Soda or other sugary, artificially flavoured drinks are a staple in most American households.
According to the US department of Agriculture, Americans consume 11 metric tons of it yearly!
Most parents introduce their kids to sugary drinks at an early age, making it very hard for them to adapt to plain water later in life.
But these sugary drinks are not only unhealthy and full of calories - two new studies have shown that they actually have a negative effect on our brains as well!
Scientists found that people who drink sugary beverages regularly were more likely to have poor memory, a smaller hippocampus, and a smaller overall brain volume.
The Hippocampus is the area in the brain which manages memory and learning abilities, so having a deficiency here can have quite an impact.
Now some people might think that diet sodas might be a better alternative then - but actually, they might be worse:
Researchers also proved that consuming diet soda regularly could triple the risk for stroke and dementia.
Of course this doesn't mean that drinking coke once in a while will definitely lead to memory loss or stroke.
But it indicates a tendency that can be quite worrying if you consume sugary drinks regularly for long periods of time.
The Senior Author of both papers, Sudha Seshadri, is also a neurology professor and faculty member of the BU's Alzheimer Disease Center. She states:
"These studies are not the be-all and end-all, but it's strong data and a very strong suggestion. It looks like there is not very much of an upside to having sugary drinks, and substituting the sugar with artificial sweeteners doesn't seem to help. Maybe good old-fashioned water is something we need to get used to."-Sudha Seshadri, Professor of neurology at Boston University School of Medicine (MED)
And it's not just sugary drinks - of course, it's sugar in our overall diet that affects different cardiovascular and metabolic diseases.
But the researchers chose to study the effect of sugary beverages since that's easier to measure than overall sugar intake, and sugary drinks are especially high in fructose sugar.
It's easier for consumers to opt for water instead of skipping sugar altogether, so if you want to live a healthier lifestyle, maybe giving up drinking soda daily could be a first step in the right direction.
Why exactly is diet soda even worse than regular sugary beverages?
There's no definite answer to this yet - but there are a few theories.
The artificial sweeteners in diet soda are designed to trick the brain into thinking it gets more "fuel" through glucose.
But eventually, this backfires because the brain overcompensates for the lack of real glucose in other ways, causing many different negative effects throughout the body.
Artificial sweeteners are made up of different chemicals and have different effects - since the study didn't mention exactly which ones were being tested, we can't conclude definite results.
But they all differ from regular sugar - and this could have a big impact in our gut.
The microbiome in our stomachs is highly sensitive and features thousands of different bacteria. And there's a direct connection from the gut to the brain, so any changes in our diet can have immediate impact on our brain health.
We were always aware that too much sugar and especially sugary drinks had a negative impact on our health.
But in conclusion, the new studies have shown alarming results concerning regular soda consumption and diet soda, proving that they decrease overall brain volume and increase the risk for stroke and dementia.
Images: 1, 2, 3, 4, Sources: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
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