10 Scientific Reasons to Ban Diet Soda from Your Life

Diet soda

Aspartame, found in diet soda, chewing gum, and even some brands of yogurt, is deceitfully disguised as Nutrasweet, Equal, and Sweet n’ Low.  Aspartame is a poison that has been found to actually increase weight gain and have many other devastating effects on the body.

Diet soda is hailed by our culture as a health-conscious beverage choice, but nothing could be further from the truth.  I hope that when you look at what science has shown us about aspartame below, it will inspire you to make a change and stop consuming this highly toxic food additive.  If people stop purchasing it, the product vanishes from the face of the earth.  It’s really simple.  Be the change.

Here are 10 reasons to never eat anything containing aspartame again:

1. Aspartame Spikes Insulin

Dr. Brooke Alpert says “Artificial sweeteners have more intense flavor than real sugar, so over time products like diet soda dull our senses to naturally sweet foods like fruit.”

Even worse, aspartame causes a spike in insulin in the bloodstream, leading to weight gain, and with time, insulin resistance and diabetes.  “Artificial sweeteners,” Dr. Brooke Alpert explains, “trigger insulin, which sends your body into fat storage mode and leads to weight gain,”

Dr. H. J. Roberts describes an experience with one of his many diabetic patients:

A 12 year-old boy with known diabetes required multiple
hospitalizations for diabetic coma while consuming considerable
aspartame products. Physicians at a university hospital had
difficulty in stabilizing his insulin requirements while he used
them.

2. Aspartame Leads to Weight Gain, Not Weight Loss

Although diet soda is calorie-free, studies have shown that it will actually make you gain weight.  In a study at the University of Texas that compared diet soda drinkers to non-drinkers over the course of a decade, and researchers found a 70 percent increase in waist circumference in the diet soda drinkers.

Furthermore, participants who washed down two or more diet sodas a day experienced a 500 percent increase!

3. Aspartame Associated with an Increased Risk of Type 2 Diabetes

A 2009 study from the University of Minnesota found that drinking just one diet soda per day was associated with a 36% increased risk of metabolic syndrome and diabetes.

According to Wikipedia, “Metabolic syndrome is a disorder of energy utilization and storage, diagnosed by a co-occurrence of three out of five of the following medical conditions: abdominal (central) obesity, elevated blood pressure, elevated fasting plasma glucose, high serum triglycerides, and low high-density cholesterol (HDL) levels. Metabolic syndrome increases the risk of developing cardiovascular disease, particularly heart failure, and diabetes.”

That explanation is in my estimation insufficient to explain the magnitude of this finding.  There is likely no disease or condition that can occur in the body without a damaged metabolism.  Metabolism is the body’s ability to produce energy, and with a healthy metabolism and sufficient energy production, it can perform all of it’s tasks required for cell maintenance, regeneration and optimal function.

4. Aspartame has No Nutritional Value

When you drink a diet soda, you may not be ingesting any calories, but aspartame is a poison, not a nutrient.  Coffee, milk, fresh juice, clean water, even a Mexican coke, made with cane sugar (as opposed to corn syrup) is far superior to any kind of diet beverage.  The carbonation is a nutrient as well, helping to deliver oxygen and protect the gut from endotoxic bacteria.

5. Aspartame Linked to Headaches

A 1994 study on aspartame found that consuming aspartame gave many people headaches.  “It appears that some people are particularly susceptible to headaches caused by aspartame,” concluded the study authors.

Minnesota-based dietitian Cassie Bjork has said “I have several clients who used to suffer from migraines and pinpointed their cause to diet soda.”

6. Aspartame Destroys Your Teeth

In a three-person case study published in the March/April 2013 issue of the journal General Dentistry, Dr. Mohamed Bassiouny studied the teeth of a cocaine-user, a methamphetamine-user, and a habitual diet-soda drinker, and found the same level of dental erosion among all three.

7. Aspartame makes Drinking Alcohol more Dangerous

Mixing alcohol with diet soda increases the effect of alcohol, making you drunk more quickly than with sugar-sweetened beverages, the following study has found.

Using diet soda as a low-calorie cocktail mixer has the dangerous effect of getting you drunk faster than sugar-sweetened beverages. This finding was published in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research (ACER), where researchers at Northern Kentucky University found that drinking diet soda with liquor causes a quicker rise in breath alcohol concentration (BrAC) than if the exact same amount of alcohol was consumed with regular soda instead.  The study found that levels of breath alcohol concentration were 18% higher in those who drank alcohol with diet soda.

8. Aspartame is Associated with Depression

A 2013 study presented at a meeting for the American Academy of Neurology found that “drinking sweetened beverages was associated with higher depression risk, whereas coffee drinking was weakly related to lower risk.”

Unlike the poison known as aspartame, coffee (more specifically, caffeine) acts like a nutrient, boosting the body’s metabolism, and the ability of every cell to produce energy.

9. Aspartame is Bad for your Bones

It is said that women over 60 are at a greater risk for osteoporosis than men.  This is likely due to estrogen existing in the body unopposed by progesterone.

In a study performed at Tufts University, researchers found that females who drank soda, including diet soda, had nearly 4 percent less bone mineral density in their hips than women who didn’t drink soda at all.

Another study, this one published in 2006 in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition had similar findings, that cola intake was associated with low bone-mineral density in women.

10. Aspartame Damages Your Heart

As of 2012, we now have evidence that drinking diet soda damages your heart and increases your risk for having a heart attack.  One more time:  Heart attacks can kill you, and drinking diet soda increases your chance of a heart attack.  Stated even more clearly, diet soda increases your chance of dying.  It’s not even a stretch to say that aspartame slowly kills you.  Is it worth it?

The study was done by researchers at the University of Miami and Columbia University, and found that diet soda drinkers were 43 percent more likely to have experienced a heart attack, or “vascular event”, than those who drank none. Meanwhile people who drank regular sodas did not appear to have an increased risk of heart attacks.

It’s game over for aspartame.  Throw out your diet sodas, aspartame-ridden gum and yogurt, and don’t buy or drink anything with aspartame in it again – and together we will make a better world.  Let’s go!