Soda & Heart Disease

Do you enjoy a can of soda every day?

Watch out--while you're drinking a sweet, bubbly cola, you might also be boosting your chance of contracting heart disease and fatal complications such as heart attacks. Even diet soda, touted as ostensibly healthy, is a possible culprit for increasing your chances of these unhealthy developments, say scientists and doctors that study nutrition and heart health.

Metabolic Syndrome

According to Dr. Ramachandran Vasan, a professor of medicine at Boston University, people who drink soda regularly are more likely to develop a condition known as "metabolic syndrome." Metabolic syndrome is often found in people with high blood pressure, reduced HDL cholesterol (also known as "good cholesterol") and elevated blood sugar. Metabolic syndrome is a known precursor to diabetes and heart disease.

These findings were recently published by Dr. Vasan and others in the July 2007 issue of the medical journal Circulation, and chronicled soda consumption in over 3,500 people from 1987 to 1998. Study doctors found that people who drank more than one can of soda per day were 48 percent more likely to have or develop metabolic syndrome.

Vasan said that it "did not seem to make a difference whether the soda was regular or diet."

Lifestyle Choices

Other doctors find a link between diet soda and heart disease--but not the one that Vasan did. For example, diet guru Dr. Dean Ornish explained to ABC News that "people who drink soft drinks probably are more likely to lead unhealthful lifestyles in other ways." Dr. Darwin Deen, associate professor of clinical epidemiology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, agreed with Ornish, saying that people who drink a lot of soda are often stuck in patterns that cause damage to their heart or will also lead to heart disease through other paths.

Dieters and healthy eaters often eschew soda and soft drinks entirely, while soda is part of the fast-food culture that many people blame for rising obesity.

Statistics

Vasan and other researchers were not able to find a particular cause for the link between soda and heart disease, but they did find that people who drank diet soda more than once a day were 36 percent more likely to have a larger waist than those who did not. Diet-soda drinkers are also 67percent more likely to develop diabetes and other complications, some of which can contribute to heart disease.

Obesity

University of Texas researchers found that consuming artificial sweeteners--like the ones in soda--mess up a person's ability to process real sugars, leading to a craving for more and more sweets. Study doctor Sharon Fowler found that as a person drank more diet soda, there was a larger risk of becoming overweight--and obesity, of course, is one of the major risk factors for heart disease. The more obese a person becomes, the more cholesterol is present in their blood. It is that cholesterol that leads to heart attacks.

Decreasing the Risk

The best way to decrease your risk of developing soda-induced heart disease or metabolic syndrome is to simply stop drinking soda, replacing it with non sweet beverages like water, real fruit juice and milk.

People concerned about the link between soda and heart health should also look at other unhealthy habits they have in their life, combating obesity and increasing heart health by improving their diets and exercising more. And you don't have to give up soda entirely--instead of drinking it as an everyday beverage, try saving it for a once- or twice-a-week treat.