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Consuming soft drinks may have become a trend or maybe a lifestyle for some people. On hot afternoons it is best to drink cold and sweet drinks, such as soft drinks. But be careful, too often consuming sugary fizzy drinks can have a bad effect on you.
Apart from being able to cause obesity or obesity, recently it has also been found that soft drinks can cause you to grow old quickly. How can?
Soft drinks cause aging quickly
A study from the University of California-San Francisco (UCSF) has found that regularly drinking sugary soft drinks can accelerate the aging of immune cells. As a result, the body becomes more susceptible to chronic disease.
According to Prof. Elissa Epel, researcher of the study, regularly consuming sugary soft drinks can affect the progression of the disease. Sweet fizzy drinks can not only cause a lack of metabolic control of sugar in the body, but can also accelerate the aging of cells in the body's tissues.
How can soda cause you to age quickly?
This is related to the telomere length. Telomeres can be a marker of cell aging. Telomeres are repeating DNA sequences that cover the ends of chromosomes to keep them from dangling. This serves to protect DNA from damage. These telomeres get shorter each time the cell divides. However, if the telomeres are too short, cells can stop dividing 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 with age. In addition, short telomeres can also be associated with tissue damage, swelling, and insulin resistance, along with chronic diseases, such as coronary heart disease and diabetes related to aging.
Research from UCSF has shown that participants who consumed large amounts of soft drinks tended to have shorter telomeres. The researchers compared telomere length (as seen from blood samples) and consumption of sugary fizzy drinks in each participant in the study, and the results were different. The study, which involved 5309 people aged 20-65 years, also calculated that consumption of soft drinks of approximately 600 ml per day was associated with an increase in biological age of about 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 disease occurs. So, it will take your body a lot of time for the disease to develop, which you may have started the disease since childhood.
Conclusion
This study from UCSF adds to findings about the impact of consuming lots of soft drinks, in addition to causing obesity, metabolic syndrome, diabetes, and heart disease. Soft drinks are one of the things that can shorten the length of your telomere, so that it can make the cells in the body age faster.
Other things that can also affect your telomere length are smoking, diet, race, gender, and the speed at which your blood cells divide. This means that by adopting a healthy lifestyle, with a balanced nutritional diet, regular exercise, managing stress, and not smoking, you can maintain your telomere length, thus opening up greater opportunities to live longer.
