Save your pancreas and avoid empty calories by learning how to wean yourself off soda.

Last straw? Besides its effects on your wasteline, the sugar in soda may raise your cancer risk.

RODALE NEWS, EMMAUS, PA—Pancreatic cancer is a particularly fatal form of cancer and ranks as the fourth leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the U.S. Because there are few symptoms, doctors often don't catch the disease until it's in its late stages. So it makes sense to avoid or counteract the known causes of pancreatic cancer, including smoking, obesity, type 2 diabetes, and, according to a study published today in the journal Cancer, Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, soda. The researchers suspect that it could trigger tumor growth by affecting your body's production of insulin.

THE DETAILS: Researchers used data from a group of 60,524 Chinese adults living in Singapore, a highly industrialized country with a diet that's more in line with that of Western countries than traditional Asian cultures, says the study's lead author, Noel Mueller, MPH, research associate at Georgetown University Medical Center. Using food-consumption questionnaires to gather data on their diets over a roughly 10-year period, the researchers asked how frequently the adults drank sugar-sweetened soft drinks and juices, along with other foods typical of Western diets—red meat, sugary candy, and alcohol, for instance.

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There was no correlation between juice intake and pancreatic cancer, but adults who drank two or more sodas a week had an 85 percent greater risk for pancreatic cancer than adults who drank none at all. Although other factors, such as smoking, obesity, and type 2 diabetes, can also put you at risk for pancreatic cancer, Mueller says that soft drinks have a unique effect on the body, perhaps accelerating the growth of tumors. "Habitual consumption of sugar-sweetened soft drinks could be stimulating tumor growth through their effects on the hormone insulin," he notes. High sugar levels seem to be the culprit, though in this study, the high sugar levels in juices may have been mitigated by their smaller serving sizes and other factors.