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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.
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).
This post brought to you by Dole-omite and Benn & Gerry's.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
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.
So first off, Yes, Diet makes a difference- lacking two of the ingredients. And Diet Caffeine free is just fine. Additionally, these three inrgedients are not cola exclusive. Coffee (from dunks with liquid sugar), Root Beer, and other drinks, I'm sure, could find yourself in the same dillema.
I'm annoyed at this doomsday article (not just TFS, but TFA) which is totally shock value, and one paragraph of truth.
But then again, I suppose I should get used to that.
Belief? Hope? Preference?The Existential Vortex
But if you mix cola and uncola, they annihilate each other, producing huge amounts of pure energy. Be careful!
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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!
And Diet Caffeine free is just fine.
I wouldn't be as bold as to suggest that anything about Diet Caffeine free coke is "fine".
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.
If you want to worry about something, worry about brominated vegetable oil, which is used in Mt. Dew and other citrus sodas to disperse the citrus oils uniformly in the drink. Or, if you really want to worry about something which actually has a non-negligible chance of killing/disabling you, look both ways before crossing the street and always wear your seatbelt; and (a distant second) don't smoke.
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
I only have to worry about a shrinking penis.
http://www.snopes.com/medical/potables/mountaindew.asp
Arsenic is natural. Tobacco is natural. Multivitamins are artificial.
caffeine free diet soda. for when you are low on artificial coloring.
I've decided to Diversify my Holdings. I've divided my cash between my left and right pockets, instead of all in one.
Diet or sugar free sodas have artificial sweeteners that are cancer causing (among other things).
That's a myth. It's supported by the fact that most diet sodas used to contain saccharine, which is a sweetener that has been shown to cause cancer in laboratory rats if fed to them in sufficiently large quantities. As a result of these (possibly spurious) studies, most soft drink companies switched their artificial sweetener to aspartame ("Equal") many years ago (in the 1980s), which, as you can see by my link, has definitely not been shown by any studies to cause cancer (or lupus, or diabetes mellitus, or any other such nonsense). Virtually all of the evidence of aspartame causing ailments, including headaches, is entirely anecodotal and unsupported by scientific study.
My blog
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...
The US-RDA for water is 2 liters of water (8 cups) per day.
[Citation needed]
There is explicitly no RDA for water. The DRI or AI for water is between 2.7-3.7 liters per day, but "includes all water contained in food, beverages, and drinking water." Those references also note that "Thirst and consumption of beverages at meals are adequate to maintain hydration." -- I.e. no need to carry a bottle to constantly sip from as if you're trying to survive a desert hike, on top of every other beverage you're already drinking.
The 64 oz / day myth was created by people who can't read both consecutive sentences from the 1945 Food & Nutrition Board study: "An ordinary standard for diverse persons is 1 milliliter for each calorie of food. Most of this quantity is contained in prepared foods." Well established. The most recent recommendation from the same board suggests approximately 3 liters of water, about-faces itself saying most (80%) is met through beverages, explicitly denotes caffeinated beverages as an acceptable source of hydration, and similarly reiterates that the "vast majority" of people meet their hydration need merely by responding to thirst - not by forcing themselves to drink water to hit a magic number.
Of course only drinking diet soda won't magically make fat people skinny, but it helps a lot. When you drink 2 or 3 cans of coke a day, that's 300-450 calories from nothing. That's a whole meal, really. Eliminating a whole meal a day certainly goes a long way to losing weight, without curtailing your cravings for the taste of cola.
Hint: if it's manufactured, it's bad for you.
Sigh. This attitude is silly and I get tired of hearing the "if it's natural it's good for you crowd". Some manufactured things are bad some are good. There are manufactured medicines that save lives every day. And their are all manner of natural things that (e.g. urainium, hemlock, poison frogs, leprosy, lightning) that are bad for you. We should try to learn about ourselves and understand what is good and what is bad and why rather than simply generalizing and passing on a deceptive concept to those we talk with.
no positive impact whatsoever on obesity rates.
Statistics is that they don't necessarily apply to the individual, though. I lost 20 pounds recently, and while part of it was strict diet and exercise, part of it was cutting out crap like soda. But sometimes I want a soda, so I have diet soda. Technically I'm obese but my BMI is well on the way to merely overweight.
I have an alternate hypothesis about the diet soda statistic. Based on my own experience, if someone trying to lose weight isn't drinking only water, they might be doing it wrong. You have to get used to eating healthy and drinking healthy. For a while it seems like your are eating/living bland, but you get used to it and a healthy diet tastes normal while really rich foods taste really rich.
Maintaining weight is easy, and diet foods can be a help in that. But losing weight involves a lifestyle change that is torture at first but which gets easier with time. I used to drink a lot of sweetened stuff. Now it's mostly water, and I really enjoy drinking water all the time. Diet soda is like false hope. Anything in life worth having requires sacrifice, and giving someone soda that has no calories can be like telling them they don't have to sacrifice.