13 Ways That Sugary Soda Is Bad for Your Health
When consumed in excess, added sugar can adversely affect your health.
However, some sources of sugar are worse than others — and sugary drinks are by far the worst.
This primarily applies to sugary soda but also to fruit juices, highly sweetened coffees, and other sources of liquid sugar.
Here are 13 reasons that sugary soda is bad for your health.
1. Sugary drinks have a strong link to weight gain and don’t make you feel full.
Large levels of the simple sugar fructose are included in the most popular added sugar, sucrose, sometimes known as table sugar.
Unlike glucose, the sugar that results from the digestion of starchy foods, fructose does not reduce levels of the hunger hormone ghrelin or promote feelings of fullness.
Because sugary drinks don’t make you feel full, you typically add them to your overall calorie consumption when you eat liquid sugar (3Trusted Source,One study found that persons who added sugary Coke to their regular diet ingested 17% more calories than they did previously.
Not surprisingly, research demonstrates that those who regularly consume beverages with added sugar gain more weight than those who do not.
Each daily serving of sugar-sweetened beverages was found to raise the risk of obesity in youngsters by 60% in one study.In fact, one of the diet’s fatteningest components is sugary drinks.
2. A Significant Amount of Sugar Causes Your Liver to Become Fat
Two molecules, glucose and fructose, are present in about equal amounts in both table sugar (sucrose) and high-fructose corn syrup.
Every cell in your body can process glucose, but your liver is the only organ that can process fructose.
The simplest and most popular way to absorb excessive amounts of fructose is through sugary beverages.
When you eat too much fructose, your liver becomes overworked and converts the sugar to fat.
While some of the fat is stored in your liver, some of it is released as blood triglycerides. This may eventually lead to nonalcoholic fatty liver disease.
3. Sugar Dramatically Increases the Buildup of Belly Fat
Weight growth is linked to a high sugar diet.
Fructose in particular has been associated with a considerable rise in the harmful fat around your organs and tummy. Visceral fat, also referred to as belly fat, is this.
An increased risk of type 2 diabetes and heart disease is associated with excess abdominal fat.
32 healthy participants in a 10-week research drank beverages sweetened with either fructose or glucose.
In contrast to those who consumed fructose, those who consumed glucose experienced an increase in skin fat, which is unrelated to metabolic illness.
4. A Major Component of Metabolic Syndrome, Insulin Resistance May Be Caused by Sugary Soda
Insulin is a hormone that helps glucose enter cells from the bloodstream.
However, if you consume sugary soda, it’s possible that your cells will grow less susceptible to or resistant to insulin’s actions.
When this occurs, your pancreas must produce more insulin in order to eliminate the glucose from your bloodstream, which causes your blood insulin levels to rise.
Insulin resistance is the name given to this condition.
Metabolic syndrome is a precursor to type 2 diabetes and heart disease, and insulin resistance is likely its primary cause.
Excess fructose results in insulin resistance and persistently high insulin levels, as shown by animal studies.
In a study of healthy, young males, moderate fructose consumption led to an increase in insulin resistance.
5. Sugar-Sweetened Drinks Could Be the Number One Dietary Factor in Type 2 Diabetes
Millions of individuals throughout the world suffer from type 2 diabetes, which is a common condition.
Elevated blood sugar levels brought on by insulin resistance or insufficiency are its defining feature.
Numerous studies have linked soda consumption to type 2 diabetes, which is not surprising given that an excessive diet of fructose may cause insulin resistance.
In fact, it has been repeatedly shown that consuming even one can of sugary soda every day increases the risk of type 2 diabetes.
According to a recent study that examined sugar consumption and diabetes in 175 countries, the risk of type 2 diabetes rose by 1.1 for every 150 calories of sugar consumed daily, or about 1 can of soda.
To put that in perspective, 3.6 million more people might develop type 2 diabetes if the whole US population added one can of soda to their daily diet.
6. Sugary Soda Is Pure Sugar and Lacks Essential Nutrients
Sugary soda is almost devoid of all necessary nutrients, including fiber, vitamins, and minerals.
It only adds huge quantities of extra sugar and needless calories to your diet.
7. Sugar Might Increase Leptin Resistance your body’s fat cells create the hormone leptin.
It controls how many calories you consume and expend.
The hormone of fullness or starvation, leptin is known for changing levels in response to both starvation and obesity.
Leptin resistance, which is now thought to be one of the main causes of fat growth in humans, is the inability to respond to the effects of this hormone.In fact, studies on animals have linked fructose consumption to leptin resistance.
In one experiment, rats who received a lot of fructose developed leptin resistance. Surprisingly, leptin resistance vanished when they switched back to a sugar-free diet.
Nevertheless, human studies are required.
8. Sugary Soda May Be AddictiveIt’s possible that sugary soda is an addictive substance.
Dopamine release in the brain and a sense of pleasure are possible effects of sugar intoxication in rats.
Since your brain is designed to seek out activities that release dopamine, bingeing on sweets may have comparable consequences in certain people.
In reality, numerous studies contend that processed junk food in general and sugar in particular have an addictive effect on the brain.
Sugar may result in the reward-seeking behavior known as food addiction in people who are prone to addiction.
Studies on rodents show that sugar has a physical addictive quality.
Although it is more difficult to demonstrate addiction in individuals, many people use sugary drinks in a way that is typical of addictive, harmful substances.
9. Sugary Drinks May Raise Risk of Heart Disease
Heart disease risk and sugar consumption have long been connected.
It is commonly known that drinking beverages with added sugar makes people more likely to have triglycerides in the blood, elevated blood sugar, and tiny, dense LDL particles.
Recent research on humans have found a high correlation between sugar consumption and risk of heart disease across all populations.
One 20-year study involving 40,000 men discovered that those who drank one sugary beverage per day had a 20% increased chance of experiencing a heart attack or passing away from one as compared to individuals who rarely drank sugary beverages.
10. Soda Drinkers Are More Likely to Develop Cancer
Obesity, type 2 diabetes, and heart disease are a few of the chronic conditions that frequently co-occur with cancer.
This makes it predictable that drinking sugary beverages regularly raises your risk of developing cancer.
One research of more than 60,000 adults found that those who drank two or more sugary drinks per week had an 87% increased risk of pancreatic cancer compared to those who did not.
Another study on women and pancreatic cancer discovered a significant correlation, but not in males.
Numerous sugary sodas may increase the risk of endometrial cancer, or cancer of the uterus’ inner lining, in postmenopausal women.
Additionally, use of sugar-sweetened beverages is connected to both cancer death and recurrence in people with colorectal cancer.
11. Soda’s Acids and Sugar Are Bad for Dental Health
The harm sugary drink does to your teeth is widely recognized.
Acids like carbonic acid and phosphoric acid are found in soda.
Your mouth becomes extremely acidic due to these acids, which leaves your teeth susceptible to decay.
Although the acids in soda can injure you on their own, the addition of sugar makes soda particularly hazardous.
The harmful bacteria in your mouth get their energy from sugar, which is simple to digest. Over time, this harms oral health along with the acids.
12. The Risk of Gout is Dramatically Increased in Soda Drinkers.
Your big toes are particularly affected by the medical ailment gout, which causes inflammation and pain in your joints.
High uric acid levels in the blood frequently crystallize to cause gout.
The primary carbohydrate that is known to raise uric acid levels is fructose.
As a result, numerous sizable observational studies have established clear associations between drinks with added sugar and gout.
Long-term studies have also linked sugary drink to a 75% rise in the risk of gout in women and a risk of approximately 50% in men.
13. Sugar Intake Is Associated with a Greater Risk of Dementia
Deteriorations in brain function in older persons are collectively referred to as dementia. Alzheimer’s disease is the most prevalent type.
According to research, any slight rise in blood sugar is closely linked to a higher risk of dementia.
In other words, dementia risk increases with blood sugar level.
It makes reasonable that sugar-sweetened beverages could raise your risk of dementia because they induce quick rises in blood sugar.
Large amounts of sugary beverages can affect memory and judgment, according to studies on rodents.
the conclusion
Drinking a lot of sugar-sweetened beverages, like soda, can have a number of negative effects on your health.
These include a higher risk of tooth decay, heart disease, and metabolic conditions including type 2 diabetes.
The continuous risk of weight gain and obesity from regular use of sugary sodas is also apparent.
Reduce your intake of sugary drinks if you want to live longer, lose weight, and prevent chronic disease.