A recent study done by the University of Iowa examined the link between diet drinks and cardiovascular issues such as heart attack and stroke in healthy, postmenopausal women.
60,000 women participated in this study and it was found out that compared to women who never or only rarely consume diet drinks, women who consumed two or more diet drinks a day are 30 percent more likely to experience a cardiovascular event, and 50 percent more likely to die from a related disease.
"This is one of the largest studies on this topic, and our findings are consistent with some previous data, especially those linking diet drinks to the metabolic syndrome,” says Dr.Ankur Vyas, a fellow in cardiovascular disease at UI Hospitals and Clinics, and the lead investigator of the study, as said in Iowa Now.
About one in five people in the U.S. consume diet drinks on a given day, according to data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (2009-10). But, according to Vyas, there is a relative lack of data about the cardiovascular health consequences of diet drinks.
The study is similar to watching a person eat junk food for one straight year, and another person eating completely healthfully for one year. If the person who ate junk food becomes ill, while the person who ate fruits and vegetables remains (or becomes) healthy, we still cannot say for certain that the junk food caused that person to become ill, from a modern day scientific perspective.
Based on self-reported consumption of diet drinks over a three-month period, the researchers divided the 59,614 study participants into four consumption groups: two or more diet drinks a day, five to seven diet drinks per week, one to four diet drinks per week, and zero to three diet drinks per month. Each drink was defined as the equivalent of a 12-ounce beverage and included both diet sodas and diet fruit drinks.
After a follow up of 9 years, coronary heart disease, congestive heart failure, heart attack, coronary revascularization procedure, ischemic stroke, peripheral arterial disease, and cardiovascular death occurred in 8.5% of the women who consumed two or more diet drinks a day. Those who consumed five-to-seven diet drinks per week were at 6.9% and one-to-four were at 7.2%. Those who consumed one-to-four drinks per week were at 6.8% and zero-to-three drinks a month were at 7.2%.
"It’s too soon to tell people to change their behaviour based on this study; however, based on these and other findings we have a responsibility to do more research to see what is going on and further define the relationship, if one truly exists,” says Dr. Ankur Vyas, because “This could have major public health implications.”
