Photo: Svadilfari (flickr)
For those of you watching your weight, a new study found that diet soda is not the healthy way to go. The study is preliminary and far from the definitive truth but new research draws attention to diet soda, finding higher risks for stroke and heart attacks in people who drink it everyday versus those who drink no soda at all.
The study didn’t look at the type of diet soda or the amount consumed, just whether or not subjects drank diet soda everyday.
Participants filled out a standard survey about their diets at the start of the study. In the span of 10 years there were 559 strokes or heart attacks, 338 of them fatal.
Daily diet soda drinkers had a 48 percent higher risk of stroke or heart attack than people who drank no soda at all.
Earlier studies have also tied diet and regular soda consumption to greater risk of diabetes and a group of weight-related problems called the metabolic syndrome.
Pass The Salt
The American Beverage Association conducted it’s own study and drew the link that a person’s salt intake can also lead to stroke.
Researchers found that stroke risk rose 16 percent for every 500 milligrams of salt consumed each day. Those who took in 4,000 or more milligrams of salt had more than 2.5 times greater risk of stroke than those who’s intake only 1,500 milligrams.
Whether it’s salt or diet soda that causes vascular events like stroke and heart attacks, eating healthily will always lower your risks.