My wife has been telling me for the longest time I need to drink less soda. She’s right, but I didn’t come to see that until I did a little research on the health effects of soda on the body. Remember this lovely ad I posted a few months ago as a joke? Well now that I’ve educated myself it’s funny for a different reason … irony.
You can read the many pages about this topic I bookmarked on de.licio.us, I couldn’t summarize everything here, but to put it all in a few words, here are my findings:
Many sodas, diet and sugared, contains needless “phosphorous.” In excess, this has been shown to cause side effects in people. There is nothing nutritional in sodas: caffeine, sugar, carbonation, phosphorous and other chemicals all serve to cloak a very acidic quality. In other words, you don’t know how sugary it is because of the acids and the acids are cloaked due to the excessive sugars. In short, you’re better off drinking water.
Another detractor I read about was the tooth decay caused by sodas. One article said it starts 8 hours after drinking a soda. Wow. Think about how many sodas you’ve drank through years. How are your teeth going to treat you when you’re older? Does this image tempt you as much now? But let’s chat a bit more …
I’ll leave you with a blockquote from the nutrition research center. Suffice it to say, I’m not drinking much soda any more.
When somebody drinks a Coke watch what happens…
- In The First 10 minutes: 10 teaspoons of sugar hit your system. (100% of your recommended daily intake.) You don’t immediately vomit from the overwhelming sweetness because phosphoric acid cuts the flavor allowing you to keep it down.
- 20 minutes: Your blood sugar spikes, causing an insulin burst. Your liver responds to this by turning any sugar it can get its hands on into fat. (There’s plenty of that at this particular moment)
- 40 minutes: Caffeine absorption is complete. Your pupils dilate, your blood pressure rises, as a response your livers dumps more sugar into your bloodstream. The adenosine receptors in your brain are now blocked preventing drowsiness.
- 45 minutes: Your body ups your dopamine production stimulating the pleasure centers of your brain. This is physically the same way heroin works, by the way.
- >60 minutes: The phosphoric acid binds calcium, magnesium and zinc in your lower intestine, providing a further boost in metabolism. This is compounded by high doses of sugar and artificial sweeteners also increasing the urinary excretion of calcium.
- >60 Minutes: The caffeine’s diuretic properties come into play. (It makes you have to pee.) It is now assured that you’ll evacuate the bonded calcium, magnesium and zinc that was headed to your bones as well as sodium, electrolyte and water.
- >60 minutes: As the rave inside of you dies down you’ll start to have a sugar crash. You may become irritable and/or sluggish. You’ve also now, literally, pissed away all the water that was in the Coke. But not before infusing it with valuable nutrients your body could have used for things like even having the ability to hydrate your system or build strong bones and teeth.
What do you make of my recent “soda epiphany?”
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