Soda on the brain
Scientists have linked the use of soda and brain atrophy
Drinking large amounts of soda, sweeteners and fruit juices can lead to memory impairment and a decrease in brain volume, scientists write in an article published in the journal Alzheimer's & Dementia (Pase et al., Sugary beverage intake and preclinical Alzheimer's disease in the community).
"We found a link between the consumption of large volumes of sugary drinks and brain atrophy, including a decrease in the size of the lower parts of the brain and memory impairment. In addition, the risk of blockage of brain vessels and stroke increased three times, as well as the likelihood of developing senile dementia," said Matthew Pase from Boston University (in the note Is Soda Bad for Your Brain? (And Is Diet Soda Worse?) – VM).
In recent years, scientists and nutritionists have been seriously discussing the effect of sugary drinks on health. Recently, researchers from Tufts University in Boston found out that diabetes and other consequences of soda abuse kill about 184 thousand people a year, most of whom fall in the United States, Mexico and Latin American countries.
Pease and his colleagues claim that sweetened drinks can negatively affect not only metabolism, but also intelligence. They came to this conclusion by analyzing how the brain works and how memory works in four thousand Americans from the city of Framingham, whose heart and vascular health scientists have been monitoring since the middle of the last century as part of the FHS project.
For 10 years, the authors of the article observed how their IQ and other intellectual indicators changed, and also took pictures of the brain using a magnetic resonance tomograph, noting all changes in its structure. The scientists compared these data with what they knew about the diet of FHS participants and tried to find patterns.
As it turned out, drinking more than one or two servings of carbonated drinks, juices and sweeteners a day is fraught with a whole bunch of problems in the brain - its more serious shrinkage in old age, the development of dementia, as well as a greater risk of stroke and problems with episodic and long–term memory.
On average, the brain volume of such people was less by 1%, while the volume of the hippocampus, the memory center, decreased by 2%. Soda lovers remembered 6% fewer stories that scientists told them, and remembered them much worse the day after the experiment than people who do not drink such drinks.
As Paise and his colleagues emphasize, the negative effect was not associated with diabetes and other diseases caused by excessive consumption of sweets – even if we exclude all diabetics from the number of participants in the experiment, differences in brain volume and intelligence level will still exist.
On the other hand, scientists emphasize that it is not yet possible to understand what exactly becomes the cause and effect in this case: it is possible that people with similar problems simply consume sugary drinks more often than their healthy peers. It will be possible to verify this only in the course of future studies, in which scientists plan to find out how artificial sweeteners affect the brains of more people.
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21.04.2017