Daily Soda Consumption Increases Type 2 Diabetes Risk

Scientists have raised the alarm over the negative impact of sugary soda on health, saying drinking a can of sugary soda can dramatically heighten a person’s risk of developing prediabetes.
The new findings is published in the ‘Journal of Nutrition’. Prediabetes is a ‘warning sign’ condition that precedes full-blown type 2 diabetes, a long term metabolic disorder that is characterised by high blood sugar, insulin resistance, and relative lack of insulin.
Senior Researcher, Nicola McKeown, who is a scientist with the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Centre on Agieng at Tufts University in Boston, said: “A person who drinks a daily can of sugar-sweetened beverage has a 46 per cent increased risk of developing pre-diabetes. However, a can of diet soda every day does not boost pre-diabetes risk, the researchers found. The results show how regular sugar intake can batter a person’s body on a cellular level,” McKeown said.
The ‘NewsmaxHealth’ reported that cells require the hormone insulin to break down sugar into energy. But too much sugar in the diet can overexpose the cells to insulin. McKeown said:
“This constant spike in blood glucose over time leads to the cells not becoming able to properly respond, and that’s the beginning of insulin resistance.”
Once insulin resistance starts, blood sugar levels rise to levels that are damaging to every major system in the body. Pre-diabetes is an important landmark on the way to type 2 diabetes, McKeown said. It means a person has elevated blood sugar — a sign of increasing insulin resistance — but has not entered fullblown type 2 diabetes.
However, she asserted that prediabetes is reversible if a person cuts back on sugar. Sugar-sweetened beverages are the leading source of added sugar in the American diet as well as diets of most countries around the world including Nigeria.
These results show cutting back on sugary drinks is “a modifiable dietary factor that could have an impact on that progression from pre-diabetes to diabetes,” McKeown said.
For this study, McKeown and her colleagues analysed 14 years of data on nearly 1,700 middleaged adults. The information was obtained from the Framingham Heart Study, a federally funded program that has monitored multiple generations for lifestyle and clinical characteristics that contribute to heart disease.
Participants did not have diabetes or prediabetes when they entered the study. They self-reported their consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages and diet sodas.
The research team found those who drank the highest amounts of sugarsweetened beverages — six 12-ounce servings a week, on average — had a 46 per cent higher risk of prediabetes, if researchers didn’t weigh other factors.
However, the American Beverage Association counters that sugar in beverages isn’t the sole risk factor for prediabetes.