If you want to avoid developing diabetes and all its life-threatening blood sugar difficulties, researchers at the University of Cambridge in England say that you can use water – plain water – to significantly reduce your risk.
They say that merely replacing one of your sugary drinks a day with a glass of water or, alternatively, unsweetened tea or coffee, makes you much less likely to suffer diabetes.
The data in the Cambridge study demonstrates that for many of us, the elimination of one sugary drink a day (a soft drink, fruit drink or sweetened energy drink, for instance), or even the elimination of an artificially sweetened soft drink, and the substitution of an unsweetened beverage instead can shrink the diabetes risk by as much as 25 percent.
The 11-year study analyzed the health and diets of more than 25,000 people between the ages of 40 and 79.
“By using this detailed dietary assessment with a food diary, we were able to study several different types of sugary beverages, including sugar-sweetened soft drinks, sweetened tea or coffee and sweetened milk drinks as well as artificially sweetened beverages (ASB) and fruit juice, and to examine what would happen if water, unsweetened tea or coffee or ASB were substituted for sugary drinks,” says researcher Nita Forouhi who is with the UK Medical Research Council (MRC) Epidemiology Unit, University of Cambridge.
For the people in this study, the research showed that consuming fruit juice, sweetened tea or coffee was not related to the risk of diabetes.
Forouhi concludes: “Our new findings on the potential to reduce the burden of diabetes by reducing the percentage of energy consumed from sweet beverages add further important evidence to the recommendation from the World Health Organization to limit the intake of free sugars in our diet.”
Fortunately, many Americans are getting the message about the harm caused by sugary and artificially sweetened soft drinks. According to ABC News, soft drink consumption per person in the U.S. has dropped 20 percent since 1998. That still means the average person drinks about 41 gallons a year – but the trend in consumption is decidedly downwards.
If plain water is a little bit boring to you and you’re thirsty, there are hydrating foods. Dr. Mark Wiley tells me that the best ones are cucumbers, watermelon and celery. They are nutritious and are full of water to hydrate the body. You can also use watermelon and cucumber to flavor your water. Just cut them into slices of cubes and leave them overnight in a pitcher of water in the fridge. You’ll be surprised how much they quench your thirst.
