Scientists Have Linked High Diet Soda Consumption To A Greater Risk Of Stoke In Women
It's another bad day for diet soda drinkers. While you've no doubt already seen headlines proclaiming how bad/very bad/not that bad diet soda is for you, a new study is adding more evidence to the not-so-good heap. This particular study looked at nearly 82,000 post-menopausal women from the Women’s Health Initiative Observational Study. The larger study has been following more than 96,000 women since as early as 1993.
The women were asked to self-report their artificially sweetened beverage consumption. Just over 5 percent consumed two or more such drinks a day, with 64 percent categorized as infrequent consumers, meaning they drink 1 or less such drinks a week. Those who drank the most diet drinks "had significantly greater likelihood of all end points," meaning stroke, coronary heart disease, and all-cause mortality (that last one is a term used by scientists to refer to death from any cause).
Interestingly, among the women in the study, those who drank more diet drinks tended to have higher educational levels and a higher income, were more likely to be overweight or obese, exercised less, consumed more calories, and ate a less healthy diet overall.
Since this was an observational study based on self-reported data, other lifestyle factors could be at play. However, researchers concluded that the results of this study "add to the potentially harmful association of consuming high quantities of artificially sweetened beverages with these health outcomes."
Again, there's no shortage of studies looking at the effects of drinking soda on different populations. A 2015 study that reported on soda drinkers overall (sweetened and unsweetened) found drinking two or more sodas a day put men at a 23 percent greater risk of developing heart failure. So, probably best to limit your consumption, if you are a regular drinker. May I suggest a weekly diet soda break?
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