The sweeteners in diet soft drinks trick the brain.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/daviddisalvo/2017/04/27/why-is-diet-soda-so-bad-for-your-brain/

*Diet sodas are designed to trick the brain into thinking it’s getting an extra dose of glucose (the brain’s fuel), but eventually the trick is on us because the brain adapts to not receiving the added glucose by overcompensating in other ways (leading to a variety of effects still under investigation).

Diet sodas could imbalance the bacterial jungle in our guts—the microbiome—causing unpredictable results. Since there’s a bacterial superhighway from gut to brain, which we know interacts with key neurotransmitters, this theory may eventually tell us more of a much bigger brain story.

Different artificial sweeteners in diet drinks have different effects, and there’s debate about which causes what. This study didn’t narrow down the exact types of artificial sweeteners that were consumed, so it’s an open question how one may have affected the brain differently than another.

We can’t draw solid conclusions from this study—it’s not a case of cause and effect—but we can look at the results in light of previous research and say there’s something here worth considering. In the meantime, curtailing how much of any artificial sweetener you ingest, along with added sugar, is a reasonable position to take.

The results were published in the journal Stroke.

Forbes Accolades*