Diet drinks may be linked with strokes among post-menopausal women

It turns out that drinking multiple diet drinks daily may not be a very good idea for post menopausal women. A new study finds that it is associated with an increased risk of having a stroke caused by a blocked artery.

The study was published in Stroke, a journal of the American Heart Association.

The study is one of the first to look at the association between drinking artificially sweetened beverage and the risk of specific types of stroke in a large, racially diverse group of post-menopausal women.

Compared with women who consumed diet drinks less than once a week or not at all, women who consumed two or more artificially sweetened beverages per day were:

23 per cent more likely to have a stroke;

31 per cent more likely to have a clot-caused (ischemic) stroke;

29 er cent more likely to develop heart disease (fatal or non-fatal heart attack); and

16 per cent more likely to die from any cause.

Furthermore, researchers found risks were higher for certain women. Heavy intake of diet drinks, defined as two or more times daily, more than doubled stroke risk in:

-women without previous heart disease or diabetes, who were 2.44 times as likely to have a common type of stroke caused by blockage of one of the very small arteries within the brain;

-obese women without previous heart disease or diabetes, who were 2.03 times as likely to have a clot-caused stroke; and

-African-American women without previous heart disease or diabetes, who were 3.93 times as likely to have a clot-caused stroke. Read Complete Article