New medical research has suggested that diet sodas and pop are linked to depression, while coffee is linked to anti-depression.
The study, to be published at the American Academy of Neurology’s annual meeting in mid-March, found that people who drink four cans or more of soda daily are about 30 percent more likely to be diagnosed with depression than people who don’t drink soda.
Coffee drinkers are about 10 percent less likely to develop depression than people who don’t drink coffee.
According to the research, which will be officially released at the American Academy of Neurology’s annual meeting in mid-March, the National Institutes of Health study included more than 250,000 people between the ages of 50 and 71 and studied their drink consumption during 1995 and 1996.
A decade later, researchers asked whether participants had been diagnosed with depression since the year 2000.
According to researchers, “the risk appeared to be greater for people who drank diet [rather] than regular soda.”
“Our research suggests that cutting out or down on sweetened diet drinks or replacing them with unsweetened coffee may naturally help lower your depression risk,” Honglei Chen, who led the study, said in a statement.
Another study found that coffee also helped combat “cognitive decline, dementia” and Alzheimers, while a Japanese study found that men who consume one to two cups of coffee daily reduced their risk of dying from a cardiovascular disease by as much as 38%.
