Contents:
- Medical Video: What If You Only Drank Soda?
- Soft drinks cause old age
- How can soft drinks cause old age?
- Conclusion
Medical Video: What If You Only Drank Soda?
Eating soft drinks may have become a trend or maybe the lifestyle of some people. During the day the heat is the most delicious to drink cold and sweet drinks, such as soft drinks. But be careful, too often consuming fizzy sweet drinks can bring adverse effects to you.
Apart from being able to cause obesity or obesity, lately it has also been found that soft drinks can cause you to become old quickly. How can?
Soft drinks cause old age
A study from the University of California-San Francisco (UCSF) has found that routinely drinking fizzy drinks can accelerate aging from immune cells. As a result, the body becomes more vulnerable to chronic diseases.
According to Prof. Elissa Epel, researcher from the study, consuming sweet, carbonated drinks on a regular basis can affect the development of the disease. Fizzy sweet drinks can not only cause a lack of metabolic control of sugar in the body, but can also accelerate aging of cells in the body's tissues.
How can soft drinks cause old age?
This is related to telomere length. Telomeres can be a marker of cell aging. Telomeres are repetitive DNA sequences that cover the ends of the chromosomes so they don't dangle. This serves to protect DNA from damage. This telomer will be shorter each time the cell divides. However, if the telomere is too short, the cell can stop splitting and die. Thus, telomere length can describe or even determine the biological age of cells.
Previous research has also linked telomere length in white blood cells to age. In addition, short telomeres can also be associated with tissue damage, swelling, and insulin resistance, accompanied by chronic diseases, such as coronary heart disease and diabetes related to aging.
Research from UCSF has shown that participants who consume large amounts of carbonated drinks tend to have shorter telomeres. The researchers compared telomere length (as seen from blood samples) and consumption of carbonated sugary drinks in each participant in the study, and the results were different. The study involving 5309 people aged 20-65 years also calculated that the consumption of soft drinks as much as approximately 600 ml per day was associated with an increase in biological age of around 4.6 years.
Epel added that although the study only involved adults, the results of this study could also illustrate the consumption of soft drinks related to telomere shortening in children. This research was conducted regardless of age, race, income and education level. Moreover, telomere shortening occurs before the disease appears. So, your body needs a lot of time until it can cause illness, which you may start triggering the disease from childhood.
Conclusion
This study from UCSF adds to the findings about the effects of consuming lots of soft drinks, besides being able to cause obesity, metabolic syndrome, diabetes, and heart disease. Soft drinks are one of the things that can shorten your telomere length, so it can make the cells in your body age faster.
Another thing that can also affect your telomere length is smoking, diet, race, gender, and the speed of blood cells in dividing. That is, by applying a healthy lifestyle, with a balanced nutrition diet, regular exercise, managing stress, and not smoking, then you can maintain your telomere length, thus opening up greater opportunities to live longer.
