Soft Drinks Increase The Risk Of Heart Attack

Author: Joe Fowler Time for reading: ~1 minutes Last Updated: August 08, 2022

Soft Drinks Increase The Risk Of Heart Attack

Drinks can be harmful to the heart, whether or not their consumption has led to weight gain.

Calories in Coca-Cola and other sugary fizzy drinks have been found to contribute to weight gain. A new study on the subject shows that drinks can harm the heart, regardless of whether their consumption has led to weight gain.

For 22 years, researchers tracked eating habits, body mass index levels, physical activity, family history of cardiovascular disease and other factors among nearly 43,000 men.

It has been found that those who normally drink about 340 ml of artificially sweetened beverage per day have a 20% higher risk of a fatal heart attack than men who do not consume it.

Consumption of such drinks is proving to be an independent risk factor for cardiovascular disease, explains lead author Frank Hu, a professor of nutrition and epidemiology at Harvard School of Public Health in Boston. According to the expert, a combination of several factors, in addition to body weight, can explain the findings. For example, regular consumption of sugary drinks is associated with high levels of triglycerides and low levels of "good" HDL cholesterol, which increases the risk of heart attack and without the presence of obesity.

They are linked to the accumulation of fat in the abdomen, which can increase the risk of heart attacks, even if the person is not overweight, explains Prof. Frank Hu.

Blood samples taken from about 40% of men during the study support some of these hypotheses. Consumers of sugary drinks, at least once a day, have high levels of triglycerides, lower HDL cholesterol, and higher levels of C-reactive protein. This group of participants also has high levels of leptin - a hormone that helps regulate metabolism.

The results are published in the American Heart Association journal Circulation .

Diet carbonated drinks are also bad for the heart. A study by Columbia University and the Miller School of Medicine at the University of Miami found that consuming them daily increased the risk of heart attack and stroke.

Diet soft drinks often contain artificial sweeteners, such as aspartame, which has been linked to other health problems, such as cancer.

Researchers found that participants who drank soft drinks every day were 43% more likely to experience a cardiovascular accident than people who did not consume them.

Soft Drinks Increase The Risk Of Heart Attack

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