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Diet Sodas May Be Tied To Stroke, Dementia Risk (cnn.com)

Posted by msmash on from the things-to-ponder dept.

Gulping down an artificially sweetened beverage not only may be associated with health risks for your body, but also possibly your brain, a new study suggests. From a report: Artificially sweetened drinks, such as diet sodas, were tied to a higher risk of stroke and dementia in the study, which published in the American Heart Association's journal Stroke on Thursday. The study sheds light only on an association, as the researchers were unable to determine an actual cause-and-effect relationship between sipping artificially sweetened drinks and an increased risk for stroke and dementia. Therefore, some experts caution that the findings should be interpreted carefully. No connection was found between those health risks and other sugary beverages, such as sugar-sweetened sodas, fruit juice and fruit drinks.

5 of 223 comments (clear)

  1. Something doesn't sound right... by GrumpySteen · · Score: 3, Interesting

    "They also found that those who drank one a day were nearly three times as likely to be diagnosed with dementia."

    "Those who drank one to six artificially sweetened beverages a week were 2.6 times as likely to experience an ischemic stroke but were no more likely to develop dementia"

    So if you drink six a week, there's no change to risk of dementia, but somehow the seventh triples your risk?

  2. Re:Huh? What? by networkBoy · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Which sweetener was tested?

    IIRC aspartame was initially developed to be a drug for alzheimer's... but it was noticed that it tasted sweet, so it was marketed as an artificial sweetener.
    which... Kinda lends credence to this story.

    What about sucralose?
    Or Sodium saccharin?

    -nB

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  3. That's not really a statistic by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    "We studied 2888 participants aged >45 years for incident stroke (mean age 62 [SD, 9] years; 45% men) and 1484 participants aged >60 years for incident dementia (mean age 69 [SD, 6] years; 46% men). Beverage intake was quantified using a food-frequency questionnaire at cohort examinations 5 (1991–1995), 6 (1995–1998), and 7 (1998–2001). We quantified recent consumption at examination 7 and cumulative consumption by averaging across examinations. Surveillance for incident events commenced at examination 7 and continued for 10 years. We observed 97 cases of incident stroke (82 ischemic) and 81 cases of incident dementia (63 consistent with Alzheimer’s disease)."

    Not a lot of people and with questionaires you get such accurate data.

    "the hazard ratios were 2.96 (95% confidence interval, 1.26–6.97) for ischemic stroke and 2.89 (95% confide"nce interval, 1.18–7.07)"
    the error bars are huge and the value is close to a ratio of 1.

    So nothing to see here.

  4. Re:Huh? What? by sinij · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Obligatory: https://xkcd.com/882/

  5. 24 cans by DumbSwede · · Score: 3, Interesting

    So don't drink more than 24 cans of Diet Coke a day (125mg) or 52 cans of Diet Mountain Dew (57mg).
    Good to know

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