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MUMBAI: Tempting as it may be due to rising mercury levels but people having fizzy drinks daily are at 20% higher risk of getting heart disease than those who don't, a new study suggests. Also, people who drink diet sodas every day have a 61% higher risk of bursting a blood vessel. What is alarming is that even children, who consume 40-70 ml of soft drinks a day, may put on 3-5 kilos every year.

"Youngsters don't drink water but readily gulp down colas. They have to be told that what you do when you are a 10-year-old shows on your heart when you are 40 years old," says heart surgeon Dr Ramakanta Panda of Asian Heart Institute in Bandra Kurla Complex. And that for Mumbai's doctors is a worrying factor, as children in Indian cities are getting increasingly hooked on to soft drinks.

"The intake could have gone up to 100 ml a day now," says Dr Anoop Mishra, an endocrinologist with Fortis Hospital in Delhi, who conducted the study for Delhi-based Diabetes Foundation three years ago.

But what makes soft drinks such a health hazard is that taking a cola a day is equivalent to having seven to eight spoons of sugar at a time, says Dr Shashank Joshi, an endocrinologist with Lilavati Hospital in Bandra. The carbohydrates or sugars only provide empty calories without any nutrition, merely adding to one's weight. "It's a well-documented fact that sugary soft drinks lead to high cholesterol, high blood pressure and diabetes," he says.

The latest study from Harvard School of Public Health in Boston shows sugary drinks hit men's heart hard. The diet and health habits of 43,000 men were followed from 1986 to 2008, showing that 3,683 men who had sugary beverage every day had coronary heart disease in comparison to those who didn't.

Another study from the University of Sydney found that children who drank one or more soft drinks each day had narrower arteries in the back portion of their eye- a factor linked to higher risk of heart disease and high blood pressure.

Doctors believe it's time society adopted a hard stance against soft drinks. Dr Panda is tying with an NGO to create health awareness in school. Dr Joshi believes it's time to ban soft drinks from homes and schools, while Dr Mishra says soft drinks' consumption should be restricted to once or twice a week.

Dr Jagmeet Madan, who heads SNDT University's Nutrition College, says that children are discerning enough to understand when told that empty calories found in colas is bad. "We can tell them that there are 'sometime foods' and 'everytime foods'. It is only when 'sometime foods' like colas become 'everytime foods' that the problem arises," she adds.

A paper published in this week's American Journal of Nutrition provides a heartening observation. The article by researchers of University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill hints that a person's overall diet may decide just how harmful is the soft drink-a-day routine. It found that people who had a prudent diet (freshly cooked meals) had lowest risk of heart diseases in comparison to people who eat processed food (including meat) along with soft drinks every day. "One should physically work the effects of a sugary drink off," adds Dr Mishra.

A new report from doctors in Houston is bringing good news to the majority of heart patients – if walking up two flights of stairs doesn’t make you breathless or cause chest pain, then it’s safe to have sex.

The American Heart Association agrees that sexual intercourse causes only a slight risk of bringing on a heart attack with the same odds for people both with and without heart problems. Plus, there isn’t any proof that just because someone has already had one heart attack that sex is more likely to cause a second one to occur.

Dr. Glenn Levine, the author of the report, says that the majority of people with a heart condition walk up and down stairs all the time without thinking about it, but they may worry that having sex will lead to having a heart attack or even dying. But, as his report has brought out, this is not the case at all for most heart patients.

The report does add that patients and their doctors should bring up the subject of having sex, but that some are embarrassed to talk about it or don’t have data to share. This report gives them the guidance needed to provide that data. Levine added that a person’s overall risk of getting a heart attack while having sex is low and only represents about one percent of the cause of all heart attacks.

The report goes on to say that for people who have had one heart attack, the average risk for another is about 10 in a million every hour under all circumstances, and that participating in sexual activities raises that to about 20 in a million per hour. This amount is actually the same risks that people who have never had a heart attack face during sex, making it no more risky for heart patients to have sex than anyone else.

Patients under a doctor’s care for heart conditions may be asked to participate in a cardiac rehab program, which will monitor them for any symptoms of heart problems. This program will help the patients to gain strength in their hearts and improve their physical condition. This will help to ensure that they are good to go if they want to participate in sexual activities.