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The artificial sweeteners in diet sodas can raise the blood sugar level instead of reducing it, according to new experiments in mice and people. Diet soda is the alternative fix for those of us who can’t quite kick the high fructose corn syrup addiction, but what if it’s actually worse for us than the real stuff? A recent study has found that diet soda can actually be worse for your system. Here’s why:
First off, it turns out that the artificial sweetener in diet soda actually changes the bacteria in your stomach, in the worst of ways. The type of bacteria that’s affected helps regulate how your body processes glucose, AKA sugar. Artificial sweeteners make it incredibly difficult to process the stuff, effectively making people glucose intolerant. Crazy enough, one study found that it happened within just a week of consuming diet soda on the regular.
Okay so I can’t have sugar, big deal, you might think, but it because glucose is present in more than just confections it makes it easier for someone to develop diabetes or become obese. That’s right, it could make you fatter.
Not only that but diet soda has been tied to mental illness. In a study of 263,925 adults, those who drank diet soda were 30% more likely to be diagnosed with depression over a 10 year period than those who avoided it like the plague. However, while correlation isn’t causation, it’s somewhat mind bending to think the liquid you’re drinking might be a factor in your mental health.
People who drink diet soda have been known to develop Metabolic Syndrome, a set of disease risk factors that indicate a pattern for the development of diabetes, stroke, and heart disease. It’s a combination of abdominal obesity, high fasting glucose, low HDL cholesterol, and elevated blood pressure.
Let’s not forget that there’s stuff in diet soda that can be very, very, bad for you. For example, did you know that there’s the potential of having mold inhibitors in your soda? Sodium benzoate or potassium benzoate are frequently used in diet sodas, and can cause pretty severe damage to the mitochondria in your cells. They’ve been linked to hives, asthma and allergic reactions, and have been classified as an irritant to your skin, eyes and mucus membranes.
Last but not the least, as we mentioned above, diet soda can make you fatter. It’s not even that people order a diet drink with their 3-pound Good Burgers (although that’s part of it). According to the University of Texas, artificial sweeteners confuse the body, making it more difficult to break down foods. Over the years, diet soda drinkers will see a 70% increase in waist size and those who have 2 or more sodas per day experience a 500% greater increase in waist size.
via Source Fed
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