I am unreasonable with what I drink...

[Blondequeenie]

For the past few weeks, I have been pretty un-well, always have a very sore headache, around the eye and the nose and this is also impacted with my endometriosis.

My husband tells me that I am not helping myself by drinking so much sprite, Fanta or coke-zero per day. I used to drink Coke Zero but switched to sprite because of the no caffeine but my husband thinks I should not drink any of these drinks unless I am out for dinner. I need to be honest and say I consume around 2 litres per day of sprite, very little water apart from at night and I do not drink alcohol.

Could my husband have a point?

He says I should drink only water but that seems crazy to me as I always have a sprite with my dinner or lunch. What do you all drink?

Nice patronising tone,Mominatrix. I read some of the abstracts. That'll do me.

Nevertheless, the absolute claims you make are not currently substantiated by the data.

Sorry, what absolute claims did I make? I believe I said upthread that I'd read that artificial sweeteners could affect insulin. I have read that. I didn't say it was proven. Then I posted links to some studies so that people could look at them if they wanted. I neither expected nor said that they were conclusive. The fact that people report experiencing these effects, and that studies conclude that more research is needed, is enough to make me avoid them as much as possible.

Not being patronising - a good chunk of the papers you link to have nothing to do with your hypothesis.

I have no problem in you choosing to avoid them - just don't state that they affect insulin. To say "I read somwhere they might affect insulin" is very different to the way you initially posted. I have no problem with your revised statement, as long as you state where you read it, but I do have a problem with stating something you don't really know about as a certainty.

I squeeze half a lemon into some filter water and add some sugar. Still lemonade delicious!

Mominatrix Have you checked the credentials of the studies you quote? It’s important to recognise that the source of funds for many of these studies come from the manufacturers of the products being tested. Only in the past few years has it become law to publish the results of every study conducted. Many studies funded by large corporations and drug companies simply buried any research that didn’t support their agenda.

Scientific research isn’t always as reliable as you may think. Seeing as you bought up the vaccine debate I’ll remind you of the paper published by Andrew Wakefield in 1998 linking the mmr jab to autism that was retracted in 2010. It was in the public domain for 12 years before the study was proven to be fraudulently conducted.

I’m a nutritional therapist with a degree in biological sciences so I’ve always been sceptical about any nutritional claim that didn’t come with iron clad scientific research to back it up. However, having worked for a number of years with many many clients who struggle with addiction to fizzy drinks, Diet Coke being the most prevalent, I can tell you unequivocally that these drinks adversely affect the human body. I see it every day.

Flaming - yes, I am a medic who had done research in the past and know how to read papers. Please read the Methods section. Here it is quoted for you:

:The substances covered in this assessment are the IS currently authorised in Europe, after scientific review: aspartame [1], acesulfame potassium (K) [2], cyclamic acid and its salts [3], steviol glycosides [4], neohesperidin dihydrochalcone [5], neotame [6], saccharine and its salts [7], sucralose [8], aspartame-acesulfame salt [2] and thaumatin [5].

The search strategy aimed to find both published and unpublished studies. A three-step search strategy was utilised in this review. An initial search of Medline (Table 1), Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews and Psychinfo was undertaken, followed by analysis of the text words contained in the title and abstract, and of the index terms used to describe the article. A second search using all identified keywords and index terms diet was then undertaken across all included databases. Thirdly, the reference list of all identified articles was searched for additional studies. No language restriction was applied. Moreover, food industries and consumer associations were contacted to know if they were aware of unpublished studies.

Sorry, quotation was cut off:

"Types of studies were broad and unrestrictive to capture as much data as possible. Meta-analysis, randomised controlled, quasi experimental, cohort, case-control and cross-sectional studies were accepted. In vitro, ex vivo, and animals studies have been excluded.

Whatever its design and quality, a single study is never able to establish the causality between the exposure and the disease, in this case between IS consumption and its effects on health. In our review, we used part of Hill’s criteria of causation to assist in the assessment of the causal relationships. Indeed, a modified version of the Bradford Hill criteria was used to evaluate the evidence of a causal relationship between IS consumption and health outcomes. As a matter of fact, the following eight criteria, considered as the most important to answer our questions, were used in our review: strength, consistency, temporality, coherence, experiment, plausibility, analogy and biological gradient. One criterion, the specificity, was omitted because considered as nonspecific to our various outcomes. It should be pointed that none of these criteria alone is sufficient to establish causality and that no systematic algorithm was used. The final interpretation of the causality was based on experts’ judgment based on all analysed data."

However, having worked for a number of years with many many clients who struggle with addiction to fizzy drinks, Diet Coke being the most prevalent, I can tell you unequivocally that these drinks adversely affect the human body. I see it every day.

As a person with a scientific background, surely you can see the weaknesses in your conclusion. Due to your patient demographics, there is a bias inherent which will skew data. As a scientist, surely you understand about selection bias and also bias towards a conclusion if that it mirrors our own personal bias. As scientists we need to be always critical of the data and our own prejudices and thus need to look at the data and keep an open mind.

Can we agree that it is nutritionally crap, bad for our teeth, and makes us anti socially gassy??

A massive cafe latte in the morning.

About 3 litres of sparkling water throughout the day.

A cocktail before dinner and a glass of wine with it fairly often.

No Sprite though.

I can’t deny what I see every day momanatrix, scientific evidence or not.

Let’s also be clear that swapping fizzy drinks as a main source of hydration for water on the basis that it may or may not improve the health of the subject is going to do no harm whatsoever but may quite possibly do some significant good. This is not a case of playing Russian roulette with anyone’s health in disregarding scientific evidence (although if I could really be bothered I’m pretty sure I could find research to back up my claims too.)

In my extensive experience on this matter, it almost always has a positive impact of the health of my clients. You can choose to believe that or not.

Excessive drinking of sugary liquids is a classic symptom.

No. Excessive thirst is a classic symptom. O don’t know where you’ve got the sugary liquids bit from.

There is a bit of anecdotal evidence but aspartame seems to be the villain.

www.thesun.co.uk/archives/reallife/936442/my-diet-coke-addiction-left-me-crippled/

www.laleva.cc/food/dietcoke-pepsie.html

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/news/11971296/Fizzy-drinks-linked-to-increased-risk-of-heart-failure.html

www.nhs.uk/news/food-and-diet/fizzy-soft-drinks-linked-to-health-risk/

articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2009/02/10/10-diseases-linked-to-soda.aspx

There are loads more articles. Fizzy pop does not suit some people. As the occasional treat perhaps, but daily, who knows. The americans drink the most soda and are way down in the health stakes.

Mominatrix the diabetes epidemic in this country goes some way to suggest that consuming large quantities of sugar is having a widespread effect on the health of many. I would suggest that sugary fizzy drinks probably contributes to that particular problem although of course I can’t back up that specific claim with scientific evidence. I of course don’t see every diabetic or pre diabetic patient in my clinics but I do see a fair number of them. Many drink fizzy drinks and it’s the first place to start with changing their lifestyle habits for the better. I would be professionally negligent to ignore the very real possibility that these drinks could be having a detrimental effect on them and possibly driving a life threatening condition.

Do you drink a lot of fizzy drinks yourself?

This may sound daft but I find having a good water bottle helps me drink more water. I’ve got a camelbak one with a straw and I find taking that everywhere and putting it out on the desk helps me drink it because its right there in front of me. If I don’t have my bottle with me i can go all day without drinking because I rarely feel thirsty but can easily drink 2/3 bottles of water a day if the bottle is out.

If it's full-sugar Sprite of course it will impact your weight. It'll ruin your teeth too with all that sugar and acid. Even diet sodas are very acidic. Switch to water

justasking - your sources are unreliable.

flaming the argument was specifically with sugar substitutes and not with excess sugar laden drinks. Not sure why you have now switched to fizzy drinks in general. Additionally, the diabetes epidemic is quite complicated and multifactorial - yes, excess body weight is certainly implicated, but just consuming fizzy drinks? Not really.

In terms of my habits, why do you ask? Quite peculiar, but I'll bite. The only fizzy drink I consume is champagne. I don't have a sweet tooth - actually can't abide the stuff to the point that I have never even been able to tolerate fruit juices as a child. I also run over 30 miles a week, walk my dog 4 miles a day, get 7 hours of sleep, and have always maintained a hovering 7 stone body since late adolescence (except pregnancy, of course) and I am nearing 50. I have never counted calories or dieted in my life. HOWEVER, I also don't think I have all the answers and think there are many ways to live a healthy life.

Mominatrix justasking - your sources are unreliable

Umm.. do you understand the word anecdotal here is the meaning for you.

www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/anecdotal

justasking, what do you think I meant when I said your sources are unreliable? Do you know anything about mercola? Do you know how reliable the Sun is for health journalism? Yikes.

"Artificial sweeteners induce glucose intolerance by altering the gut microbiota", Suez et al, Nature, 2014

They first experimented extensively on mice,
but then they also asked a group of human volunteers, who normally don’t eat or drink artificially sweetened foods, to consume a high, but safe, dose for a week.

Many, but not all, of the volunteers began to develop signs of glucose intolerance.

The study found that some gut bacteria react to sweeteners by secreting chemicals that provoke an inflammatory response, which may lead to obesity, diabetes and other conditions

I read that study. It did nor state that they proved that srtifucial sweeteners cased glucose intolerance . It was 7 people, if I recall correctly. No control group, and they could only sat that some species of gut bacteria could be affected, it is interesting, and should be studied in a larger controlled study. I certainly am not saying that artificial sweeteners don’t affect gut bacteria, just that the data don’t yet have a causal link and larger studies are needed. To date, artificial sweeteners, despite multiple large studies, are not implicated in abnormal glucose tolerance.

I find that drinking room temperature flat water makes me a bit miserable, but cold water is amazing.

Put a Brita in the fridge or, at minimum, use ice cubes. Goes an enormously long way towards drinkability.

When there are concerning indications from a range of studies on mice and some on animals,
then I would weigh up the risks / benefits of artificial sweeteners in large quantities

Before consuming large amounts of anything, as a regular longterm habit, it is reasonable to ask if it has a beneficial effect on the body.
I can't find peer-reviewed studies indicating that it does.

However, it would be the case if the alternative were possibly worse, such as sugary fizz or excessive amounts of alcohol.

Otherwise, there is no particular benefit to large consumption of sweeteners in fizz, except to the manufacturers of this crap

If the alternative is to drink unflavoured water, fizzy or still, we know that water is healthy

oops
When there are concerning indications from a range of studies on mice and some on animals humans

Although observational data can NOT establish causality,
regular consumption of diet fizz has been associated in so many studies with metabolic syndrome components and T2,
that it is sensible to try to cut right back on such drinks.

e.g.
"Diet soda intake and risk of incident metabolic syndrome and type 2 diabetes in the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis (MESA)."

and several others referenced on the same page.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19151203