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.
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...
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