The following is written by Dr. Joseph Mercola. A link to the full article appears at the end of the entry:
Downing a can of Coke may not seem like a big deal … until you really examine what it does to your body. Within the first 10 minutes, 10 teaspoons of sugar hit your system.
Then:
• Within 20 minutes, your blood sugar spikes, and your liver responds to the resulting insulin burst by turning massive amounts of sugar into fat.
• Within 40 minutes, caffeine absorption is complete; your pupils dilate, your blood pressure rises, and your livers dumps more sugar into your bloodstream.
• Around 45 minutes, your body increases dopamine production, which stimulates the pleasure centers of your brain — a physically identical response to that of heroin, by the way.
• After 60 minutes, you’ll start to have a sugar crash, and perhaps reach for another Coke to start the process all over again.
Drinking Coke Now Could Have a Heavy Price Later
The average American drinks more than 60 gallons of soft drinks each year, and amazingly they make up the number one source of calories in the United States!
If you drink the regular variety, you can count on about 10 teaspoons of sugar in each can, largely in the form of dangerous high-fructose corn syrup. If you drink the diet variety, you’re likely being exposed to aspartame, and did you know there are over 92 different side effects associated with aspartame consumption including brain tumors, birth defects, diabetes, emotional disorders and epilispsy/seizures?
Regularly drinking soda is actually one of the FIRST things that I would advise patients to address, because it is capable of causing or worsening so many health issues.
For instance:
• Just one extra can of soda per day can add as much as 15 pounds to your weight over the course of a single year!
• One soda per day increases your risk of diabetes by 85 percent.
• Soda drinkers have higher cancer risk. While the federal limit for cancer-causing benzene in drinking water is 5 parts per billion (ppb), researchers have found benzene levels as high as 79 ppb in some soft drinks, and of 100 brands tested, most had at least some detectable level of benzene present.
• Soda has been shown to cause DNA damage — courtesy of sodium benzoate, a common preservative found in many soft drinks, which has the ability to switch off vital parts of your DNA. This could eventually lead to diseases such as cirrhosis of the liver and Parkinson’s.
source for this material: http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2009/03/10/Will-Organic-CocaCola-Be-the-Next-Step.aspx
