Health briefs: Soda may age you as fast as smoking

You knew that drinking sugary sodas could lead to obesity, diabetes and heart attacks. But it may also speed up the aging process.

As you age, telomeres on the ends of your chromosomes shrink. Researchers at the University of California at San Francisco have analyzed stored DNA from more than 5,300 healthy Americans in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey from about 14 years ago. And they discovered that those who drank more pop tended to have shorter telomeres. The shorter the telomere, the harder it is for a cell to regenerate — and so, the body ages.

According to the research, drinking a 20-ounce pop every day is linked to 4.6 years of additional aging. You get the same effect by smoking, said UCSF postdoctoral fellow Cindy Leung, lead author of the study. However, researchers say, a link does not mean causation.

A daily dose of walnuts — which oddly resemble the brain — may help keep Alzheimer's disease at bay.

Researchers at the New York State Institute for Basic Research in Developmental Disabilities said experiments with Alzheimer's-susceptible mice found that subjects that consumed walnuts showed significant improvement in their learning skills and memory compared with mice that didn't eat them.

The study also found improvement in motor skills and reduction in anxiety. The mice in the experiment consumed an amount of walnuts that would be the equivalent for humans of eating about 1 to 1.5 ounces of walnuts a day.

Drinking coffee — even decaf — may protect your liver.

More than 14,000 of the subjects drank coffee. The researchers found that compared with non-coffee drinkers, those who drank three cups a day were 25 percent less likely to have abnormal liver enzyme levels. Among the more than 2,000 who drank only decaffeinated coffee, the results were similar.

The reason is unclear. "There are more than a thousand compounds in coffee," said lead author Qian Xiao, of the National Cancer Institute.