SUGARED SODA CONSUMPTION CELL AGING ASSOCIATED

Sugar-sweetened soda consumption might promote disease independently from its role in obesity, according to UC San Francisco researchers who found in a new study that drinking sugary drinks was associated with cell aging.

The study revealed that telomeres -- the protective units of DNA that cap the ends of chromosomes in cells -- were shorter in the white blood cells of survey participants who reported drinking more soda. The findings were reported online October 16, 2014 in the American Journal of Public Health.

The length of telomeres within white blood cells -- where it can most easily be measured -- has previously been associated with human lifespan. Short telomeres also have been associated with the development of chronic diseases of aging, including heart disease, diabetes, and some types of cancer.

"Regular consumption of sugar-sweetened sodas might influence disease development, not only by straining the body's metabolic control of sugars, but also through accelerated cellular aging of tissues," said Elissa Epel, PhD, professor of psychiatry at UCSF and senior author of the study.

"This is the first demonstration that soda is associated with telomere shortness," Epel said. "This finding held regardless of age, race, income and education level. Telomere shortening starts long before disease onset. Further, although we only studied adults here, it is possible that soda consumption is associated with telomere shortening in children, as well."

The authors cautioned that they only compared telomere length and sugar-sweetened soda consumption for each participant at a single time point, and that an association does not demonstrate causation. Epel is co-leading a new study in which participants will be tracked for weeks in real time to look for effects of sugar-sweetened soda consumption on aspects of cellular aging. Telomere shortening has previously been associated with oxidative damage to tissue, to inflammation, and to insulin resistance.

Based on the way telomere length shortens on average with chronological age, the UCSF researchers calculated that daily consumption of a 20-ounce soda was associated with 4.6 years of additional biological aging. This effect on telomere length is comparable to the effect of smoking, or to the effect of regular exercise in the opposite, anti-aging direction, according to UCSF postdoctoral fellow Cindy Leung, ScD, from the UCSF Center for Health and Community and the lead author of the newly published study.

The average sugar-sweetened soda consumption for all survey participants was 12 ounces. About 21 percent in this nationally representative sample reported drinking at least 20 ounces of sugar-sweetened soda a day.

"It is critical to understand both dietary factors that may shorten telomeres, as well as dietary factors that may lengthen telomeres," Leung said. "Here it appeared that the only beverage consumption that had a measurable negative association with telomere length was consumption of sugared soda."

The finding adds a new consideration to the list of links that has tied sugary beverages to obesity, metabolic syndrome, type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular disease, and that has driven legislators and activists in several U.S. jurisdictions to champion ballet initiatives that would tax sugar-sweetened beverage purchases with the goal of discouraging consumption and improving public health.

The UCSF researchers measured telomeres after obtaining stored DNA from 5,309 participants, ages 20 to 65, with no history of diabetes or cardiovascular disease, who had participated in the nation's largest ongoing health survey, called the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, during the years 1999 through 2002. They found that the amount of sugar-sweetened soda a person consumed was associated with telomere length, as measured in the laboratory of Elizabeth Blackburn, PhD, professor of biochemistry at UCSF and a winner of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for her telomere-related discoveries.

Additional study authors include, from UCSF, Nancy E. Adler, PhD, professor of psychiatry and director of the Center for Health and Community, and Jue Lin, PhD, an associate researcher with Blackburn's lab; from UC Berkeley, Barbara A. Laraia, PhD, director of public health nutrition; from the University of Michigan, Belinda Needham, PhD, assistant professor of epidemiology; and from Stanford University, David H. Rehkopf, ScD, assistant professor of medicine.

Major funding for the study was provided by the National Institutes of Health. Lin is a shareholder of Telomere Diagnostics, Inc.

ESTIMATED I 65 MILLION GLOBAL CARDIOVASCULAR DEATHS EACH LINKED TO HIGH SODIUM CONSUMPTION

More than 1.6 million cardiovascular-related deaths per year can be attributed to sodium consumption above the World Health Organization's recommendation of 2.0g (2,000mg) per day, researchers have found in a new analysis evaluating populations across 187 countries. The findings were published in the August 14 issue of The New England Journal of Medicine

"High sodium intake is known to increase blood pressure, a major risk factor for cardiovascular diseases including heart disease and stroke," said first and corresponding author Dariush Mozaffarian, M.D., Dr.P.H., dean of the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University, who led the research while at the Harvard School of Public Health. "However, the effects of excess sodium intake on cardiovascular diseases globally by age, sex, and nation had not been well established."

The researchers collected and analyzed existing data from 205 surveys of sodium intake in countries representing nearly three-quarters of the world's adult population, in combination with other global nutrition data, to calculate sodium intakes worldwide by country, age, and sex. Effects of sodium on blood pressure and of blood pressure on cardiovascular diseases were determined separately in new pooled meta-analyses, including differences by age and race. These findings were combined with current rates of cardiovascular diseases around the world to estimate the numbers of cardiovascular deaths attributable to sodium consumption above 2.0g per day.

The researchers found the average level of global sodium consumption in 2010 to be 3.95g per day, nearly double the 2.0g recommended by the World Health Organization. All regions of the world were above recommended levels, with regional averages ranging from 2.18g per day in sub-Saharan Africa to 5.51g per day in Central Asia. In their meta-analysis of controlled intervention studies, the researchers found that reduced sodium intake lowered blood pressure in all adults, with the largest effects identified among older individuals, blacks, and those with pre-existing high blood pressure.

"These 1.65 million deaths represent nearly one in 10 of all deaths from cardiovascular causes worldwide. No world region and few countries were spared," added Mozaffarian, who chairs the Global Burden of Diseases, Nutrition, and Chronic Disease Expert Group, an international team of more than 100 scientists studying the effects of nutrition on health and who contributed to this effort. "These new findings inform the need for strong policies to reduce dietary sodium in the United States and across the world."

In the United States, average daily sodium intake was 3.6g, 80 percent higher than the amount recommended by the World Health Organization. [The federal government's Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommend limiting intake of sodium to no more than 2,300mg (2.3g) per day.] The researchers found that nearly 58,000 cardiovascular deaths each year in the United States could be attributed to daily sodium consumption greater than 2.0g. Sodium intake and corresponding health burdens were even higher in many developing countries.

"We found that four out of five global deaths attributable to higher than recommended sodium intakes occurred in middle- and low-income countries," added John Powles, M.B., B.S., last author and honorary senior visiting fellow in the department of public health and primary care at the University of Cambridge. "Programs to reduce sodium intake could provide a practical and cost effective means for reducing premature deaths in adults around the world."

The authors acknowledge that their results utilize estimates based on urine samples, which may underestimate true sodium intakes. Additionally, some countries lacked data on sodium consumption, which was estimated based on other nutritional information; and, because the study focuses on cardiovascular deaths, the findings may not reflect the full health impact of sodium intake, which is also linked to higher risk of nonfatal cardiovascular diseases, kidney disease and stomach cancer, the second most-deadly cancer worldwide.

FRUIT AND VEGETABLE CONSUMPTION COULD BE AS GOOD FOR YOUR MENTAL AS YOUR PHYSICAL HEALTH

Fruit and vegetable consumption could be as good for your mental as your physical health, new research suggests.

The research, conducted by the University of Warwick's Medical School using data from the Health Survey for England, and published by BMJ Open focused on mental wellbeing and found that high and low mental wellbeing were consistently associated with an individual's fruit and vegetable consumption.

33.5% of respondents with high mental wellbeing ate five or more portions of fruit and vegetables a day, compared with only 6.8% who ate less than one portion. Commenting on the findings Dr Saverio Stranges, the research paper's lead author, said: "The data suggest that higher an individual's fruit and vegetable intake the lower the chance of their having low mental wellbeing."

31.4% of those with high mental wellbeing ate three-four portions and 28.4% ate one-two.

Other health-related behaviours were found to be associated with mental wellbeing, but along with smoking only fruit and vegetable consumption was consistently associated in both men and women. Alcohol intake and obesity were not associated with high mental wellbeing.

Commenting on the findings Dr Saverio Stranges, the research paper's lead author, said: "Along with smoking, fruit and vegetable consumption was the health-related behaviour most consistently associated with both low and high mental wellbeing. These novel findings suggest that fruit and vegetable intake may play a potential role as a driver, not just of physical, but also of mental wellbeing in the general population."

Low mental wellbeing is strongly linked to mental illness and mental health problems, but high mental wellbeing is more than the absence of symptoms or illness; it is a state in which people feel good and function well. Optimism, happiness, self-esteem, resilience and good relationships with others are all part of this state. Mental wellbeing is important not just to protect people from mental illness but because it protects people against common and serious physical diseases.

Discussing the implications of the research, co-author Professor Sarah Stewart-Brown says that: "Mental illness is hugely costly to both the individual and society, and mental wellbeing underpins many physical diseases, unhealthy lifestyles and social inequalities in health. It has become very important that we begin to research the factors that enable people to maintain a sense of wellbeing.

"Our findings add to the mounting evidence that fruit and vegetable intake could be one such factor and mean that people are likely to be able to enhance their mental wellbeing at the same time as preventing heart disease and cancer."

Mental wellbeing was assessed using the Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale (WEMWBS), in which the top 15% of participants categorised as having High mental wellbeing, the bottom 15% Low and the middle 16-84% as Middle.

The research involved 14,000 participants in England aged 16 or over, with 56% of those being female and 44% male, as part of the Health Survey for England -- which saw detailed information collected on mental and physical health, health related behaviours, demographics and socio-economic characteristics.