Soda and knee pain - personal confirmation!

[Scrumhalf]

There have been studies for a while now, linking soda consumption with worse knee pain, particularly for people with osteoarthritis.

Here are a couple of general articles covering this:

Soda is Eating Away at Your Knee Joint | Sports Knee Therapy

Soda May Worsen Knee Osteoarthritis in Men

Here is a couple of original paper by the lead researcher:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3717463/

Sugar-sweetened soda consumption and risk of developing rheumatoid arthritis in women

So, I used to drink a can of soda a day pretty regularly until about a year or so ago. I had a lot of problems with my knees, especially going up and down stairs and I pretty much chalked it up to years of rugby.

Then, when I stopped soda, the pain pretty much went away. I hadn't really connected the two, until about a month and a half ago, I was walking around in the grocery store and decided to pick up a couple of 2 liter bottles of Coke Zero.

And boom, a week or so after I started drinking soda, the pain came back. The light bulb went off in my head. I wanted to finish the experiment, so I decided to keep going and finish the two bottles I had. My knee symptoms came back full bore to pretty much where I was a year ago. After the bottles were done, I stopped drinking soda again. It has been about 2-3 weeks and my knee pain has pretty much gone away.

I am pretty disciplined and a creature of habit in terms of pretty much everything and nothing else has changed in my diet, exercise, etc. So, I am chalking this as a confirmation of the study. I'm never going to touch that stuff again.

[Bouncer]

within a week. pretty crazy. sounds like a mr i post. :D

[rado]

within a week. pretty crazy. sounds like a mr i post. :D

Ha ha

[Bouncer]

Scrum all those studies you posted talk about soda with sugar specifically. As a matter of fact a few of them actually recommend diet soda as a replacement. LoL.

I'd be interested if you get this same effect from carbonated water.

[Scrumhalf]

Good question, something I've wondered too. Is it the carbonated water or the phosphoric acid? I would suspect the phosphoric acid bit I might actually do the experiment to find out.

As a scientist, I can think of nothing nobler than to sacrifice my body for the progress of knowledge! :D

[Bouncer]

Yea I'm interested. Do carbonated water with your own added sugar and maybe some lime or lemon juice. That way you can control exactly what it may be. If carbonated water with sugar and lemon don't cause the pain it has to be the acid you talk about. Is that acid in all "soda"? How about ginger ale or root beer?