NIH study finds that diet soda drinkers are more likely to be down in the dumps than regular soda drinkers, and that coffee drinkers are happier than both. More research is needed to confirm the findings.
Posted on 01/10/2013 6:17:03 PM PST by null and void
Coffee tied to a decrease in depression cases
NIH study finds that diet soda drinkers are more likely to be down in the dumps than regular soda drinkers, and that coffee drinkers are happier than both. More research is needed to confirm the findings.
Millions of people reach for an afternoon diet soda as a pick-me-up to make it through the rest of the day. But new research suggests sodas and other sugary drinks — especially artificially sweetened ones — could be related to depression.
According to the research, which will be officially released at the American Academy of Neurology's annual meeting in mid-March, people who drink four cans or more of soda daily are about 30 percent more likely to be diagnosed with depression than people who don't drink soda. Coffee drinkers are about 10 percent less likely to develop depression than people who don't drink coffee.
The National Institutes of Health study included more than 250,000 people between the ages of 50 and 71 and studied their drink consumption during 1995 and 1996. A decade later, researchers asked whether participants had been diagnosed with depression since the year 2000.
According to researchers, "the risk appeared to be greater for people who drank diet [rather] than regular soda."
"Our research suggests that cutting out or down on sweetened diet drinks or replacing them with unsweetened coffee may naturally help lower your depression risk," Honglei Chen, who led the study, said in a statement. "More research is needed to confirm these findings, and people with depression should continue to take depression medications prescribed by their doctors.
Maybe not for everyone, but certainly for me.
Neurotoxins do tend to bum a body out.
The Mountain Dew / methamphetamine association is a terrible thing.
Them Moxie drinkers are a pretty paranoid bunch too.
Where in the world did you get that picture?
If so, then bananas also cause depression. But by all means, don't ever eat grilled chicken with a glass of red wine, apple juice, tomato juice, or orange juice. You could become suicidal.
It should say “OR ELSE!” at the bottom.
Or, depression leads to overeating, overeating leads to excess weight, excess weight leads to dieting and thus consumption of diet sodas.
What sort of person drinks black coffee?
By all means ignore other peoples personal experience.
If there are hundreds of such stories, and they are not blessed by an “actual scientist”, then they are not true, right?
(Pinging the only “actual scientist” I know for his 2¢ worth)
Exactly. Drinking the diet soda keeps one from eating a sweet which one is NOT supposed to eat if one is overweight. One could be very depressed from being overweight to start with.
Interesting, but I was being treated with MAOI long before aspartame came on the scene. Maybe switch to splenda for a while just to see what other psychological maladies it can cause lol.
Well, me, for one. Three or four mugs every morning. And soda, diet or otherwise? Maybe four cans a year.
I'm the least-depressed person imaginable, but I don't attribute that to coffee.
True. Correlation is not causation.
Still, it's easy enough for someone who is depressed to switch to coffee, or even horrors!, water and see if it helps.
I've learned through bitter experience that consuming aspartame is invariably followed by worsening depression.
Some people go bananas when they hear this, some even go grilled chicken with red whine...
thank you...
Doesn’t say black coffee, just unsweetened. Though I don’t see that there research is that specific. If it were, would unsweetened coffee drinkers have got a larger boost still?
Diabetics.
I find aspartame is very bad for me, got that? for me. I make no claim for your particular metabolism and individual metabolic quirks.
By all means switch to Splenda, it's not aspartame. For me it (sucralose) and acesulfame-K (Sweet One, Sunnette) are fine. Equal is not.
Let us know how that works out for you, m'kay?
I cut back on sodas some time ago, and haven’t drunk any for quite a long time.
I’m pretty sure that aspertame is bad for you, and so is high fructose corn syrup. Sugar less so, but you can’t get sodas with sugar, at least not in these parts.
I drink a cup of coffee after all three meals. For a while, I switched to tea, but I’m persuaded that reasonable amounts of coffee are good for you, and it doesn’t seem to keep me from sleeping at night.
You completely misunderstood my comment. I have no problem whatsoever with what you said. I had depression earlier but Aspartame may well be a contributing factor for both you and me. We’re on the same side, OK?
I really am going to switch to Splenda for a while.
One thing, though, is that Aspartame has been accused of all kinds of things by anti-sweetener zealots over the years, without any kind of experimental or even rigorous correlational evidence at all. Those kinds of symptoms — say like short term memory loss — were foreign to me so I was not much worried about it. But this depression link is different.
The traitors in DC make me a whole hell of a lot more depressed than a whole truckload of Diet Coke ever could!
It didn’t give me depression but it made me have body aches from my feet to my head. It was bizarre. Almost any place that was an old injury seemed to weaken easy and be tight or sore. But once I stopped drinking the stuff the pains went away.
It didn’t give me depression but it made me have body aches from my feet to my head. It was bizarre. Almost any place that was an old injury seemed to weaken easy and be tight or sore. But once I stopped drinking the stuff the pains went away.
Me.
NIH “studies” are what depresses the hell out of me.
I don’t know about the depression aspect, but I gave up my diet soda addiction three weeks ago and in favor of green tea and good ol’ H2O and haven’t looked back! :)
Based on personal knowledge, I can assure every man that drinking copious amounts of Diet Coke does not adversely affect sexual performance in at least one male who is almost 60.
Me too. It’s my first cup or two of coffee in the morning. Any coffee which is of good quality can be drunk black: no sugar or other sweetener (natural or artificial), no milk or cream.
+1000
Your experience defies science. If you believe everything you read, you'd believe aspartame causes brain cancer, multiple sclerosis, lupus, memory loss, fibromyalgia, and so on, because people claim they "experienced" these diseases due to aspartame.
Aspartame doesn't cause any of those afflictions, even though there are thousands upon thousands who believe otherwise, and there is a simple example involving foods you eat regularly that makes that fact clear. I offered you a couple of such examples, but it's hard to reach someone with a fixed mentality.
From our trailer park homeowners website.
By the end of that summer I was so depressed I could barely move.
I figured something was causing it, but what?
I systematically back tracked every change in my life and diet and undid them one by one.
Eliminating Chrystal Lite eliminated most of the depression. Reintroducing it spiked the depression. Eliminating it again, and the depression backed off.
I avoid aspartame. Sometimes I'll unknowingly ingest some and be utterly mystified at the resulting bout of depression, until I figure out that a formerly "safe" product changed their recipe, as one cough drop manufacturer did recently.
I avoid the sweetener that requires a warning label, by all means you should eat as much of it as you can hold.
but it's hard to reach someone with a fixed mentality.
Yeah, tell me about it!
ooops sorry...
Yeah. You need to eliminate both...
Irritatingly enough SSRIs do.
Some people go bananas when they hear this, some even go grilled chicken with red whine...
I see the snark is strong within you. Since you've decided from your experience that aspartame causes depression, let's take a very simple example that will challenge your feelings.
Aspartame has three components: phenylalanine (the most common amino acid), aspartic acid (another amino acid), and methanol.
A 12 oz. Diet Coke contains the following:
The average banana contains 60 mg. of phenylalanine, 146 mg. of aspartic acid, and 21 mg. of methanol
So, combining your experience with simple math and basic reasoning, we can conclude that bananas do, in fact, cause depression.
How about a better example?
A 3 oz. piece of grilled chicken, eaten with a cup of tomato juice, contains the following:
So, a small piece of grilled chicken with just a cup of tomato juice will give you almost 12 times more phenylalanine than the amount of aspartame found in a can of Diet Coke; 33 times more aspartic acid, and more than 4 times the amount of methanol.
There better be a closet full of Prozac in your house should you ever get so brave as to take on 3 ounces of chicken with a glass of tomato juice. Either that, or put yourself on suicide watch.
I know your feelings, er, I mean, experience, causes you to believe this sweetener causes depression. Aspartame is blamed for all sorts of afflictions, but when you bother to consider some very simple science, It's all pretty silly, really.
This kind of "study" is probably the weakest kind of research there is, yet studies like this get published all the time. It is what I call a "correlational study." All it does is gather tons of data, and then apply statistical tests to see if any of the pieces of data can be correlated to other pieces of data.
At the p < 0.05 significance level, 1/20 of these correlations are false (of course, you don't know which one). And the remaining 19 correlations are worthless without further data. (A correlation is only meaningful if a reason for the correlation can be determined.) Correlation is not causation, yet all kinds of conclusions are made whenever a correlation is found.
Often, these "studies" are conducted by people who are very familiar with statistics (or have access to a statistician), and not at all familiar with research design or hypothesis formulation. For many MDs, it satisfies their research requirement (often required as part of their training), without actually making them do research. A correlation is the basis of a hypothesis and signals the need for more study; it is not an end result.
Okay, sorry for going off like that, but this is one of my pet peeves. I'm getting off the soapbox now...
What if you drink both? (I do)
Some people can’t tolerate aspartame, I’m one of them too, extreme gastro-intestinal (instant). Same with anything ending in -tol, malitol-sorbitol-xylitol, etc.(my dentist loves me-no sugar free gum or mints for me)
Bananas, Chicken and Tomatoes?
No issues.
Everyone is different
I too think there’s something wrong with aspartame and I’m glad I can’t consume it - I used to years ago - caught up with me.
Eating out in restaurants can be ‘exciting’
It’s by no means silly.
Assuming, of course, that the ONLY metabolic breakdown products of aspartame are phenylalanine, aspartic acid and methanol. Assuming it NEVER breaks down in half, or quarters or 60/40. Assuming that no one could possibly have an enzyme variant that, for example, leaves an odd methyl group stuck to what was once an innocent amino acid.
And of course, I’d also have to neglect my own personal experience, the deliberate test of the hypothesis, the deliberate repeat of the experiment with the same results, and the same results happening after accidental and unknown at-the-time exposures.
Who am I gonna believe? You or my own lyin’ eyes?
You tell me.
If I drink both, I’m depressed and awake.
That’s awesome and I agree.
Very good.
For awhile there I was thinking maybe we were getting a rare photo of billorites.
are those ancient egyptian hieroglyphics on his forehead?
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