A latest study which reveals that the consumption of artificially sweetened soft drinks, such as diet sodas, is associated with a higher risk of stroke and dementia, has once again driven home a very strong message – staying away from such beverages is good for health.
The study, published in the American Heart Association’s journal Stroke last Thursday, did not find any connection between those health risks and other sugary beverages, such as sugar-sweetened sodas, fruit juice and fruit drinks – though it is an established fact that excessive consumption of natural sugars is also harmful.
After looking at 10 years’ worth of data from 4,372 people, the research indicates that people need to look beyond the word ‘diet’ when making drink choices. Drinking at least one artificially sweetened beverage daily was associated with almost three times the risk of developing stroke or dementia compared to those who drank artificially sweetened beverages less than once a week, according to the research.
After adjustments for age, sex, education (for analysis of dementia), calorific intake, diet quality, and physical activity and smoking, higher recent and higher cumulative intake of artificially sweetened soft drinks were associated with an increased risk of ischaemic stroke, all-cause dementia and Alzheimer’s disease dementia. The co-authors announced that to their knowledge, their study is the first to report an association between daily intake of artificially sweetened soft drink and increased risk of both all-cause dementia and dementia because of Alzheimer’s disease.
There is little data on the health effects of diet drinks, which are popular among the general population, according to Matthew Pase, a senior research fellow in the department of neurology at Boston University School of Medicine and lead author of the new study.
The new study involved data on 2,888 adults older than 45 and 1,484 adults older than 60 from the town of Framingham, Massachusetts, US. The data came from the Framingham Heart Study, a project of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute and Boston University.
In the older-than-45 group, the researchers measured for stroke and in the older-than-60 group, they measured for dementia. The method of the study was to analyse how many sugary beverages and artificially sweetened soft drinks each person in the two different age groups drank, at various stages, between 1991 and 2001. This was compared with how many people suffered stroke or dementia over the next decade.
Compared to those who never drank artificially sweetened soft drinks, those who drank one a day were almost three times as likely to have an ischaemic stroke, caused by blocked blood vessels, and likely to be diagnosed with dementia.
Those who drank one to six artificially sweetened beverages a week were 2.6 times as likely to experience an ischaemic stroke but were no more likely to develop dementia. A total of 97 cases of incident stroke (82 ischaemic) and 81 cases of incident dementia (63 consistent with Alzheimer’s disease) were observed by the researchers.
Separate previous studies have shown an association between the intake of sugar-sweetened beverages and adverse health effects, such as type 2 diabetes, obesity, heart disease, stroke, and possibly even heart failure. So, caution is advised.
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