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If you are a woman and prefer plain water over fizzy drinks, you are less prone to contracting the lifestyle disease, diabetes.

A recent study at the Harvard School of Public Health suggests that women who drink plain water instead of sweet drinks keep metabolic disorders at bay.

For the study, the drinking habits of about 83,000 women were studied for more than 10 years by researchers led by Dr Frank Hu. They also studied the data from Nurses Health Study, which tracked the health and lifestyle of tens of thousands of women across the U.S.

The women were asked to answer questions pertaining to their lifestyle, including their diet and health over a span of 12 years. Over time, about 2,700 of the participants developed diabetes.

Apparently, the analysis of the data showed that there was not much role played by water drinking habits of the participants. It seems, the participants who drank 6 cups of water every day were at the same risk of diabetes as those who drank less than one cup of water a day.

But then those who consumed sweetened drinks were found to be at a higher risk of diabetes - about 10 percent higher for each cup consumed every day.

The study says that if only a single cup of the sweetened drink is replaced by a plain cup of water, the diabetes risk would fall by around 8 percent.

"The reality is fruit juices contain the same amount of calories and sugar as soft drinks," said Hu according to Mail Online.

Due to the prevalence of diabates as a lifestyle disease in our society, a reduction of 7 to 8 percent in the risk of contracting it is quite significant, according to Hu.

The research, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, also suggests that unsweetened coffee or tea could be used as an alternative to sugary beverages.They are also estimated to cut down diabetes risk by 12 to 17 percent per cup.

According to Hu, plain water, which is calorie-free, is the best drink one could have. "If the water is too plain, you can add a squeeze of lemon or lime," he adds.

"It is essentially not that water helps, except with hydration, but that the others hurt," Dr Barry Popkin, a professor at the University of North Carolina School Of Public Health who was not involved in the study, said.