Pregnant? Avoid Diet Drinks

Women who are expecting to give birth may choose to drink artificially sweetened beverages to help them maintain great health and fitness. After all, diet soda have been marketed as healthy alternatives to drinks that are sweetened by sugar. A recent study, however, suggest that this practice may actually do more damage than good to mothers.

According to one of the latest studies published by the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, there was “an association between intake of artificially sweetened carbonated and noncarbonated soft drinks and an increased risk of preterm delivery.”

One of the researchers on the project, Dr. Thorhallur I. Halldorsson, told Reuters that "It may be non-optimal for pregnant women to have high consumption of these types of products," referring to diet soda.

The research which studied 59,334 pregnant Danish women says that there was a 38 percent increase in the probability to give birth preterm for women who drank one diet soda a day as compared to women who did not drink diet soda at all during their pregnancy.

The study further suggests that women who consumed four or more diet sodas during their pregnancy increased their chances of preterm delivery to up to 80 percent. However, the research also proposes that more studies should be conducted on the subject to confirm or reject the findings.

Drinking of diet sodas and consumption of healthy food is one of the strategies expectant mothers take to avoid high blood pressure, which was previously linked with increased chances of preterm delivery.

The researchers stressed, though, that women drinking diet soda should not be alarmed but added that the topic needed more attention to further investigate and ascertain whether certain artificial sweeteners can be linked to preterm delivery.