Here’s another reason to significantly reduce your consumption of soft drinks and sweetened fruit juices:  A Swedish group of researchers determined the consumption of sweetened beverages such as soft drinks is associated with adverse effects on markers of cardiovascular risk. These findings suggest that sweetened beverage consumption is positively associated with the risk of stroke.

The authors examined the hypothesis that high consumption of sweetened beverages increases the risk of stroke. The study  followed 32,575 women aged 49-83 y and 35,884 men aged 45-79 y without cardiovascular disease, cancer, or diabetes at the beginning.

  • The consumption of sweetened beverages, including sugar–sweetened and artificially sweetened soft drinks and juice drinks, was assessed by using a food–frequency questionnaire.
  • Stroke cases were ascertained by linkage to the Swedish Inpatient Register and the Swedish Cause of Death Register.
  • They ascertained 3510 incident cases of stroke, including 2588 cerebral infarctions, 349 intracerebral hemorrhages, 156 subarachnoid hemorrhages, and 417 unspecified strokes, during a mean follow–up of 10.3 y.

The results determined that sweetened beverage consumption was significantly positively associated with risk of total stroke and cerebral infarction but not with hemorrhagic stroke.

Source: The Journal of Nutrition, 04/21/2014  Clinical Article