this post was submitted on 04 Sep 2026
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Been drinking exclusively (give or take) no-sugar caffeinated sodas since a child. Not obese or diabetic. Mid-thirties now. How bad is this?

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[โ€“] Soot@hexbear.net 7 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Even sugar-free drinks are suspected to increase your chance of diabetes, obesity, and a wide variety of other health issues. High consumption of artifically sweetened beverages are suspected to increase your likelihood of gallbladder and biliary tract cancer, notably a large increase in cholecystectomies, which you say you've had.

Here's a long review of smaller-scale studies of a variety of associations and/or suspected causations of diet soda consumption - Notably arterial disease and "remodelling", Weight gain, Depression in later life, Eating disorders, impaired cognitive development, hip fractures, UTIs, Diabetic retinopathy, End-stage renal disease, Leukemia and lymphoma, and overall mortality. The review concluded that by objective standards, the included studies were all at least of "moderate" quality.

Need I go on?

Is a lot of that going to be correlative? For sure yeah. Is it still maybe a very good idea to incorporate more water into your diet? Also yeah.

[โ€“] dropdrip@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Thanks for the links. I'll give them a read through.

They didn't separate artificial sweetened beverages from those with sugar in the article about gallbladder cancer. That's sort of... important from my perspective. Cancer and gallstones are different things anyway. I'm confidant my issues were with malnutrition over my gallbladder and the problematic gallstones.

Likewise, obese people consume "diet" sodas in an attempt to diet. Even in that review it has garbage conclusions like "consumption of any type of soda". Yea, that's real helpful in figuring out if aspartame is a carcinogen--let's sample people who don't drink aspartame exclusively to collect two data-sets: those that drink water exclusively and those that drink sugar-soda exclusively. That says nothing about aspartame.

A lot of this is garbage. I hate meta-reviews. They're always garbage.

Like, I've already stated I'm not obese, yet people keep bringing up obesity and sugar-related diseases. Thanks for not reading.

[โ€“] Soot@hexbear.net 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

To be honest, your responses read like someone who's already decided that it's not an issue. These studies definitely have flaws and limitations, I admitted that - But across the board, even those that take efforts to control for confounding factors like obesity and sugar in various ways, these issues are reported as above.

These are the facts as we know them. Do with it as you like, it's your life, but I would definitely argue the data at least means it'll likely cause issues and likely already has. Don't randomly accuse me of not reading because we disagree on interpretations.