The real deal with diet sodas!

I never drink diet sodas, in fact its very rare for me to drink sodas full stop. I have read a lot of reports, studies, opinions over the years about diet sodas and the effects it potentially has on fat storage, performance etc, so I am now going to share my opinions.

Sweeteners
One of the main ingredients in diets sodas is aspartame. We have all of aspartame I’m sure. But did you know that when you consume aspartame, it gets broken down into phenylalanine, aspartic acid and methanol. Now methanol, when drunk in large quantities can make you go blind and in fact make you feel really unwell. There was a warning recently on the world news about batches of alcohol containing large amounts of methanol, and it was literally killing people. Also, when you heat methanol, it turns to formaldehyde, that’s the stuff used to preserve dead bodies, just saying!

Cephalic Response
Has anybody ever heard of the brain-glycaemic-indexing-cephalic response? In short, this is the idea of the brain interpreting a sweet taste, as being sugary and therefore having a high GI carbohydrate sugar response, that being stimulating the release of insulin. This is precisely what you don’t want if you are trying to lose body fat. By stimulating insulin release, as well as stimulating the release of lipoprotein lipase (another fat storage hormone), you are essentially making your body efficient at storing fat, or at least not use fat appropriately. Another way to think about that is this. When you drink something sugary, it takes about 10 seconds to tell the brain that you are eating something sugary/sweet, and so the body has an early indication it needs to release insulin. It takes about 20 minutes in the gastrointestinal system to actually stimulate the release of insulin if its required! So if you haven't been drinking sugar, you have released insulin for no reason, and this certainly is bad!

Hunger
The other problem is that the taste buds for sugar, when stimulated, retain the urge to eat, even in the absence of sugar, so it can have a negative effect on hunger.

Bone Health
Studies show that women (but not men) who drank cola drinks daily (versus those who rarely drank them) had weaker bones. One explanation is that either the carbonation or phosphorus or some other constituent of cola drinks can slightly acidify the blood or change the phosphorus to calcium ratio in a way that may weaken bones. Excess acidity in the blood requires your body to release calcium, so it could lead to weaker bones if you drink carbonated drinks daily over a long period of time.

Obesity
Researchers at the University of Texas Health Center discovered some very interesting data. They found that your risk of obesity increase as follows:

26.5 percent for people drinking up to ½ can of diet soda per day, and 24 percent for regular soda drinkers consuming up to one can per day

54.5 percent for one to two cans of diet soda per day as opposed to 32.8 percent for those drinking the same amount of regular soda

57.1 percent for people drinking more than two cans of diet soda per day as opposed to 47.2 percent for people drinking the same amount of regular soda

So diet soda consumption had a higher correlation with obesity rates than normal, full sugar soda!

Heart Disease
Studies have also showed correlations between drinking diet sodas and an increased risk of heart disease, high blood pressure, high lipids among many other conditions. We haven’t even scratched the surface on problems like artificial colours and preservatives, the effects on acidity on your teeth, hyperactivity from “E” numbers.

Don't Do It!
My advice is simple, avoid diet drinks, they are empty calories, with the possibility that they may prevent fat loss and even stimulate fat gain. Certainly don't drink diet drinks when you are trying to lean up!