Diet Soft Drinks Linked to Heart Attack, Stroke Risk

Soft drink consumption linked to increased risk of stroke, heart attack, reveals study.

However, in contrast, it found that regular soft drink consumption and a more moderate intake of diet soft drinks do not appear to be linked to a higher risk of vascular events.

Colas are Bad For Health in the Long Run
Intake of regular soft drinks adds calories but diet colas don’t. However, expert opinion says that diet colas are not the best alternative to regular soft drinks.

In the current climate of escalating obesity rates, artificially sweetened soft drinks are marketed as healthier alternatives to sugar-sweetened beverages, due to their lack of calories. However, the long-term health consequences of drinking diet soft drinks remain unclear.

Hannah Gardener and her colleagues from the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine and at Columbia University Medical Center examined the relationship between both diet and regular soft drink consumption and risk of stroke, myocardial infarction (or heart attack), and vascular death.

Data were analyzed from 2,564 participants in the NIH-funded Northern Manhattan Study, which was designed to determine stroke incidence, risk factors and prognosis in a multi-ethnic urban population.

How to Deal with a Stroke - Signs - Symptoms - Risk Factors - Prevention
Stroke is a brain attack, which occurs when the blood supply to the brain is interrupted. It affects all age groups; according to the WHO, 15 million people are affected by stroke annually.

The researchers looked at how often individuals drank soft drinks - diet and regular - and the number of vascular events that occurred over a ten-year period.

They found that those who drank diet soft drinks daily were 43 percent more likely to have suffered a vascular event than those who drank none, after taking into account pre-existing vascular conditions such as metabolic syndrome, diabetes and high blood pressure.

Light diet soft drink users, i.e. those who drank between one a month and six a week, and those who chose regular soft drinks were not more likely to suffer vascular events.

"Our results suggest a potential association between daily diet soft drink consumption and vascular outcomes. However, the mechanisms by which soft drinks may affect vascular events are unclear. There is a need for further research before any conclusions can be drawn regarding the potential health consequences of diet soft drink consumption," Gardener concluded.

Quiz on Heart Attack
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The research appeared online in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, published by Springer.

Source-ANI