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The Not-So-Sweet Side Effects of Soda
– Reported, January 10, 2013
(Ivanhoe Newswire) Sweetened beverages like soda and fruit punch may be tasty, but they may also have some negative side effects on peoples mental health. Researchers have found that drinking sweetened drinks, especially diet sodas, can raise a persons risk for depression by up to 38 percent!
Between 1995 and 1996, researchers followed what drinks and how many of those beverages 263,925 participants consumed over the year. These drinks included soda, coffee, fruit punch, and tea, among others.
After asking participants ten years later if they have been diagnosed with depression since the year 200, researchers found that over 11,000 such diagnoses had occurred.
While an association between an increased risk of depression and consuming over four cups of soda or fruit punch a day was found, a 30% increase and 38% increase respectively, people who drank coffee on a daily actually had a lower risk of depression.
“Our research suggests that cutting out or down on sweetened diet drinks or replacing them with unsweetened coffee may naturally help lower your depression risk, study researcher Honglei Chen, M.D., Ph.D., from the National Institutes of Health in Research Triangle Park was quoted as saying.
Furthermore, diet soda showed an even greater link to a heighten risk of depression than all of the other sweetened drinks.
The study consents that further research should be carried out before these results can be verified, but it gives people something to think about next time the reach in the refrigerator for a drink.
“Sweetened beverages, coffee and tea are commonly consumed worldwide and have important physicaland may have important mentalhealth consequences,” Dr. Chen was quoted as saying.
Source: American Academy of Neurology’s 65th Annual Meeting in San Diego, March 2013
