Soda Drinking Every Day Could Raise Women's Stroke Risk: Study

Yet another study is linking regular consumption of sugary drinks with risk of stroke.

The newest finding, first reported by Reuters and published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, shows that women who said they drank the most soft drinks in the study had an 83 percent higher risk of ischemic stroke than those who reported drinking the fewest soft drinks.

Earlier this year, a study in the Journal of General Internal Medicine showed a link between drinking a diet soda every day and higher stroke and heart attack risk.

"It makes sense, if [sugar sweetened beverages] increase the risk for obesity, diabetes, insulin resistance, inflammation, then it should, in fact, raise the risk for cardiovascular disease, and that's what we're seeing," Cleveland Clinic's Adam Bernstein, who was not involved in the study, told Reuters.

The study included 39,786 men and women in Japan between the ages of 40 and 59, who were tracked between 1990 and 2008. They filled out a questionnaire asking them about their soft drink consumption.

By the end of the study period, 453 people had ischemic heart disease and 1,922 people had had a stroke (1,047 of which were ischemic, the other 859 were hemorrhagic).

Researchers found that women who had drank the most soda in the study -- Reuters reported that this was nearly a soda a day -- had a higher risk of ischemic stroke than those who drank the least soda in the study. However, researchers didn't find a risk between soda consumption and ischemic heart disease, or hemorrhagic stroke for either men or women.

A previous study from Harvard researchers did find a link between sugary drink consumption and increased coronary heart disease risk, at least for men, ABC News reported.

In that study, which included 43,000 people who were part of the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study, coronary heart disease risk was found to be 20 percent higher for the men who drank a daily sugary drink, compared with those who didn't drink any sugary drinks, according to ABC News.

The findings are important because we as Americans drink a lot of sugary drinks, and it's necessary to know what the potential ramifications are. After all, a recent Gallup study showed that nearly half of Americans drink a soda every single day.

For more potential health effects of soda, click through the slideshow: