Soft Drinks – A Timeline Of Effects Revealed

In 2005, white bread was overtaken by soft drinks as the number one source of calories in the average western diet. The consumption of a soft drink results in a number of reactions in the body. You may be interested to read, as an example, what happens when you drink a Coke:

• Within the first 10 minutes, 10 teaspoons of sugar hit your system. This is 100 percent of your recommended daily intake (the only reason you don’t vomit as a result of the overwhelming sweetness is because phosphoric acid cuts the flavour)!
• 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 blood pressure rises, and your liver dumps more sugar into your bloodstream.
• Around 45 minutes, your body increases dopamine production, which stimulates the pleasure centres of your brain. This is the exact same physical process as that which is stimulated by heroin!

• After 60 minutes, you’ll start to have a sugar crash.

In a recent study, it was shown that sugar is more addictive than cocaine: rats that were given cocaine regularly and then presented with the option of switching to sugar. It turned out that not only would they choose sugar over cocaine, but they would also work harder for sugar!

There’s also a whole horror-list of the effects of other substances that are found in these types of soft drinks (including benzene, sodium benzoate, phosphoric acid, aspartame and caffeine) but we won’t go into it here!

Of course, you should not chastise yourself for the occasional soft drink (nor should anybody else chastise you, for that matter!). The holistic practitioners at The Centre For Integrated Health have the philosophy that education is a key step to help clients make health decisions that count.