I just heard this on "The Doctors" - Studies show that diet soda can cause pre-term labor. I don't know what I think about this study, but I thought it was worth sharing.
Found a link: https://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=119112
Re: Diet Soda - Pre-term labor
Me too. I usually have a glass of diet soda or crystal light a day. Mostly I drink water but I need something else for dinner.
you know that its ok to have at least 200mg of caffine a day? i had a frappe from micky d's this morning with CAFFINE in it! oh my my baby will be born with 3 heads.
Causes of Preterm Delivery
Abdulla Al-Khan, MD, the director and chief of maternal and fetal medicine and surgery at Hackensack University Medical Center in New Jersey, is not in the habit of encouraging pregnant women to drink diet drinks. That said, he is also unsure that these beverages have a role in causing preterm labor or preterm delivery.
Exactly what causes preterm delivery is not fully understood, he says. "Genetics, uterine structure, fetal development, and infections all may play a role, so it is hard to say that diet drinks increase risk when we don't know 100% what is causing preterm delivery in the first place."
"You should limit your diet soda consumption as much as possible during pregnancy and go to natural products like fresh fruit or vegetable juice," he says. "Have no more than one can of diet soda every other day or every third day. Avoiding artificial sweetened drinks in pregnancy is sound advice, but it may not affect your risk of preterm labor and delivery."
The study results showed that pregnant women who drank one or more diet sodas per day were 38% more likely to deliver before 37 weeks than women who never drank artificially sweetened sodas. Those women who drank four or more diet sodas a day during pregnancy were 78% more likely to deliver early compared to women who did not drink diet sodas during pregnancy.
Since there was no increased risk seen among women who consumed sugar-sweetened drinks, the researchers suggest that it's the artificial sweetener, not soda drinking, that is responsible. Exactly how or why artificially sweetened soft drinks may increase risk of preterm delivery is not clear, but the researchers speculate that some of the sweetening ingredients may be broken down into substances that could increase this risk.
Researchers gathered information on consumption of soft drinks among 59,334 women in the Danish National Birth Cohort midway through their pregnancy. They controlled for some factors known to increase risk of preterm labor including advanced maternal age, smoking history, and weight before becoming pregnant.
Overall, 4.62% of women in the new study delivered prematurely, and 33.3% of these were "medically induced" preterm deliveries, meaning that the doctor induced preterm delivery to protect the health of the mother or baby. Drinking artificially sweetened diet soft drinks was more likely to increase risk of early preterm (before 32 weeks) and moderately preterm delivery than late-preterm delivery, the study showed.
Full article: https://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=119112