New animal research shows that aspartame at levels in three Diet Cokes daily speeds up plaque buildup in arteries. The mechanism involves increased insulin and inflammation in artery walls. The study was done in mice and monkeys, not humans.
Devastating data just dropped that are going to get you to rethink whether or not you want to have a Diet Coke ever again. So here's the deal. Aspartame, the sweetener in Diet Coke, has been associated with cardiovascular disease in humans. However, you can't do long-term controlled human studies to show that aspartame causes cardiovascular disease. You just plausibly can't do it. You can't do it for long enough. So you need to turn to animal models, which they did in this study using mice and monkeys. And they gave low-dose aspartame, the equivalent of 3 Diet Cokes per day, and showed that was sufficient to cause cardiovascular disease, the acceleration to build up a plaque in heart blood vessels. You could see it very clearly. You can see it here. And they found the mechanism had to do with the fact that aspartame increases insulin and insulin resistance. And what that does is it increases expression of a protein, a receptor called CX3CL1, basically captures inflammatory immune cells and allows them to get in to the artery wall, accelerating plaque progression. So these are really stunning new data, make a pretty compelling case that, yeah, aspartame and Diet Coke, 3 Diet Cokes per day, could cause cardiovascular disease. So make the smart choice. In the end, you do you, but I'm not going to be having a Diet Coke anytime soon. And if you want more details beyond this short form, you should check out my newsletter from today, and there'll be a long-form video on these data too. Post your questions.
