So you thought you'd live life to the max and reduce your sugar intake to zero by switching to diet fizzy drinks? If only it were that simple.
New research is hinting that what might be good for your waist-line just might pose a problem for your brain later.
As part of a series of investigations into how sweet carbonated drinks affect our brains, Boston University School of Medicine used surveys to identify any long term neurological effects of consuming drinks artificially sweetened with substances such as aspartame or saccharine.
Participants were taken from the long-term Framingham Heart Study Offspring cohort – a group of about 5,000 men and women who have volunteered to provide data over their lifetime since 1971.
The team studied 2,888 members of the cohort aged over 45 for signs of a stroke, and found 97 cases (of which 87 were clots that restricted blood flow, called ischemic strokes).
A total of 81 cases of dementia were found among 1,484 members aged over 60 were, with 63 of those having symptoms consistent with Alzheimer's disease.
They then used questionnaires that the participants had filled out at several points in their life over a seven year period to determine their food intake.
Crunching the numbers and accounting for factors such as age, education, caloric intake, smoking, and exercise, it appears throwing back at least one diet soda a day makes it nearly three times more likely you'll have an ischemic stroke – a condition that can cause dementia – or develop Alzheimer's.....[READ MORE]