Diet soft drinks reduce colon cancer risks

Soft drinks generally have a bad reputation when it comes to health, but consuming artificially sweetened beverages has been found to reduce colon cancer recurrence and death.

The Director of Yale Cancer Center and the study’s senior author, Charles S Fuchs, explained that this reputation is “because of purported health risks that have never really been documented”.

Published in PLOS ONE, the study analysed the dietary intake of 1018 patients with stage three colon cancer during and after chemotherapy while enrolled in a National Cancer Institute-supported clinical trial. The median follow-up was seven years.

The researchers found that participants who drank one or more 12-ounce serving of artificially sweetened beverages per day reduced their risk of cancer recurrence or death by 46% compared to those who didn’t drink these beverages. In the study, ‘soft drinks’ were defined as caffeinated colas, caffeine-free colas and other carbonated beverages such as diet ginger ale.

Other studies have found specific foods and drinks such as coffee and tree nuts were associated with substantially reduced colon cancer risk and death. The researchers focused on artificially sweetened beverages because an earlier study had concluded sweetened beverages dramatically increased the risk of colon cancer development. Fuchs said they wanted to see if a change in lifestyle regarding drinking artificially sweetened beverages would change the outcome of advanced cancer post-surgery.

Artificially sweetened beverages are popular alternatives to sugar-sweetened beverages, and a second analysis found that this substitution is responsible for about half the benefit of artificially sweetened beverages.

According to Fuchs, the association between lower colon cancer recurrence and death was stronger than the researchers suspected, but the finding fits in with what is known about colon cancer risk in general.

“Factors such as obesity, sedentary lifestyle, a diet linked to diabetes — all of which lead to an excess energy balance — are known risk factors. We now find that, in terms of colon cancer recurrence and survival, use of artificially sweetened drinks is not a health risk, but is, in this study, a healthier choice,” he said.

The results should encourage a closer look at the health impact of soft drinks. While there are concerns that artificial sweeteners may increase the incidence of obesity, diabetes and cancer, Fuchs said studies linking them to weight gain and diabetes have been very mixed, and there has been no proven connection between cancer and artificial sweeteners.

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