Not one of these is OK

Damned if you do, Worse if you don’t!

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For years, I drank Diet Coke. (Actually, I switched from Diet Rite to Diet Coke the second it was available. Or, maybe before it was commercially available.  But, that’s a separate story.) Not just drinking Diet Coke, but devouring it.

My routine was to drink a few score cups of coffee in the morning. Then, once lunch time rolled around, I switched to Diet Coke. Initially that meant scores of bottles. (I never liked pop in a can- because the taste was affected.) And, once the 2 liter bottle was available, I switched to them. Drinking 3 or 4 a day.

All this by way of introduction to a few facts.  With some more history.

First of all, Diet Coke was developed to be a diet pop, sweetened with saccharine. You know, the chemical that was outlawed by the FDA as being unsafe. (Of course, if you fed rats an equivalent amount of sugar as was used to test accharine, you would have known that sugar was far more dangerous. But, since sugar is a natural substance, the FDA is not permitted to regulate its existence.)

Which led to a switch in Diet Coke formulation to aspartame, in lieu of saccharine. (Nowadays, Coca Cola also uses stevia, a natural, very low caloric content, natural sweetener for some of its pop, too.)

I never liked the taste of  (real) Coke. (OK. Compared to Pepsi, I loved it.) I just didn’t like all that sugar. Which is a really good thing. Since drinking sugary drinks often leads to diabetic conditions to those who so consume.

Now, the new studies.

Not one of these is OK

Examining the health of some 1685 middle-aged adults (average age 52) over 14 years yields a reason why diabetes is related to pop drinking.  Dr. Nicola McKeown (Tufts) led that research study, along with Drs. J. Ma, P. Jacques, G. Rogers, A. Hruby, C. Smith, and E. Saltzman (all from Tufts), plus J. Meigs (Harvard Med and Mass General), and C. Fox (Framingham Heart Study). Their article, Sugar-Sweetened Beverage but Not Diet Soda Consumption Is Positively Associated with Progression of Insulin Resistance and Prediabetes, was published in the Journal of Nutrition.

The researchers found that an adult who drank one can of pop (or another sugar-sweetened beverage) a day was 46% more likely to have elevated blood sugar levels.  Which is a real problem, since none of the subjects had elevated sugar levels at the start of the study. So, now we can see why 1 in 9 adults has diabetes- world-wide.  And, that’s why diabetes is going to be a leading course of death within the next decade or so.

The diabetes these subject developed was Type 2 (aka, adult-onset) diabetes. This is the malady when the body can’t make enough insulin (the hormone that converts blood sugar to energy). When folks have elevated blood sugar levels, but don’t quite “make” the diabetes diagnosis, they are termed to be “pre-diabetic”.

Folks who drank at least six 12-ounce cans a week had a more pronounced risk of developing these conditions- and that’s after correcting for age, gender, and weight. Moreover, this higher consumption of sugared pop was also associated with insulin resistance. (This phenomenon is when the body doesn’t respond properly to the presence of insulin.)

Those study participants who were drinking diet beverages did not manifest either insulin resistance or the elevated blood-sugar levels.

Now, this study may not be a universal warning. After all, most of the subjects in the test were White, women, and middle-aged. Nor were they as overweight as most US adults. But, it implied that anyone who dropped the sugared concoctions from their diet could reverse these diabetes related conditions.

But…

We also know (from general medical observations) that folks who drink tons of diet pop also gain weight and some of them also manifest diabetes. Why that was true was not entirely clear- until now.

Dr. Richard A. Hodin (Mass General Hospital), along with 15 co-authors, may have found the answer. These researchers published “Inhibition of the gut enzyme intestinal alkaline phosphatase may explain how aspartame promotes glucose intolerance and obesity in mice” in the Journal of Applied Physiology, Nutrition, and Metabolism. (As of the writing of this post, the article is still an early release; it should be in the printed edition some time soon.)

Their studies indicate that aspartame digestion in the gut disrupts some vital processes. (See a discussion of gut bacteria and what they do for us here.) Intestinal flora that neutralize harmful toxins (lipopolysaccharides) because their alkaline phosphatase enzyme activity is inhibited. (The enzymatic activity is called intestinal alkaline phosphatase when it operates in human guts.) As such, the toxins accumulate, which then irritate the gut lining; our bodies then manifest the sort of low-level inflammation associated with chronic diseases. (See the discussion of NSAID’s for why that happens.)

Dr. Hodin’s group also mixed diet pop (containing aspartame) with the intestinal alkaline phosphatase in vitro (in glass; i.e., under lab conditions). Even in vitro, the enzymatic activity was repressed. When the enzyme was mixed with conventional (sugar-sweetened) pops, there was no inhibition of activity. When aspartame was injected into portions of a mouse intestine, the enzyme levels dropped by 50%.

Coupling the aspartame with a fatty diet proved even more troublesome. After 18 weeks, the mice fed aspartame as part of their diet gained more weight than the control (non-aspartame fed) mice. Moreover, the blood-sugar levels between meals was found to be elevated, which in humans would be called that pre-diabetic condition.

(By the way, other research conducted at the Weissman Institute of Science (Rechovot, Israel) demonstrated aspartame disrupted the composition of gut flora- as well as their functionality. And, Hodin already found that feeding the enzyme to mice prevented metabolic syndrome and diabetes, even if fed high-fat diets; if they already manifested this condition, the enzyme reduced the symptoms of the malady.)

So- diabetes when we drink sugared beverages.  Obesity (which could lead to diabetes) and intestinal irritations when we drink aspartame-sweetened diet pop.

That’s simply not fair…

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8 thoughts on “Damned if you do, Worse if you don’t!”

  1. Soda has always been something that we’ve chosen not to keep in our house. We’ll pick up a 2 liter when the kids have friends over, and allowed our kids to get one when we ate out. We never wanted to make it a taboo, but emphasized moderation. I had heard that diet soda could cause as many problems as the sugared varieties, & enjoyed seeing the research you presented. Diet Rite…do they still make that? Shudder. That’s about on par with the ‘Tab’ my mom’s friends used to drink.
    Susan recently posted..Food for Thought #11

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