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Host: Welcome back to Dr. Stengler's Natural Healing. It's time for the Natural News with Dr. Mark, and now we are going to be discussing diet soda — today, not the most healthful choice. We all know water is best, but we hear a lot of bad press about diet soda. Is there really any research to back up that it's bad for you?
Dr. Stengler: A very interesting study that came out basically found that women who drank two or more diet sodas daily over an 11-year period had a thirty percent decline in kidney function. This was done by Harvard medical researchers, so a very mainstream study. About twenty percent of the American population has chronic kidney disease, so you don't want to do things that predispose you to kidney disease. People who get it get fatigued, get bone loss, end up on dialysis — it's a very serious condition. So these diet sodas, which a lot of people think are harmless, can have serious consequences on the kidneys as well as other systems. And this was an 11-year study with a thirty percent decline.
Host: That's frightening, because some of these kids are starting to drink diet sodas when they're teenagers. So what else can they drink instead? Water, of course. There are some sweetened waters out there, but they have aspartame, which is its own problem.
Dr. Stengler: Not all of them. You can get sweetened beverages that are still low in sugar and don't have the artificial sweeteners. Diluted fruit juices — I recommend at least 50 percent diluted, water and fruit juice, because fruit juice has a lot of natural sugar, but in my opinion still better than these artificial sweeteners. And then, best of all, for those health fanatics, we like to do fresh vegetable juicing, which not many people do, but that really is the best thing beyond water to be drinking regularly. Some people like the carbonation, so there are sparkling waters out there that don't have any added sugars — we have a lemon-scented one, your mother loves those.
Host: So the sparkling waters and the fresh vegetable juices are important. Do most people know about this research? Is it rather new?
Dr. Stengler: It's quite new. Most people and most doctors don't know about it. Most doctors don't recommend their patients get off artificial sweeteners, or at least not use them on a regular basis. There are some studies showing you can get neurological effects in some susceptible individuals from artificial sweeteners, but this kidney disease issue — it's already a major problem, and we don't want to add fuel to the fire by people drinking these diet sodas on a regular basis.
We've written before about how diet sodas with artificial sweeteners actually make us eat more and can also increase your risk of diabetes. But did you know these artificially sweetened drinks can actually decrease kidney function as well? This is serious. A Harvard medical study found that over a period of 11 years, women who drank two or more diet sodas daily had a 30% decline in kidney function. That's a big drop in a very important part of the body! In this video, we discuss recent findings on how diet sodas affect kidney function, and we provide some great alternatives to diet soda.
If you've been trying to lose weight and need some serious assistance, give the Stengler Center for Integrative Medicine a call. We'll help you avoid diet sodas and get you closer to a healthy weight.
