good ol' diet cola
 

well, here it is...

i love my diet cola (be it pepsi or coke, either one). i may not be addicted to it, but i sure do drink a lot of it. consistently, probably the equivalent of 3 cans a day. i've stopped for a couple weeks before to see if i could and it wasn't much of a problem. still i'm worried, are there any health implications to drinking that much diet?

it's so easy because you look on the side of the can and it says there aren't any calories, sugar, or carbs. i guess all that acidity could degrade my teeth over the long haul, and perhaps i could develop a kidney stone... but i do drink a lot of water as well.

anyway, i'm looking for someone to give me a good reason not to drink all this diet coke. i'm concerned that it will have adverse effects on me (drinking that much carbonated beverage is hardly natural), but i know won't slow it down till i learn of a good health-conscious reason.

This was found on the first google -- I have heard these claims before - -who this guy is associated with and what his agenda is I don't know, but the claims he's making, I've seen in more than one place. Artifical Sweeteners are bad for you. There ahave been warning labels on diet sodas for years (are they even stil there) that the artificial sweeteners cause cancer in lab rats-- I think we're just learning about the long term affects in humans
Dangers of Artifical Sweeteners

Then there's the caffeine thing. After getting bitched out by my doctor for my blood pressure, I'm off caffeine, and let me tell you, I was at a 5 cup a day or more of coffee habit, quitting smoking was easier than giving up caffeine. Too much caffeine is bad for you, what the long term health problem it will cause, I don't know, but 36 ounces of caffeine a day is a lot.

Diet Sodas leech calcium from your system.

The reason to stop drinking diet soda is the artificial sweetener they use. Aspartame, also called Nutrasweet or Equal, is very dangerous.

The multi-billion dollar aspartame industry would like you believe that "aspartame kills" is an "urban legend" and that you'd have to drink 100 cans of diet soda a day to be harmed by aspartame. This is just simply not true. Their main claim is that the 3 components of aspartame are found in many natural foods and are therefore safe. This is kind of like saying carbon monoxide is safe because all it contains is carbon & oxygen, the same components of carbon dioxide. Methanol (wood alcohol), which makes up 10% of aspartame and is highly toxic (adult minimum lethal dose is 2 teaspoons), is also found in some fruits & vegetables like tomatoes. However, methanol is never found in natural foods without ethanol & pectin, its "antidotes" if you will (detailed facts below). Ethanol & pectin prevent methanol from being metabolized into formaldehyde (embalming fluid) & formic acid (same chemical as fire ant venom), both deadly toxins. An ethanol drip is even the standard emergency room treatment for methanol poisoning. Aspartame contains no ethanol or pectin, therefore the methanol is converted to formaldehyde and formic acid. Phenylalanine and aspartic acid, the other 2 components of aspartame, are amino acids found in natural foods but always as part of long chains of many different amino acids to form complex protein molecules that take humans 12 hours to gradually break down & assimilate. According to doctors, when consumed by themselves these 2 amino acids require no digestion and quickly enter the brain & central nervous system at abnormally high levels, overstimulating brain cells to death and causing many other health problems.
"Pro" aspartame people point to industry sponsored short term tests, ignoring independant tests. They point to "reliable" health sites, organizations, foundations etc. that are sponsored, funded & fed "facts" by companies that profit from aspartame. And of course, the FDA approved it so "it must be safe", neglecting to mention that the FDA denied aspartame approval for over 8 years until the newly appointed FDA commissioner Arthur Hull Hayes overruled the final scientic review panel, approved aspartame, and then went to work for G.D. Searle's (initial owner of aspartame) public relations firm at $1,000 a day. Hayes has refused all interviews to discuss his actions. The FDA also urged Congress to prosecute G.D. Searle for "specific false statements or concealed facts" stemming from Searle's testing of aspartame. However, the 2 government lawyers assigned to the case decided against prosecuting G.D. Searle and then joined G.D. Searle's law firm! Even the National Soft Drink Assn. filed a strong protest letter in 1983 against the approval of aspartame for use in beverages, saying "aspartame is inherently, markedly and uniquely unstable in aqueous media." Also, the FDA still allows hydrogenated oils to be used, does that make them safe?
Seems to carzy to be true, but ask your doctor about it (assumign he/she doesn't work for G.D. Searle). Ask what the dangers are of aspartame. Ask how drinking three cans a day of a sode that has a decent does can effect your health. He/she will tell you to try 100% juice and water, instead of poison.

I'm not sure if it's physically addictive, but anything can become psychologically addictive. Especially if you do it as regularly as 3 cans a day.

yeah, i've googled it before... can't really find a cohesive argument against it except for the dangers of aspartame. i guess if there were something really compelling to say about it, we'd have all heard of it by now.

thanks for the help so far though.

You don't think the aspartime is compelling? REALLY?

Except when guests are over, I've made the leap to sparkling water or mineral water, especially the type that is flavored with lemon essence, citrus essence, or whatever. I'm mainly there for the carbonation, so it does the job. Cheaper, too, if you buy it by the 32-oz bottle

Maybe once a day I'll have a 50-50 mix of mineral water and grapefruit juice -- very nice, almost like a mixed drink without the alcohol. There may be some calories in grapefruit juice, but not many, and plenty of vitamins and flavinoids that your bod needs as well.

There is definitely life beyond diet soda.

will,

i do, but there is so much conflicting evidence on that. i mean, if i listened to that all the time i would have stopped taking aspirin and eating eggs 6 or 7 years ago. there was new information in your post that i had not read, so thanks for that. i've put a few more google searches that were based off your post. i'm surprised how much there is out there on aspartame. people drink it everyday... you'd think this wouldn't be in such limbo with the stakes so high and widespread. crazytown.

Twenty years people have been consuming aspartame, many of those people in great quantities. I don't see people dropping dead everywhere. Plus, what is the tradeoff? If it weans you from a strong liking of empty calorie sugar water, then the dangers of aspartame are probably less than the dangers of sugar in excess.

if this is correct, and i believe it is, the lab rats were given incredibly large amounts of nutrasweet for their weight, quantities that could not be matched in humans by drinking diet cola alone. That's why they developed cancer or whatever.

If you don't find enough health reasons to stop drinking it, then just do it to spite the soda companies which are very much helping the growth of obesity in america.

The whole "artificial sweeteners will kill youW@!" thing is largely a myth. I'd be more worried about what real sugar does to you.

Yeah, these tests are always with huge amounts. However, the lobby industry does have a huge impact on everything and sways a great deal..

Just ask your doctor. I do no, by a longshot, have my doctorate in medicine.

I'm a big soda/diet soda junkie myself, and I have read all of the bad things about aspartame as well. Drinking diet soda has helped me to keep my weight down, but I can't help feeling a bit nervous due to the aspartame. So far, my solution has been to drink diet soda that contains sucralose, which is apparently less dangerous than aspartame. Sucralose does contain a radical Chlorine ion that may affect the nervous system, but no studies have shown anything conclusive. I guess I'm doomed unless they come out with a safe, calorie-free, artificial sweetener.

If this thread makes you change your mind about diet colas with aspartame, there are some out there that are sweetened by sucralose you can try.

If you are worried, the new pepsi edge contains (I think) sugar and splenda (sucralose). It cuts the calories in half. Coke's C2 uses sugar, splenda and nutrasweet blended together.

The "myth" was, no doubt, started by the sugar industry, worried about losing market share. (With good reason...how much actual sugar do YOU use in your everyday life?)

What Rodney said. I drink sparkling water, often with some slight citrus flavor added (e.g., La Croix). I love it, as what I really crave is the carbonation rather than the sugar.

I can't stand artificial sweeteners -- taste like a chemistry experiment to me. I like some "sugar" sodas (e.g., Dr. Pepper), but they aren't good for you so I try to avoid them.

From what I have read, I cant say I there is proof positive that aspartame has definitive health risks. Then again, the hints are present.

The fact that it will degrade teeth is true but thats any cola. I would be willing to bet that aspartame is much better for you than all that sugar. With all the obesity and diabetes out there, the minute chance of developing cancer is not necessarily worse.

As far as the caffeine goes, there has been a study that it actually lowers heart disease. It was with coffee and good sized amounts...im not sure but i think 3 cups per day or more. Why? I dont know, weight loss/something in coffee/or caffeine itself.

By the way, I do have my doctorate in medicine but Im a lowly resident and certainly not an oncologist or cardiologist.

Oh, I was not suggesting that anyone else in here had or didn't have their doctorite. I was only saying that there are better sources for information in this area than me, someone with only limited medical knowledge.

My doctor, who I admit on some days is a complete buffoon, has banned caffeine from my life, temporarily I hope, because of my blood pressure. I'd love to see the study that caffeine lowers heart disease. (I was up to about 5 -8 or more cups a day.)

Caffeine is in a lot of weight loss supplements, I'm not sure if aid is the right word, but it aids in weight loss because it's a stimulant. Too much caffeine in a person causes jitters, sleeplessness, headaches from withdrawl and a mess of other things... Caffeine is my drug of choice however, I have a hard time believing that it's got health benefits, though I'd love for that to be true.

The sugar mafia beat up me and took all my findings on how eating on average 12 pounds of sugar a year can affect your health adversely. You'll just have to take my word for it.

I will never, ever give up Diet Coke. I don't give a shit what "they" say. I too have high blood pressure, now controlled by daily medication, and limit my daily caffeine intake to two cups of coffee and one can of Diet Coke. And I won't be changing this ritual any time soon.

When scientists were testing the effects of aspartame on rats and mice and things of the like, they fed them such massive amounts of aspartame that they got quite ill. If you feed a rat that much of anything it'll make them sick. The scientific research there was shady, at best.

Some people can actually have allergies to aspartame, just like you can have allergies to milk or peanuts. But as far as it ever causing cancer... unless you eat several times your body weight in aspartame every week, I think you're safe;)

With several different medical journals coming through my house weekly (parent is a doctor), I've read all of the articles on aspartame I can find, simply out of curiosity. All peer-reviewed medical reports have come to the same conclusion: unless you drink diet pop in heinous amounts (i.e. 10+ cans per day) aspartame has no confirmed ill effects on the body.

If your doc limited caffeine due to hypertension, it is a good idea. Caffeine and its health effects were based on 1 study. There are tons of excellent studies showing how the ill effects of high blood pressure.

As far as the bad effects of cola...well there are so many bad things in life that if you simply HAVE to have it go ahead. I drink enough coffee and soda myself simply to stay awake.

At one point I worked for a company with a free Coke machine (literally Coke, because the company name was pronounced "Coke" even though spelled differently), and I probably _did_ get close to ten cans a day of diet soda. I started feeling weird in an indefinable way -- partly mental, partly just feeling "off" -- and I cut back. But I couldn't tell you if it was the aspartame or not. Drinking that much of _anything_ in a day would probably have some odd effect on the body.

I find it very hard to trust any reports from any source. For every report that says it's fine, there's one stating that it's harmful. You can't win either way and there will probably never be the "end all" answer.

There's just too much conflicting information... like you said w/ eggs, I mean, they're comin out w/ reports CONSTANTLY about how eggs are good, then next week they're bad, but a week later they're good again when in reality they're fine - they're eggs, not blocks of tar. They're fine, just like anything else, if consumed in moderation. If you eat a carton of eggs a day, yeah, it'd be bad. If you had 3 a day, probably not.

3 cans of diet soda isn't bad at all. I drink more than that sometimes.. maybe like 6 cans a day. It's more or less flavored water w/ some caffeine, so it's not very harmful. The nutrition label says 0 calories, 0 carbs, and that's all that really matters.

Think of it this way: If it was REALLY a problem, the FDA would do something about it.

If you compare it to people who drink NOTHING BUT water, then yeah, it'll appear not so healthy, but compare it to others who drink cup after cup of coffee (which is a lot of people) and you'll see that it's not so bad.

Sorry. You may be right and aspartame may be harmless. But FDA action or reaction is no guideline. At the top, politics rule, especially when the issue and/or proof on either side is inconclusive. Rather than keep digging, the FDA will make a finding that is a compromise between scientific rigor and corporate pressure (through friends of the drug industry in Congress and the administration).

Sometimes it's a bad compromise. A few years back, there was pressure from Congress (and industry) to "fast-track" testing of certain drugs if the drug company's own test results were positive. One particular drug, a weight-loss pill, got fast-tracked out into the marketplace after minimal testing. Six months later they pulled it from the market because many users' cardiovascular systems were failing castastrophically; some died, some needed heart-lung transplants to keep going. I talked to a guy whose wife was on machines until her transplant came up.

We all have to have unstinting faith in something or someone. God may deserve it, but not the FDA.

Aspartame gives me a wicked headache. But that's me, not you.

Also, there was an item (within the last month in Time magazine? I can't seem to find it right now), where they have discovered that using artificial sweeteners throws off the body's ability to gage how much you have eaten, and leads to eating even more. Perhaps someone else can find it.

I used to drink a lot of diet soda just for the carbonation. Then I heard about the "aspartame myth" so I switched to sparkling water with some citrus.

I've noticed that I am not as tired after switching over to sparkling water.

done some more research...

redlemon, i had read that artificial sweeteners prevent your body from have a proper ability understanding of how hungry you are also. it was from a atkin's diet book that warned that you shouldn't drink diet cola as it would make you hungrier and harder to stick to the diet.

additionally, diet cola may lead to a decrease in bone density... but i think that is primarily because it is often a replacement for drinks high in calcium (like juice and milk).

That's not exclusive to diet cola, it's any carbonated beverage...cola or not, diet or not. It's the dissolved CO2 that leeches the calcium from your bones. Sparkling drinks will do the same, because of the carbonation.

I am sorry I had to BUMP this thread.

I was doing research on aspertame today ( I drink a good 8 cans of Diet Coke a day). I have some of the symptoms. Hair thinning, some abdominal pain after I drink a diet coke, insomnia, depression, decreased vision, and the occasional headache. I am going to stop drinking it for a week or more and see if the symptoms stop. If they do I will stop drinking it and it will prove that aspartame can be dangerous.

theres still a ton of caffeine in diet pop
i mean
diet pop doesn't have sugar, but its still brutal for you

update: i've cut myself down to a single can or bottle of diet cola a day and replaced all that fluid with water. quite honestly, while i'm sitting here on my computer i'd rather have a diet coke in my hand, but i tend to have more energy throughout the day and have noticed my skin tone is more even.

'Rate,

I think you've got the right idea. I'd heard the Nutrasweet arguments, and finally switched to Splenda. The package says dextrose, maltodextrin, and sucralose. It's been too long since organic chem, so I don't know where the chlorine free radical comes from that was mentioned earlier.

It's true that carbonation is detrimental to your teeth. I've also read that sodas (not necessarily diet ones) decrease bone density, but I think that's due to the phosphoric acid in them.

My solution was to "permit" myself to drink as much Propel fitness water as I wanted. I'll list the best flavors if you want.

Being cheap, I buy it by the case when it's on sale.

This has gotten me into the mindset of drinking the occasional soda (Dr. Pepper in my case) as a "treat," and I don't really want one more than a couple of times a week.

For what it's worth.

Two years ago in my beginners biology class, we performed an expirement on the effects of aspartame on lab rats. The rats were injected with the equivalent of the asspartame in one can of diet cola, and over a prolonged period of time we began to see the horrible results. The rats bodies became bloated as if they were severely obese, but their bodies were like cottage cheese. The tumors were so thick it fealt like you were holding a baloon filled with popcorn seeds.

Ever since that I have avoided aspartame at all costs, including products such as diet cola and most gum. I would rather be fat of the extreme amounts of white sugar found in regular cola then drink myself to tumors.

Aspartame Toxicity Information Center

I've been drinking diet pop for the last 1.5 years, the last few months I have found myself addicted, drinking at least 2-3 cans per day. I found this site on google when I searched for aspartame, and these are are bunch of emails from former addicts and such describing their symptoms.
Some of the symptoms that were mentioned that I found myself to have more intensely lately are:

-Lingering Depression
-Trouble concentrating + reading
-Back Pain
-Irratability
-Irrational thoughts
-Frequent headaches
...
I am angry at the companies that sell these products and scared for myself..
I stopped drinking diet pop yesterday and hopefully my symptoms will go away (I read it may take about 60 days...)

I've read the actual aspertame studies in rats. They had to give the rats huge quantities of the stuff to make it carcinogenic.

I'm not saying it's good for you, but hell, just about everything causes cancer in lab rats anymore. ;)

Diet Cola is still fairly unhealthy, acidic, all those phosphates, caffeine.

I'd say to avoid the sodas all together. Go with somehting that tastes good and will help you keep hydrated. Carbonated drinks not only don't aid in hydration but even cause your body to use up the water it does have at an accelerated rate. The caffeine accentuates this by speeding up your respiratory system.

"Avoid carbonated drinks, which can cause gastrointestinal distress and may decrease the fluid volume.
Avoid beverages containing caffeine and alcohol due to their diuretic effect. "
Jackie Berning, Ph.D., R.D.

I have heard of studies linking Diet pop with lupus, a debilitating disease that attacks the joints.

My sister has been drinking diet pop her whole life, and now she has lupus.

For every study that says diet Cola is bad, there is another saying it is good ... I'm not stating cause and effect between artificial sweeteners and lupus, but a link that close in my family is enough warning for me.

Good thing I hate the taste of diet pop ;)