pipes

Having been type 2 diabetic for 29 years I eat everything diet pop and what have you . I use equal and splenda . The Splenda brown sugar blend IMHO is great stuf! YMMV

I also drink a LOT a water . And since I have lost a lot a weight Iam am no longer diabetic borderline thou . I was on insulin AND pills .

</intolerance>

I was just telling a co-worker this very thing today. It is really amazing how much better fresh things taste now than they did when I was eating all that crap.

Shimagnolo

I went through the soda-pop stage in my teens and twenties, and by the time I was thirty, I no longer touched the crap.

That said, a year ago I stopped at a convenience store for an iced tea, and noticed something unusual in the cooler that I bought instead: carbonated cider. I drank it at the store, then hopped back on the bike. About a mile down the road I was in living agony. It felt like someone was pumping up a football in my stomach. I wasn't even sure I was going to be able to keep riding.

Suddenly I let out a belch that was probably heard for a half mile. After that I felt fine, but I will never drink carbonated crap on a ride again.

baron von trail 

Other than the fact that it's like swallowing battery acid**********

EGUNWT

What, exactly, do you think your stomach makes to digest food with?

It's not pH neutral unicorn tears.

Neil_B

I drink occasional sodas, but not often. I dislike the fizziness and sickening sweet taste.

I think one of the main reasons for the negative comments about diet soda is that it's one of the ways the FFID (Fat Friends in Denial) persuade themselves they don't have a problem. The biggest diet soda drinkers in my office are the biggest people in my office. They drink the soda with potato chips, chocolate, cookies, and whatever else they feel like munching.

JoelS

Diet soda = major YUCK. I can't stand the stuff.

EGUNWT

I drink diet soda because it doesn't give me acid reflux like regular soda.

And it doesn't have a bunch of sugar in it to screw with my energy levels.

And it's a better caffeine delivery vehicle than our office coffee, which tastes like shoe.

tfg111

I drank diet-pepsi by the cart load for the last ten years. I have type 1 diabeties since 1998. About a year ago I stopped drinking it with caffine. Talk about major headaches. It has now been 3 1/2 weeks with out any. I drink water, and a little milk. It is nice not to have the urge to drink it. I would get a headache quickly without it. If I woke up in the middle of the night, I would have some diet pepsi. I figured, I was spending between 55-70 dollars a month on it, so I figured I could get more bike stuff, running stuff instead. I haven't lost any weight, but I have been eating like a pig for the last month or so.

FZ1Tom

I've had type 2 diabetes for about 10 years or so now, and varying degrees of success controlling it over the years as well.

I'm personally beginning to think that weight is a bigger issue than blood sugars, all else being equal. Many antidiabetic meds lower the blood sugar, but are associated with weight gain for varying reasons, but the main one being that they tend to increase hunger. That seems like a self-defeating prophecy to me since increased weight = increased insulin resistance = increased hunger = increased weight, and round and round it goes.

Since I lost about 80 pounds the last 6 months I've been able to get off the insulin and just take oral meds for now, and that has been a good thing. I just need to keep it going....

Now as for diet sodas? I do think that like all things its probably not an issue in moderation, but it is also an individual issue as well. I suspect that a LOT of folks who drink a lot of diet soda, as I do, have excessive fluid retention (again, a vicious circle since diabetes often compromises kidney function), and this accounts for much of the difficulty with weight. The problem is that the damned stuff is addictive...the caffeine, the carbonation, the taste.

I used to drink a relatively modest amount, then got to drinking more and more (since I wasn't picky, most anything diet was sufficient just so it had the fizz...). I've noticed that if I somehow swear off diet sodas for an extended period of time the kidneys manage to wring the excess fluid out of my body and I lose weight...sometimes a LOT of weight. Amazing how much fluid we can soak up and squeeze out when you're up around the 300# mark.

I try to drink at least one glass of water for every glass of diet soda, but I bet cold turkey is probably the best way to go. Just like cigarettes, etc.

Now pardon me while I take a sip of that diet limeade I picked up at Sonic

Tom

steve2k

I don't know the science, but I feel much better and eat less since I stopped drinking diet drinks. I found that I'd have a drink with lunch, and then I'd get hungry and tired mid afternoon. I don't find that now, also fruit tastes much nicer.

Missbumble 

So how did you quit??? I guess wil i get a huge headache if I attempt to quit. Can you provide some good ideas/hints to get off the Diet Coke?

Singed - Addictied in Atlanta

tfg111

The weekend I decided to quit. I went for a bike ride and the morning, and I went over to my cousins house to work on a fireplace. It kept me really busy, and I was sweating some so I wanted water. I only drank one 24oz diet pepsi all day. On Sunday, I figured I could go the entire day without it. I had a bad headache. I went for a walk on Sunday and tried to keep busy. I used to drink 6-8 24 oz diet pepsi a day. It also helped to add up the cost of the soda because we bought another vehicle and the incease in payment per month was less than the amount I was spending on soda. I thought it was kinda of dumb to worry about a higher payment and I could stop drinking soda, and save money plus get a different car.
Good luck

baron von trail 

The stomach is filled with HCL, but I highly doubt that anyone here will be drinking any Hydrochloric acid anytime soon. Not saying that diet soda is HCL, but it sure doesn't have the Ph of water.

From my recent understanding, acidic diets have been associated with all sorts of ailments. The name of the healthier-living game is to reduce acid intake and shift over to a more alkaline diet. Dumping soda would be one step in that direction.

EGUNWT

Better cut out that orange and grapefruit juice then. Both have a lower pH than diet coke. And diet coke is less than 1% the pH of what's already in your stomach. pH is not a linear scale, it's logarithmic like the Richter scale for earthquakes. Your stomach's at about a 1, diet coke's at 3, grapefruit juice at 2.8 or so.

I think that a lot of the acidity in the liquid is from carbonic and phosphoric acid. The carbonic acid is not stable at room temperature, it dissociates into CO2 + H2O as it warms up. Flat soda tastes flat because...it's less acidic. Some of that CO2 gets dissolved in your bloodstream as you digest, but the body is really good at getting rid of CO2. So the acidity of most soda products is probably overstated somewhat, by the time it gets warm enough to be dangerous, it's less acidic.

A better argument against soda is that it screws up the Calcium/Phosphorus balance in your mouth, causing dental issues.

Everything in moderation. I stick to no more than 2 cans a day 90% of the time, and sometimes don't even hit that level. More out of monetary considerations rather than health ones. If you drank cases of soda every week, yeah, that's probably not so good, either for your health or wallet. All that stuff's gotta get filtered out or metabolized somewhere, and overloading those mechanisms is probably a bad thing. Using them within their operating limits isn't so bad.

EGUNWT

Get some tylenol.

Not Excedrin. It has caffeine in it. Straight aspirin's OK too if you can do that, Tylenol's probably better. Low doses.

That's what I did when I dropped coffee (I still do tea and soda, just not the hard stuff )

Mr Danw

That was priceless

baron von trail 

Yeah, it was...I think he won that round, hands down.

</intolerance>

Quit on a Friday afternoon and plan to use the tylenol and sleep a lot. The suffering is worth it though. It is so nice to not need caffeine to feel awake.

RI_Swamp_Yankee

Real problems with diet soda:

1) The phosphoric acid in dark-colored sodas breaks down into a compound that binds to the cells that create bone, just like calcium does, only it weakens instead of strengthens them. My Dad's been drinking diet soda since the 70's, and his latest bone density tests didn't come back good. You can offset this with cheese and milk, but this kind of defeats the purpose of diet soda in the first place. Anchovies and sardines, with the bones in, work even better than dairy as a calcium source, so you can always go that route.

2) Caffeine is a stimulant and a diuretic, and if you're really heavy, you already have problems with blood pressure, sleeping disorders, heart conditions and keeping hydrated.

Speculative problems with diet soda:

1) You're fooling your tongue. Your body expects sugar-calories, and when it doesn't get them, it urges you on to replace the promised calories with =something=, resulting in urges and cravings that are difficult to control. (This is only partly proven.)

2) Aspartame (AKA "NutraSweet") breaks down into some nasty compounds as part of the digestion process. Like, formaldehyde... which is an accumulative toxin, which means it never goes away, it just increases in concentration in your cells. (This is both true and untrue - yes, it puts an accumulative toxin into you. No, you'd have to drink one whole hell of a lot of it on a daily basis for decades for this to be any sort of worry.)

On the other hand, and this is very important, caffeine dependency is a clear-cut sign of Adult ADD and/or depression. Here's how my shrink laid it out after I told her I went through a 2-liter of Diet Cherry Pepsi a day:

"OK, since you drink enough caffeine in a day to kill the Bulgarian Army, and it makes you calm and focused, and you aren't up until three AM every night cataloging facial tics, this is an indication your brain isn't getting what it needs naturally, so you're using caffeine to make up for it. Wellbutrin has a mild stimulant effect that you'll find to be better on the system than six cans of Diet Cherry Pepsi daily, and it will help with the motivation issues."

Depression and ADD, especially among people with weight issues, are massively under-diagnosed, mostly because of the social stigma, so those who need the help try to self medicate with caffeine and comfort food rather than go to see the shrink. I mean, really... is it a moral failure or hypochondria to have hypertension? Is taking medicine in conjunction with exercise and diet to control your blood pressure "taking the easy way out with a magic pill"? Of course not. Neither is taking an anti-depressant in conjunction with therapy and exercise.

Chronic depression isn't always moping and sadness... in my case it expressed itself in over-eating and motivation issues that interfered with my personal and professional life. It is a medical condition, like asthma or high blood pressure, and not a sign of a weak will, and there are a number of effective treatments for it.

Wogster

So that coffee is one level up from that at McPukes? I once tried McPukes coffe, I think they get it by buying up the stuff road resurfacers get when they grind the top couple of cm off the street before repaving, a mix of used motor oil and diesel exhaust with a hint of road kill..... I find it interesting, the worlds largest restaurant chain can't give you a drinkable cup of coffee, but any old doughnut shop or greasy spoon can provide wonderfully good coffee.....

Apologies in advance to those reading this in the morning who just spewed coffee all over their keyboard

mkadam68

Just came across this:

baron von trail 

I still say it's battery acid and wouldn't touch the stuff with a ten foot pole.

Missbumble 

Very good advice guys on quitting. My problem is exacerbated by tendency to get migraines. So my getting off diet coke will likley be replace with tea or coffeed-as w/o caffeeine I get HUGE headaches- (i have been to the hospital with bad headaches) so I am afraid to just get off caffeine. I do however believe diet coke is all artificial and crap for me.


Hard time to quit (Lost the beau) etc -but a very good idea - as getting healthier is somehting I am working at these days. So I think i will start by cutting back or at least replacing the one I may have in the am with coffee....

Butterthebean

Sorry....but I have to take issue with this.

Not to discount any of your conditions or issues, and this is not pointed at your personally, but I think this is BS being sold to us by the pharmaceutical industry. Just because a person's mood and behavior can be altered with drugs, does not mean that it was a medical issue in the first place.

The biggest difference is asthma and high blood pressure cannot be treated with therapy, and you could also add to the list diabetes, epilepsy, aids and MS.

I know this is way off topic, but I just had to let it out. Again, I don't mean this as a personal attack against anybody here, unless you are the head of marketing for the pharmaceutical industry.