Many of us drink soda, both regular and diet. Those of us who diet, have always felt that diet soda was our lifeline because it gave us a low calorie treat that was not detrimental to our weight loss or our health.
Lately there has been much controversy over diet sodas and the artificial sweeteners that are used to make them sugar free. There have been rumors that these sweeteners can ruin the lining of the stomach and your teeth, some have even said they can kill memory cells in your brain.
Let’s examine the evidence between fact and fiction.
Diet soda ruins your stomach lining:
While the acid in diet soda can be hard on the stomach of some people, most people tolerate them well. It all depends upon our system and the amount of soda we consume each day.
Diet soda will decay your teeth:
The acid in diet soda can be hard on the enamel of your teeth if you consume a great deal of the substance. It may be wise to drink the soda through a straw so that most of it will avoid the teeth, if you are concerned about this.
Diet soda kills memory cells:
This idea is more about the artificial sweeteners in diet soda. This has never been proven and the FDA provides no such information.
One should not drink diet soda when pregnant:
In this case, it is more about the effects of the artificial ingredients in the soda and the amount of caffeine. While some may buy into this theory, there is nothing to prove it to be true. As long as the amount of caffeine is watched, a diet soda now and then has not been shown to be harmful to pregnant women or their babies.
Below are a few ways soda can be harmful to your health:
Soda is the most acidic thing you can drink, and acid is not a good thing for your mouth, throat, or the digestive tract. Remember the nail in the coke, and how it was dissolved when left in the can? Try putting coke on metal and see what happens.
Soda will also deplete the body of calcium. This can lead to osteoporosis, gingivitis, and tooth loss.
The acid in soda will contribute to damaging tooth enamel, and if sugar soft drinks are ingested, it can effect the ability of white blood cells to kill bacteria in the body for at least seven hours.
Soda can actually keep you from losing weight and cause you to gain by a ratio of 1.6 times what it would normally be.
Some artificial sweeteners in diet soda are made from petroleum products, and when broken down in the body, can cause ethanol to be let into the bloodstream, making the entire body toxic.
The best way to detoxify your body after you have been drinking soda, is to switch to drinking plenty of water that has been through a filtering system to remove any impurities. Believe me you will see the difference in a very short time. You will feel much better and be more energetic than you have been in a good, long time.
Sources: http://www.healthcentral.com/diet-exercise/c/8534/14500/diet-sodas/2/, http://www.waterforlifeusa.com/blog/uncategorized/8-ways-soda-fizzles-your-health/.