Soda Pop – Worse for Women?

November 23rd, 2011 by Ryan Luce No Comments

written by Michael O’Leary

Women who drink two or more sugary soft drinks a day are more likely to have bigger waistlines, and develop heart disease and type 2 diabetes than women who drink less than that, a new multi-ethnic study shows.

The same effects were not seen in men, however, which the researchers suggested as evidence that the relationship between sugary drinks and cardiovascular diseases differs between men and women.

The study presented by Dr. Christina Shay, of the University of Oklahoma, was reported on by MedPage Todayat the AHA’s Scientific Sessions conference in Orlando, Florida Nov. 12-16. She suggested that the reason women may be more affected than men is that women have lower energy requirements and may have higher cardiovascular risk factors when a higher proportion of calories comes from sugared drinks. (Link to published site)

Shay said few studies that have looked at this before have involved ethnically diverse study groups, so she and her colleagues decided to analyze data from the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis (MESA) study. This is a longitudinal study, meaning it is ongoing study started in 1999 that follows the same group of people over a long time. In this case 38 percent of the group is non-Hispanic white, 28 percent is black, 22 percent is Hispanic and 12 percent is Chinese Americans. Currently there are over 6,800 participants.

In this study, Shay’s group analyzed the responses to a standardized dietary and food frequency questionnaire returned by a subgroup of 4,166 men and women aged 45 to 84 in the MESA study. Sugar-sweetened drinks on the questionnaire included regular soft drinks, soda, sweetened non-diet mineral water, and nonalcoholic beer.

The results showed that 8.4 percent of the participants reported drinking at least two sugary drinks each day. Over five years of following these people, Shay’s group found that 26.8 percent of the women who reported drinking that many sugary drinks a day had impaired fasting glucose compared to 20.4 percent of those who drank less than that. Similarly, 63.7 percent of the women who had a greater than 3 percent increase in waist circumference compared to 54.1 percent of the women who did not drink that many sugared drinks per day.

When they made adjustments for factors that could confound the results, the differences between those who drank two or more sugary drinks per day and those who didn’t remained statistically significant, meaning it is unlikely the difference was due to chance.

When they did the same analyses of the men, the differences between those who drank two or more sugary drinks per day and those who drank less than that there was no significant difference.

There was no mention in the MedPage Today report about the impact of sugary drinks on the ethnic groups within in the study.

Rachel Johnson, of the University of Vermont, and a spokesperson for the American Heart Association said the study reinforces the AHA’s recommendation of limiting consumption of sugary drinks to no more than 450 calories or 36 ounces per week, and that women in particular ought to limit their consumption of these beverages.