One less soda a day could keep your hair loss at bay.
A new study suggests drinking your favorite pop could be raising your odds of going bald.
Researchers from the Tsinghua University in Beijing found that those who indulged in just one soda per day had a 57% higher risk of experiencing male pattern hair loss compared to those who avoided fizzy bevs.
Specifically, they analyzed the consumption of “sugar-sweetened beverages,” referred to as SSBs in the study, and hypothesized the likelihood that any drink high in added sugar could contribute to the condition. With the possible exception of diet sodas, other sugary drinks, including sports drinks, sweetened coffee and tea, should be off the table if you want to keep your hair.
Data show that half of men typically lose their hair by 50, and 25% of bald men see the earliest signs of hair loss before they’re 21, according to the Cleveland Clinic.
Scientists have long searched for an effective hair loss treatment, trialing everything from twice-a-day tablets to old-school Minoxidil, the active ingredient in Keeps and Rogaine. One team of Japanese researchers even grew a hair follicle in a petri dish earlier this year — a first step toward developing a regenerative hair growth treatment.
But recent advances might be for naught if men continue to guzzle down soda. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 63% of adults aged 18 years and up drink at least one sugary beverage a day.
This latest study, published in the journal Nutrients, looked for links between sweet drink consumption and male pattern hair loss, in a self-reported survey of 1,028 men, ages 18 to 45, located in China.
Participants answered questions about previous balding, their eating habits and if they experience any mental health problems. They were also asked how often they consumed certain foods and beverages — namely soft drinks and sweetened refreshments.
This revealed a “significant association” between a high sugary drink consumption and hair loss in men.
Investigators saw the highest sweetened beverage intake among the youngest men surveyed, and believed it to be the result of an “unawareness of the harmful effects” of the sugary drinks.
“Chronic diseases and deaths are so vague and distant for young people that they are unwilling to give up the satisfaction brought by SSBs for the sake of long-term health goals,” the authors wrote.
Researchers further concluded that drinking sugary beverages one to three times per week saw an increased risk of hair loss by 21%, while consuming four to seven of the sweet drinks heightened the risk to 26%.
In addition to hair loss, they found a relationship between sweetened beverage intake and psychological health — potentially fueling a vicious cycle of depression and anxiety made worse by hair loss.
In their analysis, researchers found that people who consumed three sodas per day had about a 25% higher risk of depression. They also discovered that the simple sugars in such drinks are associated with heightened anxiety among 45-year-old study participants.
The scientists’ findings are correlative, meaning that they cannot be certain that soda causes hair loss — only that soda drinkers are losing their hair at higher rates.
This potential link between poor diet and balding isn’t the first of its kind, though, as other researchers have analyzed the effects of salt and a receding hair line. Some researchers have touted healthy eating and various vitamins and minerals as the holy grail to preventing hair loss, yet it remains unclear if eating clean is indeed end-all, be-all.
The Beijing researchers didn’t seem to think so. They did not find any protective qualities of eating healthy, but called for more studies to be conducted to confirm their results.