Ageing in a can

If advertising is to be believed then drinking soft drinks will variously, and apparently instantly; provide you with a group of stunningly gorgeous friends (who like to dress as scantily as possible at every opportunity), make you capable of superhuman physical feats, and suddenly make everything that is happening incredibly amusing. Of course, advertising is never to be believed. In fact, quite contrary to all of these enlivening and rejuvenating effects a new study has in fact indicated that soft drinks may make you age more rapidly, in the same way that smoking will.

In September in this column we reported on a study which showed that the act of sitting could age you at the cellular level as evidenced by its effect on telomeres. Telomeres are sit at the end of chromosomes and stop your DNA unravelling or clumping. Effectively, telomeres protect your genetic code and shorter telomeres indicate more rapid ageing. Now this new research has shown a link between soft drink consumption and shortening of your telomeres.

Australians are among the biggest consumers of sugar sweetened drinks in the world. Although soft drink consumption does appear to be declining on average each Australian consumes around 300ml of soft drink daily and that is not good news for public health.

In the new study the researchers analysed 5,309 subjects aged between 20 and 65. They looked at the amount of soft drink a person consumed and correlated that with the length of their telomeres. The results showed that average daily soft drink consumption for participants in this study was 350ml daily, slightly more than the Australian average (this was an American study). However, 21 per cent of respondents were consuming an average 590ml daily.

The correlated data showed that there was a direct but inverse relationship between soft drink consumption and telomere length: the more soft drinks consumed, the shorter the telomeres. At the level of 590ml daily the researchers calculated that to be associated with 4.6 years of ageing. They say that this effect on telomeres is similar to that of smoking.

Of course, this does not prove that soft drinks cause telomere shortening and therefore rapid ageing but it does suggest a link between people who choose to drink a lot of these drinks and faster ageing outcomes.

Words have power so maybe we ought to drop the linguistic fraud of calling these drinks “soft”.