeds or popcorn" rule — and it's still being handed out on discharge sheets nearly two decades later.
Read it if you've been told to avoid seeds forever and want to know where that came from.
It studied men aged 40–75. It's the best evidence available on this question, not the last word for everyone.
Books
An honest caveat up front: none of these is about diverticulitis. There is no good, current, general-audience book on this specific condition — which is a large part of why this app exists. What follows are books on fiber, digestion and the gut-brain link by authors with real clinical credentials, chosen because they're useful to someone managing a recovery.
The most directly relevant book here, because fiber is the puzzle in diverticulitis recovery — the thing that hurts you mid-flare and protects you afterward. Good on why variety of plant fiber matters more than raw grams.
Best for the maintenance stage, once you're ramping fiber back up and want to understand what you're feeding.
Written for general gut health, not for recovery staging. Do not use it to decide when to advance a stage — it doesn't address flares.
On the two-way link between stress and digestion. Relevant if you've noticed your symptoms track with hard weeks — the thing Steady Belly's stress logging exists to help you see.
Best if stress looks like one of your patterns and you want to understand the mechanism.
Explanatory rather than practical. Few concrete steps to take away.
The friendliest introduction to how digestion actually works. Worth it if you were diagnosed without ever really being taught what your colon does.
Best in the first weeks, when you're trying to understand the basics without being lectured.
General anatomy and physiology. Diverticular disease barely comes up.
Clinical references
These are the references behind Steady Belly's own educational content. All freely readable.
The clinical overview: what it is, how it's diagnosed, how it's treated, when it's complicated. Written for clinicians, so it's dense — but it's the least filtered picture you'll find.
Who gets this, how often, and at what cost. The source for most of the numbers quoted about the condition, including the roughly 450,000 US emergency visits a year.
The clearest plain-language summary of clear-liquid and low-fiber eating during a flare. A good second opinion on anything the app's food stages tell you.
Why this is showing up earlier and harder in people under 50. Useful if you were diagnosed young and were told it's an older person's condition.
A gentler read on the same trend, written for patients rather than clinicians.
On how presentation and emergency-department outcomes differ across groups. Worth reading if your experience hasn't matched the standard description.
Creators
We were asked to include content creators, and decided not to. Recommending someone on a health page means vouching for what they say next, and we can't check that. Steady Belly's own content hasn't been through clinical review yet either — it would be a strange moment to start ranking other people's.
What's more useful is knowing how to judge them yourself. Diverticulitis advice online is unusually bad, and the tells are consistent:
If you find someone genuinely good, tell us — support@steadybelly.app. We'd rather add names you've vetted in real life than names we guessed at.