Every or almost every single article on negative effects of soda mentions the chance of getting obese and various heart problems that come with it. Also high blood pressure.
I am a 26 year old guy without any (diagnosed) health issues, and I have an on/off adiction with Cola, sometimes for weeks and months I drink 2+ liters of it every day and barely any water.
Not only am I not obese, but I have the exact opposite problem, I am very skinny, bellow normal BMI and I struggle to reach the minimum needed calories for normal functioning. I have gastric problems that make it hard for me to eat almost any type of food, so I feel full after just a few chews of anything. I also have low, not high, blood pressure.
So…why am I barely able to meet my needed calories, while others with far less soda manage to get overweight? I looked at a bunch of articles and everyone mentions obesity, teeth and so on, but no one mentions the effects on the stomach, or at least I didn’t find anything.
Have you seen a gastroenterologist? Or even a primary care doc?
When you say digestive issues, do you have sulphur burps? Do you poop with any sort of regularity [every day, every third day, once a week?] Can you time a digestive run by avoiding corn for a couple weeks then eating a huge bowl of it [or as much as you can manage] Do you eat meals or do you graze? Have you kept a food diary to determine exactly how much you actually do eat during a 24 hour period/1 week period?
If your digestion has drastically slowed down recently - have you gotten a colonoscopy? Is your poop the normal diameter or has it shrunk to the diameter of a finger? Do you poop diarrhea, toothpaste, rabbit pellets? [check out the poop scale for types of poop]
See, I was having digestive issues that we thought may have been gall bladder issues, or bile release issues - the ultra sound showed nothing in my gall bladder, so they ran a camera up my ass to discover a stage 3 adenocarcinoma that was 15 cm from my asshole inwards, the total circumference of the lower gut, and through all the layers [but not spread anywhere yet] The narrowing of poop from inch and a half down to a finger was the result of the tumor restricting the expansion of my poop chute which in turn slowed down the ability of my body to process food by moving it down from stomach to small intestine to large intestine to out - hence the inability to eat a full meal, and the sulphur burps [food was fermenting in my stomach] and also vomiting because the stomach wants to empty, and it will - up or down.
I lost about 75 pounds before we got me diagnosed, and then I lost 100 pounds during chemo and radiation because nothing stayed inside long enough to really benefit me [at one point I was drinking around a gallon of sugar water a day and eating around 2000 more calories in solid food, and drinking almost another half gallon of electrolyte solution with no sugar. I still ended up in hospital so dehydrated I was within a day or so of organ shut down.]
Because most people don’t “have gastric problems that make it hard for them to eat almost any type of food”. This means they generally get at least as many calories as they need from food and sugary drinks are then added calories. That potentially leads to obesity and obesity leads to various heart problems. (The exact causal links are complex and constantly revised as research increases our knowledge, but the associations are well established.)
You are underweight because you take in few calories overall. The (inadequate) calories you do take in seem to be mostly added sugar ones, and few that go along with foods of higher nutritional value. By your description of your intake you are likely malnourished, possibly quite significantly so.
The list of potential reasons for your “gastric problems” is long. Yes, get ye to a decent doctor, who will spend some time taking a complete history, look for any meaningful clues on exam, and start the appropriate evaluation ball rolling.
The major issue with too much sugar isn’t obesity, at least not in the short term. The problem with too much sugar is insulin resistance and its relation to metabolic syndrome. Things may be okay now but too much sugar will likely lead to bad health outcomes in the future.
FTR, I had lots of stomach issues and lived with a low level of discomfort for years. After starting on a very low carb/ keto diet, the discomfort is pretty much gone.
To address this directly, your speculation that sugar cola intake is causing you “gastric problems” - once upon a time soda intake was thought to possibly worsen gastroesophageal reflux symptoms but there turns out to little evidence that it does.
I don’t know what is causing your problems, eosinophilic esophagitis, GERD, cancer, who knows … and lots of sugary beverages, along with a lack of actual nutritional food, is a poor health choice in many ways beyond obesity risk (risk is never certainty) … but something else is the cause.
I used to work in a large company that gave us a large health check up financial bonus that we could spend on anything, so I used every single cent to go to various doctors, I did a ct scan, even a colonoscopy, there were some inflamations and microcysts, but it wasn’t obvious from what. I did loads of blood tests for various possible diseases, vitamins and whatnot, but every single thing came out normal, other than anemia caused by malnutrition, which I fixed that with supplements, but it didn’t have any effect on the eating disorder.
I hoped that too much soda could be the reason for all this, because it would be an obvious problem and it would be easy to fix by simply not drinking soda, however it seems it’s not that easy.
I wouldn’t look for any easy fix, because there almost isn’t ever one, but it would be a worthwhile experiment to markedly reduce your sweetened soft drink intake and see if anything changes over the course of a few weeks.
Glad you’ve had some evaluation. First step though is that good history. Volume of testing is less important than wisely chosen testing. No question that your dietary habits are horrible and unhealthy. Certainly it is worth committing to a say three month period of a healthier lifestyle and seeing if you feel somewhat better.
But what you describe is not normal. There is a cause and once identified there may be appropriate treatment. My two cents given what you’ve listed as already done would be wanting to be sure you’ve had a normal endoscopy to cross eosinophilic esophagitis off the list, and then to consider avoidant restrictive food intake disorder - ARFID. But again a full complete history is key.
One thing that crossed my mind, soda does make you lose potassium and probably other minerals and vitamins through urine, so could that also be a reason?
So basically not soda itself causing the issues directly, but it causing the lack of some key vitamins/minerals, which in turn causes various symptoms like a less effective stomach, worse immunse system,…?
There is a popular case of a woman who only drank Cola and kept fainting because she lost all her potassium, but recovered after she stopped drinking soda.
I’ll state again then stop: you are very likely malnourished even if you get adequate calories. What you do not consume each day is likely more of impact to your health than any theoretical losses resulting from the soda. Being unable to alter your intake to a healthier diet must be an unacceptable option. The cause must be identified and dealt with.
When my chemo induced digestive um, er, revolution, er, uprising [?] was happening, I was up to 4000 cal a day. The oncology nutritionist approved my personal medical shake recipe. It is generally made without ice [i had 5FU and oxaliplatin induced allergy to cold. I know it sounds funky, but I could draw a line on my arm with an ice cube and have it turn into a giant hive, then lay a warm cloth over it and the hive would go away. How is that for a silly party trick?]
Medsludge [and it tastes way better than ensure!]
12 oz whole milk greek yogurt [unflavored since I made my own, but flavored out of a grocery store works too]
4 oz whole milk
1.5 - 2 packets carnation instant breakfast [1 vanilla and 1 strawberry comes out tasting like a mcdonalds shake]
2 tbsp flake real oatmeal blenderized into flour - for dietary fiber
1 tbsp ground flax seed meal - for the omegas
Can be blended with frozen fruit or ice
Can be kept in the fridge, and poured into those small 4 oz breakfast juice glasses and sipped gently. Doesn’t need to be poured down your throat all at once.
Keep a cooler of healthy snacks that you can tolerate eating - little tubs of applesauce, rice pudding, freeze slices of bananas [i love banana discs frozen then dipped in dark chocolate that has cinnamon mixed into the chocolate] single serve 100 calorie packs of pretzels, or crackers, even potato chips.