Consuming Sugary Drinks May Significantly Increase Cardiovascular Disease Risk: Study Finds

Scientists studying the impact of sugar on the risk of cardiovascular disease have found that eating too much added sugar increases your risk of stroke or aneurysm, but eating a few treats is associated with a lower risk of cardiovascular diseases. Meanwhile, drinking sweetened beverages raises your risk of stroke, heart failure, and atrial fibrillation.

“The most striking finding from our study is the divergent relationship between different sources of added sugar and cardiovascular disease risk,” said Suzanne Janzi, PhD candidate at Lund University and corresponding author of the article in Frontiers in Public Health. “This surprising contrast highlights the importance of considering not just the amount of sugar consumed, but its source and context.”

Scientists collected data from two major cohort studies, the Swedish Mammography Cohort and the Cohort of Swedish Men. These studies had diet questionnaires administered in 1997 and 2009, allowing the scientists to monitor participants’ diets over time. The scientists looked at a sample of 69,705 participants. They looked at three classes of sugar consumption — toppings like honey, treats like a pastry, or sweetened beverages like fizzy drinks — and seven cardiovascular diseases: two different types of stroke, heart attacks, heart failure, aortic aneurysms, atrial fibrillation, and aortic stenosis. The participants were monitored until they died, were diagnosed with one of the cardiovascular diseases, or reached the end of the follow-up period in 2019. During this period, 25,739 participants were diagnosed with a cardiovascular disease.

They found that consuming sweet drinks was worse for your health than any other form of sugar: drinking more sweetened drinks significantly increased the risk of ischemic stroke, heart failure, atrial fibrillation and abdominal aortic aneurysm. However, the highest risks of a negative health outcome arose in the lowest intake category for treats. Consuming occasional treats was associated with better outcomes than no treats at all.

Reference: Janzi Suzanne , González-Padilla Esther , Ramne Stina , Bergwall Sara , Borné Yan , Sonestedt Emily, Added sugar intake and its associations with incidence of seven different cardiovascular diseases in 69,705 Swedish men and women, Frontiers in Public Health, VOLUME 12, 2024

DOI: 10.3389/fpubh.2024.1452085