Study: Drinking soda doubles risk of pancreatic cancer
Image by AFP/Getty Images via Daylife
Just one more reason to re-consider drinking soda. Researchers in Singapore followed 60,542 people over the course of 14 years. They found that of those who drank two or more sodas per week had double the risk of developing pancreatic cancer than those who did not. If you drank fruit juice instead of soda, you showed no sign of elevated risk.
That’s the correlation. The cause? It could be the elevated sugar level in soda.
…the higher levels of sugar found in soft drinks may be resulting in the raised level of insulin in the body, which is believed to contribute to the cell growth in pancreatic cancer.
Getting pancreatic cancer is no walk in the park. Only five percent of those diagnosed with the disease live more than five years.
For years now, we’ve known that drinking lots of soda poses an increased risk for developing diabetes. And we know that soda consumption is directly linked with higher obesity rates. We also know that soda cans are lined with BPA, which acts as an endocrine inhibitor that may help cause both diabetes and higher levels of obesity. High soda consumption for children can lead to a host of problems, including an allergy to penicillin, lower calcium levels that leads to deformed bone growth in the short term, and osteoporosis in the long. Add a greater risk for developing pancreatic cancer, and, at this point, you’d have to be a little crazy not to wonder whether cracking open that next Coke or Pepsi is really worth it.
If people really start paying attention, it could be that soda will be the cigarettes of the future, and we’ll look back and say, really, we drank that stuff?
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Is there some combo of carbonated water and lots of sugar that makes soda particularly bad, or shouldn’t these findings be applied to all high sugar drinks and even a high sugar diet?
everynowandthen,
There seem to be several factors at work here. For obesity and diabetes, yes, the high level of sugar in sodas (and in high fructose corn syrup drinks) seems to be a common factor. But so does the presence of BPA in the cans and bottles.
Soda has been shown to weaken bones, where as juice drinks do not.
Drinking soda does contribute to bone loss.
In response to another comment. See in context »Teen girls usually drink pop/soda instead of drinking milk(lacking in calcium for strong bones). Also more importantly, the phosphorus/phosphates decreases the bones. One of my nutritional classes; spoke of too much protein consumption. Where there is protein; there is phosphorus. I am not saying to drastically reduce protein; choose whole/high quality proteins; such as eggs instead of mixed grains(needed to make complete protein for Vegetarians). The reason for the high quality proteins is because of those with renal failure; protein has to be watched/monitored. Also the kidneys bring us back to the soda consumption point. Soda is back on the kidneys too(I will not elabotate-said too much already). Thank you for your report.
Do the sodas in Singapore use HF corn syrup?