Here’s some more grim news on the diet soda front. Circulation published a study that found that drinking diet soda (specifically) raised your chances of getting the horrible threesome of diabetes, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol (called the metabolic syndrome) by 34% among people who drank one diet soda a day–even when everything else (including diabetes) was taken into account. Eeks. Diet soda was a greater metabolic syndrome risk than the risk associated with eating red meat OR fried foods! This study needs to be repeated, but is right in line with a previous Doc Gurley post on recent, unrelated research that showed that rats eating artificially sweetened yogurt gained more weight (and had a lower body temperature), than rats eating either sugar-sweetened yogurt or plain yogurt.

So how do you stop the diet soda urge? First, cut back. Instead of a can a day, start replacing your six-pack at the next trip to the grocery store with some sparkling water. Try to think of your usual diet soda as a one-on-the-weekend kind of thing. Then cut it down more. If you have diabetes, what you don’t want to do is replace diet soda with sugar soda. The same diet soda research found that milk was protective against metabolic syndrome (Doc Gurley theory about this? Due to vitamin D in milk). Try replacing your diet soda with a FAT-FREE icy cold glass of milk–with that one change, you go from drinking something that increases your risk, to something that decreases your risk–what an impact! Second, try to channel your inner revulsion, to work against the appeal of those dewy, cold cans of soda. Before you drink it, take a moment to deliberately look at your soda and think about icky clogged arteries, increasing belly size (abdominal girth) and how this could be what keeps you from seeing your grandkids marry. We all have years of marketing hype force-fed into our brains. Sometimes it helps to actively work against it.