Did you know that consuming more than two soft drinks a day, can double your risk of developing two types of diabetes?. Well, that is exactly what a new study in the European Journal of Endocrinology has claimed.
The Karolinska Institute in Sweden studied the effect of drinking sugary or artificially sweetened drinks and the likelihood of developing type 2 diabetes or LADA.
Researchers say this applies to soft drinks that are artificially sweetened as well as those containing sugar.
Besides type 1 diabetes, an autoimmune disease that usually starts in childhood and type 2 diabetes caused by high blood sugar and an inability to produce insulin. There is a third type of diabetes, known as Latent Autoimmune Diabetes of Adulthood (LADA) shares some characteristics of both type 1 and type 2 and as a consequence is referred to as type 1.5 diabetes.
The Karolinska Institute in Sweden studied the effect of drinking sugary or artificially sweetened drinks and the likelihood of developing type 2 diabetes or LADA.
The 2,864 Swedish adults who participated in the study were asked questions detailing what they ate and drank. Approximately half of the group had either type 2 diabetes and LADA, while the remaining individuals were diabetes free.
The study concluded that people who drank 2 or more 200ml soft drinks a day were 2.4 times more likely to develop type 2 diabetes than individuals who did not consume two soft drinks a day.
Also, the soft drink consumption doubled the risk of developing LADA.
The more soft drinks a person drank the greater the likelihood of developing diabetes. So, people who consumed five soft drinks daily – whether sugary or artificially sweetened – were 10 times more at risk of developing type 2 diabetes and more than 4 times a higher risk of type 1.5..
Dr. Elizabeth Robertson, a director of research at Diabetes UK, noted that “participants who drank more sweetened drinks also led unhealthier lifestyles in general, meaning a number of other factors like diet and exercise may have also influenced the results.”
