From:
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/77616.phpEditor's note: I see another thread mentions only diet drinks, but here's the article I saw discussed on TV this morning: Soft Drinks Linked To Heart Disease Via Metabolic Syndrome
Date: 24 Jul 2007
A new US study has found that drinking more than one soft drink a day, whether regular or diet, may be linked to an increased risk of developing heart disease, via an increase in metabolic syndrome, a group of characteristics like excess girth, high blood pressure, and other factors that increase the chances of getting diabetes and cardiovascular problems.
The findings are published in the early online edition of Circulation, the journal of the American Heart Association.
The research is part of the large scale ongoing study known as the Framingham Heart Study (FHS), that started in 1948 and is now in its third generation of participants, grandchildren of the original cohort. The FHS looks at common factors or characteristics that contribute to cardiovascular disease (CVD) by following its development over a long period of time in a large group of people who joined before they had any overt symptoms of CVD or heart attack or stroke.
The FHS was started under the direction of the National Heart Institute (now known as the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute or NHLBI). Senior author of the study, Dr Ramachandran Vasan, who is professor of medicine at Boston University School of Medicine in Massachusetts, said that:
"We were struck by the fact that it didn't matter whether it was a diet or regular soda that participants consumed, the association with increased risk was present."
(More at link, above)