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Men who love soda at higher risk for heart attack, say Harvard scientists; Sugary drink habit could kill

Drinking two sugary beverages a day increases cardiac risk by 42%

Experts have some not-so-sweet news for men who drink sodas and sugary drinks.

Downing just one sugary beverage a day can up your heart attack risk by 20%, according to research published by Harvard scientists in the journal Circulation.

The more soda or noncarbonated fruity drinks, the higher your risk.

Two servings ups your heart risk by 42%. Drink a soda with all three meals? Your risk increases by 69%.

The team of Harvard researchers found a strong correlation between sugary drinks and heart attack risk that held up even after factoring in smoking, physical activity, alcohol, family history and BMI, reports MSNBC.com.

Volunteers who kicked their soda and sweet-drink habits experienced lower blood pressure.

While this study didn’t take diet soda into account, recent studies have linked artificially sweetened drinks to increased stroke and heart attack risk.

While this research focused on men, researchers say, sweet drinks aren’t good for women either.

It’s a problem that can easily be solved if people just stopped sipping the high calorie beverages and paid more attention to what they’re imbibing, according to lead study author, Lawrence de Koning, a research fellow in the department of nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health.

“The first thing to do is to reduce the intake of sodas and then eventually eliminate them,” he said.

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• Original Research Article

Sweetened Beverage Consumption, Incident Coronary Heart Disease and Biomarkers of Risk in Men

1. Lawrence de Koning1; 
2. Vasanti S. Malik2; 
3. Mark D. Kellogg3;
4. Eric B. Rimm4; 
5. Walter C. Willett4; 
6. Frank B. Hu4*

+Author Affiliations

1. ¹ Harvard School of Public Health & Children's Hospital Boston, Boston MA;
2. ² Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, MA;
3. ³ Children's Hospital Boston, Boston MA;
4. ⁴ Harvard School of Public Health & Medical School & Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, MA

1. ↵* Corresponding author; email: fhu@hsph.harvard.edu

Abstract

Background—Sugar-sweetened beverage consumption is associated with weight gain and risk of type 2 diabetes. Few studies have tested for a relationship with coronary heart disease (CHD), or intermediate biomarkers. The role of artificially sweetened beverages is also unclear.

Methods and Results—We performed an analysis of the Health Professionals Follow-up study, a prospective cohort study including 42 883 men. Associations of cumulatively averaged sugar-sweetened (e.g. sodas) and artificially sweetened (e.g. diet sodas) beverage intake with incident fatal and non-fatal CHD (myocardial infarction) were examined using proportional hazard models. There were 3683 CHD cases over 22 years of follow-up. Participants in the top quartile of sugar-sweetened beverage intake had a 20% higher relative risk of CHD than those in the bottom quartile (RR=1.20, 95% CI: 1.09, 1.33, p for trend < 0.01) after adjusting for age, smoking, physical activity, alcohol, multivitamins, family history, diet quality, energy intake, BMI, pre-enrollment weight change and dieting. Artificially sweetened beverage consumption was not significantly associated with CHD (multivariate RR=1.02, 95% CI: 0.93, 1.12, p for trend = 0.28). Adjustment for self-reported high cholesterol, high triglycerides, high blood pressure and diagnosed type 2 diabetes slightly attenuated these associations. Intake of sugar-sweetened but not artificially sweetened beverages was significantly associated with increased triglycerides, CRP, IL6, TNFr1, TNFr2, decreased HDL, Lp(a), and leptin (p values < 0.02).

Conclusions—Consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages was associated with increased risk of CHD and some adverse changes in lipids, inflammatory factors, and leptin. Artificially sweetened beverage intake was not associated with CHD risk or biomarkers.