In an article on Yahoo! News titled Sugar-Sweetened Drinks May Pose Heart Risks to Women, Study Suggests they report that drinking two or more sugary drinks a day may boost a woman’s risk for developing heart disease and diabetes even if doing so doesn’t increase her weight. Middle-aged women who drank two or more of these drinks, such as soda or flavored water, were almost four times more likely to have high levels of triglycerides (dangerous blood fats) and impaired blood sugar levels compared to women who drank less than one sweetened beverage a day.
Further, this habit leads to more belly fat, which is more harmful than fat stored in other areas of the body. Belly fat is more dangerous because it can affect blood pressure , cholesterol, and insulin production.
I’ve read in other places that high fructose corn syrup, which is used as sweetener in a lot of these drinks, contributes significantly to belly fat. The liver removes the extra fructose from the blood and immediately stores it as fat while other sugars will pass through and can be eliminated through the kidneys without causing any further harm.
Most of the sugar-sweetened drinks are also highly acidic, so they throw of your body’s pH balance, and they are diuretic, so they dehydrate you instead of quenching your thirst.
What Are the Alternatives?
Water is the best choice. You are thirsty because your body craves water. Water is used to keep your body’s cells hydrated. Most of the chemical reactions that occur in the body, from digesting food and nerve conduction to memory and muscle contraction, can only happen in the presence of water.
I understand that many people think that water tastes bad. If your water comes out of a tap then it probably tastes like chlorine, a toxic chemical added to many municipal water supplies. If you drink out of a bottle then it tastes like the plastic that has leached into the water.
A good water filter will take care of all that. In my house, all of our water comes from a water filtration system that cleans the water and makes it alkaline. When we are going to be away from home we take our water with us in a BPA-free bottle.
Both of our drinking water filters and our shower filter come from here. You don’t have to use the same one I use, just make sure that you find one that both filters the water and makes it alkaline.
What About Energy Drinks?
Most energy drinks that I am familiar with are high in both sugar and caffeine, neither of which are good for you. The energy from sugar and caffeine is short-lived and leaves you worse off than before. Instead, try something more natural. Our bodies are designed to live on plants and we can get a lot of slow-burn energy from chlorophyll. I have found that barley grass powder in water is a great way to get energy without the crash afterward.
If you already have a problem with triglyceride and blood sugar levels then I invite you to check out what bergamot juice extract can do.
Thanks for reading.
Wayne Woodworth
PS. You can safely assume that any links on this site are affiliate links and that I make some income from orders placed on the sites that I link to. I only link to and endorse products that I use myself and have found supportive.
