I see it all the time and as I have written about before; a guys goes up to the counter at the Mini-Mart and puts down a honey bun, a bag of chips and a diet Mountain Dew! Why the Diet Soda? I’m sure that he didn’t care a hoot about the diet part of the soda after buying the honey bun and chips. He bought the Diet Mountain Dew because of the taste! They do taste good and sweet and that leads us to the first reason that diets drinks can be bad for us:

#1: IT CONFUSES THE BODY: Diet Sodas have an intense flavor, even more than real sugar, so over time products like diet sodas dull our senses to the naturally sweet foods like fruit. According to Dr. Brooke Alpert, the author of “The Sugar Detox”, even more disturbing is the fact that these sugar stand-ins, have the same effect on your body as real sugar. Artificial sweeteners still trigger insulin, which can send your body into a fat storage mode which can of course lead to weight gain.

#2: IT CAN LEAD TO WEIGHT GAIN, NOT WEIGHT LOSS: yes these drinks are calorie free but don’t accept these drinks to help you with your weight loss reduction plan. Researchers from the University of Texas found that over the course of 10 years diet soda drinkers have a 70% greater increase of waist circumference compared with non-drinkers. Researchers also found that diet soda drinkers experienced a 500% greater increase!

#3: IT’S ASSOCIATED WITH AN INCREASE RISK OF TYPE 2 DIABETES: Drinking one diet soda a day was associated with a 36% increased risk of metabolic syndrome and diabetes in a University of Minnesota study. Metabolic Syndrome simply means that one may have a cluster of conditions ranging from high blood pressure, elevated glucose levels, raised cholesterol and a large waist circumference that put people at high risk.

#4: IT HAS NO NUTRITIONAL VALUE: When you drink a diet soda, one does not take in any calories----but rather you are swallowing something that has no nutritional value. The best no calorie drink is good old fashion “water”. Water is essential for many of our bodies’ processes, so replacing it with a diet soda is not doing the body a favor or any good at all.

#5: IT’S SWEETENER IS LINKED TO HEADACHES: Early studies on Aspartame anecdotal evidence suggest that this artificial sweetener may trigger headaches in some people. Dr. Bjork states that many of his clients who used to suffer from migraines pinpointed their cause for these headaches to diet soda.

#6: IT WILL RUIN YOUR SMILE OVER TIME: Excessive soda drinking, whether it’s regular or diet drinks could leave you looking like a “Breaking Bad extra”, according to a case study published in the journal of General Dentistry. The research compared the mouths of cocaine users, a methamphetamine-user, and a habitual diet soda drinker, and found that the same level of tooth erosion in each of them. The reason--- citric acid, which will weaken and destroys tooth enamel over a period of time.

#7: IT MAY BE BAD FOR YOUR BONES: Women over 60 are already at greater risk for osteoporosis than men, and at Tufts University researchers found that drinking sodas, including diet sodas, compound the problem even more. They discovered that female cola drinkers had nearly 4% lower bone mineral density in their hips than who did not drink sodas. In a 2006 study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that cola intake (all kinds of sodas, not just diet) was associated with low bone-mineral density in women.

#8: IT MAY HURT YOUR HEART: According to researchers at the University of Miami and at Columbia University, just one diet drink a day could boost one’s risk of having a vascular event such as a stroke, heart attack, or even vascular death. Their study found that diet soda drinkers were 43% more likely to have experienced a vascular event than those who drank none. Researchers did however say that much more studies need to be conducted before definite conclusions can be made about diet soda’s effects on health.

Chip Sigmon CSCS*D, USAW, CFMT

References:
USA Today and Fox News