Drinking Diet Soda Increases Risk Of Stroke

No matter what new chemical concoctions the corporate food companies put in “diet” (i.e. low calorie) carbonated beverages (variously known as soda, pop or other terms depending on where you live) to replace sugar, it’s not natural and it’s not good for you. Just think of the various health risks later discovered from saccharin and aspartame. Now it turns out that stroke is another of the health hazards. Stick to sugar — in moderation! From the South Asia Mail:

New research is raising fresh worries about diet soft drinks, noting that people who drink them every day have a higher risk for strokes and heart attacks compared to those who drink no pop at all.

But the researchers are quick to point out that their study does not prove that diet soft drinks cause heart attacks or strokes. They note there could be other aspects about diet pop drinkers that accounts for the increased risk that they observed.

The research was presented this week at the American Stroke Association’s International Stroke Conference 2011. It found that people who drank diet pop every day had a 48 per cent higher risk of stroke or heart attack than people who said they never drank the stuff.

The study’s lead researcher, Hannah Gardener, an epidemiologist at the University of Miami, says she has no idea why diet soft drinks could be risky.

It may be that people who drink lots of diet pop also tend to have a poor lifestyle that raises their stroke risk. That poor lifestyle could include smoking, drinking too much alcohol, not exercising enough or having high blood pressure and smoking.

However, the researchers tried to take into account these known stroke risk factors. And yet, they still didn’t see a change in the link between drinking diet pop and increased stroke risk.

“If our results are confirmed with future studies, then it would suggest that diet soda may not be the optimal substitute for sugar-sweetened beverages for protection against vascular outcomes,” Gardener said in a news release…

[continues in the South Asia Mail]