A nice glass of cold Coca-cola on a hot day takes me right back to childhood and gives me a boost of energy. However, I keep pop in the ‘treat’ category rather than drinking it on a regular basis because I believe the sugar content is unhealthy.
A new study looking at beverage intake recently came out, and it provided another reason to suspect that drinking our calories is not good for us. The study found that the higher a woman’s intake of sugared pop, the lower her chances of having a live birth after in vitro fertilization.
The study followed 340 women undergoing IVF. It compared women who drank no pop to those who drank more than one cup per day. Those who drank one or more cups of pop per day were 16% less likely to have a live birth from the IVF cycle studied.
Another study looked at how long it took women conceiving naturally to become pregnant. Unfortunately they did not tease out regular pop and diet pop, however they still found that the more pop a woman drank, the longer it took to get pregnant. They reported their results as the likelihood of getting pregnant in over the course of twelve menstrual cycles compared to no pop consumption.
- <500 ml – 89%
- 500 ml – 85%
- 1000 ml – 84%
- 1500 ml+ – 48%
As you can see, the impact of drinking pop is small unless you are drinking unusually high amounts. Even so, because it is an easy behaviour to change, I suggest it as a quick fertility ‘win’.
Dr. Andrea Hilborn is a naturopathic doctor in Kingston, Ontario
Association between preconception maternal beverage intake and in vitro fertilization outcomes.RonitMachtingerM.D,AudreyJ.GaskinsSc.D.bcAbdallahMansurM.Sc.aMichalAdirB.Sc.aCatherineRacowskyPh.D.dAndrea A.BaccarelliM.D., Ph.D.eRussHauserM.D., Sc.D.fgJorge E.ChavarroM.D.bcg. Fertility and Sterility. Available online 3 October 2017
Caffeinated Beverage and Soda Consumption and Time to pregnancy. Elizabeth E. Hatch,1 Lauren A. Wise,1,2 Ellen M. Mikkelsen,3 Tina Christensen,3 Anders H. Riis,3 Henrik Toft Sørensen,1,3 and Kenneth J. Rothman1,4. Epidemiology. 2012 May; 23(3): 393–401.