Cola Drinks : Are They Really Safe?

You see them everywhere. They are in the supermarkets, at the stores, and in practically all parts of the world. They come in fancy, and attractive containers.Their manufacturers want consumers to believe that these cola drinks quench thirsts and are safe to drink.

For sometime now, majority of us believe these lies.

But are they really safe?

Read this.

Cola drinking remained a risk factor even when the researchers compared only women matched for age, weight, alcohol use, previous trouble with high blood pressure, use of birth control pills, physical activity, smoking, and use of other classes of beverages.

Compared with women who drank less than a can of regular cola a day:

Women who drank one can of cola a day increased their high blood pressure risk by 9% in the first Nurses Health Study and by 13% in the second Nurses Health Study.

Women who drank two to three cans of cola a day had an 11% higher risk in the first study and a 24% higher risk in the second study.

Women who drank four or more cans of cola a day had a 44% higher risk in the first study and a 28% higher risk in the second study.

Compared with women who drank less than a can of diet cola a day:

Women who drank one can of diet cola a day increased their high blood pressure risk by 7% in the first Nurses Health Study and by 5% in the second Nurses Health Study.

Women who drank two to three cans of diet cola a day had a 6% higher risk in the first study and a 9% higher risk in the second study.

Women who drank four or more cans of cola a day had a 16% higher risk in the first study and a 19% higher risk in the second study.

Identifying the Culprit

What's going on? There are ingredients in cola drinks -- corn syrup in sugared colas and caramel coloring in both sugared and diet colas -- that might cause high blood pressure. This is far from proven, Winkelmayer hastens to point out.

"Clearly, at this point, we need to be very careful and require further research to confirm this finding," he says. "If cola drinking is, in fact, a cause of high blood pressure, it would be important to identify the biological mechanism that makes this happen. We need to understand what it is that creates this link. This agent needs to be identified."

Even so, the link between cola and high blood pressure worries Richard Milani, MD, head of preventive cardiology at the Ochsner Clinic Foundation in New Orleans.

"The unexpected and rather alarming finding of this study is this very strong and increasing risk of high blood pressure as women drink more and more cola," Milani tells WebMD. "That is very, very concerning, because of the even larger amount of cola

consumption in U.S. children. We don't see 10-year-olds drinking coffee, but we do see 6-year-olds drinking their weight in cola. This is an alarming finding."

See http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/516356