I've been a diabetic for 12 years, jus recently I moved in with my brother in arizona. Every other day its a argument about im drinking to much diet soda he thinks it will raise my blood sugar and ill fall into a coma and die.ive told him numerous times diet soda has no sugar so it cant raise it. He claimed to have read a article about diet soda and diabetes but now he cant find it so he says to drink more water he doesnt buy bottled water when I do everybody drinks up from me knowing I only have one option .(if u ever been to arizona you would know the water out here smells and taste horrible so I try to avoid drinking it as much as possible) My question for you guys is does diet soda effect diabetics more then a regular person or is my brother just talking out his a**.
Soda in general is bad--especially coke. (The phosphoric acid apparently pulls calcium out of our bones.) As far as I know, diet does not bring up BG. Water is best, but diet soda will not harm your BG.
Yeah im just wondering about this article he kept refering to saying diet soda can kill type 1diabetics becuase of whats in it.
So its aspartame that we should look out for?
Aspartame doesn't raise BG--it "just" causes cancer.
We just discovered a ginger ale that has only 11g of carbs for the whole 12oz(?) bottle. The magic is thanks to Stevia. It is not marketed as diet and does not have the aspartame or Splenda aftertaste. It’s super strong, which I’ve been looking for ever since having a particular English ginger ale about 40 years ago in Germany! This one is called Wild Ginger and is produced by NorthWoods.
I have had type 1 diabetes for 54 years. I was diagnosed at the age of 2 in 1958. I love aspartame cause it has allowed me to eat things that I never could before...pudding, yogurt, jello, soft drinks. As a child the only diet drinks had saccharin in them and tasted awful. (You all have probably never heard of a drink called Tab) Keep in mind though that I have lived through having my glass syringes and stainless steel needles sterilized in a little machine by my mother as a child, using tablets mixed with urine and water in a test tube to check blood sugars (very inaccurate), take U40 mix insulin from cows and pigs. Now I use an insulin pump that is no larger than a cell phone which helps me control my blood sugars much better than injections (I developed a condition called hypoglycemic unawareness) So, yes I love my Diet Pepsi and as long as I have had this medical condition and as good as my health is now I will continue to love them. Diet drinks should have no effects on your blood sugar.
I don't think diet soda will directly cause you blood sugar problems and kill you. Perhaps the artificial sweeteners represent some health risk, just as they are a problem for all those who don't have diabetes. But if they were a serious problem, we would have started to see more cases of people getting cancer and so forth.
But in my view, the real problem with diet soda is that they continue to feed the "craving" for sweet. Our minds are very powerful things. And sweet tastes really drive our hunger and desires and drinking diet soda feeds that addiction. And having a craving for sweets is not a good thing. Sure, right now you can drink a diet soda and it will be ok, but later, after dinner when the house is empty of diet soda and it is late, that box of cookies will be calling your name.
No, diet soda does not effect a person with diabetes any differently than a person without diabetes. The artificial sweeteners pose the same concerns for everyone. However, you are an adult and can make your own decisions. If diet soda is the route you want to go, that's your choice.
If I were in your shoes, I would put the problem solving back on your brother. I'd ask him to fix the problem and come up with a solution to not drinking as much diet soda and yet having enough other options to drink. Good luck!
Lol yea I just wish my brother would believe me when I tell him. Because its stressful always having to argue with him
I can’t imagine it has anything to do with Type I diabetes, but every few years researchers seem to find a link with T2. Although these are usually disproved by a later study, here’s a recent one: http://www.nyhealthinsurer.com/2013/news/study-links-diet-soda-to-higher-type-2-diabetes-risk/
–Heidi
I would suggest you "prove" to your brother that there is a negligable effect. Test before drinking the soda. Down the soda. Wait 15-30 minutes and re-test. Diet soda has no effect on my BG, some diabetics may have their BG go up from caffeine though. As other have said "eat (or drink) to your meter."
Thinks about the years of "diet" foods she ate as a kid after diagnosis (before carbohydrate counting) ... juice, yogurt, pop, ice cream, chocolate ... thinking aspartame was harmless.
That is not good. :(
Also, struggles to this day with being addicted to Diet Coke -- I SWEAR they put something addictive in that stuff. I crave it like cigarettes and I've never smoked! I do fine until I break down and drink one, and then it's all downhill for a few weeks until I snap out of it again. I need to just avoid it completely forever, like an alcoholic.
Too much soda of any type is not particularly good for you. Diet soda, however, will not raise your BG. If you need to prove it to him, pull out your meter and test before and after drinking one. The numbers will speak for themselves.
I don’t think the problems it’s said to cause are immediate, so a before and after won’t demonstrate anything…
No diet sodas wll NOT raise your blood sugar. I used to drink diet Pepsi,diet ginger-ale, and diet grape sodas, but I have now lost my taste for carbonated beverages. consuming diet sodas Never did a thing to my blood sugars. And tell your brother I am still alive, did not keel over and die from drinking them.Brunetta
type 1 45 years
After college, I waited tables for a few years. One place had styrofoam cups and I tallied my Diet Cokes during a 3-4 hour lunch shift and was astonished to find out I had 27 of the, like 12 oz cups but w/ ice! I don't drink it that much these days and have kind of gotten to the point where, most of the time, it doesn't taste very good.
When I used to drink more of it (2-4/day...) was when I was heavier and my BG control was wilder. I noticed sometimes, I'd have a Diet Coke and it would appear to make my BG spike up but I wasn't keeping any records and things were so much wilder that I can't say for sure if it was from the Diet Coke or a delayed fat/ protein spike from the bacon cheeseburgers or some odd anomaly from the NPH.
=( I'm the same way! I made myself a deal to go 1 year without a pop. I only made it 5 months. Honestly I love water I don't know why pop is such a treat!
If you drink it and it doesn't raise your bg at all that is your proof. Just show him a meter reading after drinking the diet soda. I was drinking diet soda last year after my diagnosis but I've stopped and it tastes bad to me now. Before that I was not really a big soda drinker except for dandelion burdock soda which I was having occasionally. Splenda does raise my bg, aspartime doesn't. I avoid all of those artificial sweeteners now. I either have real sugar in fruits etc. or stevia which is totally safe, it has no carbs, and tastes good to me. I make my own soda with filtered water & the soda stream, using various teas, lemon, limes etc. for flavor and stevia if I want to sweeten it. It's delicious. You have to get raw stevia extract with no maltodextrin, sugar(believe or not they put sugar in some stevia products), or sugar alcohols. Making your own soda with the soda stream is fun and it's much healthier than 99.9 % of the sodas you will find on the market diet or not. Almost all of the stevia sweetened sodas have sugar alcohols in them which has a laxative effect and add some carbs.
It was mentioned in some form already, but I'd like to repeat it:
While diet soda contains no calories, it will trick your brain that you're actually getting something sweet with energy in it.
So your mind will start the process of metabolizing the imaginary source of calories and eventually will catch up with the situation that there are none.
After that you'll get the urge to consume more sweet stuff, perpetuating the issue.
Eventually you'll have to give in and consume actual calories, with the brain telling you to do it fast -- therefore the sweet cravings as sugar calories are metabolized fastest.
Hope that helps in making you stay away from the diet (and non-diet) stuff.