Don’t Give Sick Kids Diet Soda

If your children are sick with fever, diarrhea or another illness, don’t try to nurse them back to health on diet soda. In a case reported in the European Journal of Pediatrics, a sick boy who had only Diet Coke for a few days developed a serious fever, vomiting, rapid heartbeat and breathing problems.

His regimen of taking in only Diet Coke led to metabolic acidosis, a severe pH imbalance in his body that could have killed him. The doctors who treated him warn that when you give ill children fluids, make sure they have real sugar in them — not artificial sweeteners. That keeps their bodies from becoming too acidic.