Patriot Health Digest
You hear it a lot: My grandmother drank a glass of wine every day and lived to be 102! Here is something you will never hear: Grandma drank a whole bottle of wine each day and will turn 100 next May.
While some studies say that alcohol, and especially red wine, can give some health benefits, you can rest assured there is nothing healthy about consuming soda.
Not only can soda cause obesity, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and even some cancers, soda can also cause a much shorter, and much unhealthier life. The science says that these types of drinks can be compared to a weekly carton of Marlboros. Soda and drinks like it are connect to many negative health problems:
1 — Soda is connected to early death
A big study published in 2019 in JAMA Internal Medicine revealed an association between greater drinking of sugary beverages and all-cause mortality. The study researched data on over 450,000 people from 10 nations in Europe and discovered that those who consumed two or more sugary drinks or artificially sweetened drinks daily were more likely to pass away sooner of any reason compared to those who consumed less than one of these drinks each month. Interestingly, the study connected to artificially sweetened soft drinks to more circulatory disease deaths while sugary drinks were linked with more digestive disease deaths.
2 — You will gain the worst type of belly fat.
Technically labeled visceral adipose tissue (VAT), or “the most deadly belly fat in your body” this type of deep abdominal fat around internal organs secretes chemicals that put you at risk for a range of metabolic diseases such as type 2 diabetes and heart disease. A study inside the Journal of Nutrition that researched the soda consumption habits of healthy people connected daily soda drinking to a 10% greater volume of VAT when compared to non-sugary beverage consumers.
3 — This is your brain on orange soda.
If you want a better memory, consuming sugar-sweetened drinks is not the way to better brainpower.
Researchers looked at data from the Framingham Heart Study, a big long-term study on the lifestyles of the people of Framingham, Massachusetts, and discovered a link between soda drinking and memory issues and an increased rate of dementia, including Alzheimer’s disease and stroke.
If you are wondering which kind of soda is the worst for your cognitive function, it is the neon-colored sodas such as orange Fanta (44 grams of sugar in each can) and Mountain Dew (46 grams).
Author: Blake Ambrose
