Researchers are no longer sure of that. Newer research by Armstrong, et al (widely referenced on athletic/training websites) indicates that at amounts under 300mg per day, caffeine exerts no more diuretic action than…water.
Just in the interest of accuracy, I want to point out that psychosomatic is not the same as not real. A person can’t tell if something is “real” or psychosomatic by analysis of symptoms. A person cannot stop a psychosomatic reaction by changing their beliefs.
I am not saying anything about the cause of allergies: I don’t know anything. I break out in really ugly hives often, sometimes almost daily. I have no idea what the cause is. It may well be psychosomatic (since it doesn’t seem to be anything else), but that makes it no more or less real than if it is caused by some other cause.
Whether you like it or not, the inability to digest lactose due to the body no longer producing lactase is, in fact “lactose intolerant”. That is the proper medical term for it.
While it does not produce the same symptoms and problems as, say, gluten intolerance, having intestines full of indigestible milk parts can cause significant discomfort and issues. Poo-pooing this and essentially saying it’s all in people’s heads doesn’t magically make the bloating, flatulence, and other symptoms go away.
As for the “placebo effect” comment - are you saying fatal allergic reactions are due to the placebo effect?
I don’t see anything there suggesting that the “allergies” were psychosomatic, but rather that food intolerances or other physical reactions were misinterpreted as allergies or that people were misdiagnosed due to insufficient testing.
There is no solid evidence that diet beverages have any bad health issues.
Cite?
Cite?
I see WhyNot beat me to it. There’s no evidence that moderate consumption of caffiene beverages is non-hydrating.
You are correct.
I had a draft post with over 30 cites and decided that was a little silly, I chose poorly when reducing the number.
I felt that amount was just contributing to thread drift.
But they are not hard to find with just a little searching.
http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=144310
http://archpedi.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/abstract/148/11/1150
Just search for for DBPCFCs
Quoth Broomstick:
Assuming that that’s not completely hyperbole, which way are you diverting the flow? Water is actually diamagnetic, meaning it’ll be repelled by a magnet.
And LSLGuy, there are plenty of people who drink nothing but caffeinated beverages. If coffee and tea were actually net diuretics as you claim, those folks would all be not just unhealthy, but dead. The only beverages that are net diuretics are some strong alcoholic drinks.
Indeed. My Dad used to tell stories of going fishing out of SoCal with Portugese Fishermen. They’d stay out 2 days, maybe more or less, depending on the catch. On board, Dad was suprised to see they carried no drinking water at all, just strong coffee in big Thermos bottles and a large cask of red wine. 48 hours doing hard work, in the hot sun for half of it, how could one survive if coffee and booze were such anti-hydrators?
http://www.ajcn.org/content/82/6/1327.abstract
And here is one where they excluded people who were allergic
“Unblinded studies suggested that small amounts of lactose,
such as the 12.5 g in 240 mL milk (1 cup), cause symptoms in
most persons with lactose maldigestion (13–15). However,
blinded studies showed no significant difference in symptoms
after the daily ingestion of 240 mL conventional milk compared
with 240 mL lactose-hydrolyzed milk (5, 16–18). Recently, we
reported that 240 mL conventional milk with breakfast and din-
ner was not associated with significantly greater symptoms than
were observed with a similar volume of lactose-free milk (3).”
And I will stop now.
A very unscientific report. In the summer my service club sells pop and water at festivals. In hot weather, we sell about as much water as the 7 types of pop put together. What surprises me is the number of younger kids given a choice, take water. Perhaps there wasn’t much money for pop when I was a kid, but I can hardly imagine I would have ever taken water over pop.
Except in high volumes, there’s nothing unhealthy about drinking water. Anything else you drink contains potentially less than ideal substances, or flat out toxins. You won’t go wrong drinking only water if your other nutritional needs are being met with other foods. After weaning, our ancestors probably drank only water most of the time, and sometimes blood or small amounts of fruit juice, yet some of them must have survived.
Now if you are talking about dental health, there are some who believe anything except water is bad for your teeth. I used to go to a dentist who had hired a hygenist who was annoying patients by telling us to drink nothing but water, then asking us if we were alcoholics, because it was better to drink fruit juice or milk than alcohol if we were addicted. She didn’t last long, but some people actually feel this way. Of course the best thing for your teeth would be to eat or drink nothing, die quickly, and leave a corpse with great looking teeth.:rolleyes:
When you consider the total volume of fluids your body requires to be replenished every day, water is the most efficient drink to consume. Coffee, tea, milk, alcohol, fruit juices and the other beverages mentioned have both plusses and minuses associated with their consumption. If you need any of the constituents in any of the alternative beverages, by all means, enjoy as much as you like, even to the point of replacing your entire fluid intake with them. In the vast majority of cases, however, the primary “enhancement” to these alternative drinks is sugar and salt, marketed as “electrolytes.”
A healthy, diversified diet will supply the average person with all the electrolytes they would require, and any present in the fluids they drink are, mostly, superfluous. This is not to imply there are not salutary benefits to be gained by drinking certain liquids, but if one were to replace their entire fluid intake with these liquids, it might not prove as beneficial, health-wise, as simply drinking water.
A significant factor to consider is that, in the majority of cases considered, alternatives to water cost many, many times more than water on a per-ounce basis. According to the USEPA, the average cost of water, delivered to your tap, is [COLOR=#0000ff]$2 per 1000 gallons, or less than 50 cents per ton (you can’t even buy dirt that cheap!). A fairly common price for bottled water is $1 for a 16-ounce bottle, or $8 a gallon—more than double the average price for gasoline. Most soft drinks and other water alternatives cost more than this.[/COLOR]
If money is no object, and you feel the need to supplement your body’s intake of trace nutrients with other liquids, knock yourself out. There really is no health-related downside to drinking fluids other than water. But in most cases, in the US at least, we are consuming all the macro- and micro-nutrients we need, without adding them to the fluids we drink.
I’ll repeat:
Some studies indicate that diet soda encourages weight gain. One hypothesis is that they throw off the body’s ability to judge and regulate caloric intake.
One study is epidemiological: it notes that diet soft drink users are heavier. The other study uses lab rates, and also finds that artificial sweeteners increase weight. I admit I’m biased: I don’t like artificial sweetners. But 2 studies with similar conclusions and disparate methodologies are worthy of attention.
Thanks to **DrDeth **& Chronos for setting me straight on coffee / soda as net diuretics. It seems I over-accepted the military’s conventional wisdom on the topic.
Said another way, it seems I drank the Kool-aid.
Really?! :eek: People who are trying to control their weight by driniking diet soft drinks are heavier that people who don’t? (Gomer pyle voice) Surprise, surprise, surprise!!
And even the study sez that : *Fowler is quick to note that a study of this kind does not prove that diet soda causes obesity. More likely, she says, it shows that something linked to diet soda drinking is also linked to obesity.
“One possible part of the explanation is that people who see they are beginning to gain weight may be more likely to switch from regular to diet soda,” Fowler suggests. “But despite their switching, their weight may continue to grow for other reasons. So diet soft-drink use is a marker for overweight and obesity.”
Why? Nutrition expert Leslie Bonci, MPH, RD, puts it in a nutshell.
“You have to look at what’s on your plate, not just what’s in your glass,” Bonci tells WebMD.
People often mistake diet drinks for diets, says Bonci, director of sports nutrition at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and nutrition consultant to college and professional sports teams and to the Pittsburgh Ballet."
“A lot of people say, 'I am drinking a diet soft drink because that is better for me. But soft drinks by themselves are not the root of America’s obesity problem,” she says. “You can’t go into a fast-food restaurant and say, ‘Oh, it’s OK because I had diet soda.’ If you don’t do anything else but switch to a diet soft drink, you are not going to lose weight.”*
That study is not solid evidence that diet beverages have any bad health issues. It just shows that you can’t eat two double bacon burgers and a super-sized fries and expect to lose weight because you washed that down with a Diet Coke.
The second study is also next to useless:
*Hubrich counters that it is far from clear if the rat studies have any relevance to people, adding that many human studies suggest low-calorie sweeteners in diet sodas and other foods are beneficial for weight loss.
One of the most recent suggested that use of sucralose – the sugar substitute sold as Splenda – along with increased physical activity, helped children lose weight, she says.
“I am not aware of any studies in humans suggesting that the use of low-calorie sweeteners is associated with weight gain,” she says.
Clinical psychologist Edward Abramson, PhD, who specializes in treating patients struggling with weight, agrees that rat studies may not have much relevance to humans when it comes to appetite and weight control.
“The issue of food intake and energy expenditure is much more complicated in humans,” he says.*
But is is true that if you drank a bunch of triple expressos, that really won’t hydrate you.
Moderate use of caffienated beverages are still OK.
Note that altho Web MD is not a bad source at all, they still pick and choose amoung articles, often seeming to choose those which support their agenda.
For example, here’s a AJCN article
http://www.ajcn.org/content/76/4/721.short
"*Background: The role of artificial sweeteners in body-weight regulation is still unclear.
Objective: We investigated the effect of long-term supplementation with drinks and foods containing either sucrose or artificial sweeteners on ad libitum food intake and body weight in overweight subjects. …
Results: After 10 wk, the sucrose group had increases in total energy (by 1.6 MJ/d), sucrose (to 28% of energy), and carbohydrate intakes and decreases in fat and protein intakes. The sweetener group had small but significant decreases in sucrose intake and energy density. Body weight and fat mass increased in the sucrose group (by 1.6 and 1.3 kg, respectively) and decreased in the sweetener group (by 1.0 and 0.3 kg, respectively); the between-group differences were significant at P < 0.001 (body weight) and P < 0.01 (fat mass). Systolic and diastolic blood pressure increased in the sucrose group (by 3.8 and 4.1 mm Hg, respectively) and decreased in the sweetener group (by 3.1 and 1.2 mm Hg, respectively).
Conclusions: Overweight subjects who consumed fairly large amounts of sucrose (28% of energy), mostly as beverages, had increased energy intake, body weight, fat mass, and blood pressure after 10 wk. These effects were not observed in a similar group of subjects who consumed artificial sweeteners. "*
and another:
http://www.ajcn.org/content/51/6/963.short
“To examine whether artificial sweeteners aid in the control of long- term food intake and body weight, we gave free-living, normal-weight subjects 1150 g soda sweetened with aspartame (APM) or high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) per day. Relative to when no soda was given, drinking APM-sweetened soda for 3 wk significantly reduced calorie intake of both females (n = 9) and males (n = 21) and decreased the body weight of males but not of females. However, drinking HFCS-sweetened soda for 3 wk significantly increased the calorie intake and body weight of both sexes. Ingesting either type of soda reduced intake of sugar from the diet without affecting intake of other nutrients. Drinking large volumes of APM-sweetened soda, in contrast to drinking HFCS-sweetened soda, reduces sugar intake and thus may facilitate the control of calorie intake and body weight”
and another:
http://www.ajcn.org/content/84/2/274.short
*Consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs), particularly carbonated soft drinks, may be a key contributor to the epidemic of overweight and obesity, by virtue of these beverages’ high added sugar content, low satiety, and incomplete compensation for total energy. Whether an association exists between SSB intake and weight gain is unclear. We searched English-language MEDLINE publications from 1966 through May 2005 for cross-sectional, prospective cohort, and experimental studies of the relation between SSBs and the risk of weight gain (ie, overweight, obesity, or both). Thirty publications (15 cross-sectional, 10 prospective, and 5 experimental) were selected on the basis of relevance and quality of design and methods. Findings from large cross-sectional studies, in conjunction with those from well-powered prospective cohort studies with long periods of follow-up, show a positive association between greater intakes of SSBs and weight gain and obesity in both children and adults. Findings from short-term feeding trials in adults also support an induction of positive energy balance and weight gain by intake of sugar-sweetened sodas, but these trials are few… The weight of epidemiologic and experimental evidence indicates that a greater consumption of SSBs is associated with weight gain and obesity. Although more research is needed, sufficient evidence exists for public health strategies to discourage consumption of sugary drinks as part of a healthy lifestyle. *
But yes, there is also some evidence that diet drinks don’t help with weight loss. However not helping with weight loss is different than “There is no solid evidence that diet beverages have any bad health issues.”
Thus the evidence seem to be that drinking diet beverages is generally safe. They are also hwaaaay less fattening than sugar or HFCS beverages. But, do not think that just switching to diet soda alone will nessesarily result in a weight loss.
First of all, I don’t have a solid health science background. I would say currently that, “There exists an hypothesis that diet beverages stimulate hunger, but this hasn’t been demonstrated conclusively. There is some evidence for it though.” Whether this evidence is actionable is another matter.
Dr. Deth reported studies that pre-dated mine. One was a literature review (which is preferable for layman’s purposes), but as far as I could tell it only addressed sugar sweetened beverages. Further work is necessary. If anybody can point to a good roundup of the research on artificially sweetened soda, it would be helpful. Ideally, it would address the question, “Relative to what?” Personally, I prefer tap water.