Diet Soda & Stroke Risk

Tim | February 16, 2011

Diet Soda Linked to Stroke

With the advent of Diet soda’s many people made the switch thinking that the low calorie no sugar soft drinks would be a healthier choice that still provides taste, those healthy thoughts may very well be wrong.

While Soda in general has been blamed for much of America’s health risks such as obesity and diabeties the switch to diest soda’s seemed natural but now new research is showing that drinking diet soda might put you at risk for a stroke.

This new research studied moderate to regular diet soda drinkers and came to the conclusion that everyday consumers of diet soda raised their stroke risk a whopping 50%.

At this years American Stroke Associations International Stroke Conference data was scrutinized on over 2500 people who fell into different categories of diet soda consumption. The main groups were people who drank regular soda in moderation to daily, people who drank diet soda in moderation to daily and people who did not drink soda at all. Moderate drinkers were defined as those who had 1-6 servings of diet soda a week.

The results found that people who drank diet soda daily had a 48% higher risk of stroke than the other groups combined even when considering family history, lifestyle and exercise.

Diet Soda Research

The diet soda research which was conducted over 9 years concluded showing that 559 of the over 2500 participants had suffered a vascular event of some kind.

221 strokes

149 heart attacks

338 total deaths

Based on this research scientists believe that people who drink diet soda may want to reconsider their choices.

Earlier research on diet soda showed conclusive links to Metabolic Syndrome which is a collection of conditions likely to cause Coronary Heart Disease. These conditions include:

Type 2 Diabetes

Obesity

Stroke

High Blood Pressure

While regular soda is known to cause health related problems over time when consumed even in moderation now diet soda is showing signs that it isn’t a wise choice either. Water is the best alternative and great for your body. If you are a diet soda drinker it might be time to stop.