The average American consumes 57 gallons of soda a year. This equates to 1.5 cans of soda daily.
Have you ever wondered how soda can affect your body and health?
As soda enters your body, the sugars and acids dissolve tooth enamel. If you want to teach your child what soda does to teeth, instead of leaving a baby tooth for the tooth fairy, put it in soda for a month and then see what happens.
Next, your body notifies the pancreas to create insulin in order to convert the beverage into energy. As a result, your blood sugar levels spike and your liver begins working on converting this energy to fat. If the soda had caffeine, your blood pressure rises as well.
Soda causes the body to create dopamine which gives the brain pleasure signals similar to cocaine or heroin essentially hooking you on the product. After an hour, your body begins to experience a sugar crash which signals the brain to find more sugar in order to recreate the dissipating ‘high’. This often causes increased calorie consumption.
Harvard University studied 40,000 male soda drinkers over twenty years and found a host of health problems related to soda. Drinking this beverage increases ‘metabolic syndrome’ which increases a person’s risk to diabetes and heart disease.
The phosphoric acid in soda drains the body of calcium which leads to less bone density over time while increasing your risk to kidney stones.
If all of these things risks are not enough to get you thinking of drinking less soda, sodium benzoate and other sodium preservatives drain the body of potassium which can lead to rashes, eczema and asthma. Many believe that drinking two sodas a day can increase your risk of cancer.
If you drink diet sodas, realize that most artificial sweeteners have more harmful effects on the body than cane sugar. Most sodas do not use cane sugar as manufacturers prefer to use cane sugars cheaper cousin – corn syrup – another product that is not good for you.
