Sugar Drinks Significantly Raise Heart Disease Risk

Middle-aged women who consume two or more sugar-sweetened beverages per day have a four fold increase in risk factors that damage arteries, according to research presented at the American Heart Association’s meeting in Orlando.

Study leader Dr Christina Shay, from the University of Oklahoma in the US, said: “Women who drank more than two sugar-sweetened drinks a day had increasing waist sizes, but weren’t necessarily gaining weight. These women also developed high triglycerides and women with normal blood glucose levels more frequently went from having a low risk to a high risk of developing diabetes over time.”

Elevated triglycerides (fat blobs in your blood) are now seen as a major risk factor for developing heart disease. Eating sugar causes them to rise too much. The study was part of a bigger heart health investigation called the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis (Mesa) which looked at data on 4,166 adults aged 45 to 84.

This study echoes the findings of another recent study involving 4301 healthy subjects aged 46-68 years old (60 % women). It found that as the dietary sugar intake went up, so did the amount of the small and more dangerous LDL cholesterol particle, which is also associated with increased triglycerides and decreased protective HDL cholesterol.

It does not pay to have a mid-life sugar-eating binge crisis. Regular consumption is bad for your cardiovascular health.