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Israeli Study: Soda Drinks Cause Liver Damage, (and diet drinks with aspartame)

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Israeli Study: Soda Drinks Cause Liver Damage

 

Av 19, 5769, 09 August 09 08:30

by Karin Kloosterman

 

(Israelnationalnews.com) A new Israeli study

reveals that too much sweetened soda and fruit

juice may cause long-term liver damage. Switching

to water is the best preventive measure to contribute to long-term health.

 

It may be a good idea to replace the juice in

your kid's lunch box with a bottle of water. A

health conscious Israeli physician has bad news

for the beverage industry. According to Dr. Nimer

Assy, people who drink more than one liter (about

four cups) of sweetened beverages a day have a

five times greater risk of developing fatty liver.

 

" In the long term, this contributes to more

diabetes and heart disease,” warns the doctor

from the Ziv Medical Center in Haifa.

 

While known culprits like sweetened carbonated

soda are on the list of " no-nos, " natural and

freshly squeezed fruit juices appear there, too.

His findings are reported in the Journal of

Hepatology, where Assy, a specialist in internal

medicine, liver disease and liver transplantation

and director of the Liver Unit at Ziv, warns that

the beverages cited can cause long-term damage.

 

In his study, Assy followed 90 healthy patients

with no perceived risk for fatty liver. He

discovered that about 80 percent of the people in

the study who were diagnosed with fatty liver

drank more than half a liter (about two cups) of

sweetened soft drinks (carbonated beverages and

sweetened juices) every day, whereas only 17% of

those in the control group had the condition.

 

Don’t squeeze, chew!

The ingredient in the sodas and juices that

causes the damage is a fruit sugar called

fructose, which is highly absorbable in the

liver. It does not affect insulin production and

goes straight to the liver where it is converted

to fat. Fructose ups the chances that you will

suffer from a fatty liver, which can lead to

cirrhosis of the liver and liver cancer, Assy tells ISRAEL21c.

 

The father of five, who lives in the Christian

Arab village of Fassuta in the Galilee region of

Israel, confesses that his own kids drink Coke.

However, his advice to other parents is to limit

their offsprings' intake of soda or any sweetened

beverage – natural or artificial – to not more

than about one cup, juice box, or can, a day.

 

To reap optimal benefits from fruit and avoid the

liver damage possibility, Assy suggests eating

the fruit whole. “The natural orange has fibers

and prevents fructose from being absorbed [in the

liver],” he explains. If that’s not possible, he

recommends drinking fruit juice that has extra pulp in it.

 

Assy's study was spurred by what he saw at his

in-patient clinic. “We have noticed recently that

there are many patients coming to the clinic with

fatty infiltration of the liver,” he tells

ISRAEL21c. “Usually the risk factor is for people

with obesity, diabetes and alcohol [abuse, but]

we noticed some people without these pre-conditions could have fatty liver.”

 

Diet drinks are suspect as well

He started the study by asking his patients to

take a questionnaire. As the group of 90 people

(with a 50:50 ratio of women to men, ages 40 to

50) filled in the blanks, an explanation began to

emerge. They were asked about their level of

physical activity, caloric intake on a daily

basis and the amount of soft drinks they consume.

 

“We found people who drink more than two cans of

Coke a day have increased their chances for a

fatty liver, and if left untreated their chances

for heart disease and cirrhosis of the liver also increase,” Assy says.

 

When Assy refers to soft drinks, he's including

diet soft drinks in the mix. With inconclusive

data on diet drinks, he believes that those

containing artificial sweeteners may have a

similar effect. While diet drinks do not contain

fructose, they do have aspartame and caramel

colorants: “Both these can increase insulin

resistance and may induce fatty liver,” says the doctor.

 

Assy plans to conduct a more extensive study of

the health effects of artificially sweetened

drinks and he suspects that his findings may not

be to the taste of the world's beverage industry.

 

Reprinted by permission of <http://www.israel21c.org/>Israel21c.

www.IsraelNationalNews.com

© Copyright IsraelNationalNews.com

Subscribe to the free Daily Israel Report - israelnn.com/

 

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