Sugary drinks and type 2 diabetes risk: Is it about more than excess kilos?

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Australians love sugary drinks and we're not just talking cola and the like. Think sports drinks, energy drinks, cordials and even fruit juices (which have a sugar content on par with soft drinks).

Not only are these sweet drinks bad for our teeth, they're loaded with kilojoules. Drink too many and you'll stack on weight and increase your risk of a host of diseases, including type 2 diabetes.

In fact one recent study found for every extra sugar-sweetened drink you have per day, there was an 18 per cent increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes.

Type 2 diabetes causes raised levels of glucose, a type of sugar, in the blood. It can damage vital organs and lead to deadly heart attacks and strokes.

But do such drinks raise the risk of type 2 diabetes purely because drinking them tends to make you stack on the kilos? Or could they bring about this effect even if you're not sipping them to the point you're overweight?


While most experts believe it's primarily excess kilos that are to blame, research provides some tantalising clues there might also be other mechanisms involved. (Note that sweet drinks are linked only with type 2 diabetes. The less commontype 1 diabetes is not caused by diet or other lifestyle factors.)

When it comes to your eating and drinking habits raising your type 2 diabetes risk, most experts agree — it's extra body fat that's the key player.

"It is more being overweight — particularly around the waist — that is linked with type 2 diabetes than any particular food you eat," says Ian Caterson, Boden Professor of Human Nutrition at the University of Sydney.

Excess fat makes you more prone to diabetes because it hijacks your hormonal system, sending it into chaos.

The result is the hormone insulin, which is released from your pancreas, can't do its job of transporting glucose (which you get from the breakdown of your food) into your body's cells (which use it as their main energy source).

"People with diabetes have high blood sugar because they're still absorbing sugar from food, but they can't deal with it quickly and appropriately," says Caterson.


Our bodies don't seem to register kilojoules in liquid form as well as those in food. This means we don't eat less of anything else to compensate, making it easy to gain weight.
Drinks often loaded with preservatives, colourings and flavourings

But over the years, some research has suggested even if you're not overweight, regularly drinking sugary beverages might still increase your type 2 diabetes risk.

Indeed a recent international study found drinking sugar sweetened beverages regularly was linked to a greater incidence of type 2 diabetes, regardless of whether you're carrying extra weight.

The study analysed the pooled results of 17 separate studies that tracked groups of people over time.

But Associate Professor Anna Peeters, head of Obesity and Population Health at Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute, says the study's findings are not conclusive: "I don't think their data was strong enough."

The hint that sugary drinks might act in other ways to trigger type 2 diabetes had emerged from earlier studies, Peeters says.

"I think this particular study is the first one that kind of made us take that hint seriously," Peeters says. "It doesn't really tell us it's any stronger [a force at work] but it tells us we should look at it more closely."

One idea is that the drinks might force repeated bursts of insulin to be released from the pancreas, causing the pancreas to "wear out" and stop being able to produce further insulin.

"What this [study] confirmed is that there is a really strong and observable risk associated with drinking sugar-sweetened beverages and developing diabetes.

"For every extra drink you have per day, there was an almost 20 per cent increased risk of developing diabetes. That's a lot."

"I think if the question is 'is there a strong association between drinking soft drinks and developing diabetes?' then 'yes, there is'. That's pretty much solved. But it's not clear [yet] all the mechanisms that are happening."

Whichever way you look at it, limiting sugary beverages is a good idea. There's nothing in these drinks that we actually need. If you're drinking them too often, they may increase your odds of gaining weight, which in turn raises your odds of not just type 2 diabetes, but heart disease and certain cancers, including breast and bowel.

Also soft drinks, along with plenty of other sweet drinks, are often loaded with preservatives, colourings and flavourings and other things you basically don't need.

So make a point of looking out for the sugar content on the label of drinks, remember that even fruit juices have a similar sugar content to soft drinks and choose water.




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