3 Weeks of Diet Coke! Only 9 more days to go!

I wish I had a picture of the 7 vials – SEVEN! – of my blood that the blood test lab drew on the day before I began drinking 10 Diet Cokes a day, but I was dizzy and queasy and tired after the day of testing and the blood loss, and I completely forgot.

I don’t like giving blood, but The Doctors TV show asked their doctor, Dr. Pinzone, an endocrinologist, to thoroughly examine me, before and after the test, to see what changes the 300 Diet Cokes caused to my health.

And those results are now looking like the only real chance we now have to determine how bad, or not bad, drinking Diet Coke REALLY is.

Because I’m not showing any of the health problems that I had when I drank regular Cokes. My body weight is the same – within a pound or 2 of where I started – and I haven’t noticed real changes to my fasting blood sugar or blood pressure. More than that, I feel fine. At the three week point in drinking regular Coke, I didn’t feel great.

The biggest problem I have with the Diet Coke drinking is related to the sheer volume of liquid; I’m making a dozen trips to the bathroom while I sit in the office drinking diet soda all day. I think that if I was drinking caffeinated water (which you can buy, actually), I would feel the same. Caffeinated and needing to pee.

But no one believes it. I’m still hearing from so many people who believe that Diet is worse for you than sugared soda.  I was on a talk radio program the other day, following a doctor who was warning that diet sodas cause diabetes and weight gain, but as soon as said that he might be exaggerating the dangers, I was off the program. “Diet Coke is Bad For You” = interesting news. Sells toothpaste. “Diet Coke isn’t that Bad For You” – Boring. Turn the channel.

Except for the millions of people dying from diseases related to high insulin, which is caused so dramatically more by sugar than artificial sweetener. It could be very damaging to dissuade people from switching from sugared soda to Diet because of exaggerated fears about the dangers of diet.

So, it’s all coming down to the blood lab tests and Dr. Pinzone. Will he find changes in my blood labs that show Diet to be even worse than sugared soda? Nine more days, 90 more Diet Cokes.