Just when you thought you’d kicked all of your bad habits – from Friday night pizza at 2 a.m. to that half pack of cigarettes a day and finally switching from rum and cola to rum and diet cola – those darn scientists come back around to take away your last guilty pleasure. Two new studies have shown that diet drinks and artificial sweeteners increase people’s waistlines and their risk for diabetes.

The new research was shown at a conference for the American Diabetes Association. The first study analyzed 474 subjects in San Antonio over two decades and found that over the long-term, change in waist circumference in diet-soda-drinkers was 70% greater than those who didn’t drink diet soda. Even more alarming – frequent consumers of diet soda, people who said they drank 2 or more diet sodas each day, showed waist circumference increases that were 500% greater than those of non-diet-soda-drinkers.

Abdominal fat (waist circumference, then), is a risk factor for several conditions, including heart disease, cancer, and – you guessed it – diabetes. Scientists in a related study fed mice a high-fat diet containing the chemical artificial sweetener aspartame. Those mice that consumed aspartame showed “elevated fasting glucose levels and equal or diminished insulin levels.” In other words, artificial sweeteners make your body work harder to produce insulin, which in turn can cause diabetes.

Co-author Dr. Gabriel Fernandes says, "These results suggest that heavy aspartame exposure might potentially directly contribute to increased blood glucose levels, and thus contribute to the associations observed between diet soda consumption and the risk of diabetes in humans.”

So, let’s recap…Diet soda? Not the best drink for you, especially if you drink 3 or more cans a day. Try and stick to water!

 

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Tags: diabetes, waist circumfrence, diet soda
Categories: Stuff