Drinking diet soft drinks is increasing type 2 diabetes....

Today's Post: Thursday, 10-7-2010

Today, the email I got from Al Sears, MD had this headline:

“The Zero-Calorie Hoax.”

He says that people drank over 43 billion cans and bottles of diet soft drinks last year.

I’ve already posted that diet soft drinks are such strong stimulating drugs for sugary foods, they almost always make the people drinking them as fat as they would be from drinking regular soft drinks despite having virtually no calorie content themselves.

I’d be willing to bet most of the people drinking those diet soft drinks don’t yet know that!

That’s a LOT of people buying an EMPTY promise!

But Dr Sears has even worse evidence than that. It seems that drinking diet soft drinks both causes type 2 diabetes and the precursor condition, metabolic syndrome that is both directly harmful and tends to lead to type 2 diabetes.

In the Diabetes Care journal for April, 2009, he found a study reported that found that people who drink diet soft drinks every day are 67 % more likely to develop type 2 diabetes.

Another study in the journal Circulation for 2008 found that people who drank the most diet soft drinks had a 34 & greater risk than those who drank the least.

And, another study, in the same journal, Circulation for 2007, found that people drinking more than one diet soft drink a day had a 56 % bigger chance of developing metabolic syndrome.

(Metabolic syndrome is a group of risks that give you a greater chance for diabetes, as well as coronary artery disease and stroke.

You get a fatter belly; your protective HDL goes down, your blood pressure goes up towards dangerous territory, and your blood sugar starts getting too high. And, if the last part keeps going and your blood sugar keeps getting farther past too high, they diagnose you as having type 2 diabetes.)

Here’s a drink that makes people fat and sick big time!

And, by and large, the poor people drinking diet soft drinks have no clue!

Yikes!

Have you been included too because you got used to regular soft drinks first or you want the fizz or caffeine or better taste from these drinks?

Here are some MUCH safer and less fattening ideas!

If you want or need caffeine and have been drinking a diet cola, instead drink coffee, tea, or green tea or take green tea extract or drink unsweetened cocoa. If you drink these drinks without sugar or artificial sugar or regular milk it’s even better for you.

Green tea, tea, and unsweetened cocoa all are dramatically better for you with no milk added. If they are a bit too hot to drink when you are ready, just add a bit of ice or cold water.

Many coffee drinks have tons of sugar and bad fats. (They also tend to be extra money and fattening.) But you can drink coffee black or add just a bit of 1% lowfat milk or just a bit of 1% lowfat milk and a teaspoon or more of powdered cinnamon. That last method even makes instant coffee pretty good. And, you can also get good tasting coffees from Starbucks and Peet’s. And Starbucks has a dark roast instant which is not bad. Coffee has more caffeine than tea, so you have to be a bit more careful not to overdo it until it keeps you awake the next night. That defeats the purpose a bit!

If you are just thirsty, chilled and filtered water is not bad and definitely does the job.

If you want the fizz, chilled club soda and Perrier water and the like work well.

If you like fruit flavor, there is a new drink out called “Hint” now becoming available some places which has a very nice, mild flavor – from REAL fruit and virtually no sweetness or sugar and no artificial sweeteners at all.

If you want to zap your taste buds with your drink, chilled Bloody Mary mix or the Virgin Mary drink with their blend of spices works very well. So does spicy V8 and Snap E Tom tomato juice. These use a bit of horse radish or hot peppers.

V8, tomato juice, and 100 % real cranberry juice have very little sugar and are OK in moderation too.

And, if you are exercising enough and not too fat, one glass a day of 100 % real juices can be OK. To some degree the real nutrition in them makes real juice less harmful to drink as long as you don’t overdo it. These include orange and apple and grape juices.

Or you can have a glass of one of the other healthier drinks and a piece or two of real fruit.

By adding a health OK or health protecting drink plus some real fruit which also contains water, you can quench your thirst quite well.