A study published in the July issue of the American Heart Association Journal has caught my attention. For years, we have been reluctantly recommending that soda drinkers switch from regular soda to diet soda because of the high sugar content in regular soda and its relationship to tooth decay. (We would much rather see no soda at all in your diet, but until now we thought that diet soda was more or less acceptable.) This study shows that people who consume significant quantities of diet soda have a 48% increased risk of heart disease. That’s a lot, and the more diet soda consumed, the greater the risk.
This is not to say that diet soda necessarily CAUSES heart disease, but that it is ASSOCIATED with it. The current thinking is that people who consume lots of diet soda also tend to eat more fatty foods, more empty calories and exercise less. In other words, diet soda is part of an unhealthy lifestyle. Apparently diet soda is one of the factors that leads to what is known as metabolic syndrome – a combination of high blood pressure, excess fat around the waist, high triglyceride levels, elevated insulin and low levels of HDL or “good” cholesterol. It’s metabolic syndrome that causes heart disease.
The dental problem with diet soda is that it causes alarming levels of enamel erosion in kids who drink a lot of it. The enamel is gone within a year or two of the time the teeth erupt into the mouth. Diet soda contains phosphoric or citric acid and these acids can dissolve away the enamel in a very short time. Once it’s gone, there is no way to get it back. As a result, these kids often need crowns at a fairly young age to protect the underlying tooth structure. I have always thought that anything that eats the enamel off your teeth is probably not very good for the rest of your body and now there is a study to prove it.
I think that maintaining a healthy lifestyle in our society is difficult for many reasons, but that’s a subject for a whole ‘nother blog. (Or several more, for that matter.) In the meantime, what to drink? The boring truth is that water looks like the healthiest choice.
