High Sugar Drinks: Liver Cancer & Menopause.
I woke up and started perusing the new literature and got stuck on this article. It goes without saying that people really "know" or have "heard" how alcoholics can damage their livers and some of the time, this damage leads to liver cancer. The following study shows that a similar process appears to happen in people who consume sugary drinks like soda and sugar-laden fruit drinks. We know that things change as we get older and our hormone levels drop, we lose the ability to process what we bring in and things go awry in the background. While this study is not perfect by any means, as I often struggle with questionnaire based research. . . specifically when it comes to this data set, the science here makes sense and we should worry about the impact here!
The Big Picture: Did you know that almost two-thirds of adults in the U.S. have a daily habit of sipping on sugar-sweetened beverages? With such a high consumption rate, the question begs: could these drinks impact our liver health?
The Study's Aim: Researchers embarked on a quest to unearth potential links between our beverage choices - both sugar-sweetened and artificially sweetened - and their possible connection to liver cancer and fatalities from chronic liver diseases.
How They Did It: This wasn't just any small study. The research spanned across a whopping group of 98,786 postmenopausal women, all between the ages of 50 and 79. These women were previously enrolled in the Women’s Health Initiative across 40 clinical centers in the U.S. between 1993 and 1998. The researchers then kept an eye on their health for an extended period up to March 2020. By using a food questionnaire at the study's start, they determined how many sugary drinks the women consumed. And here's a twist: they didn't count fruit juices, just regular sodas and sugar-laden fruit drinks. Three years into the study, they revisited these women to assess their intake of artificially sweetened beverages.
The Key Findings: Over almost 21 years, 207 of these women were diagnosed with liver cancer, and another 148 tragically passed away due to chronic liver diseases. But here's where it gets interesting:
Initially, about 7% of the women said they drank a sugar-sweetened drink daily. Fast forward three years, and about 13% were reaching for an artificially sweetened drink every day.
The women who often grabbed a sugar-sweetened drink, compared to those who were more restrained, faced a noticeably higher risk of being diagnosed with liver cancer. They were also more likely to succumb to chronic liver diseases.
However, for those who preferred the artificially sweetened drinks, the news was slightly brighter. Their risk for both liver cancer and chronic liver disease-related deaths didn't seem to skyrocket in the same way. (Remember, we should always choose stevia here!!!)
Zhao L, Zhang X, Coday M, et al. Sugar-Sweetened and Artificially Sweetened Beverages and Risk of Liver Cancer and Chronic Liver Disease Mortality. JAMA. 2023;330(6):537–546. doi:10.1001/jama.2023.12618
The Takeaway: For the mature ladies out there, it looks like those daily sugar-sweetened beverages could be a cause for concern regarding liver health. But as always, more research is needed to dig deeper and figure out the 'whys' behind these observations. Until then, perhaps moderation is the key! Lastly, those statements like "OMG, I have to have my rum and coke". . .think again, we don't "have to have" anything!!!Jason & Rita. . . aka Dr. De Leon and Dr. Gillespie.
