Drinking two sugary sodas a day won't just make you fat — it'll shorten your life as well, according to a new study published in the American Journal of Public Health. Researchers at the University at California at San Francisco found that the sugary drinks shorten telomeres, the caps that keep chromosomes from unraveling and protect DNA from damage.
Telomeres shorten with age, and their length corresponds with biological aging. Short telomeres have been linked to many diseases of aging, including diabetes, heart disease, and some forms of cancer.
Researchers studied DNA from more than 5,300 participants ages 20 to 65. They found that drinking 20 ounces of soda a day shortened telomeres to the equivalent of an additional 4.6 years of aging, comparable to the effect of smoking.
"This is the first demonstration that soda is associated with telomere shortness," said the study's senior author Elissa Epel, Ph.D.
"Regular consumption of sugar-sweetened sodas might influence disease development, not only by straining the body's metabolic control of sugars, but also through accelerated cellular aging of tissues," she said.
"This finding held regardless of age, race, income and education level," she continued, and also added that telomeres begin to shorten long before the onset of disease.
"Further, although we only studied adults here," she added, "it is possible that soda consumption is associated with telomere shortening in children, as well."
Sugar-sweetened soft drinks were the only beverage that had an effect on telomeres.
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