How drinking habits influence heart health
Drinking healthy beverages, and limiting unhealthy ones, is associated with a significantly lower risk dying from cardiovascular disease (CVD), according to new findings published in Nutrition Journal.[1]
“Several meta-analyses of prospective cohorts have suggested that higher intakes of tea, coffee, and low-fat milk are associated with lower risks of several chronic diseases, including diabetes, CVD and mortality, while higher intakes of sugar-sweetened beverages, artificially sweetened beverages and fruit juice are associated with higher risks of these chronic diseases and mortality,” wrote corresponding author Zhangling Chen, a researcher with the department of cardiovascular medicine at The Second Xiangya Hospital in China, and colleagues. “However, these previous prospective studies mainly focused on the associations of individual beverage items with health outcomes. Yet, humans generally do not consume single beverage items, and they consume a variety of beverages with complex combinations of nutrients that are likely to be interactive or synergistic.”
To learn more about the impact of a person’s drinking habits over time, Chen et al. tracked data from nearly 9,000 adults who participated in the National Health and Nutritional Examination Survey. The mean follow-up time was 15.5 years. During that time, there were more than 2,000 deaths, including more than 750 related to CVD.
Participants were given a healthy beverage score (HBS) based on the drinks they consumed. While healthier options—things such as coffee, tea and low-fat milk—increased a person’s HBS, less healthy options decreased their HBS.
Overall, participants with a low HBS were associated with an increased risk of CVD-related mortality and all-cause mortality. These associations were consistent across the study’s population, meaning factors such as age, sex, smoking status, fiber intake and hypertension did not appear to dictate whether or not beverages influenced a person’s health risks.
Reviewing these findings, the authors emphasized that healthy beverage patterns contain much less added sugar. Drinking fewer sugar-sweetened and artificially sweetened beverages has already been found to significantly improve a person’s cardiovascular health, and these findings confirm that trend.
“These findings suggest that greater adherence to a healthy beverage pattern may benefit prevention of premature mortality,” the group concluded.
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Michael has more than 19 years of experience as a professional writer and editor. He has written at length about cardiology, radiology, artificial intelligence and other key healthcare topics.