The effects on the population regarding this increased soft drink consumption and the health of individual drinkers was the research topic of a recent study at the Boston University School of Medicine through the Farmingham Heart Study. Researchers found that persons consuming more than one soft drink per day had an increased risk of the factors that are associated with heart disease. Interestingly, both regular and diet soft drinks were seen as equal contributors to these threats to heart health.
These factors of heart disease risk have been clustered into a group of symptoms know as “Metabolic Syndrome.”
This grouping includes excess waist circumference, high blood pressure, elevated triglycerides (fats), elevated glucose levels, and a lower level of the good HDL cholesterol (high-density lipoprotein). According to the researchers, three or more of these factors present in the body indicates a higher risk for heart disease and for diabetes as well.
“We were struck by the fact that it didn’t matter whether it was a diet or regular soda that participants consumed, the association with increased risk was present,” said Ramachandran Vasan, M.D., and professor at Boston University School of Medicine. “In those who drink one or more soft drinks daily, there was an association of an increased risk of developing the metabolic syndrome.”
The Farmingham Study involved some 9,000 personal observations made in middle-aged men and women at 3 different times over a 4 year period. When this study began, researchers immediately observed that persons consuming more than one soft drink per day had a 48 percent higher presence of metabolic syndrome than those consuming one drink or less a day.
Also interesting was the increased risk noted over the course of the study for persons who had no evidence of a metabolic risk at the start, but who consumed one or more soft drinks per day. At the end of 4 years, those who consumed this amount of soft drink had a 44 percent higher risk of developing new-onset metabolic syndrome. Also noted for this group was a 31 percent greater risk of developing new on-set obesity, a 30 percent increase in developing increased waist size, a 25 percent increase in triglycerides and glucose levels, and a 32 percent risk of having lower HDL levels. These results were published in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association.
With obesity statistics for American adults and children rising each year and with the onset of diabetes also rising, a change in lifestyle and health practices is obviously overdue.
“Every human being is the author of his own health or disease.”
Gautama Siddharta
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