Diet Coke has been a longtime staple in the American diet over the past 25 years, yet just recently are people realizing the need to detoxify their systems of synthetic sweeteners and harmful chemicals often associated with diet drinks. Whether you have indulged in drinking Diet Coke for only a few months, or if it has been the majority of your life, some simple steps can be taken to detoxify the body of chemical buildup and the addiction to super sweet sweeteners such as aspartame (NutraSweet) and sucralose (Splenda).

Eliminate alcohol, coffee, cigarettes, refined sugars, saturated fats and anything that contains artificial sweeteners from your daily diet. These items compromise optimal body function. The five FDA-approved non-nutritive sweeteners are saccharin (Sweet N Low), aspartame, acesulfame potassium, sucralose and neotame.

Use healthy sweeteners such as raw (unpasteurized) honey, organic maple syrup, Rapadura or stevia to sweeten your food, and use these in moderation to avoid a spike in blood sugar, suggests experts with WellnessTips.com. Detoxifying the body will require optimal food intake with as little stress to the body as possible. Avoiding sugar and any kind of highly processed ingredients with additives and chemicals will take stress off cleansing organs such as the liver and kidneys.

Eat plenty of fiber from brown rice and organically-grown fresh fruits and vegetables. Beets, radishes, artichokes, cabbage, broccoli, spirulina, chlorella and seaweed are excellent detoxifying foods, says experts with Gaiam Life. Also supplement with vitamin C, which helps the body produce glutathione, a liver compound that helps eliminate toxic material.

Drink a minimum of two quarts of filtered, alkalized water daily. Diet products that are full of caffeine and artificial sweeteners are very acidic to the gut and overall body pH. Alkalizing filtered water will add alkaline balance against the acidic environment it is currently in, and will balance the pH to restore optimal health within the cleansing organs. Alkaline water is negatively charged and an "antioxidant." Antioxidants reduce cellular and DNA damage caused by free radicals, says the industry leaders in alkaline water ionizer technology.