Soda increases the risk of heart failure, suggests a study that followed 42,000 Swedish men over a 12-year period, and a two-a-day habit could kill you.
The study published in the British Medical Journal's Heart followed the food habits of the men for more than a decade and discovered that those drinking at least two sweetened beverages a day had a 23 percent higher risk of going into heart failure,
according to CNN.
The ages of the men participating in the study ranged from 45 and 79. The men were asked to record their average consumption of 96 food and drink items over the preceding year in a food frequency questionnaire.
The
BMJ study said no distinction was made between drinks sweetened with sugar, fructose/glucose, or artificial sweetener. Tea, coffee and fruit juice were not included in the study.
"The well-known association of sweetened beverages with obesity and Type 2 diabetes, which are risk factors for heart failure, reinforces the biological plausibility of (the study authors') findings," said Miguel Martínez-González and Miguel Ruiz-Canela of the Biomedical Research Center Network on Obesity and Nutrition, in an editorial accompanying the study.
"Based on their results, the best message for a preventive strategy would be to recommend an occasional consumption of sweetened beverages or to avoid them altogether," said the editorial.
Martinez-Gonzalez and Ruiz-Canela, though, acknowledged that other factors could have been involved in the heart failure of the study's participants because of the complexity of failure. They also said the study did not factor in the fact that the use of sweetened drinks tend to lessen with age.
They added that a high consumption of sweetened drinks is a sign of a poor general diet and more reliable indicator for disease.
CNN said almost six million people live with heart failure in the United States.
"It's a very miserable life," Dr. Roberto Bolli, chief of cardiovascular medicine at the University of Louisville School of Medicine, told CNN. "Patients with heart failure are severely limited in their ability to perform daily tasks; they get short of breath for even small efforts like walking one block, or sometimes even walking inside their house."
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