Diet Soda Dangers

Time to nix the diet soda habit. Drinking diet soda every day may raise your risk of a heart attack, stroke and death.
Can’t get by without your daily fix of diet soda? You might want to rethink the habit. Research presented at the International Stroke Conference found that those who drank diet carbonated beverages every day had a 61 percent greater risk of a heart attack, stroke or other deadly cardiac event. This isn’t the first research to find a link between diet soda and health issues. A 2009 study found that diet soda was also associated with type 2 diabetes and metabolic syndrome — a cluster of symptoms, including obesity, belly fat, high blood pressure and high cholesterol, that increase the risk of heart disease, stroke and diabetes.
Though these studies do not prove that diet soda is the cause of these conditions, it does sound a warning bell. If you have a serious soda habit, you might want to think about cutting back and drinking water, or even seltzer, instead.