Risks associated with consumption of sugary beverages have been discussed in many previous studies. It has been found in most of the studies that these beverages increase the risk of many health conditions or make previously existing ones worse.

A new study, which has been published in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, has seen the issue from a different point.

It is a question whether consuming sugary beverages suppress cortisol. Cortisol is a hormone, which is associated with both stress and weight gain. It was found by researchers that drinks sweetened with aspartame were not having the same stress-relieving effect; however ones that consisted of regular sugar helped relieve stress, especially in women.

According to one of the study's authors, Kevin D. Laugero, of the University of California, Davis, and the US Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service, "This is the first evidence that high sugar - but not aspartame - consumption may relieve stress in humans. The concern is psychological oremotional stress could trigger the habitual overconsumption of sugar and amplify sugar's detrimental health effects, including obesity".

The study was conducted on 19 women between the ages of 18 and 40. Eight women out of them were made to consume aspartame-sweetened beverages and 11 of the women drank one sugar-sweetened beverage at breakfast, lunch and dinner.

They were asked to not drink any other sugary beverages after that. It was concluded in the study that women who consumed sugar-sweetened beverages had a reduced cortisol response to the math test and more activity in the hippocampus compared to those who drank the artificially sweetened beverages.