Drinking lots of sugar-sweetened sodas and juices significantly increases the risk of chronic kidney disease, reports a new study from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Using health questionnaires for 3,003 African-American adults in Jackson, Mississippi, covering a 13-year period, the researchers found that the top third of subjects, those consuming the most sugar-sweetened drinks, were 61 percent more likely to develop kidney disease than those in the bottom third.

This article appears in the April 2019 issue of Natural Awakenings.