Just Say No to Soda

We are hard wired genetically to crave sugar. Our ancient ancestors rarely came across sugar. When they did, it was a quick and rare energy boost. That was then and this in now! Sugar isn't rare today, but readily available. The average American consumes close to a half a pound of sugar a day! The average woman now weighs what the average man did in the early 1960s, which is about 162 pounds.

I was at a chiropractic seminar a number of years ago and I saw a friend of mine who shared his frustration with me. He was very upset that he was able to help many of his patients reduce or eliminate their headaches, but he couldn't help his wife get rid of her headaches.

My first thought was that she might be drinking a lot of diet soda, so I asked him that question and the answer was yes. I suggested that her headaches might be a side effect as a result of consuming large amounts of aspartame. She immediately stopped drinking diet soda and within a short amount of time her headaches disappeared. The chiropractic adjustments were not addressing the cause of the headaches.

Diet sodas are not the only culprits. Almost all regular sodas contain high fructose corn syrup, which is now sometimes called "corn sugar". There is more sugar in a can of soda than an adult should have in an entire day! One 12-ounce can of regular soda has about 33 grams of sugar. I recommend that a healthy adult consumes less than 25 grams of sugar a day.

Research indicates that sugar sweetened beverages are to blame for about 183,000 deaths worldwide each year, including 133,000 diabetes deaths, 44,000 heart disease deaths and 6,000 cancer deaths.

Even drinking one 8 ounce serving of soda per day, raises your risk of Type 2 diabetes by 18%. 6 in 10 children and 5 in 10 adults fall into this category!

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) states, “Frequently drinking sugar-sweetened beverages is associated with weight gain/obesity, Type 2 diabetes, heart disease, kidney diseases, nonalcoholic liver disease, tooth decay and cavities, and gout, a type of arthritis.”

"Big Soda" is fighting back. CDC director Dr. Brenda Fitzgerald received $1 million in funding from Coca-Cola to combat childhood obesity during her six-years as the commissioner of Georgia’s public health department and has a history of promoting the soda industry’s “alternative facts.”

Her Coke-funded anti-obesity campaign focused on exercise. None of the recommendations involved cutting down on soda or junk food. Research shows exercise cannot counteract the detrimental effects of a high sugar diet.

1. Weight gain - Besides the extra calories, there are altered hormonal and physiological responses that may influence fat accumulation and metabolism.

2. Sugar has a detrimental impact on gut bacteria.

3. Sugar stimulates the same addictive areas of the brain as cocaine.

4. Men who drank an average of one can of soda a day, had a 20% higher risk of having a heart attack or dying from a heart attack than men who rarely consumed soda.

5. Women who consumed a can of soda daily over a 22-year study had a 75% higher risk of gout than women who rarely consumed soda.

6. Drinking one artificially sweetened beverage a day may increase your risk of stroke and dementia by 300% as compared to drinking less than one a week.

7. A 2012 study found that people who drank diet soft drinks daily were 43% more likely to have suffered a vascular event, including a stroke.

8. One theory is that diet sodas "trick" the brain into thinking it’s getting a shot of glucose. When blood sugar doesn't increase, the brain can "panic" and drive the body to enter a survival mode to eat more.

9. About 60,000 postmenopausal women were tracked for about 10 years and it was found that drinking just two diet drinks a day can dramatically increase the risk of an early death from heart disease.

10. People with Type 2 diabetes are often advised to consume artificial sweeteners instead of sugar. Research shows that daily consumption of diet soda is associated with a 36% greater relative risk of metabolic syndrome and a 67% greater relative risk of Type 2 diabetes, as compared with not consuming any.

11. A study of about 264,000 U.S. adults over the age of 50 indicated that those who consumed more than four servings artificially sweetened beverages a day, had about a 30% higher risk of depression compared to those who did not consume diet drinks.

12. In April 2017, research presented at the Endocrine Society’s 99th annual meeting in Orlando, found that artificial sweeteners promote metabolic dysfunction and the accumulation of fat.

13. Researchers discovered that phenylalanine, an aspartame breakdown product, blocks the activity of a gut enzyme called alkaline phosphatase (IAP). That enzyme was found to be important to prevent the development of metabolic syndrome.

A Soda Substitute:

Some of my patients feel like drinking pure water after a lifetime of drinking soda just doesn't do it for them. For those people, I suggest to buy carbonated mineral water in glass bottles and to either add a squeeze of a lemon or a lime, or add a dash of an organic concentrated pomegranate or blueberry juice.

These soda substitutes are actually healthy for you, by adding phytonutrients and trace minerals to your body that you may very well be lacking!

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