Saturday, March 15, 2014

Just Another Observational Study

"Drinking more than four sweetened beverages a day, especially diet soda, doesn't appear to be good for one's mood, a study by the U.S. National Institutes of Health found.
"In a study of more than 200,000 older adults, those who drank more than four cans of soda a day had a 30 percent greater risk of depression than those who consumed none. The same amount of fruit punch was tied to a 38 percent higher risk, according to research released today by the American Academy of Neurology. The risk was even greater for people who consumed diet drinks, whether soda, punch or iced tea.

The study, one of the first to look at sweetened beverages and depression, doesn't explain the connection, so it's still unknown how the drinks may be tied to mental health, said Honglei Chen, one of the study's researchers. One theory is that the drinks have been linked to diabetes and obesity, which in turn can lead to the mood disorder, he said."

We didn't need another observational study, but these things get funded so they do them.  The study can't answer the important question:
Does drinking soda/diet soda make you depressed?
Because the answer very well could be that depressed people drink more soda of any type to make themselves feel better.
However, there's a good reason to think that drinking this stuff does in fact make you depressed, because the best model for depression is based on inflammation as the cause.  In other words, the same chronic inflammation that is caused by a diet that features high blood sugar spikes, high chronic insulin levels and systemic chronic inflammation causes depression in some or many of those on this diet.  
Ever see a depressed person socking away avocado?  Lard?  Or bacon and eggs?  More likely, they are eating cookies or other sweets (processed foods made from wheat, soy, HFCS, and omega 6 laden industrial "vegetable oils"), along with their cola (diet or otherwise).  
Eat meat, vegetables, nuts and seeds, little fruit or starch, no sugar/wheat.

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