Soft drinks are hard on your health
Soft drinks contain little to no vitamins or other essential nutrients. However, it is what they do contain that is the problem: caffeine, carbonation, simple sugars — or worse, sugar substitutes — and often food additives such as artificial coloring, flavoring, and preservatives.
A lot of research has found that consumption of soft drinks in high quantity, especially by children, is responsible for many health problems that include tooth decay, nutritional depletion, obesity, type-2 diabetes, and heart disease.
Why the sugar in soft drinks isn’t so sweet
Most soft drinks contain a high amount of simple sugars. The USDA recommendation of sugar consumption for a 2,000-calorie diet is a daily allotment of 10 teaspoons of added sugars. Many soft drinks contain more than this amount!
That's why too much sugar so unhealthy? Well, to start, let's talk about what happens to you as sugar enters your body. When you drink sodas that are packed with simple sugars, the pancreas is called upon to produce and release insulin, a hormone that empties the sugar in your blood stream into all the tissues and cells for usage. The result of overindulging in simple sugar is raised insulin levels. Raised blood insulin levels beyond the norm can lead to depression of the immune system, which in turn weakens your ability to fight disease.
Something else to consider is that most of the excess sugar ends up being stored as fat in your body, which results in weight gain and elevates risk for heart disease and cancer. One study found that when subjects were given refined sugar, their white blood cell count decreased significantly for several hours afterwards. Another study discovered that rats fed a high-sugar diet had a substantially elevated rate of breast cancer when compared to rats on a regular diet.
The health effects of diet soda
You may come to the conclusion that diet or sugar-free soda is a better choice. However, one study discovered that drinking one or more soft drinks a day — and it didn’t matter whether it was diet or regular — led to a 30% greater chance of weight gain around the belly.
Diet soda is filled with artificial sweeteners such as aspartame, sucralose, or saccharin. These artificial sweeteners pose a threat to your health. Saccharin, for instance, has been found to be carcinogenic, and studies have found that it produced bladder cancer in rats.
Aspartame, commonly known as nutrasweet, is a chemical that stimulates the brain to think the food is sweet. It breaks down into acpartic acid, phenylalanine, and methanol at a temperature of 86 degrees. (Remember, your stomach is somewhere around 98 degrees.) An article put out by the University of Texas found that aspartame has been linked to obesity. The process of stimulating the brain causes more cravings for sweets and leads to carbohydrate loading.
Carbonation depletes calcium
Beverages with bubbles contain phosphoric acid, which can severely deplete the blood calcium levels; calcium is a key component of the bone matrix. With less concentration of calcium over a long time, it can lower deposition rates so that bone mass and density suffer. This means that drinking sodas and carbonated water increases your risk of osteoporosis.
Add in the caffeine usually present in soft drinks, and you are in for even more trouble. Caffeine can deplete the body’s calcium, in addition to stimulating your central nervous system and contributing to stress, a racing mind, and insomnia.
Skip the soda and go for:
• Fresh water
Water is a vital beverage for good health. Each and every cell needs water to perform its essential functions. Since studies show that tap water is filled with contaminants, antibiotics, and a number of other unhealthy substances, consider investing in a quality carbon-based filter for your tap water.
On the go? Try using a stainless steel thermos or glass bottle, filled with filtered water. Enhance the flavor of your water with a refreshing infusion of basil, mint leaves, and a drop of honey.
• Fruit Juice
If you are a juice drinker, try watering down your juice to cut back on the sugar content. Buy a jar of organic 100% juice, especially cranberry, acai, pomegranate, and then dilute three parts filtered water to one part juice. You will get a subtle sweet taste and the benefit of antioxidants. After a couple of weeks, you will no longer miss the sweetness of sugary concentrated juices.
• Tea
Tea gently lifts your energy and has numerous health benefits. Black, green, white, and oolong teas all contain antioxidant polyphenols. In fact, tea ranks as high or higher than many fruits and vegetables on the ORAC scale, the score that measures antioxidant potential of plant-based foods.
Herbal tea does not have the same antioxidant properties, though it is still a great beverage choice with other health benefits, such as inducing calming and relaxing effects.
If tea doesn’t satisfy your sweet tooth, try adding cinnamon or a little honey, which has important health benefits that refined sugar lacks. For a selection of healthy teas that promote total body wellness. Drink up! I hope you find the ways and means to avoid soft drinks.
Iced tea ups kidney stones risk
Washington, July 23: Binging on iced tea may raise the risk of developing painful kidney stones, say experts.Dr. John Milner, a urology expert at Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine, has revealed that iced tea contains high concentrations of oxalate, a chemical that leads to the formation of kidney stones.
"For many people, iced tea is potentially one of the worst things they can drink. For people who have a tendency to form kidney stones, it's definitely one of the worst things you can drink," he says.
He highlights the fact that the most common cause of kidney stones is the failure to drink enough fluids.
According to him, people are generally more dehydrated during the summer due to sweating, and increasing ice tea consumption in such a situation may raise the risk of kidney stones, especially in people who are prone to develop them.
"People are told that in the summertime they should drink more fluids. A lot of people choose to drink more iced tea, thinking it's a tastier alternative. However, in terms of kidney stones, they’re getting it going and coming. They're actually doing themselves a disservice," he says.
Dr. Milner insists that there is not better alternative than water to quench thirst, and to properly hydrate.
He suggests that people try flavouring water with lemon slices because lemonade helps ward off kidney stones.
"Lemons are very high in citrates, which inhibit the growth of kidney stones. Lemonade, not the powdered variety that uses artificial flavoring, actually slows the development of kidney stones for those who are prone to the development of kidney stones," he says.
Dr. Milner also recommended people concerned about developing kidney stones to cut back on eating foods that also contain high concentrations of oxalates—such as spinach, chocolate, rhubarb and nuts.
He says that such people should easy up on salt, eat meat sparingly, and drink several glasses of water a day.
Water: The Drink for Long Life
Water is vital for good health and a long life. Although you can live for days without food, your survival depends on drinking water. Each and every cell needs water to perform its essential functions. Read on to learn how water factors into your health and longevity plans.
Benefits of a good "drinking habit"
• Stay hydrated. On these hot summer days, your body needs to replenish itself with water more than ever. When you become dehydrated, you don't have enough water in your body to carry out normal functions. Even mild dehydration can drain your energy and give you a feeling of fatigue.
• Regulate body temperature. For work-out fans, drinking water reduces cardiovascular stress and improves performance. And water reduces body temperature, making the exercise process safer and more effective.
• Skin health. Water hydrates and irrigates impurities from the skin, keeping it healthy and glowing.
• Nutrient absorption. Water transports essential nutrients, minerals, vitamins, proteins and sugars for assimilation.
• Aids in weight loss. If you haven't been drinking enough water, your body has developed a pattern of storing water-which equals extra unwanted pounds. Drink more water to teach your body that it no longer needs to store water. Water is also a natural appetite suppressant.
• Flushes wastes and toxins. Water helps us flush our system of the chemicals and toxins that we encounter every day in our modern world: car exhaust, dyed clothing, synthetic, formaldehyde-packed carpets - when you add up the toxins, it becomes dizzying! Your body will process and eliminate some of these hordes of chemicals that enter it. The rest are stored in the liver, lungs, kidneys, fat cells, intestines, blood stream, and skin. Without enough fluids to flush out your system, these accumulated toxins in your body will slow down your organ function, causing premature aging and resulting in chronic illness.
You should be drinking at least 60 ounces of water - about 8 glasses - a day.
To develop a good water-drinking habit, get two large, rigid thermos bottles with a 20-ounce capacity and fill them with water. Take one along with you during the day to drink at work, and drink the other one at home.
Water: You Are What You Drink
Everything that goes down the drain from our lawns, our agricultural fields, or anywhere else in our environment inevitably ends up in our drinking water. The president of the Environmental Working Group, Ken Cook, states that "approximately 45 million Americans in thousands of communities drink water that is polluted with fecal matter, parasites, disease-causing microbes, and pesticides at levels that violate Safe Drinking Water Act standards."
And a recent report showed that pharmaceutical drugs are showing up in tap water across the nation. People taking pharmaceutical drugs pass them through their bodies and into the sewage plants, which remove the usual pollutants - but not drug chemicals from waster water, and some ends up in your drinking water. Even a small amount of drug chemicals and pollutants taken in by your body continuously over a long period of time can trigger genetic changes, cause allergies, or even lead to cancer.
Of the many filtration processes that remove contaminants, the kinds that use activated charcoal is recognized by the EPA as the best available technology for filtering out volatile organic compound (VOCs) and other dangerous chemicals. The most convenient and affordable way to have safe, healthy water for you and your family is to use an in-home water filtration system.
Health in a Bottle?
Bottled water has gained tremendous popularity, as word about the hazards of tap water is getting out. However, many bottled waters were found to be simply processed water using distillation, reverse osmosis, de-ionization or filtration. So, is bottled water safer than tap water? Tests have discovered that some bottled waters contained more chlorine by-products than surface and ground waters. And the pesticides, herbicides, and pharmaceuticals that are found in household tap water are appearing in bottled water with alarming frequency.
The Natural Resources Defense Council report on the subject concluded that, "there is no assurance that bottled water is any safer than tap water." Throw into that mix that plastic containers contain polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), which leach into your water. Skip the plastic bottles for storing. Instead store in glass bottles, and for water-on-the-go, get a reusable thermos.
WATER FOR LIFE
You think you know everything about water? Think again, because there might be things you don’t know yet. This list will provide you a number of facts about water:
• Water is what’s lost to a person’s weight after an intense work out and not fat, which most people think of.
• About 70-75 percent of the Earth is water. (Now, that’s a common fact.)
• Caffeine-concentrated drinks like coffee and soft drinks might be almost made of water but the caffeine, is a diuretic, can stop water from going through some vital parts of the human body.
• Water can ease headaches.
• A person can’t survive without water for a week.
• Water is the best drinkable anti aging product because it effectively flushes out the wastes from the body and moisturizes the skin.
• If you want to regulate your appetite, just drink ample amount of water.
• Too much of everything is bad and with water, it’s called water intoxication, which can probably occur on intense work outs.
Is Water Good or Bad for Dry Skin?
Question: Is Water Good or Bad for Dry Skin?
You would think that putting water on the skin would moisturize it more, but the opposite is true. Plain water that comes in contact with skin evaporates and takes with it many of the skin's natural oils called natural moisturizing factor (NMF). The more frequently that skin comes into contact with water, the drier it gets -- unless those natural oils are replaced. Since you have to use water for bathing, how do you do so without drying out the skin?
Answer:
The following are some guidelines to follow when it comes to water and dry skin:
Water temperature should be tepid -- hot water takes more oils away than cool water.
The length of water contact should be short -- no long, hot showers if your skin is dry.
Unless you have mud and grime on you, you really don't have to use soap everywhere on your body. It's OK to just use soap in "pits and parts" -- in areas where you sweat, like armpits and the genital area (private parts).
If you need soap, use one of the recommended soaps for dry skin that contain emollients and actually replace the skin's natural oils.
Using antibacterial gels for hand-washing does not cause the skin to dry out because the alcohol does not bind to the skin's oils.
When drying off, pat the skin dry with a towel until the skin is not dripping - do not rub the skin vigorously.
Use a good moisturizer on the skin immediately after any contact with water.
Health Tip: Keep Your Lungs Healthy
(HealthDay News) -- Your lungs may take a lot of abuse from the air that you breathe and an unhealthy lifestyle.
The American Lung Association offers these suggestions to help improve lung health:
1. Avoid cigarette smoking and exposure to secondhand smoke.
2. Limit exposure to pollutants in the air, including chemicals and smoke.
3. Minimize your risk of getting respiratory infections.
4. Keep hands clean and get vaccinated to protect against illnesses such as flu and pneumonia.
5. Have regular medical checkups to help spot lung problems early.
