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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."
According to the article, the people were drinking 3 to 7 LITERS a day. That is a lot.
If you drank 7 liters of pure water a day you would probably suffer from low potassium as a result of electrolytes being flushed our in your urine. The US-RDA for water is 2 liters of water (8 cups) per day.
Not to mention, eating 2-3 bananas over the course of the day would probably correct the problem.
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!
Actually, it's right.
I'll preface this with... INAHN (I'm not a health nut), I'm just very aware of the bad things that I consume. I'm smoking a cigarette and drinking a tall glass of cold soda while I'm writing this. :)
"natural" products, that aren't manufactured, but just bottled, are ok, but rather rare in most stores.
"manufactured" products usually contain refined sugars, preservatives, artificial colors, etc, etc. The're all bad for you.
The human body isn't designed to handle refined sugars very well. It does ok with raw sugar, but only in reasonable quantities. If they used raw sugar in the quantity that shows up in most sodas, it's bad for you. There was a recent study (and review of historical data) that showed the instances of diabetes were virtually nil compared to now. The major contributor? refined sugars.
Caffeine free soda has more bad stuff in it, just not caffeine.
Diet or sugar free sodas have artificial sweeteners that are cancer causing (among other things). Myself, I can't drink any diet soda. Even just a sip, and I'll have a migraine for the next 8 hours. I've been very unhappy during road trips, if/when I stop at a drive through and they hand me a diet soda instead of the regular one I ordered. One sip, and now I have 8 hours of driving where it feels my brain is going to explode.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
Yes, a very very slow bullet.
I'm not sure what a "showel" is, but: There is no convincing evidence that moderate consumption of aspartame causes harm. The evidence was all from "accelerated failure studies", where they gave mice extreme doses and extrapolated back to normal consumption. Well, that's not bad for a first approximation, and diet drinks had a cancer warning label for a while. However, the studies were refuted early on and now time has borne out that the studies were incorrect. There's apparently a threshold effect, and under a certain dosage (which is quite high), it's perfectly safe.
For very small values of "perfect."
Artificial sweeteners may not be the certain cancer death they were once thought to be. However, there's still a few issues with them:
* Asparatame breaks down into asparatase and methyl alcohol at higher temperatures, such as those used in baking, and during certain chemical processes, such as the digestive process. Methyl alcohol is toxic to humans.
* Sucralose interacts badly with certain medications, including those taken by cancer patients to prevent recurrences.
* ALL sweeteners, regardless of their source or chemical composition, trigger insulin production in the same way that sugar does. This is a reflexive response, where the body ramps up insulin production in response to the *taste* of sweet, not waiting until blood sugar actually goes up. This results in lower blood sugar levels in response to non-nutritive sweeteners, which induces hunger and sugar/carb cravings. This is why switching to diet soda from regular causes weight *gain* rather than loss in often-replicated studies.
Don't you wish your girlfriend was a geek like me?
There is no convincing evidence that moderate consumption of aspartame causes harm.
September 30, 1980-- The Public Board of Inquiry concludes NutraSweet should not be approved pending further investigations of brain tumors in animals. The board states it "has not been presented with proof of reasonable certainty that aspartame is safe for use as a food additive."
January 1981-- Donald Rumsfeld, CEO of Searle, states in a sales meeting that he is going to make a big push to get aspartame approved within the year. Rumsfeld says he will use his political pull in Washington, rather than scientific means, to make sure it gets approved.
January 21, 1981-- Ronald Reagan is sworn in as President of the United States. Reagan's transition team, which includes Donald Rumsfeld, CEO of G. D. Searle, hand picks Dr. Arthur Hull Hayes Jr. to be the new FDA Commissioner.
March, 1981-- An FDA commissioner's panel is established to review issues raised by the Public Board of Inquiry.
May 19, 1981-- Three of six in-house FDA scientists who were responsible for reviewing the brain tumor issues, Dr. Robert Condon, Dr. Satya Dubey, and Dr. Douglas Park, advise against approval of NutraSweet, stating on the record that the Searle tests are unreliable and not adequate to determine the safety of aspartame.
July 15, 1981-- In one of his first official acts, Dr. Arthur Hayes Jr., the new FDA commissioner, overrules the Public Board of Inquiry, ignores the recommendations of his own internal FDA team and approves NutraSweet for dry products.
You can't take the sky from me...
While that's perfectly logical and well-reasoned it flies in the face of actual real-world studies. Science now knows (for certain, using statistics and actual data) that drinking diet soda versus regular soda has no positive impact whatsoever on obesity rates. Source In fact, that article actually claims that diet soda drinkers are MORE likely than their regular soda drinking counterparts to be obese.
Now, as the article points out, correlation isn't causation, but the taste of diet soda combined with no proof of its efficacy as a weight reducing substance means that I'll certainly never consider drinking it.
Multivitamins are no different to having a diet that consists of fresh fruit, vegetables and meats. While not the best substitute for a decent diet, to say that vitamins aren't natural is just stupid.
No. No. Yes to the the stupid bit.
IAAAHN (i AM actually a health nut): There are a multitude of beneficial micro-nutrients, anti-oxidants and other compounds in fruits and vegetable, legumes and meats, that you simply don't these get through a popping a multi-vitamin, thus even a comprehensive vitamin and mineral supplement can never replace a good diet.
Plants contain beneficial phytochemicals, flavinoids, anti-inflamiatory compounds, fatty-acids, amino acids, etc, etc. even the soluble fibre and insoluble roughage are highly beneficial to the essential life-supporting colony of bacteria that you are a host to. It's important not to ignore them either, your are a walking colony of your single-celled ancestors descendants, and guess what, a lot of them are along for the ride in your guts - there are 10 times as many cells in your body that are not you as human cells are more than 100 times larger than the bacteria in your gut.
Put simply a full spectrum multi-vitamin would not replace vegetables without about 100-150 different compounds.
Not eating your greens and eating too much processed foods seriously fraks with your internal biota, there's plenty of thought that suggests this is the cause or at least implicated in many modern ills.
You won't develop deficiency and/or die if you don't have these compounds, you can live without them. However the human body has actually evolved ingesting all these fringe nutrients, it stands to reason this is why our health benefits from these compounds. Some would argue they might as well be considered essential based on the benefit to our longevity and physical function.
Their really aren't any shortcuts to good health. Its a no-brainer that the key to good health is following the lifestyle that our bodies and minds evolved in. Exercise and wholefoods and time outdoors, you can't escape, ditch the cola and go for a jog.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
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.