THE PSYCHOLOGIST : This common drink increases the risk of serious heart condition, study finds

This common drink increases the risk of serious heart condition, study finds

The commentary below is greatly over hyped. The "Results" section of the journal abstract below. We see that all the Hazard Ratios were quite low -- meaning weak effects -- with the results from sugar-sweetened and articially sweetened drinks being virually the same. As usual, income was not controlled for so all we are probably seeng here is that poor people (big drinkers of fizzy drinks) have worse health. Richer and wiser people drink orange juice. Rather amusing, really

During a median follow-up of 9.9 years, 9362 incident AF cases were documented. Compared with nonconsumers, individuals who consumed >2 L/wk of SSB or ASB had an increased risk of AF (HR, 1.10 [95% CI, 1.01–1.20] and HR, 1.20 [95% CI, 1.10–1.31]) in the multivariable-adjusted model. A negative association was observed between the consumption of ≤1 L/wk of PJ and the risk of AF (HR, 0.92 [95% CI, 0.87–0.97]). The highest HRs (95% CIs) of AF were observed for participants at high genetic risk who consumed >2 L/wk of ASB (HR, 3.51 [95% CI, 2.94–4.19]), and the lowest HR were observed for those at low genetic risk who consumed ≤1 L/wk of PJ (HR, 0.77 [95% CI, 0.65–0.92]). No significant interactions were observed between the consumption of SSB, ASB, or PJ and genetic predisposition to AF.

Whether you're looking to satisfy a craving with a crisp can of sugary goodness or offset it completely with the refreshing taste of your favourite diet soda, when it comes to selecting a beverage from a drinks menu, we’re spoilt for choice.

But are our ‘healthier’ drink choices really adding much value to our well-being in the long run? According to a new study, they could be having the opposite effect.

Published in the journal Circulation: Arrhythmia and Electrophysiology, the research follows the drinking habits of roughly 202,000 adults aged 37 to 73 in the United Kingdom, examining the results of a 24-hour diet questionnaire.

Specifically, the findings of the study suggest a strong correlation between adults drinking no to low-sugar beverages and their risk of developing atrial fibrillation.

Individuals who reported consuming more than two litres of artificially sweetened drinks in the 24-hour time period were found to have a 20 per cent higher chance of developing the condition (that’s roughly six standard cans).

Atrial fibrillation (AF) is a serious cardiovascular disease defined by having a heartbeat that is too slow, too fast or irregular. Additionally, patients diagnosed with AF report symptoms such as lightheadedness, chest pain, extreme fatigue, and shortness of breath. Most notably, atrial fibrillation has been found to be the leading cause of stroke in the United States.

According to the Heart Foundation, atrial fibrillation is the most common recurring arrhythmia found in clinical practice, prevalent in two to four per cent of the population in developed nations such as Australia.

Additionally, the findings indicated that the individuals who reported consuming beverages with added sugars had an increased risk of the disease by up to ten per cent. On the flip side, consuming unsweetened juices, such as natural orange juice, was associated with a reduced risk of up to eight per cent.

“Our study’s findings cannot definitively conclude that one beverage poses more health risk than another due to the complexity of our diets and because some people may drink more than one type of beverage,” says lead study author Dr Ningjian Wang, a professor at the Shanghai Ninth People’s Hospital and Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine.

“However, based on these findings, we recommend that people reduce or even avoid artificially sweetened and sugar-sweetened beverages whenever possible,” Wang added in a statement discussing the study’s findings.

While the results are certainly worth discussing, this is the first study of its kind to examine the correlation between atrial fibrillation and both sugar-sweetened and no-to-low-calorie artificially sweetened beverages, indicating much further research is needed to fully understand the risks associated with each beverage.

So, if diet sodas and ‘no-sugar’ alternatives could be facilitating equally as much damage to our health, what’s the safest drink to turn to? Based on the study’s results, the safest hydration option is plain and simple H2O.

“Do not take it for granted that drinking low-sugar and low-calorie artificially sweetened beverages is healthy, it may pose potential health risks,” warns Wang.

https://www.bodyandsoul.com.au/health/health-news/this-common-drink-increases-the-risk-of-serious-heart-condition-study-finds/image-gallery/c1442ee9ef82a08436afe5a7f4b9558d

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Background

The essence of conservatism is caution. The essence of Leftism is anger

This blog is written solely by John Ray, who has a Ph.D. degree in psychology and 200+ papers published in the academic journals of the social sciences. It does occasionally comment on issues in psychology but is mainly aimed at giving a conservative psychologist's view on a broad range of topics. There are very few conservative psychologists.

The blog originated in Australia and many (but not most) posts discuss Australian matters. Australians have an unusually good awareness of events outside their own country. Australian newspapers feature news from Britain and the USA not as an afterthought but as a major part of their coverage. So Australians do tend to have a truly Western heart, which is the reason behind the old name for this blog. So events in Australia, Britain and the USA all feature frequently here, plus occasional coverage of other places, particularly Israel.

A primer in American politics for non-Americans:

SCOTUS is the Supreme Court of the United States, the highest court in the land

The "GOP" stands for "Grand Old Party" and refers to the Republican party. The GOP is at present center/Right, while the Democrats have been undergoing a steady drift Leftwards and now have policies similar to mainstream European Leftist parties.

The ideological identity of both parties has however been very fluid -- almost reversing itself over time. In the mid 19th century, the GOP was the party of big government and concern for minorities while the Democrats advertised themselves as "The party of the white man" -- an orientation that lasted into the mid 20th century in the South. The Democrats are still obsessed with race but have now flipped into support for discrimination AGAINST whites.

Was Pope Urban VIII the first Warmist? Below we see him refusing to look through Galileo's telescope. People tend to refuse to consider evidence— if what they might discover contradicts what they believe.

Global warming

Calibrated in whole degrees. Larger graph here

Climate scientist Lennart Bengtsson said. “The warming we have had the last 100 years is so small that if we didn’t have meteorologists and climatologists to measure it we wouldn’t have noticed it at all.”

The term "Fascism" is mostly used by the Left as a brainless term of abuse. But when they do make a serious attempt to define it, they produce very complex and elaborate definitions -- e.g. here and here. In fact, Fascism is simply extreme socialism plus nationalism. But great gyrations are needed to avoid mentioning the first part of that recipe, of course.

Two examples of Leftist racism below (much more here and here):

Beatrice Webb, a founder of the London School of Economics and the Fabian Society, and married to a Labour MP, mused in 1922 on whether when English children were "dying from lack of milk", one should extend "the charitable impulse" to Russian and Chinese children who, if saved this year, might anyway die next. Besides, she continued, there was "the larger question of whether those races are desirable inhabitants" and "obviously" one wouldn't "spend one's available income" on "a Central African negro".

Hugh Dalton, offered the Colonial Office during Attlee's 1945-51 Labour government, turned it down because "I had a horrid vision of pullulating, poverty stricken, diseased nigger communities, for whom one can do nothing in the short run and who, the more one tries to help them, are querulous and ungrateful."

Defensible and indefensible usages of the term "racism"

The book, The authoritarian personality, authored by T.W. Adorno et al. in 1950, has been massively popular among psychologists. It claims that a set of ideas that were popular in the "Progressive"-dominated America of the prewar era were "authoritarian". Leftist regimes always are authoritarian so that claim was not a big problem. What was quite amazing however is that Adorno et al. identified such ideas as "conservative". They were in fact simply popular ideas of the day but ones that had been most heavily promoted by the Left right up until the then-recent WWII. See here for details of prewar "Progressive" thinking.

R.I.P. Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet deposed a law-defying Marxist President at the express and desperate invitation of the Chilean parliament. He pioneered the free-market reforms which Reagan and Thatcher later unleashed to world-changing effect. That he used far-Leftist methods to suppress far-Leftist violence is reasonable if not ideal. The Leftist view that they should have a monopoly of violence and that others should follow the law is a total absurdity which shows only that their hate overcomes their reason

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was a war criminal. Both British and American codebreakers had cracked the Japanese naval code so FDR knew what was coming at Pearl Harbor. But for his own political reasons he warned no-one there. So responsibility for the civilian and military deaths at Pearl Harbor lies with FDR as well as with the Japanese. The huge firepower available at Pearl Harbor, both aboard ship and on land, could have largely neutered the attack. Can you imagine 8 battleships and various lesser craft firing all their AA batteries as the Japanese came in? The Japanese naval airforce would have been annihilated and the war would have been over before it began.

FDR prolonged the Depression. He certainly didn't cure it.

WWII did NOT end the Great Depression. It just concealed it. It in fact made living standards worse

Joe McCarthy was eventually proved right after the fall of the Soviet Union. To accuse anyone of McCarthyism is to accuse them of accuracy!

The KKK was intimately associated with the Democratic party. They ATTACKED Republicans!

People who mention differences in black vs. white IQ are these days almost universally howled down and subjected to the most extreme abuse. I am a psychometrician, however, so I feel obliged to defend the scientific truth of the matter:

The average African adult has about the same IQ as an average white 11-year-old and African Americans (who are partly white in ancestry) average out at a mental age of 14. The American Psychological Association is generally Left-leaning but it is the world's most prestigious body of academic psychologists. And even they have had to concede that sort of gap (one SD) in black vs. white average IQ. 11-year olds can do a lot of things but they also have their limits and there are times when such limits need to be allowed for.

America's uncivil war was caused by trade protectionism. The slavery issue was just camouflage, as Abraham Lincoln himself admitted. See also here

Did William Zantzinger kill poor Hattie Carroll?

Did Bismarck predict where WWI would start or was it just a "free" translation by Churchill?

Leftist psychologists have an amusingly simplistic conception of military organizations and military men. They seem to base it on occasions they have seen troops marching together on parade rather than any real knowledge of military men and the military life. They think that military men are "rigid" -- automatons who are unable to adjust to new challenges or think for themselves. What is incomprehensible to them is that being kadaver gehorsam (to use the extreme Prussian term for following orders) actually requires great flexibility -- enough flexibility to put your own ideas and wishes aside and do something very difficult. Ask any soldier if all commands are easy to obey.

A good article on Leftist hate

The real history of social Darwinism

Some personal memoirs

Memoir highlights

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This common drink increases the risk of serious heart condition, study finds

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