CollectiveInk

Regular sodas = empty calories and high fructose corn syrup. Diet sodas = chemicals that your body doesn't know what to do with. I don't have the time to link right now (but can later) but there have been many studies that have shown that Arti Swt. fool your body into dumping insulin (like it would do if you consumed sugars) but with no sugars to process it plays havoc (hence a lot of sweet cravings/ blood sugars bottoming out/ etc. Not to mention all the processing methods mentioned above.

I kicked the soda (all) habit almost 2 years ago and haven't regretted it. Water, fruit juice, black coffee, wine/beer in that order.

When you do crave a fizzy drink, you can get carbonated water (any brand, but not tonic or club soda) and mix 50/50 with fruit juice (grape and orange work well) and you have a fruit soda that's healthy!

bdinger

I dumped the diet soda (again) after I realized it was doing precisely nothing for me. Went back to water and coffee, with the occasional green tea (gotta dump those too..) and life has been grand. Someone told me, and I believe it as strange as it sounds, that one can of regular soda is less toxic than one can of diet soda. If I have the urge, I'll have a regular soda once in a blue moon, doesn't seem to affect me at all.

Now if I could dump the coffee..

baron von trail 

+1 on big Pharma pushing the mood altering drugs while also trying to convince everyone that they are nuts!!!!

evblazer

I do believe there are actually people out there who either due to something wrong with their development, their environment or being affected by something more then others actually do needs some of these drugs. Of course you can't make enough money off of those people so you gotta get the doctors to prescribe them for anyone who might benefit from them while making no other changes to their life. It is the easy way out and isn't that what we all want

Butterthebean

Reminds me of an interesting story I read. It was about a guy who was extremely obese and needed to loose alot of weight. The Doctor told him he would die if he didn't have gastric bypass. He told the patient that diet and exercise alone would not be sufficent and that he would not live without the surgery.

Isn't gastric bypass just an extreme "forced" diet?


Whoa...now I am WAAAAAAYYYYYYY off topic.

bautieri

Yes, yes it is. My father was a canidate for gastric bypass and the list of things you cannot have is staggering. Not to mention the microscopic portions. It's my understanding that a patient of gastric bypass will get really sick if they over eat or have soda/beer/fizzy drinks.

Don't worry about being off topic, it's Friday.

baron von trail 

Actually it is quite an industry, this faux psycho thing. GF recently did a paper on how the whole DSM-IV-TR was rewritten in order to suit the psychiatric industry's need to have more ailments for which to treat and prescribe meds. The new diagnostic methods also helped simplify paperwork and allowed for more insurance coverage to finance the treatments for these so-called ailments.

Most psychiatric diagnostics are done by handing a patient a questionnaire which focus on the usual: Have you ever felt sad, tired or unloved? From this they evaluate a person's state of mind.

Sorry, if I think it's all BS.

RI_Swamp_Yankee

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.



This is a common attitude, and one I used to have myself. Anti-depressants and anti-anxiety medicine are way over prescribed, and usually by a non-specialist like a family general practitioner or non-emergency clinic doctor. Their effectiveness in those circumstances is usually very small. (Like taking diabetes medicine while snacking regularly on M&Ms)

The way it's supposed to work is this: The counselor/psychologist works with you for a few weeks before coming up with a diagnosis and a course of treatment. Sometimes they think medicine can help (sometimes not!), so they send you to a psychiatrist or nurse-practitioner who specializes in this field of medicine, and will work with you on a once-a-week basis to get the type and dosage correct, and then follow up with you once every few months. Meanwhile, you continue with therapy.

The science says therapy is much better than medicine by itself... but it also says the combo of medicine + therapy is incredibly effective in many cases. Sure as hell seems to be working for me.

Chronic depression, as opposed to major depressive disorder, =is= a medical condition just like epilepsy, and not just "something bad happened to you" - this is why it's often a hereditary condition.
(In fact, the course of treatment for major depressive disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder is now very, very different than that for chronic depression.)

There's too much opinion and not enough fact surrounding this stuff, which is why I'm pretty vocal about it. There is no stigma or shame in having depression, nor is their any in taking medicine to help control it... like allergies or high blood pressure.

Butterthebean

I am sincerely glad, because depression is more real and more serious than some folks will admit.


Some would argue that it's not hereditary, but rather a learned response...much like watching your parents drink, smoke and curse everyday of your childhood, then doing the same exact thing when you become an adult.


I totally agree. IMO, the shame belongs to the pharmaceutical industry.

chewybrian 

The shame is when medicine is the only offered solution. My Doc said I had HBP, and gave me only a prescription. I chose diet and excercise, and I was able to get my BP into the excellent range without meds. Surely, a lot of patients would not have followed this path if offered, but shame on my Doc for not even mentioning the option!

My point is, that this same scenario must sometimes play out with drugs for depression, and shame on the docs if it does. But no shame on you or anyone else for taking meds, if it is the right thing to do. I'm sure there are people who could benefit from the drugs, and don't get them because of the stigma. So good for you for speaking out about it.

Missbumble 

OK So far so go - Day 1 off of the Diet coke, but it ain't over yet...

yeamac 

Diet soda is gross. Even when actively trying to loose weight, I still drink the leaded stuff, when I drink soda.

RI_Swamp_Yankee

Some would argue that it's not hereditary, but rather a learned response...much like watching your parents drink, smoke and curse everyday of your childhood, then doing the same exact thing when you become an adult.

In my case, it's from my grandfather on my Mom's side, who passed away before I was born. My folks were pretty well rounded and happy people, all told. Granpa couldn't hold down a job for long, went through stretches where he wouldn't leave the house for weeks at a time, and had a few more personality quirks that sound all too familiar when looking at my own life. I never met the man, nor heard all that much about him until I was an adult.

I understand there is a resistance to accepting depression, chronic and acute, as a medical condition rather than a failure of will and self-control, and I understand that the notion that behavior should, in some instances, be changed through medicine is scary or unbelievable to some.

Yet it does more good than harm to attempt to treat depression, and doing nothing does more harm than good. Depression kills. Around 33,000 people a year commit suicide in the US. Compare this with fatal heart attacks - around 45,000 a year.

I hate to sound like a broken record or fanatic, but I believe we need to increase awareness and acceptance of depression as a medical issue that can and should be taken care of with therapy, exercise and sometimes medicine. It will save lives.

lutz

For me it is Club Soda (carbonated water) with a bit of apple juice - very refreshing.

baron von trail 

A lot of the people who commit suicide -- and many of those who go off on a rampage -- are actually on some form of med at the time.

Not to belittle your specific situation, but pharmacuetical companies really are legalized "drug pushers". Trust me, the last thing they care about is your well-being.

For more info on just how criminal these guys really are, look into the book "Corporate Crime in the Pharmacuetical Industry". It was written in the 1980's. The book pretty much lays out what these bastreads do to get their junk out into the market and into your body.

Neil_B

Let me go on the record here. I suffer from frequent fits of depression. I seem to work myself out of them, but the lows can be horrible.

Now if I can only figure out if I developed depression from being overweight all my life, or if lifelong depression led to lifelong obesity.

baron von trail 

+1 on something sometimes not being all right with myself and how I feel. All of it leading to binge eating, and in earlier days binge drinking, cigarette smoking and what-not. Bike riding is one of the things that seems to work best in removing this feeling.

I also found that eating less to no refined sugar really helps in keeping these raunchy feelings at bay.

All that being said, I def will not take drugs, presription or otherwise. I will instead ride my bike and watch closely what I eat.

mishmashmusic

I dropped daily sodas about 2 months ago, and have lost that last bit of weight I couldn't seem to get rid of. I figured I was at least dropping 200 calories a day (1400 a week) by stopping. I've lost somewhere in the 5-10lb range since January.

My co-worker, on the other hand, drinks diet sodas constantly (at least 4 or 5 a day), and he's always complaining about not being able to lose weight. We've all told him to drop the sodas, but he insists they are DIET, lol.

Neil_B

I wish I could say riding works for me as an anti-depressant, but it often doesn't.

coasting 

this is very interesting. when i started losing weight, the fact that i drank diet coke made no difference to the regular weekly loss. i had been on diet sodas for years so the weight loss had nothing to do with switching to diet.

but that last bit of weight just won't come off even though i continue to eat the same healthy way as when the weight loss was good and i ride at least as much maybe more than i used to. i can't identify anything i regularly eat that can be cut out or replaced with something healthy and i don't treat myself with bad food any more often than before. I'm pretty sure it is my high intake of diet sodas that is keeping the weight from shedding, though i don't know why.

Butterthebean

How do you know you just haven't hit a plateau? Happens to alot of people. You're body adjusts to the reduced calories and exercise. One of the most effective means of overcoming a plateau is to change up your exercise routine.

baron von trail 

For me, my life changed significantly once I dropped all sodas from my diet (diet soda and regular), includung the soda I would have accompany my occasional drinks of liquor. Well...to rephrase, when I drank soda with my liquor, I could not stop drinking it. Once I switched to having a glass of water along side the beverage, I had absolute control. My binge drinking abruptly came to a stop.

Another major change was losing the mood swings that seemed to show up out of nowhere. Without the daily uptake of soda, these too began to disappear.

Now, none of this was an officially sanctioned study. Other changes also swept through my life. I quit eating refined sugar and dropped most all processed foods from my diet as well. The sum total really helped level out my moods and made me much more easy to live with...I think.

sumguy

I've tasted diet soda and have determined that I will never buy anything with artificial sweeteners. Also the word diet screams to me mad scientist. I picture a lab with beakers and chemicals. I know a lot of food contains chemicals etc but they don't advertise it the way the word diet does to me.

Gonna have to try mixing juice with carbonated water - I miss the fizz of drinking soda. I used to drink mostly Mt Dew or milk, rarely water. I would go days without drinking plain water. I cut back on the Dew to 1-2 bottles a day. I love the taste of coffee and tea but too lazy to make them. Ever since my "kidney stone" situation, I drink water almost exclusively. I dropped the soda, cut back on the milk, increased water and started losing weight immediately.

theetruscan

I've always preferred soda with bitters. Apple juice and other juices can be nice, but bitters give it that bit of "interesting" I want in a drink that isn't water.

baron von trail 

Here's a thought. Why are we even debating this issue?

I think we can all agree that drinking the chemical concoction called diet soda is not very healthy. It sort of shows how misguided we have become as a modern society when we can no longer enjoy a simple glass of water.

Why on earth do people need to drink this artificially sweetened carbonated garbage?

BTW: Much the same could be said for food choices. Why eat a sugary donut, with absolutely zero nutritional substance, that turns to glue inside your stomach, instead of eating...say, an orange or an apple?

This is not a lecture. I've been struggling with these Q's for well over a decade myself, now. I am just wondering why we choose chemical junk over whole foods?