I think its a given that drink soda, specifically Coca-Cola, is not good for you. But do you really know what happens inside your body once you consume this beverage?
A new infographic has revealed the reaction you go through for an hour after consuming, from the first sip, right through to 60 minutes after finishing.
The graphic was compiled by The Renegade Pharmacist, a blog run by former UK pharmacist Niraj Naik and includes a seven-stop breakdown.
He reveals:
In The First 10 minutes: 10 teaspoons of sugar hit your system. (100 per cent of your recommended daily intake.) You don’t immediately vomit from the overwhelming sweetness because phosphoric acid cuts the flavor allowing you to keep it down.
20 minutes: Your blood sugar spikes, causing an insulin burst. Your liver responds to this by turning any sugar it can get its hands on into fat. (There’s plenty of that at this particular moment).
40 minutes: Caffeine absorption is complete. Your pupils dilate, your blood pressure rises, as a response your livers dumps more sugar into your bloodstream. The adenosine receptors in your brain are now blocked preventing drowsiness.
45 minutes: Your body ups your dopamine production stimulating the pleasure centres of your brain. This is physically the same way heroin works, by the way.
60 minutes: The phosphoric acid binds calcium, magnesium and zinc in your lower intestine, providing a further boost in metabolism.
This is compounded by high doses of sugar and artificial sweeteners also increasing the urinary excretion of calcium.
>60 Minutes: The caffeine’s diuretic properties come into play. (It makes you have to pee.)
It is now assured that you’ll evacuate the bonded calcium, magnesium and zinc that was headed to your bones as well as sodium, electrolyte and water.
>60 minutes: As the rave inside of you dies down you’ll start to have a sugar crash.
You may become irritable and/or sluggish. You’ve also now, literally, urinated the water that was in the Coke.
But not before infusing it with valuable nutrients your body could have used for things like even having the ability to hydrate your system or build strong bones and teeth.
Mr Naik told FEMAIL: ‘When I worked as a community pharmacist I had some great success at helping people get off long term medication. Especially blood pressure medication, statins and diabetic medication.
‘Many of them [patients] would consume fizzy drinks on a daily basis. A few on several medications would consume two to three cans a day. In one case a guy was on every heart drug under the sun and taking big doses.
‘So I created my own system to help my patients where I would write little shopping lists for people based on their conditions. My first advice to them would be to do a simple swap, replacing fizzy drinks with water with fresh lemon or lime juice.
‘In many cases just doing this would have a dramatic effect on their health. So this indicated to me that fizzy drinks and sugar were big issues relating to blood pressure and metabolic diseases like diabetes and heart disease.
‘Then I did a lot more research and discovered that there were other scientists and doctors who backed up my claims.
‘The BBC TV documentary called The Men Who Made Us Fat is especially good and gives all the evidence to back up my claims.
‘I also did a presentation all about cholesterol and statins that is one of the most viewed on YouTube on this subject and gives all the evidence for sugar being one of the main causes of heart disease, rather than saturated fat and high cholesterol which we have all been led to believe.
‘Its actually the bad manufactured fats in processed foods and refined sugar that you really need to worry about, not the good healthy fats you would find in eggs, free range meats and foods like avocados.’
Ella Allred, Technical Nutritionist at NutriCentre.com told FEMAIL: ‘These facts on Coke, may shock you, but it is a good indication as to why we shouldn’t be drinking it.
‘The NHS has just changed the total added sugar allowance from 10 teaspoons per day to 7.5 teaspoons per day.
‘This makes just one can more than your total free sugar allowance for the entire day.
‘Such a high surge of sugar causes your pancreas to over work to produce insulin, increasing your chances of developing Diabetes Type 2 and causing you to lay down fat around the middle, which increases your chances of developing heart disease.
‘The caffeine hit from the coke silences certain receptors in the brain making you feel alert and awake.
‘We don’t feel tired in the first place due to caffeine deficiency, so it just masks the symptoms of another problem. Ignoring this problem isn’t going to get you anywhere!
‘The huge sugar hit that your body now needs to deal with uses up valuables nutrient stores such as magnesium and calcium, our biggest stores being in our bones – just think about that for a second.’
‘It also causes you to become dehydrated, making you feel drowsy and tired, again needing another energy hit.
‘The sugar and caffeine stimulate the same pleasure centres in our brain as drugs such as cocaine and heroin, leaving you craving more, which further worsens the effect on your body,’
MailOnline has contacted Coca-Cola for comment.
Source: DailyMail
