What Actually Happens When You Replace All Your Water With Coke

Kind: captions Language: en You love it, you crave it, and you can't get enough of it. Coke is your go-to drink, and you've decided to make it the only liquid you put into your body. What could go wrong? To start with, the sugary drink is tricking you into wanting more. You'll never actually be able to quench your thirst, and with each can of soda, you are killing yourself quicker than you think. In the days to come, your teeth will rot, you'll gain weight, and at least one of your vital organs will fail. Before we get started, let's blow your mind with some statistics. In 2018, the average American consumed 38.87 gallons of soda throughout the year. This is actually lower than previous years. For example, in 2010, the average annual consumption of soda was 45 1/2 gallons per person in the United States. This is a massive amount of soda to be drinking annually. And it comes with all kinds of consequences. Although, if we look at the average amount of soda consumed worldwide in 2018, the United States is not in the number one spot. Argentinians drink about a quarter of a gallon more soda a year than Americans do. In fact, the Americas themselves hold the top five spots for most soda drank each year, with Argentina being first, the United States second, Chile third at 37 gallons per year, Mexico fourth at 36 and Uruguay fifth at about 30 gallons of soda per year. Belgium, Germany, and Norway come next around 26 gallons per person per year, followed by Saudi Arabia at approximately 23 1/2 gallons per year. Now, if you're drinking soda every day, these numbers do not apply to you. If we assume that instead of drinking your recommended eight glasses of water daily, you drink eight cups of Coke daily, you will consume 182 1/2 gallons of Coke during the year, this is somewhere between four and five bathtubs full of Coke. Just thinking about that should make you feel a little queasy, but let's just say you go for it anyway. That first day you switch to your Coke only lifestyle, you feel okay. Soda for breakfast seems a little odd at first, but as the sugar hits your tongue and pleasure signals are sent to your brain, you quickly forget about that no soda for breakfast tamboo. The sugar in a drink is tricking your brain to wanting more. But it's not just soda you want more of. You want more of everything. This is because the sugar your body is taking in is increasing your appetite. In the days to come, this will lead to many more problems as your body tries to adjust to only drinking Coke. As the first day of drinking Coke comes to an end, you're likely going to be pretty tired. Whenever you need a quick pickme up, you just opened another can of Coke. But now that it's bedtime, you decide it's best to stop drinking and try to get some rest. At first, you're a little jittery as the levels of caffeine and sugar in your body are still pretty high. It'll take several hours for your body to metabolize and use up those chemicals, which means you could be staring at the ceiling wanting to sleep for several hours. But at some point, you will crash hard. You pass out and sleep through the night. When you wake up the next morning, you're a little achy. You're dehydrated as the high amount of sodium and high fructose corn syrup in the Coke causes your body to use up much of its resources to metabolize and digest the sugary liquids from the day before. You go to the sink for a glass of water, but then you remember that you've given up on the clear thirst quencher and instead head to the fridge for another bottle of Coke. The top comes off with a satisfying release of CO2 and you're officially on day two of your Coke only lifestyle. Everything seems pretty normal for the first few days, except for the ups and downs associated with sugar highs. But as the week progresses, you'll notice some changes to your body, none of which are very pleasant. Every time you take a bite of food or a sip of soda, your teeth ache. It's like you've developed cavities overnight. This is actually not too far from the truth. After days of only drinking soda, the enamel on your teeth starts to break down. As you drink your Coke, the sugar that lingers in your mouth is used by bacteria to carry out life functions. One of those byproducts of these processes is an acid that causes your teeth to decay. As your teeth are damaged, cavities, which are holes in your teeth, start to develop. These can eventually become so painful that you'll need to seek the help of a dentist. The crazy part is that the more soda you drink, the worse the tooth decay is going to get. Not to mention that once you have a cavity, every time soda enters your mouth, some of the liquid will get inside those holes in your teeth and cause searing pain. All of this is exacerbated by the fact that the bacteria destroying your teeth thrive inside your cavities. They also now have a surplus of food because every time you take a swig of coke, you're providing them with the sugars they need to multiply. It's a vicious cycle that can only end with you losing a few teeth. But you decide to put up with the mouth pain and continue chugging that Coca-Cola. Unfortunately, you're about to start noticing some physical changes to your body that you might not like very much. Every week that you drink Coke instead of water, you're consuming around 5,000 more calories than you normally would. This is like adding two extra days of meals to your weekly caloric intake. What this means is that your body's going to start to become larger. And this is not because you're gaining muscle from picking up and putting down those soda cans all day. The weight you're gaining is mostly stored fat. As you plan your meals for the day, it's unlikely you're taking into consideration how many extra calories you're consuming from soda. This means that you do not adjust what you eat and therefore you're consuming hundreds of more calories than you would have on a normal diet. The high fructose corn syrup and soda also doesn't stimulate the production of insulin and leptin the same way other sugars do. What this means is that you do not feel full as quickly as you should. This results in overeating resulting in weight gain. As you continue your week, you try to mitigate your caloric intake by not snacking as much. But when you go for that sugary drink, your body doesn't register all of the calories in it the same way it would if you were eating a protein bar or a healthy snack. So even after a large glass of Coke, your body still thinks it needs more calories. On top of this, as your body gets used to the high amount of sugar and coke, it craves more. Sugars are vitally important to the energy production process in your cells. The brain knows this, which is why it's programmed to make you want more and more sugar. Unfortunately, the sugars in Coke do not satisfy this craving and you end up finding yourself having that snack anyway. The really unfortunate part is that if you are female, there are no fewer than 88 different studies that show weight gain caused by sugary drinks is more prevalent in women than men. The body typically stores excess calories and sugars as fat, which builds up further each day that you're continuously drinking Coke. But women aren't the only subgroup that seems to be negatively impacted by drinking too much soda. Children who drink soda every day increase their odds of becoming obese by 60%. This is too big of a number to be a coincidence. By drinking soda all the time, there's no doubt that your body will gain weight, which could also lead to you becoming obese. And with obesity comes all sorts of other problems that you'll discover in the weeks to come. There are definitely other factors that play a role in someone becoming obese other than just drinking soda. However, in a huge study of more than 33,000 people, researchers found that people who have a genetic predisposition for obesity had a much higher rate of actually becoming obese if they drank soda. However, people with the same predisposition who did not drink soda were actually less likely to become obese. Why is this important? It shows even if you have a family history of obesity, staying away from Coke and other sugary drinks might help you maintain a healthy weight. if you also maintain an active lifestyle and eat right. Drinking large amounts of soda on the other hand could worsen the underlying condition and amplify it to deadly levels. So, after a few weeks of only drinking Coke, your teeth hurt and you are gaining weight. Soon, your clothes won't fit and you'll need to go shopping. But this is the least of your worries. Things are about to get much more serious. As you continuously put high amounts of sugars into your body via your daily bottles of Coke, your pancreas and liver have to work overtime to metabolize it all. This can lead to a lifealtering disease. Diabetes. Oversaturating your bodies with sugar from soda can lead to insulin resistance of your cells or damage your pancreas that keeps it from producing enough insulin. Either way, your body is starting to fall apart from within. Just by drinking one or two cans of soda a day, your chances of developing type 2 diabetes increase by around 26%. And since all you're drinking is Coke, it's pretty much inevitable that you will develop the disease after a few weeks to a few months. This happens because as the sugar and coke circulates through your body, too much of it is left in the bloodstream due to the fact that your pancreas just cannot keep up. But a side effect of this excess sugar is that it can eventually lead to your cells resisting the signals to take in the substance and produce energy. This is one way that type 2 diabetes develops. There can be no denying that you're rolling the dice with your body with each extra drink of Coke. At some point, you'll probably lose and be confronted with diabetes. Your pancreas is not the only vital organ that takes a beating from your Coke only drinking habits. After months of consuming Coke, your liver could be in dire straits. Coke and other sugars contain a lot of a type of sugar called fructose. Fructose is not broken down in the body the same way other sugars like glucose are. Instead, fructose is processed almost exclusively in the liver. The problem is that when there is too much fructose in your body, the excess is stored as fat in your liver. This buildup of liver fat can cause all sorts of problems inside you. As you consume more and more soda and more and more fat accumulates on your liver, you could develop non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. This can lead to the inflammation of your liver, which in extreme circumstances can cause scarring of the tissue and liver failure. It probably goes without saying that if your liver fails due to damage caused by drinking too much soda, you die. But even if you have a milder case of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, all kinds of problems can still arise. You might start feeling fatigued due to a slowing down of your metabolism. There also might be some pain or discomfort in your abdomen as your body tries to signal to the brain that there is something very wrong going on. This can also lead to abdominal swelling, enlarged palms, even jaundice which is a yellowing of the skin. This change in skin color is a good indication that the liver is not working properly as one of its functions is to filter out a chemical called Billy Rubin that accumulates when blood cells die. This is a natural process and a healthy liver that hasn't been sabotaged by its owner drinking excessive amounts of soda can easily filter out the Billy Rubin. However, if the liver has a buildup of fat around it, this process is hindered. Drinking Coke every day will also increase your chances of developing a painful disease called gout. Gout is a form of arthritis that can result in sudden and severe pain in your joints. One minute you could be sipping your eighth can of Coke for the day and the next you could be on the ground writhing in agony as your joints feel like they have fire ants crawling within them. Gout occurs when crystals form from a buildup of uric acid in your joints. These urate crystals are what causes the excruciating pain associated with gout. The fructose and soda causes your body to produce uric acid to help break down the complex sugar. As a result, more and more urate crystals can accumulate in your joints. The more Coke you drink, the more uric acid your body needs to produce. Every time you take a sip, your body is that much closer to developing gout. In a 22-year long study, researchers found that people who consume just one can of sugary drinks a day were 75% more likely to develop gout in the future. So, it's not really a matter of if, but when you'll have to worry about joint pains from gout if you only drink Coke. Just remember that the more times your body has to dump uric acid into your system to help with the digestion of fructose, the more likely you are to develop pain in your joints as a result of urate crystals being formed. So at this point, some of your main organs are beginning to malfunction or shut down. As the first few months of only drinking soda comes to an end, you're likely overweight and your skin might be discolored. It's not a pretty sight to look at. However, the worst is yet to come. One study found that drinking just one can of soda a day can increase your risk of having a heart attack by 20%. You're likely consuming around eight cans a day since this is your only source of water other than what's in the food you eat. Why do your drinking habits coincide with an increased risk of having a heart attack? When you started gaining weight, your heart needed to work harder to circulate blood and nutrients around your body. Like with any muscle, the more you use your heart, and the harder it has to work, the more tired it gets. After months of working overtime just to keep up with all the sugar input from the soda you drink, your heart begins to become strained. The extra weight you've gained definitely doesn't help matters either. There's a correlation between drinking lots of Coke and what types of food you're putting into your body. Coke and a healthy salad normally don't go together. So, more likely than not, the meals you're eating while drinking Coke probably contains some fatty or processed ingredients. This further aggravates the problems for your heart as your cholesterol levels are likely increasing as well. The sugar in soda also causes an increase in blood pressure. All of these factors combined are really bad news for your heart. The high amount of fructose and soda might not only cause inflammation of the liver, but could cause your arteries and veins to swell as well. If fat begins to build up along the pathways that your blood flows through, your heart will need to work even harder than it already is to make sure that nutrients reach your brain and other vital organs. The Coke you're drinking every day is causing your body to swell up, increasing the likelihood of a future heart attack. And once you have that heart attack, it's highly likely that the doctor who saves your life will tell you to stop drinking soda. Your coke only lifestyle will be over. On the plus side, following your doctor's advice will probably save your life. Now, as you lay in the hospital bed recovering from a heart attack, your bones start to ache. You've been dealing with gout, but this is different. You feel like a young person in a 90-year-old body, and it's because of your Coke intake that your bones are literally falling apart. That Coke you've been sipping on over the last several months contains a large amount of phosphate. If you consume more phosphate than calcium can cause your bones to deteriorate. Since Coke contains approximately 0 mg of calcium per bottle and around 37 milligs of phosphorus, your ratio to maintain healthy bones is off by a lot. You could supplement your calcium intake by drinking more milk or other calcium richch drinks. But since you decided Coke was the only beverage for you, this isn't an option. You could try eating foods high in calcium like cheese, soybeans, and salmon, but it probably won't be enough since you'll be washing it all down with a glass of Coke. The effects of soda on a developing body can be especially detrimental as having strong bones is vital for the growth process. It's the shifting of the calcium and phosphorus ratio within your body that results in a decrease in bone density. Regardless of who you are or your age, it is not a good thing. On top of this, you now weigh much more, which is putting even further strain on your bones. You're only a Coke or two away from collapsing. Which brings us to the scariest part of only drinking Coke. It lowers your life expectancy. It might seem astonishing, but the Coke you've been drinking for years now is changing your DNA. At the end of each of your chromosomes is a section of genetic code called telomeirs. Telomeirs play a role in maintaining the integrity of your DNA every time your cells divide, which is happening all the time. The division of cells is what allows you to grow, heal, and replace dead or damaged cells. Every time a cell divides, some of the telomeir section in the chromosome is lost. Eventually, there are no telomeirs left. When this happens, the DNA degrades and the cell dies. This is what causes aging. As you get older, your telomeres get shorter and shorter until your cells start to deteriorate due to the ends of each chromosome no longer having any protection during cell division. If your cells can't divide, you can't replace damaged or lost cells, which eventually leads to death by old age. The most insane part is that drinking large quantities of soda every day might actually shorten your telomeirs by about the same amount as someone who smokes cigarettes every day. What this means is that the coke you've been drinking is shortening your life expectancy by years or even decades. The exact mechanism that causes soda to erode your cells telomeres is not exactly known yet, but recent studies on telmir length in white blood cells have produced interesting results that connect the two. Scientists from the University of California, San Francisco, have found that daily consumption of a 20 ounce soda was equivalent to an average of 4.6 years of telmir shortening. However, the shortening of your life due to only drinking Coke is not just because of the damage it's doing to your cells. Studies suggest that drinking one to two glasses of soda per day can increase your chances of early death by 14%. If you drink two or more glasses per day, your chances of dying early increases to 21%. These are some really scary statistics because the cause of death is not defined. Your chances of dying from many types of diseases actually increases as the result of consuming a lot of soda or sugary drinks. The most common cause of death from soda is from cardiovascular diseases such as coronary heart disease or stroke. People who drink two or more servings of soda per day are 31% more likely to die from cardiovascular disease. There's also some evidence to suggest that consuming soda might increase your risk of certain cancers as well. All of these statistics are not pleasant to think about, which probably indicates that you should quit drinking large quantities of soda as soon as possible and supplement it with some water. But there is some good news. If all you drank was soda for days, weeks, or months, and you haven't succumbed to any of those terrible side effects you mentioned so far, you might be able to reverse any damage that's already been done to your body. Now, everyone's different, which means that drinking only Coke will affect people in different ways. Take the case of one woman from Monaco. She only drank Coke for 16 years before being hospitalized. This is probably much longer than