What you drink matters. Everything that you ingest has an impact on your health. The vast majority of Americans fail to meet the recommended amount of daily water intake, leading to significant dehydration impacting one’s health.
Are you someone who regularly reaches for a soda when thirsty? After reading the following information, I hope that you think twice before reaching for your favorite carbonated beverage.
There is no benefit that can be obtained from drinking soda. Just one can contains 10 teaspoons of sugar, which is equivalent to a person’s daily-recommended amount. Within an hour of drinking soda, your blood sugar spikes. This causes an insulin burst that tricks your liver into converting all sugars into fat. After about 40 minutes, the caffeine has been absorbed into your body. Your body then responds with dilated pupils and increased blood pressure, and the liver dumps more sugar into your blood stream.
Over time, soda consumption has a significant impact on your health. Soda consumption can interfere with neurological process, particularly those involved in making memories. A study published in Neuroscience found that a diet full of added sugar can reduce the production of the chemical brain-derived neutrophic factor (BDNF). When these levels are not high enough, cognitive tasks such as learning and the formation of memories become more difficult.
Consuming one can of soda a day dramatically increases your risk of developing chronic heart disease (CHD). Researchers of a Harvard University study found that “consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages was associated with a higher risk of CHD and some adverse changes in lipids, inflammatory factors, and leptin.”
Moreover, with every sip of your favorite carbonated beverage, you are causing damage to your teeth. The sugar in these drinks bonds to the bacteria in your mouth, which allows the rise of acid, that weakens the enamel of your teeth that can lead to cavities.
Do you think drinking diet soda is better for you? Think again. Diet soda drinkers have the same health problems as those who drink regular soda, if not more. Diet sodas are packed with artificial sweeteners that disrupt your body’s ability to process real sugar. The consumption of fake sugar confuses your body into thinking that it needs to process real food. When your body realizes it didn’t get what it was expecting, it doesn’t know how to respond. When a diet soda drinker consumes real sugar, his or her body is unable to recognize it as real and it doesn’t release the hormone that regulates blood pressure and blood sugar. According to Susan Swithers, “you’ve messed up the whole system, so when you consume real sugar, your body doesn’t know if it should try to process it because it’s been tricked by the fake sugar so many times.”
Diet soda may actually cause you to gain weight. Dr. Melina Jampolis states, “Research shows that sweet taste can increase appetite and the regular consumption of high intensity sweetness of artificial sweeteners may encourage sugar cravings and dependence.” Artificial sweeteners may also dampen your brain’s reward center, and that can cause you to over-indulge in more sweet-tasting, calorie-rich foods.
More about the health impacts of diet and regular soda consumption can be found here. What happens to your health when you stop drinking soda? That can be found here.
Before reaching for your favorite carbonated beverage please consider the long-term impact it can have on your health. Is the drink really worth it?