Is Diet Soda Harmful?

I had posted this piece on my Facebook titled "Is Diet Soda Harmful" and feel it's very important for people to know about so with Mardy's help with editing out people's names, I'm sharing the whole thing here, so you can benefit from people's comments we shared, as I found it a very nice stream of conversation. 

Is Diet Soda Harmful?

Beyond the addiction issue, diet soda has been linked to increased rates of heart attack and stroke, kidney problems, preterm deliveries, and, yes, weight gain. While not yet carved in scientific stone, the emerging evidence is a bit disturbing. Here’s a rundown:

Heart Attack and Stroke: Drinking diet sodas daily may increase the risks for heart attack and stroke and other vascular events by 43 percent, but no such threat exists with regular soft drinks or with less frequent consumption of diet soda. These results come from a study including more than 2,500 adults published online in the Journal of General Internal Medicine on January 30, 2012. So far, no one knows what it is about diet sodas that could explain the added risk. 

Kidney Trouble: In 2009, researchers at Harvard found that drinking two or more diet sodas daily could lead to a 30 percent drop in a measure of kidney function in women. No accelerated decline was seen in women who drank less than two diet sodas daily. The drop held true even after the researchers accounted for age, high blood pressure, diabetes and physical activity.

Preterm Delivery: A Danish study including more than 59,000 women found a link between drinking one or more diet sodas daily and a 38 percent increase in the risk of giving birth to preterm babies; the risk was 78 percent higher among pregnant women who drank four or more diet sodas daily. No such risk was seen with regular soda.

Weight Gain: Wouldn’t it be ironic if instead of helping you lose weight, diet sodas had the opposite effect? A study at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio found that compared to those who drank no diet sodas, study participants who did had a 70 percent greater increase in waist circumference; worse, drinking two or more diet sodas daily led to ballooning waist circumference that was 500 percent greater than those who drank none. This doesn’t prove that diet soda is to blame since the study was observational - it could be that participants began gaining weight and then started drinking diet sodas.

• Thanks for looking after us
•  Dr. Spurlock, Thanks for sharing this.
• muy interesante gracias por compartirlo
• what do you think of coconut water, Marc?
• Guess I need to quit drinking the _______ (bleeped by Mardy)!
•  I was drinking loads of fizzy drinks but stopped a couple of months back. After reading the above, I am very glad I did. Thanks for putting this on facebook.
• [1] William Marc "Fibromyalgia" Spurlock (on Facebook)

   I do like coconut water. It is great for rehydration as opposed to sport drinks, which can have are not as close to nature provides and often have very harmful sweeteners and color additives. It has lots of potassium in it. And coconut oil really helps with weight loss and fat breakdown.
• Wow, thanks for sharing this. I don't drink any kind of diet drinks, I can't stand the after taste.