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Soda Pop Damages Your Cells' Telomeres
BarbaraHudson writes Those free soft drinks at your last start-up may come with a huge hidden price tag. The Toronto Sun reports that researchers at the University of California — San Francisco found study participants who drank pop daily had shorter telomeres — the protective units of DNA that cap the ends of chromosomes in cells — in white blood cells. Short telomeres have been associated with chronic aging diseases such as heart disease, diabetes and some forms of cancer. The researchers calculated daily consumption of a 20-ounce pop is associated with 4.6 years of additional biological aging. The effect on telomere length is comparable to that of smoking, they said. "This finding held regardless of age, race, income and education level," researcher Elissa Epel said in a press release.
1) What is the name of the paper?
Found it: http://ajph.aphapublications.o...
"Soda and Cell Aging: Associations Between Sugar-Sweetened Beverage Consumption and Leukocyte Telomere Length in Healthy Adults From the National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys"
Objectives. We tested whether leukocyte telomere length maintenance, which underlies healthy cellular aging, provides a link between sugar-sweetened beverage (SSB) consumption and the risk of cardiometabolic disease.
Methods. We examined cross-sectional associations between the consumption of SSBs, diet soda, and fruit juice and telomere length in a nationally representative sample of healthy adults. The study population included 5309 US adults, aged 20 to 65 years, with no history of diabetes or cardiovascular disease, from the 1999 to 2002 National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys. Leukocyte telomere length was assayed from DNA specimens. Diet was assessed using 24-hour dietary recalls. Associations were examined using multivariate linear regression for the outcome of log-transformed telomere length.
Results. After adjustment for sociodemographic and health-related characteristics, sugar-sweetened soda consumption was associated with shorter telomeres (b=–0.010; 95% confidence interval [CI]=0.020, 0.001; P=.04). Consumption of 100% fruit juice was marginally associated with longer telomeres (b=0.016; 95% CI=0.000, 0.033; P=.05). No significant associations were observed between consumption of diet sodas or noncarbonated SSBs and telomere length.
Conclusions. Regular consumption of sugar-sweetened sodas might influence metabolic disease development through accelerated cell aging. (Am J Public Health. Published online ahead of print October 16, 2014: e1–e7. doi:10.2105/AJPH.2014.302151)
From the study abstract: "After adjustment for sociodemographic and health-related characteristics, sugar-sweetened soda consumption was associated with shorter telomeres (b=–0.010; 95% confidence interval [CI]=0.020, 0.001; P=.04). Consumption of 100% fruit juice was marginally associated with longer telomeres (b=0.016; 95% CI=0.000, 0.033; P=.05). No significant associations were observed between consumption of diet sodas or noncarbonated SSBs and telomere length."
More: http://ajph.aphapublications.o...
Here's a link to the study: study. They performed a cross-sectional study across some 5000 adults, looking at the effect of sugar-sweetened beverages (SSB), non-carbonated SSBs, diet soda, and fruit juices. They adjusted for sociodemographic and health-related characteristics, and found that SSBs are correlated with shorter telomeres (b=–0.010; 95% confidence interval [CI]=0.020, 0.001; P=.04); fruit juice with longer telomeres (b=0.016; 95% CI=0.000, 0.033; P=.05), and no difference for diet sodas and non-carbonated SSBs.
I'm not sure how to interpret the results, as the study does not explain what the effect size is, or how impactful it is to general health. If there are any biologists in the crowd who can explain this, that would be super helpful.
The actual study only applies to sugar-sweetened drinks.
They generally don't know that it's an organic process without controlling for those factors. You can't shove a microscope up someone's ass and just observe why a particular diet is having a particular effect.
Remember how people always like to harp on how correlation is not causation? Well, it's said too often and too zealously, but it's still true. One of the most important lessons is that you need to control for confounding factors, or the effect you observe could simply be a correlation. It's very, very hard to control for the entire set of a human's behavior, though -- which is what you'd want to do in a classic, traditional experiment.
There are a handful of confounding factors that are constantly problems -- they correlate with tons of things. Any good study about humans will control for them. Income and education level are two of them. So you will always see a paper controlling for these and, if they find an interesting effect, you will see a statement about how the effect is independent of income and education level -- because if that wasn't true, it's not a very valuable finding.
You think a beverage that can be used to degrease objects is healthy ?
Coca-Cola is about as effective a degreaser as you can find.
Not only is that stupidly wrong, (it just so happens mythbusters actually found that while it can remove rust, it doesn't remove grease) but it's also meaningless.
Alcohol is by far more effective for degreasing, yet drinking it in moderation is proven to be healthier than not drinking it at all.
I don't think there is any recommended sugar dose. You can get by just fine with zero sugar.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
I have never seen any study suggesting that, except the single widely ridiculed Yale study. Not surprising given how nearly identical sucrose and HFCS are in the gut.
Yeah, most of the HFCS criticism is built on "natural foods" lore and wacko hysteria about chemicals. It *could* be that HFCS is worse than some other sugars, but the vast majority of studies have shown no significant difference in response to HFCS vs. sucrose.
Just to be clear what we're talking about here, HFCS is not the same as pure fructose, and a lot of the lore about HFCS compares studies on fructose with sucrose or other things, rather than HFCS. Commercial HFCS is generally either 42% or 55% fructose, and almost all glucose otherwise. Sucrose, on the other hand, is a molecule that breaks down in the first stages of digestion to 50% fructose and 50% glucose -- so, as the parent said, they are basically identical in most of digestion. (It's called "high fructose" corn syrup, by the way, because it's much higher than normal corn syrup, which has very little fructose. But acting like pure fructose and HFCS are the same thing in studies is highly misleading.)
Also, for the natural foods buffs, please note that honey is mostly fructose and glucose in almost the same concentration as HFCS, so if HFCS is bad for you, "natural" honey is probably not a solution to this problem.
For further details, here's a link to a recent (2013) metastudy that summarizes what is known. From the abstract:
[A] broad scientific consensus has emerged that there are no metabolic or endocrine response differences between HFCS and sucrose related to obesity or any other adverse health outcome. This equivalence is not surprising given that both of these sugars contain approximately equal amounts of fructose and glucose, contain the same number of calories, possess the same level of sweetness, and are absorbed identically through the gastrointestinal tract. Research comparing pure fructose with pure glucose, although interesting from a scientific point of view, has limited application to human nutrition given that neither is consumed to an appreciable degree in isolation in the human diet. Whether there is a link between fructose, HFCS, or sucrose and increased risk of heart disease, metabolic syndrome, or fatty infiltration of the liver or muscle remains in dispute with different studies using different methodologies arriving at different conclusions.
In general, our dietary issues are probably a result of excess sugar consumption in general. Switching from HFCS to cane sugar is probably not a significant improvement unless you simultaneously decrease overall sugar consumption.
I highly doubt it's the carbonation. Carbonation is literally just CO2 compressed into the water. Your body not only already has a large quantity of CO2, but depends on it as part of your blood's buffering solution for maintaining a specific PH level. If there's too much CO2 in your blood, your kidneys will simply remove it without consequence.
Carbonation is an acid. The effect on teeth is three-fold. The sugar is bad (Feeds the bacteria). The acid level rise damages teeth directly. The acid level rise is beneficial for the bacteria. The bacteria raise the acid level, and the acid ends up eating the enamel. So a sugary carbonated beverage is worse than a sugary drink with no carbonation, or a carbonated drink without sugar.
There are many such interactions we don't count. We think of everything on a "yes" or "no" basis, when often it could be more complex than that.
Learn to love Alaska
Fructose is a problem only if you get too much. Honey is not a problem to the same extent - it has much more taste and you get sick if you try to match someone's fructose consumption with honey. Most foodstuffs are bad if you eat "way too much" of them. Even completely natural stuff - but that doesn't happen as often. Natural food satiates, and you stop eating. Heavily processed food sell better, they don't satiate and people keep eating. You getting fat is a side effect the corporations can live with - and then they sell you a dieting plan for even more profit.
Captcha: unfair
You have it wrong... there's no recommended daily dose of Refined sugar for sure. You definitely need to eat products that contain sugars, or you will die.
Keep in mind.... meat, all fruits and vegetables, milk, yogurt, butter, contains sugars, bread, raw potatos, rice, corn, wheat, all contain sugars.
You don't need any sucrose or artificially refined sugar products in your diet, but you do need simple and complex sugars, you just get them automatically, because all nutritious foods contain them.
And here is the author's disclosure from the article, available on PubMedCentral: "Author disclosures: J. M. Rippe, consulting fees from ConAgra Foods, PepsiCo International, Kraft Foods, the Corn Refiners Association, and Weight Watchers International." Still think the study is credible?
Yes, anybody who cites peer reviewed research to disagree with you is a troll; especially when you tried to give the impression that the research doesn't exist.
The overall message of your previous post was that the HFCS lore and "wacko hysteria". So, you basically begin by calling anybody who disagrees with you a "wacko" and conclude by calling anybody who provides counter-citations a "troll". Do you have any arguments that don't begin and end with insulting those who disagree with you?
An actual troll (unlike your use of the term) is somebody who appeals to emotion for negative effect, for sadistic enjoyment or for manipulation. You are, by definition, a troll. Though I get that the term is bastardized to the point that it doesn't mean anything these days.
Metastudies are bullshit. Unless they consider ALL peer-reviewed literature on the topic, they're just a fancy way of cherry-picking to make an idea look more credible. Nobody with any academic training in science takes metastudies seriously because they're nothing more than over-glorified book reports.
You have it wrong... there's no recommended daily dose of Refined sugar for sure.
You definitely need to eat products that contain sugars, or you will die.
I know that not eating fats and proteins will kill you, but not eating sugars (or at least extremely low quantities) will not kill you (I might be wrong, I'm not a doctor). For example Ketogenic diets have been studied for almost a 100 years by modern medicine, and is used very effectively to control epilepsy. A general public version is known as the Atkins Diet.
There are even some studies that suggest that such diets can protect against Alzheimers:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm...
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm...
The ketogenic diet is a high-fat content diet in which carbohydrates are nearly eliminated so that the body has minimal dietary sources of glucose. Fatty acids are thus an obligatory source of cellular energy production by peripheral tissues and also the brain.
In the absence of glucose, the preferred source of energy (particularly of the brain), the ketone bodies are used as fuel in extrahepatic tissues.
there is evidence from uncontrolled clinical trials and studies in animal models that the ketogenic diet can provide symptomatic and disease-modifying activity in a broad range of neurodegenerative disorders including Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease, and may also be protective in traumatic brain injury and stroke
I don't have any specific citations but some believe that Alzheimers is like a form of brains diabetes, where the brain cells are no longer able to absorb sugars, which might be caused by modern high sugar diets. Switching to a Ketogenic diet, bypass the brain inability to feed on sugars and is fed ketone bodies instead, potentially reversing the symptoms.
You definitely need to eat products that contain sugars, or you will die.
A very broad and factually untrue statement. We underestimate the metabolic pathways available to us for survival.
Gluconeogenesis + Ketones anyone??
Gluconeogenesis: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gluconeogenesis
Ketones: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketogenesis
Gluconeogenesis
The real problem is not the deamonization of Fructose but that the "processed" vs "natural" red herring is being used to ignore that sucrose is processed by the body into fructose and glucose. Meaning the body turns sugar into the exact same sort of mixture as HFCS. So in reality, as bad as HFCS is, sucrose is JUST AS BAD.
That said, I can't speak to this current study of telomeres but there is plenty of mechanism of action known for fructose. Fructose (unlike glucose) is processed exclusively in the liver, through many of the same pathways as alcohol.
Whether bound into a sucrose molecule or free floating in an HFCS mixture, 90% of fructose is processed int he liver (the rest is just excreted). The liver makes a number of things out of it, including hormones that suppress feelings of fullness (causing you to eat measurably more), but it also makes some of the worst kinds of cholesterol, VLDLs.
But you are right, the natural vs processed comparison is kind of bunk, especially when its "processed natural" anyway. The only natural vs processed argument that makes any sense is this: In nature sugar is found with fiber. Just try eating anywhere NEAR the sugar in a soda by eating apples or sugar cane....and then try doing it with a full meal. Good luck.
Pressing apples into juice....is processing. If you think of processing as primarily "Removing fiber from food" then it makes a lot more sense. In the end that is mainly what a lot of processing does. It removes the main constituent of food that limits how much and how fast we can eat.
Then to top it all off, with the "low fat" kick, they then remove the fat as well, which makes the food taste reminicent of cardboard, so to fix that, they add sugar. Its like an assault from all sides.... remove both fat and fiber, both things that moderate apetite and fullness, and replace with sugar, which suppresses fullness and gets turned into the worst kinds of cholesterol.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"