Diet Soda or Deadly Soda?

Summary

Some folks who want to lose a little weight switch from sugared drinks and sodas to diet sodas. Healthy change, right? Wrong. In this video I discuss some disturbing research on diet sodas and a myriad of health problems including cancer. And...did you know they may be addictive??!!

Transcript

Hi there!  I’m Dr. Lisa Schwartz and today I wanted to discuss a product that many people turn to when they try to lose weight.  That product is diet soda.  They assume that because it has no calories but can still satisfy their need for a sweet taste, that ultimately they may lose weight by drinking diet sodas.  Unfortunately, just the opposite is true.  And there are other significant health risks that go along with diet soda consumption as well.

First let’s define what we are talking about.  When I say diet soda I am actually including any beverage that is sweetened with a low or no calorie sweetener.  Most commonly this is seen in diet sodas, but there are a lot of low or no calorie beverages out there that have the same effect.  Anything that contains an artificial or “natural” sweetener like Stevia can cause the problems I’m about to discuss.

There are several artificial sweeteners approved by the FDA.  Here is a partial list along with the relative sweetness compared to table sugar which has a value of 1.

So you see that these sweeteners can actually be hundreds to thousands of times sweeter than sugar.  But they have no calories, right?  Yes, that is correct, they have no calories.  So what’s the problem?

The problem may be in the way your brain and body react to these sweeteners.  Here are a few facts about what sweeteners do to your body:

1.     In spite of having no calories (and no nutritive value by the way), consumption of artificial sweeteners raises both blood sugar and insulin levels.

2.     The greater circulating insulin levels that result can lead to insulin resistance, which is the hallmark of type II diabetes.  This means that even though you have insulin circulating in your blood, your cells are not responding to it the way that they should which is to remove sugar from the blood and put it into cells for use or storage.  Higher circulating levels of insulin are also linked to other major diseases like cancer and heart disease.

3.     Artificial sweeteners can dull how your brain senses sweet since they are hundreds to thousands times sweeter than real sugar.  This can cause you to crave more sweetness.

4.     In animal studies, artificial sweeteners caused a slower metabolism so that fewer calories were burned leading to weight gain.

The way that sweeteners affect your body, put you at risk for certain health problems.  In fact there are several chronic diseases and problems associated with the consumption of diet sodas and artificial sweeteners.  Diet soda consumption is associated with

·      Greater risk of type II diabetes, heart disease, and stroke

·      Lower bone mineral density

·      Weight gain

·      An increased waist circumference and fasting glucose

·      Decreased kidney function

·      A 30% higher risk of depression

The link between diet soda consumption and diabetes is very strong.

There was a very large and well done French study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition regarding this link.  The study looked at diet soda versus sugar sweetened soda consumption in over 66,000 women and found some interesting results. 

First, women who consumed a half a liter per week of diet soda had a 15% greater risk of type II diabetes compared to women who consumed a half a liter of sugar sweetened soda.  Let that sink in for a moment.  Consuming diet soda was worse than regular soda.  But wait, there’s more…

For women who drank one and a half liters of diet soda per week, their risk of developing diabetes was 60% higher than women who drank one and a half liters of regular soda.  60% greater risk with diet soda.  That is much worse than drinking regular soda.  And still, that’s not all…

Women who drank diet sodas, drank more (2.8 glasses per week compared to 1.6 glasses per week).  Now it may be that women felt that since there were no calories, they could drink more, but given what we know about the effects of artificial sweeteners on the body, the diet sodas may have been more addictive.

There are some animal studies to back up this theory of addiction as well.  One really interesting study was again from France done by Serge Ahmed and his colleagues at the University of Bordeaux.  They were looking at how much rats liked the taste of saccharine sweetened water.  And here’s what they found.

When rats were allowed to choose between water sweetened with saccharine and intravenous cocaine, 94% chose the saccharine sweetened water. 

Over IV cocaine…

Even the cocaine-addicted rats preferred the saccharine sweetened water. 

The authors speculated that the addictive potential of the intense sweetness comes from the fact that most mammals have evolved in environments that lack concentrated sugars.  So when exposed to excessively sweet substances, the reward center in the brain is overly stimulated.  This can overrule any self-control mechanism and lead to over indulgence and addiction.  Fascinating, right?

So what have we learned here…

1.     Diet sodas are associated with several health problems including weight gain, increased waist circumference, diabetes, heart disease, and stroke among others.

2.     Artificial sweeteners have some of the same effects on the body as consuming real sugar.

3.     Animal studies support the theory that there may be an addictive quality to artificial sweeteners.

So take a look at your beverage consumption and cut out all the artificial sweeteners. 

If you are interested in more information about breast cancer, nutrition, and healthy lifestyle changes, be sure to visit my website and blog at LisaSchwartzMD.com or subscribe to my You Tube channel at Lisa Schwartz, MD.  Thanks for your time and attention.  See you next week.