I have a love/hate relationship with diet soda. I love it because I sometimes need the sweetness of a caffeine boost and I don't want the calories, but I hate it because I know that diet soda isn't much better for me than regular soda since even just drinking ONE diet soda a day can give you a higher risk of heart attack or stroke. Well, now it turns out that there's one other major side effect of saving your calories by drinking diet soda: a new study has found a link between drinking diet soda or diet fruit drinks and an increased risk of depression.
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That's right, drinking that no-calorie soda may actually make you depressed! According to the study, "people who regularly drank four or more cans of any type of soda a day were 30 percent more likely to have received a diagnosis of depression than people who did not drink soda." Okay, so ANY kind of soda is really bad for your mental health, sure, but get this: the risk of depression was actually MUCH higher if you drank diet soda (31 percent increased risk) than if you drank regular soda (22 percent increased risk).
Even worse, though, if you drink diet fruit drinks thinking that because it's fruit it's going to be healthier than soda, then you are even worse off! Those people were actually 51 percent more likely to be diagnosed with depression. That's more than HALF!
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Funnily enough, people who drank four or more cups of coffee a day were actually 10 percent less likely to have been diagnosed with depression than non-coffee drinkers. Though, to be honest, that sounds like way too much cafecito to me!
Of course, researchers are still trying to figure out why that is, but I know one big thing: I'm definitely going to need to stop drinking diet soda ASAP! I know that when you're depressed, one of the symptoms can also be eating more and that's just something I don't want to do. With all of the increasingly awful side effects of drinking any kind of soda, and especially diet soda, we all need to give it up ASAP.
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