Diet Sodas and Juices Are Linked to Higher Stroke Risk, Study Says

Diet drinks may seem like healthier options than sugary sodas and fruit drinks, but studies haven’t all backed up their health benefits. In the latest look at the popular beverages, researchers found that older women who drank more diet drinks had a higher risk of stroke and heart disease, as well as a higher risk of dying early from any cause, compared to women who drank fewer of the drinks. In a study published in the journal Stroke, researchers studied data from more than 81,000 post-menopausal women enrolled in the large population-based Women’s Health Initiative. Three years into the study, the women answered questions about how many diet drinks — including low-calorie sodas and fruit beverages with artificial sweeteners — they consumed in the past three months. After an average followup of nearly 12 years, the scientists found that women who drank two or more artificially sweetened drinks a day had a 23% higher risk of having any type of stroke, and a 31% increased risk of having a stroke due to clotting in brain blood vessels, compared to women who reporting drinking fewer than one beverage a week (or none at all). That increased risk is particularly concerning, since most of these strokes were in smaller blood vessels in the brain, says Yasmin Mossavar-Rahmani, associate professor of clinical epidemiology and population health at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, who led the study. Previous studies suggest that having repeated strokes in th...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized healthytime Heart Disease Source Type: news