and good help tonight swapping out regular pop for diet might seem like a healthy choice but a new study suggests artificially sweetened drinks might pose risks of their own dr. Frank McGeorge is here tonight with the growing science behind this possible health hazard well Karen and JC you know as somebody who actually chooses to drink diet over regular soda this research is actually starting to bother me as counterintuitive as it might be there have been prior studies linking artificially sweetened sodas to weight gain diabetes and even high blood pressure well now it's stroke a new study from the American Heart Association and American Stroke Association says drinking two or more of any kind of artificially sweetened drink a day is linked to a greater risk of heart attack clock based strokes and early death in women over 50 after controlling for lifestyle factors the study found a 31% increase in clot based strokes now the greatest increase was in women who were obese or african-american these conclusions come after looking at the data of over 81 thousand women over 50 years old that are part of the women's health initiative this means the study results cannot be applied to men because this is an observational study it doesn't show a specific cause and effect and no one is clear if the observed link is related to the way the data was collected in the study or an actual effect the artificial sweeteners could be having while there's no expert agreement yet many researchers believe that while replacing sugary beverages with artificially sweetened sodas can be helpful as a short-term solution when people are cutting galleries long-term drinking artificially sweetened drinks does not appear to be healthy and Americans may be paying attention to these studies in fact the Beverage Marketing Corporation says bottled water surpassed carbonated soft drinks to become the top beverage by volume in 2016 back to you see we're learn
