It is quite amazing that so many of us are easily fooled and believe that diet drinks are a lot better for us because they don’t contain real sugar.
There are a lot of health issues which have been reported that are related to having too many diet drinks, have a look at the ones below and see if you knew about any of them.
Problems with Kidneys
Harvard Medical School research has shown that diet drinks could be bad for your kidneys.
Over an 11 year period, over 3000 women that drank diet sodas had twice the risk of kidney failure than those that drank normal soda drinks with real sugar.
Can Overwork Your Metabolism
The University of Minnesota completed a study of 10,000 adults and the result of this study was that drinking 1 diet drink a day increases your risk of metabolic syndrome by 34%.
This syndrome includes symptoms such as high cholesterol, higher risk of heart disease and increased belly fat.
Can Lead to Obesity
The main reason people drink diet drinks are to reduce their calorie intake each day to try and lose weight.
What a lot of people don’t realise is that by drinking just 2 diet drinks a day can increase your waistline by 500%!
The reason for this is because all of the artificial sweeteners that are in these drinks make you hungry so you eat more than you should and the excess calories that your body is getting are being stored as fat.
Also, artificial sweeteners confuse the body into thinking you are really having real sugar.
Can Increase Your Hangover
Sugar free drinks allow alcohol to enter your bloodstream quicker as your body does not have any sugar to process first!
Therefore, you may wake up in the morning with more of a hangover than you were to just have maybe a regular vodka and coke!
Promote Allergies
Sodium and potassium benzoate are what is present in diet sodas as a preservative.
These can alter the DNA in mitochondria making it ineffective which can lead to a lot of health issues such as allergic reactions, hives and asthma.
Increase the Risk of Rotting Teeth
If you drink more than 3 diet drinks a day you are likely to have a lot more fillings, lose more teeth and have more decay. This is because it contains 3.2 pH and is very acidic and it is the acid that dissolves tooth enamel.
May Cause Reproductive Issues
Some studies have shown that the chemical bisphenol A (BPA) that all soda cans are coated with may cause fertility problems.
Could Lead to Heart Disease
Columbia University and the University of Miami found in a study that if you drink just 1 diet drink a day this can increase your risk of a heart related event by 43% and regular soda drinkers that took part in this study did not experience any increase.
There are a lot of health issues related with drinking diet soda drinks even though it may seem like a good idea at the time, therefore it is better to drink normal sodas, just in moderation though because of the sugar content!
Resources
http://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/new-concerns-about-diet-sodas
http://ps.columbia.edu/news/diet-soda-deadly
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2660468/
https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/healthy-drinks/soft-drinks-and-disease/