Know The 8 Good Things That Will Happen To Your Body When You Quit Drinking Soda.

You’ve decided to give up diet soda—good idea! Maybe you weren’t hitting your weight-loss goals or couldn’t stomach that long list of ingredients anymore. Or perhaps you heard one too many times that it’s just not good for you.

Whatever the reason, eliminating diet soda from your diet will improve your health from head to toe. Research on diet soda is still in its infancy, but there’s enough out there to identify what you can look forward to when you put down the can and cool down with an unsweetened iced tea instead.

#1: Migraines disappear and focus sharpens.

It turns out the headaches you expected from a diet soda withdrawal didn’t materialize. And now that you’ve quit the stuff, you probably find yourself thinking clearly for the first time in a while. That’s because the chemicals that make up the artificial sweetener aspartame may have altered brain chemicals, nerve signals, and the brain’s reward system, which leads to headaches, anxiety, and insomnia.

#2: Taste buds are more sensitive.

It’s not your imagination: Without your usual diet soda chaser, you may find that food has more flavor. It has subtlety. It’s more enjoyable. That’s because the artificial sweeteners in your diet soda overwhelmed your taste buds with an onslaught of sweetness. Aspartame ranks 200 hundreds times sweeter than table sugar. Splenda? 600 times. In fact, brain scans show that diet soda alters sweet receptors in the brain and prolongs sugar cravings rather than satisfies them. Rather than needing sugary treats or something really salty like pretzels and chips, they reach for an apple and a piece of cheese. And, when they try diet soda again, they find it intolerably sweet.

In addition, you’re also making your teeth healthy the moment you stop drinking soda.

#3: The weighing scale finally goes the right way.

While you may have started drinking diet soda to facilitate weight loss, quitting it may actually do the trick. A recent 9-year study found older adults who drank diet soda continued to pack on belly fat. The study piggybacks on research that found each daily diet soda increases your chance of becoming obese in the next decade by 65{cee2002f739e7296570a1535f296f4aba2d6d38c2e845de34f2a289022b9ebe8}, and drinking diet soft drinks daily was associated with an increase in metabolic syndrome—obesity, high blood-pressure, high triglycerides—which leads to heart disease and diabetes.

#4: Bones strengthen.

Putting down the soda can may be the best way to improve your bone strength and reduce your risk of fractures. Each daily soda increased the chance of hip fracture by 14{cee2002f739e7296570a1535f296f4aba2d6d38c2e845de34f2a289022b9ebe8} for postmenopausal women. And another found that older women who drank cola had lower bone mineral density in their hips. The jury is still out on why soda has this effect, but the science pretty clearly suggests that a soda habit weakens your bones.

#5: Your attitude towards food changes.

Since diet sodas have no calories, people drinking them often feel it’s okay to indulge elsewhere. Often people who consume diet soda make poor food choices, like a burger and fries, a piece of cake, or potato chips, because they think they can afford those extra calories. Plus, soda often accompanies unhealthy foods. Sometimes those poor choices are built up habits. You’re conditioned to have soda with chips, fries, or something sweet. When you eliminate the soft drink, you also break the junk food habit.

#6: You handle booze better.

It’s a fact: Diet soda gets you drunk faster. When you mix it with alcohol, your stomach empties out faster than if you used regular soda, causing a drastic increase in blood alcohol concentrations. And when you add caffeine, look out. Bar patrons who mixed drinks with diet colas were intoxicated much more easily and frequently. Your best bet for a mixer? Club soda, which is naturally sugar- and calorie-free.

#7: Fat storage and diabetes risk decreases.

Our hormones may explain the great paradox of why people gain weight when they switch to diet soda. Drinking two-thirds of a diet soda before eating primed the pancreas to release a lot of the fat-storing hormone insulin. When the pancreas is overworked from creating insulin to control blood-sugar levels, diabetes rears its ugly head. Middle-aged men who drank 1 or more diet sodas daily were found to be much more likely to develop type 2 diabetes over a 7-year period.



#8: Kidney function improves.

Now that your body no longer has to make sense of the unpronounceable ingredients in diet soda, your kidneys can get back to clearing toxins, stabilizing blood pressure, and absorbing minerals. One study looked at 11 years of data and found that women who drank 2 or more servings of diet soda doubled their chances of declining kidney function.


Source: Prevention