Coffee Benefits

• Researchers say replacing soda with water, coffee, or tea can reduce a person’s risk of death from type 2 diabetes by more than 20%

• They add that drinking artificially sweetened sodas instead of regular soda can also reduce the risk, but only minimally

• Experts say coffee and tea don’t raise blood glucose or sugar levels in the body in addition to other health benefits.

Adults with type 2 diabetes could live longer and reduce their risk of cardiovascular disease by switching from sugary drinks to water, coffee, or tea, a new studyTrusted Source published in The BMJ suggests.

Looking at a group of more than 15,000 adults with type 2 diabetes over an average follow-up period of 18 years, researchers from the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health in Boston reported that those who consumed the most sugar-sweetened beverages regularly had a 20% higher risk of death from any cause compared to those who drank the fewest types of these beverages.

In addition, people who drank the most sugary drinks had a 25% higher risk of cardiovascular disease and a 29% higher risk of cardiovascular disease-related death, the researchers said.

People with the highest sugary drink consumption drank on average more than one sugary beverage daily while those who consumed the least had less than one serving per month, the researchers noted.

“Sugary drinks containing a combination of fructose or high fructose corn syrup and glucose raise the blood sugar rapidly and induce rapid rise in blood sugar and insulin,” said Dr. Pouya Shafipour, a family and obesity medicine physician at Providence Saint John’s Health Center in California.

“This, in turn, will negatively impact diabetic control, worsen fatty liver, vascular inflammation and result in a higher risk of [cardiovascular] and other diseases that are directly linked with poorly controlled diabetes,” he told Medical News Today.