Sweetened Drinks Increase The Risk Of Kidney Stones

Author: Alexander Bruni Time for reading: ~1 minutes Last Updated: August 08, 2022

In this article, learn more about Sweetened Drinks Increase The Risk Of Kidney Stones. Doctors still do not know whether the connection is direct or indirect..

Middle-aged people who consume one sweetened carbonated beverage a day are at increased risk of developing kidney stones, a new study shows. This means that the recommendation to consume plenty of fluids should be modified to exclude sweetened beverages.

To assess the impact of different beverages on risk, Dr. Gary Quran 's team at Brigham and Women's Hospital collected data on the eating habits and medical history of more than 200,000 people.

The questionnaires were completed every two years, and none of the participants had kidney stones at the beginning of the study. The results show that 159 out of every 100,000 people get kidney stones if they drink sweetened drinks once a week. The frequency increases to 306 per 100,000 if such drinks are consumed daily .

Carbonated drinks are extremely widely used, so despite the relatively small increase in risk they carry, they lead to a large number of cases of kidney stones and a large financial burden.

Drinks such as coffee, tea, wine, beer and orange juice (without added sugar), on the other hand, reduce the risk of kidney stones. For example, infrequent coffee consumption is associated with a frequency of 205 per 100,000 compared to 137 per 100,000 for regular consumption. Only 96 out of every 100,000 regular consumers of red wine develop kidney stones, compared with 174 per 100,000 for those who rarely drink wine (defined as consuming wine less than once a week).

The study, published in the Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology , is another study proving a link between the appearance of kidney stones and high intake of a number of substances such as fructose, calcium , vitamin C supplements and others. The study does not explain the observed dependencies. According to researchers, blood sugar may be important because it affects the metabolism of calcium ions in the body.

Another possibility is that the connection is indirect - sweetened drinks lead to obesity , and that - to kidney stones. Although they do not answer a number of important questions, research such as these are the best guidelines that physicians can use to give advice to their patients.

Sweetened Drinks Increase The Risk Of Kidney Stones

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