Daily diet soda may cause strokes, heart attacks

Posted: 9:07 AM

LOS ANGELES - It's not definitive proof of harm, but new research raises concern about diet soda.

It suggests that people who drink it every day have higher risks for stroke and heart attack than those who drink no soda of any kind at all.

The findings come from a federally funded study of about 2,500 adults in the New York City area.

Doctors have no explanation for why diet soda might be risky. It could be that people who drink lots of it also fail to exercise, weigh more or have other risk factors like high blood pressure and smoking. However, the researchers took these factors into account and found the trend remained.

More: http://www.newsnet5.com/dpp/news/health/daily-diet-soda-may-cause-strokes-heart-attacks

Not sugared (rare) or corn syrup sweetened.

There was a study a while back that said people who drank diet soda actually gained weight. I'll have to find that and bring it back.

Plus, the stuff tastes like shit.

Blyuck.

That's all I can say.

Even the stevia based sweeteners suck.

that actually tasted good was sorbitol. But it's not calorie free, just lower calorie, and it has the unfortunate side effect of being a laxative in larger doses. So that's a no go.

prevent cavities by killing bad bacteria in your mouth if you eat it regularly. It's like sugar that's good for you. It does have a laxative effect in very large doses initially, but your body gets used to it quickly and then that goes away.

Seriously. Explosive diarrhea from gum. Yowza.

You can cut your Cocaine with it, too....

I think all the HFCS sodas taste like ass and diet sodas replace the 'good stuff' with chemicals that make it even worse.
That being said I haven't had many sodas (maybe 2 or 3) in the past year or so since I did Atkins.

pushed through the FDA by that paragon of (satanic) virtue the death skull Rumsfeld

It's a neurotoxin and a sedative so you bunch of sheeple won't rise up like they did in Egypt.

just Google "aspartame toxic", it is DEFINITELY harmful.

You know, like one of those study thingies that those scientist types do?

My professors there were studying aspartame and they said in class that there were so many problems and concerns with it that it would never be approved for human consumption.

Then in 1980, when Reagan was elected, he decimated the FDA and it was approved for use by Rumsfeld's company.

Like a study.

What you say is not science, what you say is an unsubstantiated claim. Only in situations where something can be proved logically may your word be taken to be correct.

However, this is not a matter of logic.

You must provide actual evidence to support these claims.

That IS evidence. And don't you dare call me a liar.

You have offered me no third party evidence to prove your statement true, you are relying upon your credibility (which on a forum is non-existent) to make this sound realistic.

It may very well be true, but I have no way of knowing.

In other words:
Put up or shut up.

You are having trouble understanding the difference between evidence and anecdote.

What you gave us was an anecdote - a short personal account of something. We have no way of knowing if perhaps you are remembering it incorrectly, or got details wrong, or who knows what else.

Now if your professors put together a paper with studies and facts to back up those statements, and published it in a peer-reviewed journal, THAT'S evidence. So, did that happen?

Hope the posters sees what I mean.

That's an anecdote. And the plural of anecdote is not data. You may not be lying, but you're still not right.

Carried out by Mohammed Ali Al-Bayati, PhD, DABT, DABVT in response to the 50 year prison sentence given to Diane Fleming for the murder of her husband. http://www.medicalveritas.com/manAlBayatiChuck.pdf

Diane Fleming's story here: http://justmusing.org.uk/?page_id=122

Just for kicks: http://www.holisticmed.com/aspartame/

Other than people who are sensitive to phenylalanine, which is one of the metabolites of aspartame, there is no known problems with it. Other than perhaps the study mentioned in the OP.

AND a case study is NOT a large scale study using statistical analysis to produce a sound conclusion that can be duplicated.

Secondly, "aspartame" is mentioned in it exactly zero times. Go to the Conclusions section, read it, and tell me where it says that aspartame killed Mrs. Fleming's husband. Thanks.

There's still no evidence to support the claim. Just because your professors say something in a classroom, that alone does not prove the claim.

And you'll come up with all sorts of links, new and old.

Monsanto, Searle, Cheney, gmo, cancer, toxic, unsafe, etc.
All these words and terms show up on almost every report or article.
Conspiracy theory? Maybe, maybe not. How many "conspiracies' have been proven to be fact many years after the fact?

Don't believe it? Hey no sweat.
Drink up :beer:

Google told me so!

to compromise our precious bodily fluids.

Or was fluoride not doing the job, so they added aspartame?

It's so hard keeping track of the conspiracy theories, I'm sorry.

POP

OMG! It's recursive like GNU!

OK, that's the second thing this morning, I think we all know God made that happen.

Just think about it.

I didn't. :P

source of sodium should be re-evaluated.

That is real science, and it is well known that eating processed foods with high levels of sodium is indeed linked to the same thing. The weirdness of it, though, is that those processed products have extremely high levels of sodium in comparison to soda.

But you know, water is the best thing to drink really.

Better for your teeth, for your waistline, and now it seems for your heart and brain.

Did they actually monitor the blood pressure of these folks to find out whether or not hypertension was the cause?

So, I don't know the particulars. All I could find was this article with comments from members of the American Heart Association, who think sodium is the likely culprit.

They are under the direct control of Donald Rumsfeld.

I think that bullshit on the side of the can that says it adds a negligible amount of sodium should be removed.

When I was a part of weight watchers wayyy back in the 90's, we were all warned about the dangers of the sodium in diet sodas. I thought that was common knowledge. I do know the more I drink, the more swelling I get, especially in the summer. In the summer, I have to drink plain water because the diet soda makes me swell so bad.

Quite frankly, I'm shocked that it's still allowed on the market.

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

Those web pages aren't fit to wipe your ass with.

ETA the home page: http://www.wnho.net/

http://www.wnho.net/global_warming.htm

http://www.wnho.net/wnho_response_to_obamacare.htm

http://www.wnho.net/pro_family_news.htm

Jesus Christ indeed.

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

You know, scientists - instead of crotch-sniffing Jesus freaks?

ETA the homepage of the website you link to: http://www.wnho.net/

you linked to there. Very credible.

I've read that aspartame interferes with synapse firing in the brian....what I do know for certain is that I have a nice happy nature as a rule, but drinking that stuff makes me really short tempered. It's bad news for me.

And I cannot imagine that doing so wouldn't have a deleterious effect.

But, with the money you save not buying diet soda you could buy better booze.

1.75 L of Evan Williams (which is ok neat too, but sometimes caffeine and bubbles make it more fun) = $20
4L of store brand Club Soda= $1.40
4L of diet pop= $2.50

So we're talking about savings of between $1.10 and $2.50. That's not even enough to upgrade the Evan Williams into a 1.75L bottle of Grant's Scotch.

It's $20 for 1.75L where you're at? It's like $10 here.

Caffeine... It's been my experience that people who drink diet soda drink it exclusivly. Morning, noon and night. Having your heart rate elevated all day, every day, from caffeine consumption cannot be a good thing.

My own mother is a Diet Coke addict - 4, 5, 6 cans a day. Has sleeping problems, can't get to sleep, can't stay asleep, doesn't sleep long enough. Gee, I wonder why.

There's got to also be something there with sleep disturbance.

Luckily I'm not a coffee drinker.

But you'll find that even the major cola's have a caffeine free version.

But, as discussed up-thread, sodium is also a concern. The amount per serving is not terribly high but several servings throughout the day add up. Five servings of Diet coke contains 10% of the USDA/RA. That's on top of normal intake through food. Now that I'm thinking about it, diet soda just might be a time-bomb in a can. I do love the stuff though.

Sleep apnea is linked to stroke, etc. as well. A good quality night's sleep is essential to good health.

Then give them hell.

Where do most people drink diet soda? Fast food joints tend to be places where this beverage is consumed more than other places.

Add to that what Fast food is made up of (lots of empty calories, sugar, salt, heavy amounts of fat)

And we know over-consumption of those foods leads to strokes (especially the salt part)

People I know who drink diet soda do it at home.

Sodium is completely harmless, right?

HOWEVER, diet sodas are usually drunk in combo with a fast food meal, which has a lot of....you guessed it, Sodium

And too much sodium absolutely can cause strokes

:)

It's all about balance :)

really didn't. Did they compare diet vs. non-diet (HFCS) drinkers? Just says they compared diet drinkers to people who drink no soda of any kind. Did they look at the sweeteners involved?

They don't measure how much is ok or how much is too much, and it is in a very small sampling of people.

The question isn't statistical sensitivity, which is a consequence of sample size, it's really a question of medical meaningfulness. How big a signal makes medical significance? When the sample size gets bigger and bigger the statistical sensitivity increases and it's possible to detect with statistical significance something that means absolutely nothing from a medical meaningfullness point of view.

The trouble is as always CONFOUNDERS there are so many things that are correlated to drinking diet soda and they all have to be identified and stripped away by very careful assignment of subjects to the follow on studies' control and treatment categories.

This shit just fuels trendy bullshit in the market place. Suddenly everyone will be selling some sort of 'special' water that promises good health and longevity. My PhD advisor took home distilled water for his family from the lab because he feared sodium in the local Texas water. Turned out what he should have been worried about was the ASBESTOS that was plastered all over his office and lab walls. Mesothelioma makes for a BAD DAY.

to make the peer-reviewed science crowd happy. But who would fund it? The only studies that get funded are from companies that want to flog toxic chemicals to the unsuspecting public. And for some reason those are considered acceptable by the "pure science" crowd.

Meh. I'll stick with the precautionary principal and will continue to avoid it.

With maybe a one time grant from the government or something.

That isn't to say that artificially sweetened soda is good for you. There are more than a few reasons why it is not. One of the problems with the study was that the group drinking the soda was disproportionately Black and Hispanic and that those groups have a much higher stroke risk to begin with. The researchers did not account for that. The non-soda group was vastly younger and whiter.

Sparkling water with a slice of lemon or lime tastes much better and is much healthier for you than soft drinks. Plus it's cheap. You can find house brands for as little as a dollar a litre.

If you can afford the initial outlay, bying home seltzer machine is a great way to go.

http://www.sodastreamusa.com/

As little as a dollar a liter does not compare to diet cola, which generally retails for about $1-1.50 for 2 liters.

so I just mostly avoid pop. But I do love a giant fountain Mountain Dew or Coke on crushed ice. Just haven't had 'em in the decade plus since I left th US.

Yum, yum, yum. I don't get them but maybe a couple of times a year.

I'll look into the Sodastream thing but it would really be best if I could just be happy with water and fruit juice. I wish I knew how to get there from here.

All my diet soda is caffeine-free, and I often get sodium-free, but I'm sure I'd be better off doing without the stuff entirely.

You could always try a mix of carbonated water and juice. I would think alternating until you wean yourself could work. Alternate between the two, and then start lowering the amount of juice.

I don't drink much soda, I drink water, coffee (with stevia), and unsweetened iced tea. I really like cherry coke, but I'll drink a ton of it, so I just don't buy it to keep in the house. I did get one the other day and it was yummmmmy. I think of sodas as a treat, since they don't actually quinch my thirst like water does.

I bought one of those vitamin waters a few weeks ago, it was strawberry kiwi flavor. It wasn't until I'd drank half the thing I noticed it had a ton of sugar in it. It was good though it will be a long time before I get another one.

Not good either. I don't like Stevia.

I figure I can make my own iced tea and put some sugar in it. That will be better than Coke (phosphoric acid rots the enamel on your teeth) or diet soda with artificial sweeteners in them. Although Splenda and equal both taste good to me.