Diet Sodas May Raise Risk of Dementia and Stroke, Study Finds

I dropped all sodas years ago.

Diet Sodas May Raise Risk of Dementia and Stroke, Study Finds

People who drink diet sodas daily have three times the risk of stroke and dementia compared to people who rarely drink them, researchers reported Thursday.

It’s yet another piece of evidence that diet drinks are not a healthy alternative to sugary drinks, and suggests that people need to limit both, doctors said.

Diet Sodas Raise Risk of Dementia and Stroke, Study Finds

April 20, 201701:38 

While the findings do not prove that diet drinks damage brains, they support other studies that show people who drink them frequently tend to have poorer health.

The researchers, led by Matthew Pase of the Boston University School of Medicine and colleagues, studied more than 4,000 people for their report, published in the journal Stroke.

“We found that those people who were consuming diet soda on a daily basis were three times as likely to develop both stroke and dementia within the next 10 years as compared to those who did not consume diet soda,” Pase told NBC News.

“Both sugar-sweetened and artificially sweetened soft drinks may be hard on the brain."

“Our study provides further evidence to link consumption of artificially sweetened beverages with the risk of stroke,” the team wrote.

“To our knowledge, our study is the first to report an association between daily intake of artificially sweetened soft drink and an increased risk of both all-cause dementia and dementia because of Alzheimer’s disease.”

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The team did not ask people which artificial sweetener they used. Some of those in the diet drinks were likely saccharin, acesulfame, aspartame, neotame, or sucralose, the researchers said.

Mario Tama / Getty Images

To their surprise, the team did not find the same risk for sugar-sweetened beverages. But they found other troubling signs. “In our first study we found that those who more frequently consume sugary beverages such as fruit juices and sodas had greater evidence of accelerated brain aging such as overall smaller brain volumes, they had poorer memory function and they also had smaller hippocampus, which is an area of the brain important for memory consolidation,” Pase said.

And other experts pointed out that sugary drinks are a major cause of obesity, diabetes, stroke and other ills.

“Both sugar-sweetened and artificially sweetened soft drinks may be hard on the brain,” Dr. Ralph Sacco, chairman of the neurology department at the University of Miami, and colleagues wrote in a commentary in the same journal.

Sacco, a former president of the American Heart Association, led another study that found women who drank diet sodas had a higher risk of stroke, heart attack and other types of heart death.

“Now with the growing number of studies that suggest a relationship between artificial sweetened beverages and vascular risk, I would say reach for a bottle of water before you reach for your artificial sweetened beverages,” Sacco told NBC News.

Drinking two or more diet beverages a day linked to high risk of stroke, heart attacks

And this reason to not do any type of soda:

Dementia Linked To Beverage Drunk By 50% Of People Every Day

  The latest here:

Drinking two or more diet beverages a day linked to high risk of stroke, heart attacks

(CNN)More bad news for diet soda lovers: Drinking two or more of any kind of artificially sweetened drinks a day is linked to an increased risk of clot-based strokes, heart attacks and early death in women over 50, according to a new study by the American Heart Association and American Stroke Association.

The risks were highest for women with no history of heart disease or diabetes and women who were obese or African-American.

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Previous research has shown a link between diet beverages and stroke, dementia, Type 2 diabetes, obesity and metabolic syndrome, which can lead to heart disease and diabetes.

"This is another confirmatory study showing a relationship between artificially sweetened beverages and vascular risks. While we cannot show causation, this is a yellow flag to pay attention to these findings," said American Academy of Neurology President Dr. Ralph Sacco, who was not involved in the latest study.

"What is it about these diet drinks?" asked lead study author Yasmin Mossavar-Rahmani, an associate professor of clinical epidemiology and population health at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx, New York. "Is it something about the sweeteners? Are they doing something to our gut health and metabolism? These are questions we need answered."

Weight and race increased risk

More than 80,000 postmenopausal US women participating in the Women's Health Initiative, a long-term national study, were asked how often they drank one 12-fluid-ounce serving of diet beverage over the previous three months. Their health outcomes were tracked for an average of 11.9 years, Mossavar-Rahmani said.

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"Previous studies have focused on the bigger picture of cardiovascular disease," she said. "Our study focused on the most common type of stroke, ischemic stroke and its subtypes, one of which was small-vessel blockage. The other interesting thing about our study is that we looked at who is more vulnerable."

After controlling for lifestyle factors, the study found that women who consumed two or more artificially sweetened beverages each day were 31% more likely to have a clot-based stroke, 29% more likely to have heart disease and 16% more likely to die from any cause than women who drank diet beverages less than once a week or not at all.

The analysis then looked at women with no history of heart disease and diabetes, which are key risk factors for stroke. The risks rose dramatically if those women were obese or African-American.

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"Women who, at the onset of our study, didn't have any heart disease or diabetes and were obese, were twice as likely to have a clot-based or ischemic stroke," Mossavar-Rahmani said.

There was no such stroke linkage to women who were of normal weight or overweight. Overweight is defined as having a body mass index of 25 to 30, while obesity is over 30.

"African-American women without a previous history of heart or diabetes were about four times as likely to have a clot-based stroke," Mossavar-Rahmani said, but that stroke risk didn't apply to white women.

"In white women, the risks were different," she said. "They were more 1.31% as likely to have coronary heart disease."

The study also looked at various subtypes of ischemic stroke, which doctors use to determine treatment and medication choices. They found that small-artery occlusion, a common type of stroke caused by blockage of the smallest arteries inside the brain, was nearly 2½ times more common in women who had no heart disease or diabetes but were heavy consumers of diet drinks.

This result held true regardless of race or weight.

Only an association

This study, as well as other research on the connection between diet beverages and vascular disease, is observational and cannot show cause and effect. That's a major limitation, researchers say, as it's impossible to determine whether the association is due to a specific artificial sweetener, a type of beverage or another hidden health issue.

"Postmenopausal women tend to have higher risk for vascular disease because they are lacking the protective effects of natural hormones," North Carolina cardiologist Dr. Kevin Campbell said, which could contribute to increased risk for heart disease and stroke.

"This association may also be contributed to by rising blood pressure and sugars that were not yet diagnosed as hypertension or diabetes but warranted weight loss," thus leading the women in the study to take up diet beverages, said Dr. Keri Peterson, medical advisor for the Calorie Control Council, an international association representing the low- and reduced-calorie food and beverage industry.

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Yet, said Sacco, who is also chairman of neurology at the University of Miami's Miller School of Medicine, the more studies there are coming up with the same associations, "the more you begin to question. The more you begin to feel strongly about the association being real."

Critics also point to the possible benefit of artificially sweetened drinks for weight loss, a critical issue considering the epidemic of obesity in the United States and around the world.

For example, two World Health Organization meta-analyses of existing research on non-sugar sweetners called those studies "low-quality and "inconclusive," said William Dermody Jr., vice president of media and public affairs for the American Beverage Association, a trade organization.

"Low- and no-calorie sweeteners have been deemed safe by regulatory bodies around the world," Dermody said, "and there is a substantial body of research that shows these sweeteners are a useful tool for helping people reduce sugar consumption.

"We support the WHO's call for people to reduce sugar in their diets, and we are doing our part by creating innovative beverages with less sugar or zero sugar, clear calorie labeling, responsible marketing practices and smaller package sizes."

Dementia Linked To Beverage Drunk By 50% Of People Every Day

Only rarely do I ever drink a soda, it is coffee or wine all the time for the best benefits, sometimes  cranberry pomegranate juice. Beer is quite acceptable since at bars you never know how long ago that bottle of wine was opened. 
http://www.spring.org.uk/2017/04/beverage-dementia.php

Half of Americans use a drink linked to dementia on any given day.

Both sugary and artificially sweetened ‘diet’ drinks are linked to dementia by two new studies.

People who drink sugary beverages tend to have poorer memories, smaller brains and a smaller hippocampus (an area vital for learning and memory).

Diet sodas, though, don’t seem much safer.

A follow-up study found that people who drink diet sodas are three times more likely to develop dementia and stroke, compared to those who drink none.

Both studies show associations, so it doesn’t prove cause and effect.

Professor Sudha Seshadri, who led the research, said:

“These studies are not the be-all and end-all, but it’s strong data and a very strong suggestion.

It looks like there is not very much of an upside to having sugary drinks, and substituting the sugar with artificial sweeteners doesn’t seem to help.

Maybe good old-fashioned water is something we need to get used to.”

Excess sugar intake has long been linked to obesity, diabetes  and heart disease.

Its effect on the brain is more of an unknown (although what are the chances it’s going to be good for us?!)

More surprising is the link between diet sodas and dementia.

The researchers suggest it could be down to the artificial sweeteners used.

Sugar is toxic to the brain

This is certainly not the first study to link sugar intake with dementia.

A recent study linked excess sugar intake with Alzheimer’s disease.

It suggested that too much glucose (sugar) in the diet damages a vital enzyme which helps fight the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease.

High blood sugar levels have also been linked to memory problems.

The researchers in this study think that sugar could have a ‘toxic’ effect on the brain.

The studies were published in the journals Stroke and Alzheimer’s & Dementia (Pase et al., 2017; Pase et al., 2017).