by: Danna Norek
(NaturalNews) New studies are suggesting there is a link between premature births and regular consumption of artificially sweetened soft drinks. The study, which was commissioned in Denmark, looked at 60,000 pregnant women and their resulting births and studied their consumption of diet soft drinks.
They found that women who had a higher intake of diet soda had a significantly higher risk of delivering their babies preterm. The increased risk was calculated around 38% higher in women who had one diet soda per day in comparison to women who had none at all.
Even more alarming, they found that women who had four or more diet sodas per day had an 80% higher risk of giving birth prematurely than their diet soda free counterparts.
While regular soda has been linked to high blood pressure in and of itself, the premature birth link to soda is specific to artificially sweetened soft drinks only. This logically suggests that the link is really due to the artificial sweeteners that are commonly used to sweeten soft drinks.
The artificial sweeteners that are typically used to make soft drinks taste sweet are aspartame and saccharin, but aspartame seems to be the most popular. Aspartame has the alarming ability to break down in the body to other toxic compounds like formaldehyde and formic acid.
The recommendation for pregnant women has always been that consuming these artificial sweeteners in moderation during pregnancy is acceptable.
However, this new research study may prove otherwise, and have pregnant women everywhere searching for healthier alternatives. Or better yet, avoiding diet soda all together.
Even for people who are not pregnant, this is food for thought as to what you are actually putting in your body when you drink diet sodas. Any substance that adds to the risk of premature birth cannot be good for the human body, after all.
Women who are pregnant may want to think about healthier alternatives for their sugary soda cravings. There are some lower calorie sweetened soda beverages that can be found in health food stores that contain natural sweetener alternatives.
Also, they may want to consider adding fresh squeezed lemon to their water, which can satiate some of the cravings for sugary sweet drinks. Adding some fresh fruit to water for flavor also may help healthfully satisfy these types of cravings.
Or, if they really want to experience a soft drink, perhaps reaching for the real stuff may be a slightly healthier option than diet soda, according to this study. It's important to note however, that carbonated beverages in general have been linked to bone weakness because of their potential to leach calcium.