Popular Drinks Linked To Diabetes

There has been a concern for some time that high consumption of sugary drinks such as colas, for instance, is bad for your health for a number of various reasons. Bloomberg, who is the Mayor of New York City, is so concerned about sugary drinks that he even tried to ban the largest sizes of these drinks from being sold completely. Not only are these drinks bad for the teeth, being acidic as well as having high sugar content, but they are surprisngly high in calories too. Hence drinking too many of these sugary drinks can lead to ‘unconscious’ consumption of a large proportion of daily calories and weight gain over time.

Sodas and type 2 diabetes

A team of researchers in the UK analyzed data from over 27,000 people looking for a connection between consumption of certain types of drinks and the development of type 2 diabetes. The drinks were sugary sodas, juices and nectars, as well as the artificially-sweetened drinks. 

When allowance was made for the influence of high overall energy intake and high body mass index on the results, an increase in the risk of diabetes in patients of 18 percent still remained – but only for the sugar-sweetened drinks - not the diet drinks. (It was possible that people who ate more or were more obese, and therefore are already at risk of developing diabetes, chose to have the diet drinks. The implication of this being that the drinks were not actually the cause of the diabetes in patients).

No link was found between drinking juices and nectars and the development of diabetes in this particular study.

This study was taken in a European population but similar results have been seen in American studies too.

The link between sugar consumption and diabetes

It is known that high sugar consumption, particularly from drinks, is associated with development of type 2 diabetes.  

This is a prediabetic condition in which cells become less sensitive to the effects of insulin, which lowers your blood sugar levels. The pancreas churns out increasing quantities of insulin to try and overcome the resistance and eventually, it becomes exhausted. By this stage the person would have acquired type 2 diabetes and be looking at a life with daily insulin shots to replace the pancreas’ function.

The other factor with sugary drinks is that the sugar is rapidly absorbed (quicker than when you eat foods) and leads to a ‘spike’ in blood glucose levels, requiring an equivalent hike in insulin levels to return glucose levels to normal.  When rapid increases in the blood glucose and insulin levels become frequent, they can also lead to the development of insulin resistance and all that it entails.