You may think that choosing the “diet” version of your favourite fizzy drink will save your wellness a few calories, but you may be facing even more serious health concerns as a result. According to a new large study, scheduled for presentation Sunday at the annual meeting of the AmericanCollege of Cardiology, in Washington, DC, women who are heavy consumers of diet drinks might be more likely to experience heart attacks, dangerous blood clots and other cardiovascular problems than those who rarely or never consume artificially sweetened beverages.
Wellness expert Brenda Goodman details, ‘The findings come from a study of nearly 60,000 healthy postmenopausal women in the United States. Participants were asked to estimate how many artificially sweetened drinks they’d had each day for the past three months. Diet soft drinks and low-calorie fruit drinks were counted toward the daily total. Researchers divided the women, whose average age was 63, into four groups based on their overall consumption. The heaviest consumers had two or more diet drinks a day. The next group had five to seven artificially sweetened drinks a week. The third group had one to four drinks a week. The least frequent consumers said they never or only rarely indulged in diet drinks, reporting between zero and three in a month.’
Goodman continues, ‘About nine years later, researchers checked to see how many women had experienced any of these heart-related problems: heart attacks; strokes; blood clots that threaten the legs, arms, organs or head; surgery to reopen clogged arteries; heart failure; or death from heart trouble. Heavy consumers of diet drinks were about 30% more likely to have suffered heart trouble during the course of the study than women who rarely or never had artificially sweetened beverages. Nearly 9% of frequent consumers had a serious heart event compared to about 7% of women who rarely or never indulged.’
Susie Swithers, a professor of psychological sciences at PurdueUniversity who, although not involved in the study, is studying the effects of artificial sweeteners in animals, points out, ‘This is not the first study to show a relationship between diet soda intake and the risk of stroke and cardiovascular disease. This shouldn’t be a surprise to us anymore.’ Goodman adds, ‘The study has some significant limitations. Because it only followed women over time, asking about habits and patterns that were already in place, it can’t prove that diet drinks caused their heart problems.’
In a statement prepared in response to the study the American Beverage Association notes, ‘The women who had the greatest risk of cardiovascular effects consumed two or more diet beverages per day. However, they also had higher incidence of smoking, diabetes, hypertension and overweight — all known risk factors for heart disease. Thus, it is impossible to attribute their cardiovascular health issues to their diet beverage intake.’ That said, the researchers claim to have adjusted their numbers to try to account for those differences, as well as other relevant factors such as exercise and caloric intake.
Swithers suggests a reason as to why diet drinks may affect your heart: animals that eat regular sugar after consuming a diet heavy in artificial sweeteners have a disrupted response to the real thing. ‘[Like diabetics], they become hyperglycemic,’ she comments. ‘Their blood sugars go up higher than they should.’ They also make less of a heart-protective protein. Swithers adds, ‘If drinking diet soda interferes with this system, then over the long term you’re taking something away that protects your cardiovascular health, and that could be what’s contributing to these effects.’
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