Researchers at the University of Iowa have conducted a study on post-menopausal women and the effects of consuming 2 or more diet soft drinks per day.
The study was presented to the American College of Cardiology (ACC).
The findings of the report state that those older women were 30% more likely to succumb to cardiovascular disease and 50% more likely to die as a result of those diseases than older women who occasionally consumed soda.
The consumption of diet soda for post-menopausal women was found to be associated with:
• Heart disease
• High blood pressure
• High cholesterol
• Weight gain
Ankur Vyas, lead author of the study explained: “We were interested in this research because there was a relative lack of data about diet drinks and cardiovascular outcomes and mortality.”
Vyas continued: “The association between diet drinks and cardiovascular problems raises more questions than it answers. We only found an association, so we can’t say that diet drinks cause these problems.
Although the findings of the study are incredible, Vyas warns: “It’s too soon to tell people to change their behavior based on this study; however, based on these and other findings we have a responsibility to do more research to see what is going on and further define the relationship, if one truly exists. This could have major public health implications.”
Earlier this year, researchers at John Hopkins University published a study that stated diet soda drinkers are over-eating on the side which explains why those consumers are not losing weight.
This paper states that overweight and obese Americans who consume diet soda are still ingesting the same amount of calories through fatty and high-caloric foods because they feel they can; as long as they drink diet soda.
There is a visible surge in diet soda use from 1965 to present and the correlation, according to the researchers, is diet soda consumption when compared against the participant’s body mass index (BMI).
The researchers concluded: “Overweight and obese adults drink more diet beverages than healthy-weight adults and consume significantly more solid-food calories and a comparable total calories than overweight and obese adults who drink SSBs. Heavier US adults who drink diet beverages will need to reduce solid-food calorie consumption to lose weight.”
In 2013, researchers at Purdue University analyzed studies and data regarding the correlation between the consumption of diet soda and the body mass index (BMI) of those customers using the product. Findings show that the artificial sweeteners are the culprit for health problems and dietary issues.
Artificial sweeteners used in diet soda tricks the body into thinking that it is consuming calories; yet this has disastrous effects physiologically.
Susan Swithers, behavioral neuroscientist and professor of psychological sciences for Purdue University said : “Honestly, I thought that diet soda would be marginally better compared to regular soda in terms of health. But in reality it has a counterintuitive effect. You’ve messed up the whole system, so when you consume real sugar, your body doesn’t know if it should try to process it because it’s been tricked by the fake sugar so many times.”
Swithers explained that “accumulating evidence suggests that frequent consumers of these sugar substitutes (such as aspartame, sucralose, and saccharin) may also be at increased risk of … metabolic syndrome, type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease.”
A decade prior, Purdue University released a study entitled, “A Pavlovian Approach to the Problem of Obesity”, on artificial sweeteners and how they disrupt the human body’s ability to count calories.
This study showed “that being able to automatically match caloric intake with caloric need depends on the body’s ability to learn that the taste and feel of food by the mouth suggests the appropriate caloric intake. Much as Pavlov’s dogs learned that the sound of a bell signaled food, people learn that both sweet tastes and dense, viscous foods signal high calories. This learning process begins very early in life and perhaps without conscious awareness, according to the researchers.”
