No diet soda?

Worried about my kidneys early on, I kept a very close watch on my kidney function. My GFR has remained high and stable, I'm happy to say, and my UOP, serum Cr, P, K, and BUN are all just fine.

True, not all fluids are created equal (I suppose my humorous tone doesn't come across well in three word text) but I have seen no negative impact of massive diet soda intake over many years, so I'm not worried.

The study that is typically shared with regard to diet soda and decline in kidney function relies on the Nurse's Health Study, which I always find interesting. People find little correlations in the data of that study all the time and use it to draw premature conclusions. For example, it was determined from a similar study that diet soda intake decreases bone mineral density. However, upon further investigation, it was determined that it's actually the displacement of milk and the phosphoric acid in dark-colored sodas that causes the problem, and so Diet Mountain Dew fans who wouldn't drink milk even if they didn't drink diet soda had nothing to fear, just take your calcium!

Because the Nurse's Health Study relies on food frequency questionnaires to determine intake and no determination was made between, say, diet coke or diet mountain dew or diet sprite, there's no way to determine what part of diet soda causes a problem, or if diet soda itself is actually the cause at all. For example, people who have diabetes might be more likely to drink diet soda in an attempt to control blood glucose. Diabetes is also the leading cause of CKD. If you were to include these people in a study then diet soda consumption will correlate strongly with CKD, but it's not because of the diet soda, it's because of the Diabetes which is causing the CKD and the increased diet soda consumption. Many studies do try to adjust for things like diabetes but we cannot ever adjust for all confounding variables on such a large scale, unfortunately.

/r/loseit Thread Parent