A study found that excessive sugary drinks does not only make you fat but also make your injured knee worse. Researchers conducted a study on patients suffering from osteoarthritis in their knees, which is a common degenerative condition affecting six million older adults in the UK. The result showed that the patients’ condition progressed faster as they consume more soft drinks. Slim men were found to be particularly affected.
‘This study may offer the potential to identify a modifiable dietary risk factor for disease progression, enable evaluation of prevailing recommendations of healthy diet, and thus have potential public health implications,’ said study leader Dr Bing Lu from Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.
The study involved 2,149 patients who had been diagnosed with osteoarthritis following an X-ray. At the beginning of the study, each participant’s soft-drink consumption was measured using a Food Frequency Questionnaire. This did not include sugar-free drink consumption.
The researchers track the participants’ osteoarthritis progression 12, 24, 36 and 48 months later by measuring joint space change in their medial knee compartments. Body mass index (a measure of obesity) was also measured and tracked and data for men and women were analyzed separately.
After controlling for BMI and other factors that may contribute to knee OA, men who consumed more soft drinks per week had worse progression of their condition. The joint space became narrower by an average of 0.29 millimeters in men who drank no soft drinks to 0.59 millimeters in men who drank more than five soft drinks a week.
Men with normal weight had worse effects on their knees than men who were overweight or obese. By contrast, only women of normal weight showed an association between more soft-drink consumption and knee OA progression.
Based on the results, the researchers concluded that the more soft drinks men drink, the worse their knees might get.
However, it is unclear whether this problem is due to high-calorie soft drinks leading to excess weight burdening knees, or if there are other ingredients in soft drinks that contribute to OA progression.
(Source: www.dailymail.co.uk)
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