Diet Soda and Heart Attacks
There’s been a lot of controversy surrounding diet soda products in recent years. But a new study suggests that the risks may be worse than we thought.
A U.S. study from the Journal of General Internal Medicine has just reported findings that indicate a possible link between diet soda and risk of heart attack and stroke.
The study looked at 2600 adults for a period of 10 years, comparing those who drank diet soda on a daily basis to those who drank no diet soda whatsoever.
Researchers found that the daily diet soda drinkers were at a 44 percent increased risk of suffering a heart attack or stroke when compared to the non-drinkers. Pretty shocking findings, right? But let’s look more closely at these results…
One of the key issues when it comes to these kinds of health studies is the possibility of confounding factors. Basically, there’s no way to know for sure if there was a direct link between diet soda and heart attack risk. There may be a number of lifestyle factors common to diet soda drinkers that are actually putting them at greater risk. For example, diet soda drinkers may also be exercising less or eating poorer diets.
This is important to keep in mind whenever you hear about this kind of research. But that doesn’t mean the research should be ignored. In fact, researchers in the current study controlled for a number of other key factors, including exercise, diet, blood pressure, and diabetes, suggesting that these variables were not to blame.
This bolsters the study’s conclusions, and although it’s still not proof, it does suggest that something might be going on. At the very least, diet soda drinkers should take caution.
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