Slashdot Mirror
Cola Consumption Can Lead To Muscle Problems
wjousts writes "As I'm sure many Slashdot readers live almost exclusively on cola drinks, a new warning from doctors:
'Doctors have issued a warning about excessive cola consumption after noticing an increase in the number of patients suffering from muscle problems, according to the June issue of IJCP, the International Journal of Clinical Practice. ... 'Evidence is increasing to suggest that excessive cola consumption can also lead to hypokalaemia, in which the blood potassium levels fall, causing an adverse effect on vital muscle functions.' And sorry, diet colas aren't any better."
I drink mountain dew instead.
Define "excessive", please.
Bananas contain lots of potassium.
Solution is obvious: drink all the cola you want, just make sure to supplement with banana ice cream. Added advantage of calcium and magnesium in the ice cream (also necessary for proper muscle function).
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Good thing I live on Mountain Dew...I would hate to have muscle problems!
Ah Ha! Now I know the reason why I never liked cola drinks. Sorry for the rest of you, that may have to give it up.
I figured out that cola was bad for you when I heard of the school science experiment where you put old teeth (baby teeth or animal teeth) in cola for a couple of days and let them disintegrate!
So don't eat licorice along with your colas.
FTFA:
It appears that hypokalaemia can be caused by excessive consumption of three of the most common ingredients in cola drinks â" glucose, fructose and caffeine.
The dew is even worse for you, bro. The article makes no mention of diet colas, which do not contain fructose or glucose, so I doubt they are as bad as sugar sodas.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Just mix 'em together and you're set.
Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
I fear for Abby (NCIS).
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
TFA states that it's a general problem with soft drinks, and the really serious cases involve patients that drink multiple liters every day. Not that there's any particular benefit to more reasonable consumption (say, 20 oz/day), even if it won't put you in the hospital.
http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/01/15/1854232
AFAIK hypoalkemia can be caused by fluid intake of any type in excess e.g. the mother who died recently on a radio program after drinking too much water. TFA doesn't state if cola affects it more than say water.
I know cola has a lot more bad stuff in it but does is it a major catalyst of hypoalkemia?
Looks like the reporter just wanted to make a sensational headline.
Cola is not good for muscles. So? No nerd has to worry about it. No muscles, no problem.
great just another thing we need, a warning on bad things we all like, like video games and eating too much candy...O, right.
Its not my fault, someone put a wall in my way.
Hypokalemia is very dramatic. Not. According to Wikipedia:
Mild hypokalemia is often without symptoms, although it may cause a small elevation of blood pressure,[5] and can occasionally provoke cardiac arrhythmias. Moderate hypokalemia, with serum potassium concentrations of 2.5-3 mEq/L, may cause muscular weakness, myalgia, and muscle cramps (owing to disturbed function of the skeletal muscles), and constipation (from disturbed function of smooth muscles).
In other words you might have cramps and the likes, and be constipated. And what's the no less dramatic cure to this terrible ailment? Oral potassium chloride supplements (Klor-Con, Sando-K, Slow-K) or just eating leafy green vegetables, tomatoes, citrus fruits, oranges or bananas.
Really, thanks for that Slashdot. While we're at it, did you know that it is estimated that over 40% of the population has B12 deficiency, and that it can cause tiredness, decreased mental work capacity, decreased concentration and decreased memory, irritability and depression?
You just got troll'd!
it's good, just fyi.
So what ingredient of cola does this? Last I read most popular cola drinks like Coke and Pepsi are nothing more than sugar, water, cinnamon, vanilla and phosphoric acid. Most cola drinks do not even have kola nut ingredients in them.
On thing is sure I stopped drinking the stuff regularly when I went to the dentist and had eleven cavities. Yes I brush twice a day and use the water pick. The trick is to rinse your mouth out after drinking very acidic and sugary drinks. As soon as you drink the acid begins to attack your enamel so after your done with a soda rinse your mouth out thoroughly with water. The few hours between drinking an acidic drink and brushing is more than enough time for acids to attack your teeth. This is what my dentist told me as he was drilling, not fun.
I've been drinking around 2 liters a day for several months now. I feel like I want to beat wjousts, the author, into a pulp.
But let's be honest, thank you. I'm going to switch to the good old tap water for a change.
I only drink caffiene-free diet sodas, so it looks like I'm safe.
-deane
Might explain why I had a major hankering for bananas :P Eating as many as two or more per day. Bananas freakin' rock, the perfect fruit! Comes in it's own 'packaging', the flavor varies by ripeness (I like 'em a bit green), easily blended, no seeds to pick or spit out, and cheap and easily available.
"I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist"
Pretty soon, the prices on cola will drop to the floor with this news. Then I can stock up!!
I only have to worry about a shrinking penis.
http://www.snopes.com/medical/potables/mountaindew.asp
Are you trying to suggest that aspartame (or whatever the newest artificial sweetener is) is healthy?
The truth is:
soda is bad for you and makes you fat.
"diet" soda is bad for you and makes you fat (correlation). (it does not make you lose weight according to any study).
"diet" soda uses various artificial sweeteners, of which the long term health consequences are not known.
how many people do you know that drink 2 liters of soda a day? that's 4 16.9 oz bottles. And that's just the lower limit of problem causing levels. 10 liters of soda a day ftw!
The amount that people drink in this study is just astounding. And really, how much common sense do these people have?
I'll give you hint sweetie. If you have persistent vomiting and you're drinking 3 liters a day of anything, stop drinking it and I bet your vomiting will go away!
Gee, you dumbshit. You're so fat you have to drive an electric scooter around with a basket to carry your 2 liter flagon of high fructose corn syrup, and you wonder why you have health problems?
Man, I knew people were stupid, but not this stupid...
"When the president does it, that means it's not illegal." - Richard M. Nixon
Let me get this strait: hyper cola-mania leads to "hypokalaemia"?
Table-ized A.I.
Next they'll tell us that pizza, lack of sun, and too much pr0n leads to painful death.
Table-ized A.I.
How many times do I have to point out to these fucking retarded "scientists" that correlation is NOT the same as causation! Just because two things happen at the same time doesn't mean they are related. This soda study is exactly the kind of hoax bullshit study that makes you wonder what the fuck they teach in science class these days.
once again, for the exceptionally slow:
Correlation != Causation
Get it through your thick skulls.
Are not good for your teeth and bones, drinking tons will probably screw up your whole body's PH levels having all kinds of ill effects.
Good science tries to check this by looking for other correlations. Participants are often given long questionares with various life-style and food questions. Other factors that "stick out" are then investigated further. True, sometimes things slip through the cracks; no study is perfect.
Table-ized A.I.
Way to go America! We're twice as good as "average"
FTA:
"In 2007 the worldwide annual consumption of soft drinks reached 552 billion litres, the equivalent of just under 83 litres per person per year, and this is projected to increase to 95 litres per person per year by 2012. However the figure has already reached an average of 212 litres per person per year in the United States."
Coffee (from dunks with liquid sugar), Root Beer, and other drinks, I'm sure, could find yourself in the same dillema.
When it comes to Root Beer, I think only Barque's (A fine product of the Coca-Cola Company) insists on adding caffeine.
My other car is a 1984 Nark Avenger.
Respect for the danger would be a good idea. Hypokalemia can cause arrhythmia. And hyperkalemia can also cause ... you guessed it, arrhythmia. And arrhythmia can cause death, with little warning. In fact, if your potassium level gets low enough or high enough, it is guaranteed that you will die from it, promptly. A single hypodermic syringe of non-diluted potassium chloride is practically guaranteed to send you to meet your maker within a couple of minutes.
Lots of things can cause the level to get too low or too high. A reasonable consumption of soft drinks, alone, is highly unlikely to do you in, but it is playing with a chemical balance which is extremely critical to life. When you add this factor to a bunch of other potential factors, you best pay attention. And your suggested potassium supplements can be extremely dangerous. They are for cases where serious danger is already proved, and even then require close supervision. It is much too easy to throw the balance off in one direction or the other. The vegetables and fruits you suggest are safer, but even then you would need testing to establish the right balance.
I am not a physician, but my grandfather was. Physiology is an interest of mine.
I've also heard that cola can cause bone to deteriorate, due to the phosphoric acid many of them contain.
8==8 Bones 8==8
Holy Cow! The volumes that these people are drinking! 4 liters a day? 10 liters a day? Reminds me of studies with lab rats and artificial sweeteners. You pump too much of anything into your system... bad stuff will happen.
Personally, my cola consumption is zero. I never touch the stuff.I prefer water and unsweetened tea... oh, and beer, of course!
Lacking exercise results in lacking muscles. People who lack exercise lack non-drinking of cola. News at 11!
*finger nail, zinc-plated nail, and a iron-oxide nail.
Also dissolved a dry chicken bone, and removed the blood stain out of my carpet. Works bette than Oxy Clean(tm)!
*ducks*
...but the muscles in my fingers have given up..
If it doesn't have Kola Nut, it's not a Kola, or a Cola. Do they mean to say "carbonated beverages"?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I never had this problems years ago, but lately I get aches after drinking sodas (e.g., Mt. Dew, Coca Cola, Dr. Pepper, Hawiwan Punch, etc.). Or is it I am just getting old (over 30 years)?
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
The caffeine levels in Coke or Pepsi are very low compared to coffee; approximately 10%.
Canada Health recommends no more than 400 mg of caffeine a day. To exceed this, you'd have to drink 12 L of Coke. On the other hand, only two extra large Double Doubles will bring you to that limit.
18% of all Canadian aged 31 through 50 exceed this limit, and it's not from drinking cola. The typical Canadian coffee drinker aged 31 through 50 averages over 600 mg a day.[1]
OK, the person that wrote the article really needs to stop using the term "cola" in place of "soft drink".
Soft drinks come in many flavors including cola flavor.
From my reading of the article, the soft drink can be any flavor and still be a problem if they contain any of the three ingredients listed (none of which include cola or cola flavor).
Get it right!
Its not like slash doters use our mussels anyway.
and if we do its to go get more soda.
Its not my fault, someone put a wall in my way.
I wanted to read tfa, but I stopped after looking at all the techno mumbo-jumbo.
So, What is "Cola" and what part of it is bad for you? Is it the Caffeine? The Sugar? The bubbles? I don't drink coke, but I drink seltzer... so.. I guess I'll just freak out anyway.
Bananas are the most useless food ever. Once you peel off the skin and throw away the bone, there's nothing to eat.
Jeez, people like you can be dense. Correlation != causation is not always true. Some things that are correlated because one thing causes the other. If you had bothered to read the fine article, you'd see that they presented plenty of evidence that drinking too much soda does cause the things problems they claim it does (well, more accurately, that removing the soda caused the problems to go away).
I thought my consumption was much higher than it should be, because on a stressful day when I'm working for a long time on a pet project, I sometimes get through five or six 330ml cans. My GF has been telling me off about this since forever.
However, let's do a bit of maths here, using just the low end of the spectrum mentioned in these articles for illustration...
One 330ml can of Coke contains approximately 140 Calories. That's 210 Calories for a 500ml bottle, and a staggering 840 Calories in a 2L bottle (or six cans, or four small bottles).
A healthy daily Calorie intake for an average adult male with typical exercise levels and eating a reasonable diet is around 2,500 Calories. For an average adult female with similar criteria it's around 2,000 Calories. (For contrast, a typical front-line trooper in the army, performing a very physically demanding job, might consume about 4,000 Calories per day. An adult female professional dancer eating a careful diet to maintain health and fitness while losing weight to tone their figure might go down towards 1,200 Calories but would probably get told off for trying to go any lower.)
Put that together, and drinking 2L of Coke per day is the equivalent of about 1/3 of the total daily Calorie allowance for an adult male. Drinking 3L is about half of the daily intake. Drinking 3L of Coke per day on top of an otherwise healthy and balanced diet is worth the equivalent of the energy expended in running about half a marathon. Doing that every day for a week is the energy equivalent of not losing a little over 2lb of fat every week, though of course nutrition isn't quite as simple as this!
In short, drinking that much Coke is a serious problem even without the chemical imbalances it causes, that nasty bloaty feeling (if you can get past the nausea), the acid damage to teeth, and all that stuff. You'd have to be crazy to get to 3L in one day, and certifiably insane to drink it routinely, day after day.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
OK, in general, doing almost anything in excess is bad. Everyone knows this. If you don't there is something wrong with you. Why bring it up?
You could drink 3 or more rockstars a day and then have a stroke at the age of 23. I knew someone like that, thankfully he stopped drinking them afterwards.
...from my limp, pallid hands.
Gee, this is hardly surprising. Who'd have thought that over-indulgence of soft drinks (or 'adult' drinks like beer and liquor) would result in physical problems?
With soda/cola/pop/whatever, you are consuming a supersaturate. There is a shitload of sugar in there, and its consumption will dehydrate you. And it's not all that good for the ol' pancreas, either.
Diet sodas are also a problem, as they have aspartame in them. Aspartame is a mild neurotoxin. No, you won't get dehydrated and get muscle fatigue that way, but you sure as hell will cause problems down the line. Some people who are highly environmentally sensitive will have an allergic/asthmatic reaction to the stuff.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
What a suprise. If you spend all day doing nothing but drinking tons of soda, you're muscles wont function properly! Sounds like a story for Rick Romero
"Muscle weakness" is about as dramatic as it gets - when your heart stops beating, you have a problem. The arrythmia, muscular weakness, myalgia, muscle cramps mean your nervous system is losing control of your muscles, because potassium is a key neurotransmitter and necessary for muscle control.
The best part is that when you are hypokalemic, those same neurotransmitters failing means you get confused and have no idea what is going on. So people typically "just don't feel good" without ever knowing whats going on. Then, they drink water and have a heart attack at age 20 and die.
Sure, an EMT or nurse will pick up on it and give you IV fluids, but to the lay person, they don't know what is wrong, so they can't fix it.
http://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
The main reason they did not approve was not due to REAL danger , it was due to the absence of proper documentation. The LD59 and LD90 of aspartam as so high that you would have way more problem before long before entering any danger zone. .
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
I don't eat much "processed" foods. No colas, sodas, candy bars, cheezy puffs, etc... What I do eat are home cooked natural foods with locally grown herbs and spicies. Hell I make my own bread - no high fructose corn syrup in there. The important lesson here kids is start making food you can't find at the local grocer.
I almost for got to mention - I look 15 years younger than most people my age.
"I'll give you my ice-cold refreshing Coca-Cola when you take it from my cold, dead hands."
You never expect irony, do you?
Want to be a professional wrestler? Visit www.iyfwrestling.com
@iyfwrestling
Most geeks can not carry stuff > 50 pounds. No wonder why.
The problem is, if you are in IT, you are expected to move machines around, and they ranged from 50 to 100 pounds.
And that is also why in most of the time, most IT supervisor does NOT have an CS or IT degree. I have seen interviewers that only has a music degree.
New Economic Perspectives
Sodium in cola is pretty minimal. Compare:
Pack of ramen: 890mg
12 oz of V8: 885mg
Small fries: 144mg
100 grams of carrots: 69mg
12 oz of Coke: 38mg
http://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
Just as the article states that the excessive drinking of cola drinks can cause problems with low potassium. What it doesn't tell you is that the phosphoric acid found in these drinks can also lead to being hypocalcemic. As the acid usually displaces the calcium that's found in the blood stream, and raises the phosphoric levels. The side affects of hypocalcemia can range from numbing/tingling of the extremities, tetany(seizing of the muscle), all the way to seizures and even death in most extreme cases. To those who have a rare condition called Hypoparathyroidism, it can become life threatening withing minutes of we call a "crash". We use the term "crash" to signify that the blood calcium to have suddenly dropped to low levels and start become symptomatic. When that happens and the person can't get bring the levels back up. The next course of action would to get the person to emergency room as fast as possible. The thing is anyone can become hypocalcemic at anytime. Especially when they are on really poor diet.
I drink caffeine free diet soda because in the volumes of soda I was drinking I noticed weight gain issues and nervous system issues (from the caffeine). Recently I've been noticing other issues and I've suspected the soda and backed off drinking it with noticeable improvement in my health. I've also had some sort of muscle/nervous issue in the past couple years where I've had pain in my hands and sudden inability to grip or sudden releases of my grip - I wonder if that could also be related.
But what else can I drink besides water (I don't drink alcohol, tea, or coffee either)? I checked my lemonade mix and it has fructose. Juice is high calorie. What doesn't have glucose, fructose, or caffeine?
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
This same story caught the attention of the National Health Service, who published a a commentary here:
http://www.nhs.uk/news/2009/05May/Pages/ColaSapsMuscleStrength.aspx
This is probably more worth reading than the vast majority of the /. comments.
Choice sentences from the end of the commentary:
Feel free to circulate the URL. I'm just an AC and UK taxpayer, rip me off. :^)
Excuse me but Cola has always been bad for you Infact ill tell you why, Cola, Coke, Diet-Coke and all those "Fizzy" drinks contain an ingredient known as Aspartame (Artificial Sweeteners) When Aspartame is heated to 86 degrees (F) is becomes more toxin then a fire-ants sting, with the human body temp being 98.6 ÂF (37.0 ÂC) you can count on side effects coming from these drinks containing Aspartame Muscle Retractions and Muscle Spasums are two examples of these side effects, it has also been known to cuase alot of headache's and/or migrains and can even cuase MS So folks, the next time you want to drink a "fizzy" drink, read the ingredients, if it lists Aspartame, then put it down and get something that wont actually kill you
Beware the soda drink epidemic that is paralyzing our muscles while the swine-flu pandemic threat is at level-5, terrorists are playing in your backyard, child abductors and serial killers are lurking right outside your home , the Iranian nuclear threat is coming to a theater near you, and global warming is killing the planet.
Let us know if we left out anything, we will be more than happy to give you a reason to fear those too.
...one word: ASPARTAME! And to think a whole generation of kids have had this toxic stuff put in their food & drinks. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspartame I've decided to stick to drinking water & non-concentrated fresh fruit juices, a much better option if you care about your health.
http://nathanlindsell.blogspot.com/
This condition is a result of low potassium. Just eat a freakin banana or two.
Oh Crap, I'm an optimist.....
TFA states that "It appears that hypokalaemia can be caused by excessive consumption of three of the most common ingredients in cola drinks â" glucose, fructose and caffeine." Glucose and Fructose are not contained in diet coke. I drink about 5-6l of diet coke per day and don't experience any prolems.
Who needs cola when there's water, beer and wine? They've been around for millennia.
I can't find any uses for cola except to unclog sanitaries and mix with bad whiskey to make it drinkable.
I was 4-5 years ago a heavy Coca-Cola, Fanta and Sprite user. Before that Pepsi Max.
I drank about 3-6 liter a week.
Then suddenly one day, I got stomach pains from Fanta. Coca-Cola had just changed the bottle of the Fanta and same time seems to have changed the mixture as well someway. Because the color was clearly different on the store shelfs where was old and new bottle next each other.
So I changed to Coca-Cola and used it one year without problems. Then again, suddenly I started to get problems of urinating. I got feeling that I need to go bathroom to pass some water but never actually had anything.
On that time I made choice to stop using all that stuff.
And after few years on friend of my passed to me a Coca-Cola drink on the bar (I do not drink alcohol or coffee/tee and I have never drank those) and it was just 0.33cl bottle and I got same problem 5min after drinkin it.
But, I have other problems now as well. My motor functions on my hand and leg muscles starts trembling if I take 0.33cl or more.
You can not see it, but I can feel it how some muscles just twitch little bit and It does not feel nice when it takes about 3-4 hours as that.
If those drinks would be invented now, they would never pass haleness authorities tests. Those are just poison for humans and we let our childrens to drink those every day.
It is just too bad thing to even think that we can not turn those off because the companies who manufacture those, like Coca-Cola, are too powerfull and rich to keep their companies running.
And what makes even worse (and funny in first time) is that most WHO recommences are paid by those companies, about how much a day you can enjoy of cola, ice-cream, chocolate etc.
When you check out the sponsors of all studies about the daily sugar amount what is "good", you only find those big companies who manufactures all candies, sodas and other stuff.
There is many other studies, what ain't paid by those companies and all the amounts what got enough for daily usage for adult human, was almost every situation a 1/10 of the same suggestions of what these companies has paid.
And you can think it this way.
On these days humans eat more healthy, they have removed fat almost totally. But same time we use more sugar, white flour, artificial fat from vegetable oil (vegetable fat does not exist anywhere on the world in that form. Totally artificial! It was designed on WWII on UK when there was not enough cattle to get real fat and people needed fat to bake. So scientics developed artificial fat from vegetable oil. Because oil could not be used on baking. And that does not include anything good for humans, just stress more human body than real fat what goes through the human body if not overused).
Human race will eventually vanish itself by just these big companies.
Oh, and have you seen the Supersize me Document? http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1432315846377280008
now even more disgusting ... BUT YELLOW.
Excessive use of anything will make you sick or kill you. You can even die from too much water.
It's just that it is much quicker to happen with obvious crap like Cola, "Wonder Bread" (the only wonder is, that people survive it for so long), Margarine, etc.
Oh, and now for the insightful part: If you consume smaller doses, if often does not prevent anything. It just makes it take longer, be more sneaky, and end up being called "age related diseases".
Remember that, when you're 50, and start to develop those problems. ^^
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Who says we should eat 3 meals a day every day? How about: put more effort into selecting and preparing our meals, eat fewer meals! I find I'm way less hungry if I go longer without eating - as I'm not constantly 3 or 4 hours after the last big meal. The hunger sensation goes away if you get past it (a good analogy is the vibrations of breaking the "sound barrier" in a jet airplane, you throttle past it). In the USA, family and friends are so programmed to do the "3 meals a day" thing that practically nobody questions it.
Discovery of this study changed my life. Now, some days I just eat one big meal, I focus more on enjoying that meal. If you have only one meal in a day: 2 hours to enjoy the meal, read while I'm eating or socialize with friends. I focus more on the quality of food, not quantity. Eating less frequently is a lifestyle change, not a diet!
From: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16529878
=======================
"The effect on health of alternate day calorie restriction: eating less and more than needed on alternate days prolongs life."
Restricting caloric intake to 60-70% of normal adult weight maintenance requirement prolongs lifespan 30-50% and confers near perfect health across a broad range of species. Every other day feeding produces similar effects in rodents, and profound beneficial physiologic changes have been demonstrated in the absence of weight loss in ob/ob mice. Since May 2003 we have experimented with alternate day calorie restriction, one day consuming 20-50% of estimated daily caloric requirement and the next day ad lib eating, and have observed health benefits starting in as little as two weeks, in insulin resistance, asthma, seasonal allergies, infectious diseases of viral, bacterial and fungal origin (viral URI, recurrent bacterial tonsillitis, chronic sinusitis, periodontal disease), autoimmune disorder (rheumatoid arthritis), osteoarthritis, symptoms due to CNS inflammatory lesions (Tourette's, Meniere's) cardiac arrhythmias (PVCs, atrial fibrillation), menopause related hot flashes. We hypothesize that other many conditions would be delayed, prevented or improved, including Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, multiple sclerosis, brain injury due to thrombotic stroke atherosclerosis, NIDDM, congestive heart failure. Our hypothesis is supported by an article from 1957 in the Spanish medical literature which due to a translation error has been construed by several authors to be the only existing example of calorie restriction with good nutrition. We contend for reasons cited that there was no reduction in calories overall, but that the subjects were eating, on alternate days, either 900 calories or 2300 calories, averaging 1600, and that body weight was maintained. Thus they consumed either 56% or 144% of daily caloric requirement. The subjects were in a residence for old people, and all were in perfect health and over 65. Over three years, there were 6 deaths among 60 study subjects and 13 deaths among 60 ad lib-fed controls, non-significant difference. Study subjects were in hospital 123 days, controls 219, highly significant difference. We believe widespread use of this pattern of eating could impact influenza epidemics and other communicable diseases by improving resistance to infection. In addition to the health effects, this pattern of eating has proven to be a good method of weight control, and we are continuing to study the process in conjunction with the NIH.
> caffeine free diet soda. for when you are low on artificial coloring.
It's got electrolytes! They're what plants crave!
Damn, now I have to worry about Diet Coke! Along with all the coffee, cigars and cigarettes I can't last another year.
I rarely drink anything like this. First off, there's a lot of sugar in it and too much sugar at once will either give me a migraine or put me to sleep. I can never drink one can of soda in one day because of that. Secondly, I don't like carbonation. It gets trapped in my stomach too often. Even if I get a soda to drink I have to de-carbonate it before I can drink it. Third, the caffeine puts me to sleep. If I want something that will put me to sleep, I'd rather drink hot chocolate. It at least tastes better. Most of the time, I drink water. Sometimes, I drink milk, homemade smoothies or a tea. When I have a craving or need to sleep easier, I drink hot chocolate made out of cocoa powder. I think the largest consumption of caffeine I have is green tea.
1) Fuck the slashtards, eat what you want.
2) Stop listening to people who want to tell you how to run your life.
3) Slap anyone who believes anything that He-Who-Is-Always-Photographed-From-Below-Peering-Boldly-Into-The-Future says.
Summary:
Become Eric Cartman.
Do it. Do it now.
I command you to do it now.
You can have my cola when you pry it from my weak, atrophied hand!
And yet, legions of scientists have found no problem with aspartame.
In 2005 the prestigious Cesare Maltoni Cancer Research Center at the European Foundation for Oncology and Environmental Sciences published the results of their 3 year aspartame study on 1,800 rats, known as the Ramazzini Study. It was the most scrupulous and costly investigation of the chemical sweetener ever performed. Dr. Morando Soffritti led this groundbreaking research that revealed aspartame causes lymphomas and leukemia and is a âoemultipotential carcinogen.â
And the FDA covers up data about aspartame.
You can't take the sky from me...
Just this weekend, I heard a story about a guy who worked some tech support position and wouldn't eat anything all day, but then would go and have two McDonald's value meals and scarf them down, and that was all he would eat, pretty much every day.
He was a skinny guy with a high metabolism, but he woke up one morning and found that he couldn't move; his muscles wouldn't work. Slowly, very slowly, over the next couple of hours, he managed to reach his phone and call the ambulance. He apparently had a huge potassium deficiency and was lucky that his heart didn't stop.
When did the future switch from being a promise to a threat? -C. Palahniuk
From the article:
The case studies looked at patients whose consumption ranged from two to nine litres of cola a day.
9 liters is enough soda to kill off 10,000 laboratory rats in one day isn't it?
I gave up soda last year when I was diagnosed with an Autoimmune disease. I figured the less crap I pour into my system, the better I'll feel.
Is cola being used in this article as a term for carbonated beverage with HFCS, caffeine and flavor, or actual cola like coca-cola? The last commenting doctor is from Ohio, where we call our bubbly "pop", and my 2L a day dew habit and I need to know!
Take this finding with a grain of salt. It is a "case study" of very few people who already drink copious amounts of soda so probably live pretty damn unhealthy lives otherwise.
Wait to panic and argue when there is a randomized control study about this.
Have a cola and a banana, Squire! That will sort things out.
People have much more troubling issues if they are consuming 2-9 LITERS of cola per day, which is what the study was based on. I'm sorry, but your pancreas is probably on FIRE trying to process that input.
So basically replacing water with a mixture of salt, sugar, and corn syrup will cause health problems?
NO SHIT? REALLY? /sarcasm
The dehydration effects of that much soda mixed with the effects of that much of a caloric overload (My conservative estimate pegs it at about 425 calories per liter for cola. So someone consuming seven liters a day would be consuming almost 3000 calories a day, and that's before we factor in food intake. (Keep in mind the average person needs between 2000 and 2200 calories to maintain body weight, anything more becomes fat.)
hence products like Olestra, that lets you eat fatty food with no fat calories (at the cost of greasy anal leakage, niiiiice).
Reminds me of when I used to work across the street from a Chinese restaurant. I like Chinese food and would get chicken chow mein every day, sometimes with chicken balls. The problem is that after a while I started shitting a greasy clear gel. I guess it was whatever oily stuff was coating the chow mein noodles. It only happened when I got lunch there consistently. People tell me I lost weight while I was working there, makes you wonder...
Considering this comes from the International Journal of Clinical Practice it sounds awfully unscientific. Of course this could just be bad editing and a poor choice of headline.
What is Coke? It is causing it? What in Coke is causing it is a better question, and likely the answer is sugar. 9 x 40g = 360g a DAY in ONLY cola. That's a third of a kilo, not including sugar you get from other sources. Go look at what 1kg of sugar looks like in the supermarket, and try and eat it in 3 days! In which case, Cola isn't the problem, it is sugary drinks in which there are plenty.
For the Record:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_causation
And my fav:
http://xkcd.com/552/
I find usually very smart people do not understand this very simple logical fact and make grandiose statements. They very well may be right, however their argument is wrong. Climate Change is one of my favorite examples of this. Flame on! (Sorry I couldn't resist!)
Also think about Freakanomics.
Perhaps there is also a statistical correlation between the people that would freaking drink 9 cans of coke in a day and those that smoke 20+ cigerates a day, or the fact that those people are more predetermined to be obese which may be causing it, or be more likely to eat other unhealthy foods, of which anyone factor may be the cause of.
There are many possibilities and factors and we are talking about samples and statistics here in a study where these are not controlled environments.
nutrients in ancient foods != industrial-farming products.
Was it Nat Geo that stated that oranges & tomatos were 1/5th the nutrient-completeness/level of the same fruit in the '50s?
( the ratio they stated I'm certain of, the source I'm sorta-certain of )
When we replace the high-protein maize with high-sugar "sweet" maize/corn, and eat that INSTEAD, we aren't eating what we're evolved to.
When we deplete all the nutrients from the soil, and just replace what we have to to produce salable product, we aren't eating what we're evolved to.
When we destroy the soil-structure/ecology, replacing it with chemical-fertalizer & Round-Up & Round-Up Ready crops, we aren't even eating crops that are going to be producing, in a couple of decades ( because all the soil-ecology got broken, so the funguses needed by the roots in healthy gardens, ISN'T THERE anymore, etc )
Ever heard of Colony Collapse Disorder?
where the bees that fertilize our crops ( fruits & trees, mostly ), just suddenly die off, and if you can find any corpses, they're filled with fungus, viruses, bacteria, cancer, every damn thing imaginable, essentially having AIDS?
That has some cause or other, probably the *complex* of causes, of our "industrial" gardening...
Die-offs of non-viable species are natural, though, so our extinction will be Perfectly Natural, won't it?
Natural isn't *inherently* better, but Nature ought be considered, HONESTLY, before replacing part of it and pretending/claiming that No Consequences Exist of the change...
Cheers,
Captain Obvious
This can be seen as: 1. Addiction. 2. Research upon effects of products when used excessively. 3. Label on all things: Excessive usage will lead to health problems.
Urban legends and sundry anti-virus makers keep us alerted to hoaxes. What about viral health stories? Yes virginia, it's work checking "Behind the Headlines" at NHS Choices before spamming your friends with the latest miracle cure or coffee crisis. Here's the cola crisis analysis. http://www.nhs.uk/news/2009/05may/pages/colasapsmusclestrength.aspx. Their bottom line? Be more worried about the sugar effects on teeth and diabetes!
I live on bananas and Coke (cola, not nose candy) so my potasium should be fine.