Health - Wellness
The Unexpected Side Effect
Of Drinking
Diet Soda
By ZRINKA PETERS
Research over the years has produced a mixed bag of results over whether drinks containing low-calorie, nonnutritive sweeteners (NNS) actually help anyone lose weight, and whether they are healthful in the long term. But now, recent research adds another surprising side effect to the diet soda issue — drinking them may actually stimulate appetite, making you hungrier.
Dr. Kathleen Page, the study's corresponding author and an associate professor of medicine at Keck School of Medicine, explains, "By studying different groups we were able to show that females and people with obesity may be more sensitive to artificial sweeteners. For these groups, drinking artificially sweetened drinks may trick the brain into feeling hungry."
The study also found that, for both men and women, drinking diet drinks was followed by a decrease in the amount of hormones that trigger a feeling of satiety or fullness. This reinforces that drinks containing nonnutritive sweeteners could actually leave you feeling hungrier.