Coca-Cola vs Diet Coke – Which is Healthier?

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Our Verdict

When comparing Coca-Cola to Diet Coke, we picked the Diet Coke.

Why?

While the Diet Coke is bad, the Coca-Cola has mostly the same problems plus sugar.

The sugar in a can of Coca-Cola is 39g high-fructose corn syrup (the worst kind of sugar yet known to humanity), and of course it’s being delivered in liquid form (the most bioavailable way to get, which in this case, is bad).

To put those 39g into perspective, the daily recommended amount of sugar is 36g for men or 25g for women, according to the AHA.

The sweetener in Diet Coke is aspartame, which has had a lot of health risk accusations made against it, most of which have not stood up to scrutiny, and the main risk it does have is “it mimics sugar too well” and it can increase cravings for sweetness, and therefore higher consumption of sugars in other products. For this reason, the World Health Organization has recommended to simply reduce sugar intake without looking to artificial sweeteners to help.

Nevertheless, aspartame has been found safe (in moderate doses; the upper tolerance level would equate to more than 20 cans of diet coke per day) by food safety agencies ranging from the FDA to the EFSA, based on a large body of science.

Other problems that Diet Coke has are present in Coca-Cola too, such as its acidic nature (bad for tooth enamel) and gassy nature (messes with leptin/ghrelin balance).

Summary: the Diet Coke is relatively less unhealthy, but is still bad in numerous ways, and remains best avoided.

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  • Outsmart Your Pain – by Dr. Christiane Wolf

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    Dr. Wolf is a physician turned mindfulness teacher. As such, and holding an MD as well as a PhD in psychosomatic medicine, she knows her stuff.

    A lot of what she teaches is mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR), but this book is much more specific than that. It doesn’t promise you won’t continue to experience pain—in all likelihood you will—but it does change the relationship with pain, and this greatly lessens the suffering and misery that comes with it.

    For many, the most distressing thing about pain is not the sensation itself, but how crippling it can be—getting in the way of life, preventing enjoyment of other things, and making every day a constant ongoing exhausting battle… And every night, a “how much rest am I actually going to be able to get, and in what condition will I wake up, and how will I get through tomorrow?” stress-fest.

    Dr. Wolf helps the reader to navigate through all these challenges and more; minimize the stress, maximize the moments of respite, and keep pain’s interference with life to a minimum. Each chapter addresses different psychological aspects of chronic pain management, and each comes with specific mindfulness meditations to explore the new ideas learned.

    The style is personal and profound, while coming from a place of deep professional understanding as well as compassion.

    Bottom line: if you’ve been looking for a life-ring to help you reclaim your life, this one could be it; we wholeheartedly recommend it.

    Click here to check out Outsmart Your Pain, and recover the beauty and joy of life!

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  • Tips For Avoiding/Managing Rheumatoid Arthritis

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    Avoiding/Managing Rheumatoid Arthritis

    Arthritis is the umbrella term for a cluster of joint diseases involving inflammation of the joints, hence “arthr-” (joint) “-itis” (suffix used to denote inflammation). These are mostly, but not all, autoimmune diseases, in which the body’s immune system mistakenly attacks our own joints.

    Inflammatory vs Non-Inflammatory Arthritis

    Arthritis is broadly divided into inflammatory arthritis and non-inflammatory arthritis.

    You may be wondering: how does one get non-inflammatory inflammation of the joints?

    The answer is, in “non-inflammatory” arthritis, such as osteoarthritis, the damage comes first (by general wear-and-tear) and inflammation generally follows as part of the symptoms, rather than the cause. So the name can be a little confusing. In the case of osteo- and other “non-inflammatory” forms of arthritis, you definitely still want to keep your inflammation at bay as best you can, but it’s not as absolutely critical a deal as it is for “inflammatory” forms of arthritis.

    We’ll tackle the beast that is osteoarthritis another day, however.

    Today we’re going to focus on…

    Rheumatoid Arthritis

    This is the most common of the autoimmune forms of arthritis. Some quick facts:

    • It affects a little under 1% of the global population, but the older we get, the more likely it becomes
    • Early onset of rheumatoid arthritis is most likely to show up around the age of 50 (but it can show up at any age)
    • However, incidence (not onset) of rheumatoid arthritis peaks in the 70s age bracket
    • It is 2–4 times more common in women than in men
    • Approximately one third of people stop work within two years of its onset, and this increases thereafter.

    Well, that sounds gloomy.

    Indeed it’s not fun. There’s a lot of stiffness and aching of joints (often with swelling too), loss of joint function can be common, and then there are knock-on effects like fatigue, weakness, and loss of appetite.

    Beyond that it’s an autoimmune disorder, its cause is not known, and there is no known cure.

    Is there any good news?

    If you don’t have rheumatoid arthritis at the present time, you can reduce your risk factors in several ways:

    • Having an anti-inflammatory diet. Get plenty of fiber, greens, and berries. Fatty fish is great too, as are oily nuts. On the other side of things, high consumption of salt, sugar, alcohol, and red meat are associated with a greater risk of developing rheumatoid arthritis.
    • Not smoking. Smoking is bad for pretty much everything, including your chances of developing rheumatoid arthritis.
    • Not being obese. This one may be more a matter of correlation than causation, because of the dietary factors (if one eats an anti-inflammatory diet, obesity is less likely), but the association is there.

    There are other risk factors that are harder to control, such as genetics, age, sex, and having a mother who smoked.

    See: Genetic and environmental risk factors for rheumatoid arthritis

    What if I already have rheumatoid arthritis?

    If you already have rheumatoid arthritis, it becomes a matter of symptom management.

    First, reduce inflammation any (reasonable) way you can. We did a main feature on this before, so we’ll just drop that again here:

    Keep Inflammation At Bay

    Next, consider the available medications. Your doctor may or may not have discussed all of the options with you, so be aware that there are more things available than just pain relief. To talk about them all would require a whole main feature, so instead, here’s a really well-compiled list, along with explanations about each of them, up to date as of this year:

    Rheumatoid Arthritis Medication List (And What They Do, And How)

    Finally, consider other lifestyle adjustments to manage your symptoms. These include:

    • Exercise—gently, though! You do not want to provoke a flare-up, but you do want to maintain your mobility as best you can. There’s a use-it-or-lose-it factor here. Swimming and yoga are great options, as is tai chi. You may want to avoid exercises that involve repetitive impacts to your joints, like running.
    • Rest—while keeping mobility going. Get good sleep at night (this is important), but don’t make your bed your new home, or your mobility will quickly deteriorate.
    • Hot & cold—both can help, and alternating them can reduce inflammation and stiffness by improving your body’s ability to respond appropriately to these stimuli rather than getting stuck in an inappropriate-response state of inflammation.
    • Mobility aids—if it helps, it helps. Maybe you only need something during a flare-up, but when that’s the case, you want to be as gentle on your body as possible while keeping moving, so if crutches, handrails etc help, then by all means get them and use them.
    • Go easy on the use of braces, splints, etc—these can offer short-term relief, but at a long term cost of loss of mobility. Only you can decide where to draw the line when it comes to that trade-off.

    You can also check out our previous article:

    Managing Chronic Pain (Realistically!)

    Take good care of yourself!

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  • Human, Bird, or Dog Waste? Scientists Parsing Poop To Aid DC’s Forgotten River

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    KFF Health News Peggy Girshman reporting fellow Jackie Fortiér joined a boat tour to spotlight a review of microbes in the Anacostia River, a step toward making the river healthier and swimmable. The story was featured on WAMU’s “Health Hub” on Feb. 26.

    On a bright October day, high schoolers from Francis L. Cardozo Education Campus piled into a boat on the Anacostia River in Washington, D.C. Most had never been on the water before.

    Their guide, Trey Sherard of the Anacostia Riverkeeper, started the tour with a well-rehearsed safety talk. The nonprofit advocates for the protection of the river.

    A boy with tousled black hair casually dipped his fingers in the water.

    “Don’t touch it!” Sherard yelled.

    Why was Sherard being so stern? Was it dangerously cold? Were there biting fish?

    Because of the sewage.

    “We get less sewage than we used to. Sewage is a code word for what?” Sherard asked the teenagers.

    “Poop!” one student piped up.

    “Human poop,” Sherard said. “Notice I didn’t say we get none. I said we get what? Less.”

    Tours like this are designed to get young people interested in the river’s ecology, but it’s a fine line to tread — interacting with the water can make people sick. Because of the health risks, swimming hasn’t been legal in the Anacostia for more than half a century. The polluted water can cause gastrointestinal and respiratory illnesses, as well as eye, nose, and skin infections.

    The river is the cleanest it’s been in years, according to environmental experts, but they still advise you not to take a dip in the Anacostia — not yet, at least.

    About 40 million people in the U.S. live in a community with a combined sewer system, where wastewater and stormwater flow through the same pipes. When pipe capacities are reached after heavy rains, the overflow sends raw wastewater into the rivers instead of to a treatment plant.

    Federal regulations, including sections of the Clean Water Act, require municipalities such as Washington to reduce at least 85% of this pollution or face steep fines.

    To achieve compliance, Washington launched a $2.6 billion infrastructure project in 2011. DC Water’s Clean Rivers Project will eventually build multiple miles-long underground storage basins to capture stormwater and wastewater and pump it to treatment plants once heavy rains have subsided.

    The Anacostia tunnel is the first of these storage basins to be completed. It can collect 190 million gallons of bacteria-laden wastewater for later treatment, said Moussa Wone, vice president of the Clean Rivers Project.

    Climate change is causing more intense rainstorms in Washington, so even after construction is complete in 2030, Wone said, untreated stormwater will be discharged into the river, though much less frequently.

    “On the Anacostia, we’re going to be reducing the frequency of overflows from 82 to two in an average year,” Wone said.

    But while the Anacostia sewershed covers 176 square miles, he noted, only 17% is in Washington.

    “The other 83% is outside the district,” Wone said. “We can do our part, but everybody else has to do their part also.”

    Upstream in Maryland’s Montgomery and Prince George’s counties, miles of sewer lines are in the process of being upgraded to divert raw sewage to a treatment plant instead of the river.

    The data shows that poop is a problem for river health — but knowing what kind of poop it is matters. Scientists monitor E. coli to indicate the presence of feces in river water, but since the bacteria live in the guts of most warm-blooded animals, the source is difficult to determine.

    “Is it human feces? Or is it deer? Is it gulls’? Is it dogs’?” said Amy Sapkota, a professor of environmental and occupational health at the University of Maryland.

    Bacterial levels can fluctuate across the river even without rainstorms. An Anacostia Riverkeeper report found that in 2023 just three of nine sites sampled along the Washington portion of the watershed had consistently low E. coli levels throughout the summer season.

    Sapkota is heading a new bacterial monitoring program measuring the amount of E. coli that different animal species deposit along the river.

    The team uses microbial source tracking to analyze samples of river water taken from different locations each month by volunteers. The molecular approach enables scientists to target specific gene sequences associated with fecal bacteria and determine whether the bacteria come from humans or wildlife. Microbial source tracking also measures fecal pollution levels by source.

    “We can quantify the levels of different bacterial targets that may be coming from a human fecal source or an animal fecal source,” Sapkota said.

    Her team expects to have preliminary results this year.

    The health risk to humans from river water will never be zero, Sapkota said, but based on her team’s research, smart city planning and retooled infrastructure could lessen the level of harmful bacteria in the water.

    “Let’s say that we’re finding that actually there’s a lot of deer fecal signatures in our results,” Sapkota said. “Maybe this points to the fact that we need more green buffers along the river that can help prevent fecal contaminants from wildlife from entering the river during stormwater events.”

    Washington is hoping to recoup some of the cost of building green spaces and other river cleanup. In January, the office of D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb filed a lawsuit seeking unspecified damages from the federal government over decades of alleged pollution of the Anacostia River.

    Brenda Lee Richardson, coordinator of the Anacostia Parks & Community Collaborative, said the efforts to cut down on trash and sewage are paying off. She sees a river on the mend, with more plant and animal life sprouting up.

    “The ecosystem seems a lot greener,” she said. “There’s stuff in the river now that wasn’t there before.”

    But any changes to the waterfront need to be done with residents of both sides of the river in mind, she said.

    “We want there to be some sense of equity as it relates to who has access,” she said. “When I look at who is recreating, it’s not people who look like me.”

    Richardson has lived for 40 years in Ward 8 — a predominantly Black area on the east side of the river whose residents are generally less affluent than those on the west side. She and her neighbors don’t consider the Anacostia a place to get out and play, she said.

    As the water quality slowly improves, Richardson said, she hopes the Anacostia’s reputation is also rehabilitated. Even if it’s not safe to swim in, Richardson enjoys boating trips like the one with the Anacostia Riverkeeper.

    “To see all those creatures along the way and the greenery. It was comforting,” she said. “So rather than take a pill to settle my nerves, I can just go down the river.”

    KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.

    Subscribe to KFF Health News’ free Morning Briefing.

    This article first appeared on KFF Health News and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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Related Posts

  • Spinach vs Chard – Which is Healthier?
  • Singledom & Healthy Longevity

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    Statistically, those who live longest, do so in happy, fulfilling, committed relationships.

    Note: happy, fulfilling, committed relationships. Less than that won’t do. Your insurance company might care about your marital status for its own sake, but your actual health doesn’t—it’s about the emotional safety and security that a good, healthy, happy, fulfilling relationship offers.

    We wrote about this here:

    Only One Kind Of Relationship Promotes Longevity This Much!

    But that’s not the full story

    For a start, while being in a happy fulfilling committed relationship statistically adds healthy life years, being in a relationship that falls short of those adjectives certainly does not. See also:

    Relationships: When To Stick It Out & When To Call It Quits

    But also, life satisfaction steadily improves with age, for single people (the results are more complicated for partnered people—probably because of the range of difference in quality of relationships). At least, this held true in this large (n=6,188) study of people aged 40–85 years:

    ❝With advancing age, partnership status became less predictive of loneliness and the satisfaction with being single increased. Among later-born cohorts, the association between partnership status and loneliness was less strong than among earlier-born cohorts. Later-born single people were more satisfied with being single than their earlier-born counterparts.❞

    Source: The Changing Relationship Between Partnership Status and Loneliness: Effects Related to Aging and Historical Time

    Note that this does mean that while life satisfaction indeed improves with age for single people, that’s a generalized trend, and the greatest life satisfaction within this set of singles comes hand-in-hand with being single by choice rather than by perceived obligation, i.e., those who are “single and not looking” will generally be the most content, and this contentedness will improve with age, but for those who are “single and looking”, in that case it’s the younger people who have it better, likely due to a greater sense of having plenty of time.

    For that matter, gender plays a role; this large survey of singles found that (despite the popular old pop-up ads advising that “older women in your area are looking to date”), in reality older single women were the least likely to actively look for a partner:

    See: A Profile Of Single Americans

    …which also shows that about half of single Americans are “not looking”, and of those who are, about half are open to a serious relationship, though this is more common under the age of 40, while being over the age of 40 sees more people looking only for something casual.

    Take-away from this section: being single only decreases life satisfaction if one doesn’t enjoy being single, and even then, and increases it if one does enjoy being single.

    But that’s about life satisfaction, not longevity

    We found no studies specifically into longevity of singledom, only the implications that may be drawn from the longevity of partnered people.

    However, there is a lot of research that shows it’s not being single that kills, it’s being socially isolated. It’s a function of neurodegeneration from a lack of conversation, and it’s a function of what happens when someone slips in the shower and is found a week later. Things like that.

    For example: Is Living Alone “Aging Alone”? Solitary Living, Network Types, and Well-Being

    What if you are alone and don’t want to be?

    We’ve not, at time of writing, written dating advice in our Psychology Sunday section, but this writer’s advice is: don’t even try.

    That’s not nihilism or even cynicism, by the way; it’s actually a kind of optimism. The trick is just to let them come to you.

    (sample size of one here, but this writer has never looked for a relationship in her life, they’ve always just found me, and now that I’m widowed and intend to remain single, I still get offers—and no, I’m not a supermodel, nor rich, nor anything like that)

    Simply: instead of trying to find a partner, just work on expanding your social relationships in general (which is much easier, because the process is something you can control, whereas the outcome of trying to find a suitable partner is not), and if someone who’s right for you comes along, great! If not, then well, at least you have a flock of friends now, and who knows what new unexpected romance may lie around the corner.

    As for how to do that,

    How To Beat Loneliness & Isolation

    Take care!

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  • Chocolate & Health

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    Chocolate & Health: Fact or Fiction?

    “Chocolate Is Good For The Heart”

    “When making chocolate chip cookies, you don’t measure using cups, you measure by heart”

    …but how good is chocolate when it comes to heart health?

    First, what is heart health?

    A healthy heart typically has a low resting pulse rate and a strong, steady beat. This is affected strongly by exercise habits, and diet plays only a support role (can’t exercise without energy from food!).

    It is also important to have blood pressure within a healthy range (with high blood pressure being a more common problem than low, so things that lower blood pressure are generally considered good).

    • Flavanols, flavonoids, and polyphenols in chocolate contribute to lower blood pressure
    • Dark chocolate is best for these, as milk chocolate contains much less cocoa solids and more unhelpful fats
    • White chocolate contains no cocoa solids and is useless for this
    • Some of the fats in most commercial chocolate can contribute to atherosclerosis which raises blood pressure and ultimately can cause heart attacks.
    • If you’re diabetic, you will probably not get the usual heart-related benefits from chocolate (sorry)

    The Verdict: dark chocolate, in moderation, can support good heart health.

    “Chocolate Is Good For The Brain”

    Chocolate has been considered a “brain food”… why?

    • The brain uses more calories than any other organ (chocolate has many calories)
    • The heart benefits we listed above mean improved blood flow—including to your brain
    • Chocolate contains phenylethylamine, a powerful chemical that has a similar effect to amphetamines… But it’s metabolized in digestion and never makes it to the central nervous system (so basically, this one’s a miss; we had a good run with the other two, though!)

    The Verdict: dark chocolate, in moderation, can support good brain health

    “Chocolate Is An Aphrodisiac”

    “If chocolate be the food of love, pass me that cocoa; I’m starving”

    Most excitingly, chocolate contains phenylethylamine, the “molecule of love” or, more accurately, lust. It has an effect similar to amphetamines, and while we can synthesize it in the body, we can also get it from certain foods. But…

    Our body is so keen to get it that most of it is metabolized directly during digestion and doesn’t make it to the brain. Also, chocolate is not as good a source as cabbage—do with that information what you will!

    However!

    Chocolate contains theobromine and small amounts of caffeine, both stimulants and both generally likely to improve mood; it also contains flavonoids which in turn stimulate production of nitric oxide, which is a relaxant. All in all, things that are convivial to having a good time.

    On the other hand…

    That relaxation comes specifically with a reduction in blood pressure—something typically considered good for the health for most people most of the time… but that means lowering blood pressure in all parts of your body, which could be the opposite of what you want in intimate moments.

    Chocolate also contains zinc, which is essential for hormonal health for most people—the body uses it to produce testosterone and estrogen, respectively. Zinc supplements are popularly sold to those wishing to have more energy in general and good hormonal health in particular, and rightly so. However…

    This approach requires long-term supplementation—you can’t just pop a zinc tablet / bar of chocolate / almond before bed and expect immediate results. And if your daily zinc supplementation takes the form of a 3.5oz (100g) bar of chocolate, then you may find it has more effects on your health, and not all of them good!

    The Verdict: dark chocolate, in moderation, may promote “the mood”, but could be a double-edged sword when it comes to “the ability”.

    “Chocolate Is Good During Menstruation”

    The popular wisdom goes that chocolate is rich in iron (of which more is needed during menstruation), and indeed, if you eat 7oz (150g) of dark chocolate made with 85% cocoa, you’ll get a daily a dose of iron (…and nearly 1,000 calories).

    More bang-for-buck dietary sources of iron include chickpeas and broccoli, but for some mysterious reason, these are not as commonly reported as popular cravings.

    The real explanation for chocolate cravings is more likely that eating chocolate—a food high in sugar and fat along with a chemical bombardment of more specialized “hey, it’s OK, you can relax now” molecules (flavanols/flavonoids, polyphenols, phenylamines, even phenylethylamine, etc) gives a simultaneous dopamine kick (the body’s main “reward” chemical) with a whole-body physiological relaxation… so, little wonder we might crave it in times of stress and discomfort!

    The Verdict: it helps, not because it serves a special nutritional purpose, but rather, because the experience of eating chocolate makes us feel good.

    Fun fact: Tiramisu (this writer’s favorite dessert) is literally Italian for “pick-me-up”

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    Learn to Age Gracefully

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  • Fermenting Everything – by Andy Hamilton

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    This is not justanother pickling book! This is, instead, what it says on the front cover, “fermenting everything”.

    Ok, maybe not literally everything, but every kind of thing that can reasonably be fermented, and it’s probably a lot more things than you might think.

    From habanero chutney to lacto-lemonade, aioli to kombucha, Ukrainian fermented tomatoes to kvass. We could go on, but we’d soon run out of space. You get the idea. If it’s a fermented product (food, drink, condiment) and you’ve heard of it, there’s probably a recipe in here.

    All in all, this is a great way to get in your gut-healthy daily dose of fermented products!

    He does also talk safety, and troubleshooting too. And so long as you have a collection of big jars and a fairly normally-furnished kitchen, you shouldn’t need any more special equipment than that, unless you decide to you your fermentation skills for making beer (which does need some extra equipment, and he offers advice on that—our advice as a health science publication is “don’t drink beer”, though).

    Bottom line: with this in hand, you can create a lot of amazing foods/drinks/condiments that are not only delicious, but also great for gut health.

    Click here to check out Fermenting Everything, and widen your culinary horizons!

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    Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!

    Learn to Age Gracefully

    Join the 98k+ American women taking control of their health & aging with our 100% free (and fun!) daily emails: