Why You Must Stop Drinking Diet Sodas TODAY! (And How To Do It!)

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It’s not always easy to make healthy choices. Labels are deceiving, and the mainstream media constantly feeds us things that are misleading at best and outright lies at worst. One thing you have heard for more than 30 years is that diet soda is much healthier for you than those sugar-filled sodas. No sugar and fewer calories must be better, right?

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

There are tons of research studies showing that drinking diet soda won’t help you lose weight. Not only that, but those chemicals that make up diet soda lead to all kinds of other health problems. What kind of problems are we talking about? Things like kidney disease, diabetes, and high blood pressure, just to name a few.

Although skipping all that sugar and the calories might sound like a good idea, it doesn’t work in practice. The artificial sweeteners in diet sodas are confusing to your body. Your body naturally knows how to manage its caloric intake. It’s only when we start adding processed foods and things like aspartame that our bodies no longer know what to do.

One very large study recently took a look at diet sodas and cardiovascular problems such as stroke and heart attacks in otherwise healthy, postmenopausal women. The University of Iowa conducted this study and it was presented in Washington, D.C. at the American College of Cardiology’s 63^rd Annual Session.

This study involved more than 60,000 women, and it found that women who drank two or more diet sodas each day were 30 percent more likely to have some type of cardiovascular event and 50 percent more likely to die from some type of related disease.

This is a very large study, and these numbers are no joke. This study adds to an ever-growing list that finds that there is a definite relationship between human health and diet drinks.

Of course, scientists are loath to say outright that diet drinks cause serious health problems; they will only say that there appears to be a link. This is because correlation does not always mean causation. There could be some other substance or non-diet related reason why the women in this study developed heart problems, but once you begin to stack up the research, it becomes more and more obvious that the one thing all the subjects in all the test studies have in common is drinking diet soda.

Aspartame has been linked in other studies to non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma as well as leukemia in men. This study was published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. Another study out of Arizona State University found that aspartame causes brain damage because it leaves behind methanol in the blood. The U.S. National Library of Medicine found that long-term consumption of aspartame leads to an imbalance of pro-oxidant and antioxidants in the brain. Last, but certainly not least, the Washington University Medical School found that there was a strong link between brain tumors and the consumption of aspartame.

These are just a few of the studies showing that diet drinks, and those that contain aspartame in particular, lead to serious health problems.

Other studies have found that diet drinks can cause the following issues:

Tooth decay – Although sugar-filled sodas are worse for your teeth, diet sodas still cause plenty of damage. It’s the high acid level in sodas that cause some pretty ugly, gnarly looking teeth.
Heart disease – The Journal of General Internal Medicine published a study that found that those who consumed diet sodas were at a much higher risk for heart problems such as strokes and heart attacks.
Obesity – Although many people think that getting rid of the sugar and calories in soda will help them lose weight, the opposite is usually true. Numerous studies have linked diet soda to metabolic syndrome, which gives people higher cholesterol levels, high blood pressure, and bigger waistlines.
Diabetes – People who drink diet soda have a 67 percent greater risk of developing diabetes, according to The American Diabetes Association.
Kidney problems – The American Society of Nephrology published as study done by Harvard Medical School’s Clinical Journal which found that women who drank 2 cans of diet soda each day were much more likely to suffer from a serious decline in kidney function.
Pre-term delivery – One scary study of almost 60,000 pregnant women found that those who drank diet soda regularly were at an increased risk of early delivery, regardless of their weight. The interesting thing about this study is that women who drank regular sugar-filled sodas did not have this risk. This means it’s something in the artificial sweetener doing this.

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Perhaps you are a diet soda addict. Don’t be ashamed to admit it. These things are addicting and the manufacturers know it. How else do they keep you coming back for more, even when you know it’s not good for you?

If you want to give up diet sodas, take those baby steps. Make a plan and do your best to stick to it. If you fall back and have a diet soda with lunch, get right back on the bandwagon the next day.

These are some helpful tips to help break the diet soda habit:

Remove all temptation: Like almost anything in life, if it’s right in front of you, chances are good you will succumb to temptation if the circumstances are right. Remove all diet soda from your home; tell your friends that you are no longer drinking it and ask them to not offer it to you; remove it from your workplace (if you can) and anywhere else you would normally have easy access to diet soda.
Go healthy – Be certain that you always have access to healthy alternatives. Try coffee, tea (green tea is divine!), herbal tea, water, ice water, water with lemon, water with fresh fruit, cucumber-infused water, sparkling water, you name it. Anything that is natural is a good alternative! Keep a cooler in your car with a variety of options so you always have something healthy to drink, no matter where you go!
Change your thought pattern – Instead of thinking, “I really want a Diet Pepsi but I can’t have one,” try thinking, “I care about my health so I am choosing to drink X.” Believe it or not, these kinds of thoughts really work.

The dangers of diet sodas are very real. Yes, they are low in calories, but they’re high in serious health problems. If you truly want to live a longer, healthier life, trade diet sodas for healthier alternatives. You won’t regret it.

References:

www.now.uiowa.edu

www.inspiyr.com

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