Most doctors including Angelo Cuzalina agree that sugar is not good for the overall health, and it is certainly not good for the teeth. These types of drinks are the major culprit for tooth enamel damage, and a new research suggests that these drinks are also bearing the fault for the tooth caries in children.
The results of the research have been published in the Journal of General Dentistry, by consuming energy or sports drinks for only as little as 5 days consecutively, the teeth are already exposed to a high risk of decay and enamel damage. Moreover, the energy drinks have proved twice as harmful for the teeth as the sports drinks.
Jennifer Bone, who is the spokesperson for the Academy of General Dentistry says that quite often, patients come to her office with oral health symptoms such as tooth sensitivity or tooth decay, and they simply cannot find a reasonable answer for these symptoms.
Certainly the dentists make a thorough review of the patient’s everyday diet or snacking habits, and of course they ask the patients about what type of drinks they do consume. The patients are basically stunned to find out that it is the sports drinks or the energy drinks the ones that cause these symptoms in the first place.
Researchers from the Southern Illinois University School of Dentistry have analyzed many different types of sports drinks and energy drinks. According to the findings, the sports and the energy drinks from different brands contain different amounts of acidity levels.
The researchers even put tooth enamel samples into these drinks in order to notice the damage caused by the fizzy beverages. They allowed these samples to be soaked for about 15 minutes, and then soaked the samples in artificially created saliva.
In as few as five days, the researchers could notice quite some damages to the tooth enamel on the samples. Dentists around the world including the dentists from Mt Pleasant Dental highly recommend that people who consume such sports or energy drinks on a regular basis, should always rinse their mouths with water after drinking.
This way, all those bad sugars which will be later transformed into harmful acids by the bacteria, will be flushed away and the damages can be thus avoided.
Have you ever wondered if a cup of coffee or tea and milk can substitute as one of your recommended eight glasses of water a day?
Most drinks do a good job of hydrating, but the components of some common drinks sharply reduce their hydrating ability.
Which drinks are the best hydrators, and which the worst? Here are the three most hydrating and the four least hydrating drinks.
Drinks That Are Strong Hydrators
Water is the preeminent beverage for correctly hydrating the body.
Herbal Teas (Infusions)
The leaves from plants such as mint, verbena, linden, balm, and so on give a pleasant aroma and flavor to the water in which they are steeped, which makes infusions a satisfying alternative to people who don’t enjoy drinking plain water.
The medicinal properties of the plants do not have a negative effect on the body’s assimilation of the water.
Note: The benefit does not extend to sweetened infusions, or if the tea is made with plants that have diuretic properties, such as dandelion.
Fruit and Vegetable Juices
The water in fruits and vegetables–their juice–is one of the liquids nature has provided for hydrating our bodies. Juice is water bound to a substance. To maintain our harmonic balance with nature and avoid taking in too high a concentration of nutrients and sugars, we should consider juice a secondary resource to be used in moderation.
Drinks that Are Weak Hydrators
Coffee, Tea, and Cocoa
Drinks that have a base of coffee, black tea, or cocoa are quite high in purins, toxins that must be eliminated from the body by urine or sweat in the form of uric acid. Purines need to be diluted in large quantities of liquid to be evacuated without irritation. A good portion of the water consumed with these drinks is used to eliminate the toxins.
Milk is a food, not a drink, and its digestion by adults is frequently incomplete.
Whey, on the other hand, is very easily digested, but its diuretic properties are an impediment to its consumption as a daily beverage.
Soft drinks often have a high caffeine base, a diuretic, which makes a body lose water before it has time to make its way into the intracellular environment. The other problem comes from the high sugar content of most sodas. The body has a hard time properly metabolizing refined sugar. To correct the reaction to this, the body has to surrender water from the extracellular fluid. Because that makes a person thirsty, a vicious circle is created, as the thirst is being maintained by the very beverage that is drink with the intention of getting rid of it.
Alcohol itself has dehydrating properties, removing water from the tissues it contacts and drying them out and increasing the need for water.
Adapted from The Water Prescription, by Christopher Vasey, N.D.
It is possible that adding a large tax on sugary drinks might help the people of the United States to lose weight.
A study that was recently published has determined that it would help American lose weight should the tax was large enough.
However, even then the benefits would primarily be accrued by the middle class and be modest at best.
If the United Stated added a 40% tax to the price of sugary drinks such as sports drinks and sodas that were purchased in a retail store, it would reduce approximately 12 calories from the daily intake of beverages for the average person in the United States. This would translate into a person losing approximately 1 1/4 pounds.
Without doing all of the calculations, it turns out that a 20 % tax wouldn’t work as well as a 40% tax for discouraging the drinking of sugary drinks. Also, should the tax cover more kinds of sugary drinks, the reduction in caloric intake would be somewhat increased which would reduce the options for a substitution of a lower tax.
However, if such a tax could become politically palatable, the benefits from such a tax wouldn’t be advantageous for everybody. The study also determined that increasing the taxes on sugary drinks wouldn’t reduce the weight of the poorest of the wealthiest people in the United States significantly.
The idea of taxing junk food and sugary beverages is gaining some support in some political circles. However, it might be impossible to get public support for such taxes. Recently, a survey was conducted in which people in the United States were ask for their opinion a tax increase directed at sugary drinks.
Over 3,000 people or 51% if the people surveyed either opposed or strongly opposed such tax increases. Only about 1/3 of those surveyed were in favor of a tax increase.
However, there is the deficit to consider and one factor might be how much money the increased taxes might raise. It has been estimated that a tax of 40% on a variety of sugary drinks might gather over $2,500,000,000.
Migraines affect more than 36 million Americans – that’s nearly one out of every ten people! It’s also in the top twenty disabilities that cause people to miss work. The thing is, if they all knew this secret to curing and preventing these chronically severe headaches, that number would see a drastic reduction.
Fruit tea - one word describes it - DELICIOUS and HEALTHY.
Fruit tea comprised of browned shredded quince which has been oven-dried, dry-grilled until brown, and stored ready to steep in boiling water.