As of: March 10, 2024, 4:57 p.m
By: Julia Hanigk
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Light drinks are not necessarily the better alternative - that's what a study suggests.
The sweeteners are to blame.
Effects can be seen with just two liters per week.
Shanghai – If you want to save on sugar or are currently on a diet, light products seem tempting.
Whether bars, dairy products or drinks – there is now a “zero” or “light” version of almost every product.
Instead of sugar, they contain sweeteners.
Researchers repeatedly express concerns about how sweeteners could be harmful to the intestines.
A new study has now found a connection between light drinks and cardiovascular diseases.
With sugar, with sweeteners or natural sugar: what do drinks do to our hearts?
The study, titled “Sweetened beverages, genetic susceptibility, and incident atrial fibrillation: A prospective cohort study,” was published in the journal
Circulation: Arrhythmia and Electrophysiology
on behalf of the
American Heart Association
.
The researchers are investigating the connection between atrial fibrillation and the consumption of sugar-sweetened drinks, artificially sweetened drinks and pure fruit juice.
Genetic susceptibility was also included.
What is atrial fibrillation and how do I recognize it?
The most common form of irregular heart rhythm in Germany is called atrial fibrillation.
According to
the German Heart Foundation,
the heart can then race with a pulse of up to 160 beats per minute.
However, the symptoms vary and it is estimated that only every second person notices them.
Symptoms include an irregular and accelerated pulse, shortness of breath, feeling of restlessness, reduced physical performance, dizziness, chest pain or even a short-term loss of consciousness.
The research was led by Ningjian Wang, a researcher at Shanghai Ninth People's Hospital and Shanghai Jiao Tong University School.
For this purpose, more than 200,000 health data from UK Biobank subjects were examined.
The scientists had participants fill out questionnaires about their diet and then created a group that consumed more than two liters of artificially sweetened drinks per week and one that consumed less than one liter.
At the start of the study, no one suffered from atrial fibrillation.
Link found between regular high consumption of sweeteners and heart disease
The shocking results: Consumers who consumed two liters per week had a 20 percent higher risk of cardiac arrhythmias.
And 250 milliliter jars or 500 milliliter bottles are the common sizes on sale.
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Light equals healthy?
A fallacy, says a study.
(Symbolic image) © Romanchini/Pond5 Images/IMAGO
The American Heart Association also writes on its website that the version with sugar is also not an option.
The risk of atrial fibrillation was increased by ten percent among people who reported consuming similar amounts of sugar-sweetened drinks.
However, the test subjects who drank one liter of pure juice per week during the study had an eight percent lower risk of developing atrial fibrillation.
During the almost ten-year follow-up period, there were 9,362 cases of atrial fibrillation among all participants - regardless of genetic predisposition.
Sweeteners have not been confirmed as a cause of atrial fibrillation - but they are advised to consume less
However, the study could not confirm whether the sweetened drinks also caused atrial fibrillation.
However, the link remained after a person's genetic susceptibility to the disease was taken into account.
Ningjian Wang said: "The results of our study cannot definitively conclude that one drink poses a greater health risk than another due to the complexity of our diet and the fact that some people drink more than one type of drink."
However, he still makes a clear recommendation based on his results: “Based on these findings, however, we recommend reducing or even avoiding artificially sweetened drinks and drinks sweetened with sugar if possible.
Don't assume that drinking low-sugar, low-calorie, artificially sweetened beverages is healthy.
It can pose potential health risks.”
Further research is needed
However, further research is necessary because the mechanisms linking sweetened drinks to the risk of atrial fibrillation are still unclear.
Insulin resistance and the body's reaction to various sweeteners are also possible explanations.
Another study recently suggested that the commonly used sweetener aspartame could be carcinogenic.
The substance is currently being reviewed by teams from the WHO and the International Agency for Research on Cancer.
Results will be published on July 14, 2024.
However, the international association of the sweetener industry declared the assessment to be “scientifically not comprehensive”.
(jh)