Stop drinking soda pop!

A recent study shows a link to a higher risk, like 87% higher risk, of developing pancreatic cancer. Now as a nurse, I know whenever we heard “pancreatic” mentioned in the same sentence as “cancer”, we knew we had a seriously ill patient on our hands. The survival rate is not good for this type of cancer.

For most teenagers this risk doesn’t even phase them because as we all know – teenagers are invincible. The truth is, the problem of soda type soft drinks is much bigger than pancreatic cancer. Soda pop is full of phosphorus which causes an automatic balancing system in your body to restore the balance between phosphorus and calcium. How does it do this? Well, unfortunately, for a LOT of teenagers, actually for all of us who have been drinking soda pop all of our lives, this calcium is leached from our bones. We all know what that means. If you don’t, it means osteoporosis at earlier and earlier ages and for sure and certain if you don’t stop drinking this stuff! A 1996 study published in the Journal of Nutrition by the FDA’s Office of Special Nutritionals noted that a pattern of high phosphorus/low calcium consumption, common in the American diet, is not “conducive to optimizing peak bone mass in young women.” No kidding.

Not all agree – as with any discussion, there are those in the soda pop industry who will tell you that the amount of phosphorus in one can of soda is not enough to cause harm. Maybe true – one can probably not. The problem is and continues to be that most people drink far more than that in just one day. Most sources I checked agreed that the majority of teenagers (and adults) are drinking far more carbonated drinks any day of the week than any other beverage. The point is the high sugar content, or worse than that the aspartame, is contributing not only to early onset of osteoporosis but to early obesity in children.

True story – checking out at the grocery store, I turned to see three really cute little girls. Ages were probably 2, 4 and 6, cute as buttons, happily following alongside their father who had a grocery cart FULL of processed foods consisting of boxed everything. I saw no fresh anything – and yes I did stare. I really wanted to ask him if I could take a picture of his girls and his grocery cart, but I wasn’t in the mood for an argument. What really depressed me then and still continues to haunt me, was each of these LITTLE girls was proudly carrying a very large bottle of their own Mountain Dew! He was much bigger than me, so I decided now wasn’t the time to give him a lecture about how bad, wrong and evil he was. Yeah, I know at least he was WITH his girls and at least HE was doing the grocery shopping.

We won’t even go into the neurological dangers of aspartame at this time, but I have a very strong personal testimonial of how dangerous this one ingredient can be. Drink water!!

Follow this link to see a review of this article published in the medical journal, “Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention”, as well as a short article by one of our favorite healthy-planet websites, Natural News.