Consuming two liters of diet soda or other artificially sweetened drinks a day can increase the risk of a dangerous irregular heartbeat by 20 percent compared with people who drink none, according to a new study by researchers in China.
The study, from Shanghai, found that people who drink such beverages are more susceptible to a condition known as atrial fibrillation.
Theodore Maglione, an assistant professor of medicine and a cardiologist specializing in cardiovascular disease and cardiac arrhythmias at Robert Wood Johnson University hospital in New Jersey, said: “Atrial fibrillation is a chaotic quivering of the top chambers of the heart. Normally, they beat in an organized fashion.”
Photo: AFP
Symptoms of atrial fibrillation, or “A-fib,” include “fatigue, shortness of breath, [and] palpitations,” Maglione said.
A-fib can often be genetic, Maglione said, but there are also some modifiable risk factors.
“Some things you cannot control are your genetics and age — which is a big risk factor as well. Some of the things you can control would include smoking, hypertension, uncontrolled sleep apnea, obesity and nutrition,” he said.
Photo: AP
Making sure blood pressure is optimized is important when it comes to A-fib, as well as a “heart-healthy lifestyle,” Maglione said.
“Diet and exercise has been shown to decrease recurrence rates of atrial fibrillation after we treat them with certain procedures,” he said.
“The jury’s not out on whether the low-calorie or zero-calorie sodas with artificial sweeteners are any healthier than the conventional for-calorie sodas.”
Maglione said that when it comes to A-fib and nutrition, avoiding foods that are high in cholesterol and fat, and doing regular exercise, are key.
“Even modest weight loss has been associated with much lower recurrence rates of atrial fibrillation after treatment,” he said.
A-fib can also lead to blood clots, strokes and other heart-related complications.
The US’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says stroke is “a leading cause of serious long-term disability.” And atrial fibrillation is the leading cause of stroke in the US.
Those above 65 are at greater risk for heart conditions such as A-fib and stroke, making it more important for this group to follow a healthy lifestyle and to avoid artificially sweetened drinks.
Maglione said there was also some evidence linking atrial fibrillation to early dementia later in life.
The study also looked at added-sugar beverages and pure unsweetened juices, such as orange juice. It was found that added-sugar beverages raised the risk of A-fib by 10 percent, while drinking roughly four ounces of pure unsweetened juices lowered the risk of the condition by 8 percent.
Penny Kris-Etherton, a nutritional sciences professor at Penn State University, told CNN: “This is the first study to report an association between no and low-calorie sweeteners and also sugar-sweetened beverages and increased risk of atrial fibrillation.”
Soda fiend or not, Maglione said it was important to be aware when it comes to medical matters of the heart.
“If you feel any symptoms of irregular heartbeat or palpitations, seek out medical care,” he said. “Because usually with earlier intervention, we can be more successful in treatment and preventing any of the things like stroke from occurring.
If one asks Taiwanese why house prices are so high or why the nation is so built up or why certain policies cannot be carried out, one common answer is that “Taiwan is too small.” This is actually true, though not in the way people think. The National Property Administration (NPA), responsible for tracking and managing the government’s real estate assets, maintains statistics on how much land the government owns. As of the end of last year, land for official use constituted 293,655 hectares, for public use 1,732,513 hectares, for non-public use 216,972 hectares and for state enterprises 34 hectares, yielding
The small platform at Duoliang Train Station in Taitung County’s Taimali Township (太麻里) served villagers from 1992 to 2006, but was eventually shut down due to lack of use. Just 10 years later, the abandoned train station had become widely known as the most beautiful station in Taiwan, and visitors were so frequent that the village had to start restricting traffic. Nowadays, Duoliang Village (多良) is known as a bit of a tourist trap, with a mandatory, albeit modest, admission fee of NT$10 giving access to a crowded lane of vendors with a mediocre view of the ocean and the trains
The March/April volume of Foreign Affairs, long a purveyor of pro-China pablum, offered up another irksome Beijing-speak on the issues and solutions for the problems vexing the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the US: “America and China at the Edge of Ruin: A Last Chance to Step Back From the Brink” rang the provocative title, by David M. Lampton and Wang Jisi (王緝思). If one ever wants to describe what went wrong with US-PRC relations, the career of Wang Jisi is a good place to start. Wang has extensive experience in the US and the West. He was a visiting
One of the challenges with the sheer availability of food in today’s world is that lots of us end up spending many of our waking hours eating. Whether it’s full meals, snacks or desserts, scientists have found that it’s not uncommon for us to be mindlessly grazing at some point during all of our 16 or so waking hours. The problem? As soon as this food hits the bloodstream in the form of glucose, it initiates the release of the hormone insulin. This in turn activates a switch present in every one of our cells, which is responsible for driving cell
RSS