By Dr. Maoshing Ni

Soda, pop, cola, soft drink — whatever you call it, it is one of the worst beverages that you could be drinking for your health. As the debate for whether to put a tax on the sale of soft drinks continues, you should know how they affect your body so that you can make an informed choice on your own.

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!

Just why is 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. To find out more about a high-performance filtration system, click here.

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, click here. Drink up!

I hope you find the ways and means to avoid soft drinks. I invite you to visit often and share your own personal health and longevity tips with me.

May you live long, live strong, and live happy!

–Dr. Mao

- – - – - – - – - -

Transform your health and bring quality to your years with Dr. Mao’s natural health products from the Tao of Wellness.

Discover a high-quality water filtration system that will provide you with pure, healthy water.

Order Dr. Mao’s new book Second Spring: Hundreds of Natural Secrets for Women to Revitalize and Regenerate at Any Age.

Learn hundreds of ways for living a long and happy life with Dr. Mao’s book Secrets of Longevity.

Find out amazing ways you can naturally increase your energy and heal common ailments in Secrets of Self-Healing, Dr. Mao’s landmark book on natural healing.

• Grapefruit - Far More Than a Fad! Grapefruit season is peaking - just in time for new year's resolutions and new-found determination to finally lose those pounds! The following article by About.com's Mary Shomon reveals the juicy details about this amazing fruit: The Grapefruit Diet is Alive and Well! By Mary Shomon Photo courtesy of Andrey Volodov......
• Feed Your Skin, and Water it Too! (boloji.com) by Vasu Nargundkar Natural creams and lotions are great for your skin, but if you want your skin to look good day after day and year after year, you have to work on it from the inside out. Ayurveda - the 5,000-year-old system of holistic healing from India -......
• Anti-Aging Superfoods By Mary Kearl  (AOL Health) Sunflower Seeds What They Do: Stave off grays Your genes determine how old you'll be when you first start to go gray, but it often begins in your 20s, though some won't see a gray hair until their 40s, according to the American Academy of......
• Foods that can suppress your appetite! From AOL Health Apples An apple a day keeps cravings at bay. High-fiber foods like apples generally require more chewing time, giving your body extra time to register the fact that you're no longer hungry.  Therefore, you're less likely to overeat. One study in Brazil found that women who ate......
• Top Health Food Shockers From AOLHealth Food Dye You may want to think twice before eating your favorite strawberry yogurt from now on. According to the FDA, the red food coloring -- called cochineal extract -- found in popsicles, candy, strawberry yogurt, fruit drinks and even artificial crabmeat is made from the dried, ground......

• a cautionary tale about organic and natural things One day last week I learned a valuable lesson: just because something is "natural" or "organic" does not mean it is good for you. To the contrary, it can be dangerous in the extreme. A little background: for a long time, I had high blood pressure. I was on......
• 5 Great Tips To Help You Deal With Gout And Lose Weight Hello, here is an article that I thought might be of interest to all of you who are suffering from gout or all of you who have a loved one who is affected. Read it and give some feedback on how it has helped you, or if you need more......
• Health Benefits of Green Tea Following on from a article the other day about Enviga, which contains green tea extract, I came across a headline in my RSS feed reader, about a website which has been recently launched around the health benefits of green tea, so I decided to write a post about the site,......
• Drink More Agua I seriously mean it. Drink MORE water. It helps clean your system out. I tend to drink at least a gallon of water a day. Maybe more, I get really thirsty after intense workouts. I also get extremely hungry after an intense workout, but I will cover that some other......
• Buffets Not Good for Weight Loss As I previously mentioned I am back to paying attention to my diet and exercise program... But as I also mentioned I am still on vacation. For Easter my family went to La Quinta Spa and Resort Easter brunch... All you can eat deliciousness. I had BBQ short ribs, bacon,......