DIET SODA IS JUST AS HARMFULL TO OLDER FOLKS AS REGULAR SODA August 6, 2007

Country-pop radio stalwart Kim Mitchell likes to say “might as well go for a soda, nobody hurts” well, I’ve got two things to say to Mr. Mitchell-first off- get a boys name. Secondly, if that soda’s diet and you’re going for one every day- you may as well be going for a Big Mac.

We all know that regular soda is no good for you. However, the rise of diet soda was built on the promise of low calories and less sugar (or a different type of sugar) and you would be led to believe that while drinking diet soda wasn’t exactly healthy, it wasn’t nearly as damaging as drinking the occasional bottle of traditional soda.

The Circulation Journal has published the findings of a study titled “Soft Drink Consumption and

Risk of Developing Cardiometabolic Risk Factors and the Metabolic Syndrome in Middle-Aged Adults.” A veritable slew of health blogs have been discussing the results and it looks very clear that diet soda is a big sham.

Discussing the study, the GetFitSource Blog stated ““People who drank one or more diet sodas each day developed the same risks for heart disease as those who downed sugary regular soda.” The person who wrote the post was seemingly furious over the blatant false advertising indicated by the addition of a “diet” label to the name. There is nothing that’s diet at all about these drinks.

“Needless to say this is somewhat of a surprising result since it’s definitely counter intuitive that the diet colas would have the same impact as fully sweetened sodas given the massive calories contained in the latter. Not surprisingly, a representative from the American Beverage Association opined: “How can something with zero calories that’s 99 percent water with a little flavoring in it … cause weight gain?”

The study also concluded that individuals who “drank one or more sodas a day diet or regular had an increased risk of metabolic syndrome, compared to those who drank sodas infrequently.” In terms of your heart health- diet sodas are conclusively as bad as traditional sodas.

The CardioBlog noted that this increase in Metabolic Syndrome translated into another troubling symptom- obsesity. Their latest post on this study noted that “What’s more, compared to those who drank less than one soda a day, those who drank one or more were at a 30% greater risk becoming obese and had a 25% greater chance of developing high cholesterol.”

The Disease Proof Blog was also incensed about the hurtful effects of diet soda. Joel Fuhrman M.D, the writer of the post, seemed to imply that the use of artificial sweetener was responsible for the bulk of the damage. He quoted a recent post in another medical blog that said…

“Despite its widespread use, there is a surprising lack of human clinical trials evaluating its safety. Unlike with saccharin, no evidence has been reported that stevioside and its metabolites are carcinogenic. However, animal reports of nephrotoxicity do exist.”

Are the carcinogenic effects of artificial sweeteners baring unknown repercussions on millions of American hearts? The signs are increasingly pointing to yes.

NEW ENGLAND JOURNAL OF MEDICINE STUDY REVEALS THAT OBESITY WORKS LIKE A SOCIAL NETWORK August 6, 2007

A recent study from the good folks at the New England Journal of Medicine has revealed that the spread of obesity functions much like an online social network. An article in last week’s New York Times has amplified both the size and scope of the NEJM study. Seemingly every medical professional with a blog has been weighing in with an opinion of their own.

Jon Barron’s health blog reported some of the more surprising details contained in the journals conclusions. Essentially, if you have a network of friends who are either obese or are in the process of becoming significantly overweight you are extremely likely to follow suit. For instance, “If your spouse becomes obese your chances of weight gain increase by 37%, but if your friends become obese your chances of doing the same increase by an astounding 171%.”

GetFitSource, a blog specializing in healthy lifestyles, noted that this is a natural tendency among humans and that, basically, this is a case of monkey see- monkey do. The post noted that “For example, if a close friend or sibling returns from a European vacation, we are likely to follow.” Obviously, they agreed that this type of peer motivation was an integral part of your overall odds in regards to maintaining a healthy lifestyle. “If close friends or siblings become fat, well, gradually our norms for what is acceptable weight-wise may loosen and we are probably less resistant to gaining weight.”

Having a look at the New York Times article showed me an aspect of the study that I hadn’t initially thought of, but completely made sense upon realization- unhealthy eating habits are just like society’s other chief bad habit-smoking. The NYT article said “obesity was just the start… They have already begun asking about other health-related issues. Smoking, for example — have smokers become more isolated over time?” Think about how smokers hang around together and in any environment you work in, the smokers always tend to band together. So much time spent outside coughing together is probably good for fostering togetherness.

“After all, networks evolve, and if smoking becomes unacceptable, smokers might be expected to cluster in their own little orbits, cut off from the mainstream. That, Dr. Fowler said, is exactly what happened. The Framingham data from the 1970s show smokers embedded in social networks just like everyone else. But by the 1990s, smokers began to be shunted to the side, their links to nonsmokers breaking.”

The Framingham data was an integral part in laying the base for the study referenced in the NEJM. Effectively, the Framingham Study (named for the Massachusetts town where it has been going on for several decades) is to observe how an interconnected group of people influences each others behavior over time. The NYT article noted that “as part of the study, participants named friends who could help locate them if researchers lost contact. That link was just what was needed to construct a social network and watch it evolve over decades — a web of friends and friends of friends along with family members.”

The conclusions of the Framingham study are considerable. “The striking feature of networks… Is that they amplify whatever effect they are propagating. One person catches a cold and spreads it to 10 friends, each of whom spreads it to 10 more friends.”

Furthermore, the exact same thing seemed to happen with individuals who had become obese.

“Dr. Christakis and his colleague James H. Fowler, a political scientist at the University of California, San Diego, say they do not know how it happened, but the dynamic was clear — when one person became obese, that person’s friends were more likely to become obese and so were their friends and their friends’ friends.”

One of the things that I am left wondering is whether it would be possible to integrate people into social networks and increase the effectiveness of a weightloss program or a common diet that is shared between the group. If friends influencing friends is the #1 thing that leads to obesity (aside from eating all of the time, obviously) it can definitely be harnessed to aid weight loss and more importantly to help keep the weight off. Since you see so many young people (and senior citizens as well in some cases) documenting their lives online, why not have us all put our health data right out there for a select group of people to see or better yet- the entire world.