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Diet Sodas TRIPLE Your Risk Of Stroke And Dementia, Study Finds

April 21, 2017

Adults who drink diet sodas daily have three times the risk of stroke or dementia, researchers reported Thursday.

A team of researchers, led by Matthew Pase of the Boston University School of Medicine, studied 4,372 adults for their report. They had filled in detailed questionnaires on their food and drink intake in the 1990s and were then tracked for ten years.

"We found that those people who were consuming diet soda on a daily basis were three times as likely to develop both stroke and dementia within the next 10 years as compared to those who did not consume diet soda," Pase told NBC News. "Our study provides further evidence to link consumption of artificially sweetened beverages with the risk of stroke," the team wrote.

To their surprise, the team did not find the same risk for sugar-sweetened beverages. But they found other troubling signs.

"In our first study we found that those who more frequently consume sugary beverages such as fruit juices and sodas had greater evidence of accelerated brain aging such as overall smaller brain volumes, they had poorer memory function and they also had smaller hippocampus, which is an area of the brain important for memory consolidation," Pase said.

And other experts pointed out that sugary drinks are a major cause of obesity, diabetes, stroke and other ills.

"We recommend that people drink water on a regular basis instead of sugary or artificially sweetened beverages," Pase concluded.