​Data from the Framingham Heart Study (FHS) has shown that people who more frequently consume sugary beverages such as sodas and fruit juices are more likely to have poorer memory, smaller overall brain volumes and smaller hippocampal volumes - an area of the brain important for memory. Researchers also found that people who drank diet soda daily were almost three times as likely to develop stroke and dementia when compared to those who did not consume diet soda. These findings appear separately in the journals Alzheimer's & Dementia and the journal Stroke.
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Excess sugar is known to have adverse effects on health. Diet soft drinks are often touted as a healthier alternative to regular soda. However both sugar and artificially-sweetened beverage consumption has been linked to cardiometabolic risk factors, which increases the risk of cerebrovascular disease and dementia.

Although the researchers suggest that people should be cautious about regularly consuming either diet sodas or sugary beverages, it is premature to say their observations represent cause and effect. Future studies are needed to test whether giving people artificial sweeteners causes adverse effects on the brain.

So I've never had a blog before. I've actually never had a website before either. I figure a blog is a decent place to put thoughts and post news, so here it is. It's very exciting that Hazard Health is officially a thing now! Having worked in the community and in healthcare for what seems like a bazillion years, it's kind of an amazing feeling to have this finally going. One thing I've learned in those bazillion years is that there is such a HUGE need for nutrition education. Everyone THINKS they know nutrition... they've read some books and watched SEVERAL documentaries on the topic. (WHOA). Therefore they know the truth and they hold all the secrets to ideal health. I so wish that was the case. If all anyone needed to do was read a few books to cure all that ails... well then heck, we wouldn't be the most overweight and unhealthy country in the world. I wish it was that easy. I really really do. I've seen so much suffering from lifestyle related illness that I care to admit.

There is something more that haunts us. I think we all KNOW that a bag of chips is bad. We KNOW that the vegetables are good. Yet, what do we do? We eat the chips. My hope is to help those struggling with the psychological addiction to food. I want to reverse depression, metabolic syndrome and even acne by breaking the addiction. Let's work together and use the most powerful drug there is to get better. FOOD.