Diet drinks=weight gain? Relationship at stake.

Factual Questions
1

OK not really at stake, but heated.

Background:
GF has yeast related problems. In searching for a dietary solution, she found an article on the net that says diet Coke causes weight gain because the AS fool your brain into thinking they are real calories/sugar. Sugar=yeast…
Nonsense says I. Padalerium ensues.

Seriously, I did some checking (googling) and there is a huge raging debate on this apparently.

From here:
http://www.DIABETIC.com/ubb/Forum1/HTML/000183.html

Diabetic smerimonti posts:
(posted 01-13-2005 02:03 PM)
"There are hidden calories and there are hidden sugars in it. I drank a can of Diet Coke and then checked my blood sugar, and my blood sugar jumped up. "
(bolding mine)

Less convincing from E Max Health:
http://www.emaxhealth.com/11/586.html

**Diet Coke is a Joke **

"Countless numbers of dieters consume Diet Coke thinking that it is inert to their diet efforts. After all, it’s called Diet Coke, right? Wrong.

Diet Coke, regardless of how many calories it has, wreaks havoc on your fat loss efforts and will ultimately cause you to gain weight…[T]he sweet taste from Diet Coke elicits an insulin spike, which blocks your ability to burn fat.<snip>

"When it comes to losing fat, it is more about how much sugar (or sugar substitute) you consume rather than calories or dietary fat intake. Hence, the goal is to consume as little sugar or sugar substitute as possible <snip> "

Even this article/study
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/health/3221547.html

which states (in part) diet Coke will make you gain weight long term admits:

"And more surprising still, those who drank diet soda had a greater chance at becoming overweight than did those who drank regular, full-calorie soda.
“I want to be very clear,” said the study’s lead author, Sharon Fowler, an associate faculty member at The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, "Our findings do not prove that diet soft drinks cause people to gain weight.

"Fowler presented the study’s results Sunday in San Antonio at the annual scientific meeting of the American Diabetes Association.

“By itself diet soda cannot cause weight gain, scientists say. The “zero calories” tag on the label really does mean 0 calories, so diet drinks do not increase the amount of energy the body must burn a day to gain or lose weight.”

The effect shown by the study in the San Antonio Heart Study — age 25 to 64 when they first enrolled — must be explained by other means.
(again bolding mine)

My question, is are there any reputable studies that show diet soda does not produce sugar related problems? (i.e. weight gain, yeast problems)

2

Just to pick on one point, this means absolutely nothing. It actually means less than nothing. I have been a diabetic for nearly 25 years, and I drink perhaps 1.5-2 liters of Diet Coke each day. I also have a BMI of 19, and have been from 19-21 BMI for nearly 4 years. What does that tell you? Not much, taken by itself.

FTR, if the guy you quoted is that ignorant of how his body can change blood sugar due to myriad other reasons (such as continued digestion of food eaten hours earlier, delayed digestion, stress, exercise, temperature change, etc.) then he has more serious problems than weight gain.

3

One one side you have meaningless posts by random people on websites. On the other you have a formal medical study presented to the American Diabetes Association.

Now, this does not automatically mean that the formal study is correct: no one study is ever authoritative. However, that’s the way to bet.

What the article says is that peoples’ overall eating behavior is more of a causative factor in obesity than the ingredients in any one food that they eat. That certainly fits in with all the other reporting on food that I’ve ever read.

4

Scientific double blind studies happen to disagree with the nonsense referenced at those sites.

Additionally, the biggest error is not recognizing the caloric role in weight gain. We have more calories at our fingertips than at anytime in history, and thus we weigh more.

12 X Bodywieght = calories needed to sustain body weight.

Some avg-size women need a paltry 1500 cals to maintain their healthy weight. By todays standards, 1500 calories is an utter joke. But 1500 used to be 3-4 decent meals per day. Now, 2500 calories is what you get by eating three ‘average’ meals.

Sugar has a role in offering up nutritionally deficient calories, usually don’t fill you up and since they aren’t ‘dense’ foods like complex carbs (veggies, etc), you feel hungry, even though you ate 700 calories.

5

The effect of Diet Coke and other caffeinated non-calorie drinks like coffee and tea on fat burning is not the artificial sweeteners, but the caffeine. Caffeine is a diuretic and causes fluid loss.

Drinking plenty of fluids is critical to fat burning. As it was explained to me, inadequate fluid consumption causes your kidneys to perform poorly, and they have to be helped out by your liver, which can then not do its primary functions as well, one of which is to process fats out of your body.

If you are drinking a diuretic like a caffeinated drink, you have to drink that much more fluid just to stay even with your fluid intake and keep your kidneys functioning fully. I am in a weight-loss program where one of the key indicators to continued success is to drink a minimum of 64 ounces of water a day. They say that low-calorie additives like Crystal Light are fine, but to minimize caffeinated drinks or to drink an equivalent amount of *additional * water to make up for them.

This is all stuff I have been told rather than stuff I have gleaned from research, so I will be interested to see any actual research data on it. IANA medical researcher or anything like that myself.

6

And don’t forget that people who drink diet drinks often figure that they now have “room” for more caloric foods without the weight gain. Bzzzzzz! Wrong. And they often overeat and consequently gain weight. And then they report that they GAINED weight after drinking diet drinks! Those lying diet-coke advertising bastards! We’ve had these discussions here over the years. I recommend searching the archives for discussions of food intake, calories, exercise, and weight gain. Hope the girl feels better soon, however. xo, C.

7

There’s an earlier thread in which this is discussed in connection with the “drink 8 cups of water a day” claim, and the caffeine content of these drinks has a negligable diuretic effect, which is more than compensated for by the water content.

8

Thanks, I’ll try to find that thread.

How about this (more anecdotal, just from my own experience) - caffeine can stimulate your appetite and make you feel hungrier than you otherwise would.

9

A physician friend of mine suggested that the sweetness of diet drinks can cause an insulin spike, and should therefore be consumed with other foods, because otherwise you’ll feel like crap.

I can say that in my case this is true, although it could be psychosomatic.

She said nothing about it causing weight gain tho. Additionally, the head of our department of Pharmacology & Therapeutics is diabetic and does exclusively diabetes research, and drinks diet pop fairly regularly, so I’m guessing that it can’t be that bad.

10

I’ve read (tho’ I can’t find the cite) that the associated insulin spike is temporary. In tests with peope who don’t normally drink diet drinks, they get the insulin spike because their body is expecting sugar. But if they continue to consume diet drinks, the body ceases to associate the flavor of soda with the expectation on sugar.

11

I’ve heard the reports that diet drinks cause weight gain.

I’m sure some people who drink diet pop consume extra calories on the rationale that “they have been good” or that “since I saved X calories, I can consume this piece of cheesecake”.

But this is a far cry from causality, and I do not think it likely that the brain is fooled into thinking it consumed sugar. The body knows what to do with sugar and acts accordingly. Lots of anorexics think about food constantly (it does not usually affect the appetite) and don’t gain weight from dreaming about poutine.

12

Caffiene is a stimulant and actually helps suppress appetite. It’s probably the most common ingredient in weight loss suppliments since ephedra started getting so much negative press. You would probably see it listed as whatever plant source they get the caffeine from, but if you read the label long enough you find it’s just caffeine.

I’ve personally found it to be effective, but only in larger quantities (i.e. not what you get from a can of diet coke, more like a couple cups of coffee.) I drink a lot of diet soda, and I do notice that if I go a couple of days buying non-caffeinated sodas, I end up eating more. Though it usually has more to do with eating to stay awake. I’m extremely addicted to caffeine.

13

Yes, but a *temporary * suppressant, and then when it wears off, the appetite comes back in force!

Or I don’t know what I’m talking about. Entirely possible…

14

The idea of diet pills is that it doesn’t wear off. Diet pills indicate to bombard you with about 300-600mg caffeine every 5-7 hours. If you are like me, and can sleep after a 5-shot latte, then great. Otherwise you’ll binge-eat right before going to bed or upon waking up.

15

Of course it wears off. If it didn’t, you wouldn’t need to take another pill. The idea of diet pills is to keep you buying diet pills for fear that the effect would wear off as soon as you stop taking them. As it would. Caffeine is a temporary suppressant. They all are.

16

Maybe I wasn’t clear enough.
When I started drinking diet I lost weight. I believe this makes sense. Same with sugar/yeast thing. Problem is my GF read an article on the (unfailing :rolleyes: ) internet to the contrary. Simple facts from my lips won’t dispute. I was hoping for a united doper site that explained, in lay-mens terms, a position that I could show was a counter-example of the BS that comes with the “natural” viewpoint that says diet drinks are evil. One that shows they are no worse than any other processed drink.
There were just too many to give a cross-section in the OP.

17

I think you’re changing the question. In your OP, you ask about studies that relate diet drink intake to weight gain and yeast problems. You implied that both are related to sugar. Now you seem to be asking a broader, more judgmental question - are they evil or are they good. It’s unlikely you’ll find a site that takes a position like that, unless they are grinding out that point of view as a quasi-political stance. Good or “evil” of foods are values related, and even if you want to relate it to effects on the body, the judgement you make has to take into account the needs and desires of the person and his/body. i.e. - sugar is not good or bad, per se. We don’t have enought of it - ergo: it’s good. We have too much of it - ergo: it’s bad. Same deal with diet drinks, in general. Are the substances in it good or evil? Neither, probably. It depends on what you need/want, and how much of it you have in your body at the moment. Does excess sugar effect your sweetie? If yes, don’t take in as much sugar. If not, don’t worry about it.

18

CC, duly noted. I guess I am overwhelmed by the subject which I am woefully uninformed about.

Bottom line:

Can the the brain be tricked by AS into affecting the sugar content of blood to the point of causing yeast related problems (in so much as sugar alone would do it)? And to a lesser degree weight problems?

19

Do we know that sugar causes yeast related problems?

20

No, but from here (for example):
http://www.msu.edu/user/eisthen/yeast/

“Vaginal yeast infections are caused by Candida albicans, which, along with a few types of bacteria, are normally present in relatively small numbers in your crotch. sometimes the yeast multiply rapidly and take over, causing a full-fledged yeast infection, or, in the heart-warming terminology of the medical establishment, candidiasis or monilia. this can be due to a change in the vaginal environment, injury, sexual transmission, or HIV. common environmental disruptions that favor yeast include increased pH, increased heat and moisture, allergic reactions, elevated sugar levels, hormonal fluxes, and reductions in the populations of bacteria that are normally present.” (bolding mine) (assuming ‘spikes’ [according to HER] in BS equate to ESL’s)

I’m not arguing the point. I’m asking for factual help in proving my case to my GF that diet drinks do not have the ‘whatever’ to promote yeast infections.

I’m trying to keep her sane… and me in one piece!