Health expert warns what a can of Diet Coke does to your body in just one hour

Fizzy drinks are widely known to contain a lot of sugar, so many of us opt for the diet alternative but a health expert has since explained how diet sodas impact our body.

You won't find sugar in diet fizzy drinks like Diet Coke as they contain a different ingredient to give it that sweet taste and this is an artificial sweetener called aspartame.

In fact, aspartame is actually 200 times sweeter than sucrose - so very, very sweet.

Technical nutritionist at NutriCentre, Ella Allred, has provided insight into the possible health risks of consuming aspartame.

Firstly, the artificial sweetener can trick your body into thinking it has just had processed sugar, which could ultimately result in a higher chance of developing health problems such as diabetes.

This is due to the body producing insulin when it is not needed as Allred explained to MailOnline: "As soon as you taste the sweetness of Diet Coke, your body prepares for the sugar load and causes you[r] pancreas [to] release insulin.

"The insulin surge decreases the pancreas' sensitivity to insulin, putting you at risk of developing type 2 diabetes. The insulin triggers your body to store fat around your middle and increases your risk of developing heart disease."

A health expert warns how your body reacts in just one hour to a can of Diet Coke / George Frey, Getty Images & iStock

Twenty minutes on and "blood insulin saturation is complete," according to Allred who flags that the problem is that there is no sugar in Diet Coke.

She continued: "Now you have a lot of insulin in your blood stream, pulling all of your blood available blood sugar into your cells leaving you with a massive sugar low. You then need sugar in your blood to maintain equilibrium.

"The sweet cravings kick in and may find you are reaching for another Diet Coke, which starts the cycle again."

At the 40-minute mark, Allred warned how this can "cause addiction" as drinking a diet fizzy drink which contains caffeine and aspartame can result in a "short addictive high similar in the way cocaine works".

"Aspartame and caffeine both trigger your brain's reward centres, making this combination highly addictive," she noted.

By the time an hour passes, you're probably hungry and thirsty due to nutrients being diminished, causing you to want to reach for another Diet Coke.

But it is important to note that you would have to be knocking back the cans to exceed the daily recommended intake of diet soda (0-40mg of aspartame per kg of body weight), according to the World Health Organisation.

"An adult weighing 70kg would need to consume more than nine-to-14 cans per day to exceed the acceptable daily intake, assuming no other intake from other food sources," the United Nations agency stated from its assessments of aspartame's health impacts last year.

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