Swapping out SODA for WATER can help you lose 14 pounds a year

Cutting back on soda intake and replacing them with water may lead to significant weight loss within a year, a recent Consumer Reports study revealed.

According to the report, drinking 20 ounces of water in place of the same amount of soda may help a person ward off as much as 119 cups of refined sugar within a year. This, in turn, prevents the body from absorbing 52 extra pounds of refined sugar over the same period. The report also showed that swapping out soda with water may lead to a total weight loss of 14 pounds within one year.

The report also revealed that consuming less-sugary beverages — such as milk, orange juice, and energy drinks — instead of soda may result in a significant weight loss between three to more than nine pounds. This also reduces refined sugar consumption between 47 to 97 cups per year.

Researchers said adopting these changes could make a difference in today’s worsening obesity epidemic. According to the experts, an average American consumes between 150 calories from soda each day, which was a big part of the 300 extra calories that the general population has apparently added to their daily diets over the years.

“Take away one can of soda, which would be about 150 calories, and you’re halfway there to offsetting that,” Philadelphia Health Commissioner Dr. Thomas Farley said in a Daily Mail article.

The experts also noted that young people are more likely to benefit from this method, as doing so would readily stem childhood obesity that usually persists in adulthood.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), frequent consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages may result in a plethora of adverse health conditions including diabetes, heart disease, kidney diseases, and tooth decay as well as gout, cavities, and non-alcoholic liver disease.

Replacing soda with water may facilitate weight loss, studies show

Previous studies have already established that replacing soda with water may significantly improve body weight.

Just last year, a study carried out by Virginia Tech and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill revealed that replacing one eight-ounce sugary drink with the same amount of water may help reduce calorie intake in adults aged 19 years and older. (Related: Water before meals helps with weight loss, say researchers.)

The experts also noted that adopting the one-for-one drink swap method helped improve the participants’ scores on the Healthy Beverage Index. “Regardless of how many servings of sugar-sweetened beverages you consume, replacing even just one serving can be of benefit …We found that among U.S. adults who consume one serving of sugar-sweetened beverages per day, replacing that drink with water lowered the percent of calories coming from drinks from 17 to 11 percent. Even those who consumed more sugary drinks per day could still benefit from water replacement,” researcher  Kiyah J. Duffey told Science Daily online.

In another study, researchers at The University of Nottingham and Tehran University of Medical Sciences found that replacing diet soda with water helped improve body weight and insulin sensitivity in obese women with type-2 diabetes.

“Our results are very interesting. They show that the women drinking water after their main meal at lunch time over 24 weeks lost on average 1.16kg more than the women who drank diet drinks after their meal. We think that by drinking water instead of sweet-tasting diet drinks, the women may be adhering better to the weight loss diet because artificial sweeteners may increase desire for sweetened and more energy dense foods,” researcher Dr. Hamid Farshchi said in a university release.

Sources include: 

DailyMail.co.uk

ScienceDaily.com

Nottingham.ac.uk

Global LEAD pollution only appeared on our planet following the industrial revolution: It’s definitely caused by human activity

While the mainstream media and the global elites sensationalize climate change and the impending doom caused by mankind’s “carbon footprint,” there are more serious pollution threats actually impacting human health. The element we should be more concerned about is lead.

It’s ignorant to think that an intergovernmental elite should confiscate the wealth of Nations to control levels of atmospheric gases such as carbon (which is a really a miracle molecule that makes up the basis of most all living things.)

Why aren’t we instead working together to rid the world of pollutants that take a physical and mental toll on our health? Lead contamination of soil, air and water is a serious problem, and its toxic pervasiveness today has been caused by human activity since the industrial age. Human activity such as mining and smelting have brought lead forward, into the soil, water, and air.

According to the World Health Organization, there is no safe level of lead exposure; lead exposure damages the kidneys, liver, bones, and brain. Scientists once believed that lead naturally occurred in the air, caused by earthly processes such as volcanic eruptions. However, scientists from Harvard University now provide geological evidence showing a time period in Earth’s history where lead was not present in the air. Lead has slowly become a problem since the beginning of the industrial age, when human activity began bringing this heavy metal to the forefront.

The human activity and pollutant that we should be concerned about

Author of the study, Alex More, climate scientist at Harvard University, told the Guardian, “We have basically been poisoning ourselves for about 2,000 years.” To make the determination, the researchers extracted an ice column from a glacier in the Swiss Alps and analyzed 43 meters of the ice core. The column of ice they studied began to form during a time period over 2,000 years ago, between 1349 and 1353 during the Black Death era. Bubbles of gas within the ice allow the scientists to analyze the composition of the air at that time in history. Using mass spectrometry and radiocarbon dating, the researchers were able to analyze the air composition month to month, over 2,000 years ago to present.

Chris Loveluck, an archaeologist from the University of Nottingham, said that lead levels were practically non-existent before human mining and smelting activity in Europe. Due to the ice core’s precise geographic location in the middle of civilization, the researchers were able to determine that the lead contribution came from Europe. Even before the 19th century industrial revolution, lead pollution was correlated with human activity. “We have for the first time a lead reading of what it would look like without humans on this part of the planet,” he told the Guardian.

Comparing the data to other historical mining records, the researchers made a strong correlation between mining and smelting operations in Great Britain with the rise in atmospheric lead. The research paper, published in the journal GeoHealth, concluded that human mining and smelting activities are the reason why there is so much lead pollution on the European continent.

This is the kind of human activity and pollution that humans should be concerned about. Airborne lead and this heavy metal’s increasing presence in municipal water sources is direct threat to human brain function and overall health. Visit CWC labs to keep up with important lead testing results from municipal water samples across the U.S. and view the latest results in NaturalScienceJournal.org.

Sources include:

DailyMail.co.uk

CWCLabs.com

NaturalScienceJournal.org

Dietary myth BUSTED: Eating more salt does NOT make you drink more water… you actually use LESS water as a result

Contrary to popular belief, eating foods with a high salt content do not induce thirst, a landmark study revealed. According to researchers, high salt intake does the exact opposite by retaining more water, which in turn prompts the body to use less of it. To carry out the study, a team of international researchers from the German Aerospace Center, the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine, and the Vanderbilt University pooled data from two groups of 10 male volunteers. The groups were sealed into a mock spaceship and were subjected to two flight simulations. The simulations were designed to resemble flights to the planet Mars. The two groups were given identical diets with varying salt content over a period of several weeks. The first group was examined after 105 days, while the second group was assessed over 205 days.

“A long space voyage conserving every drop of water might be crucial. A connection between salt intake and drinking could affect your calculations – you wouldn’t want an interplanetary traveler to die because he liked an occasional pinch of salt on his food. The real interest in the simulation, however, was that it provided an environment in which every aspect of a person’s nutrition, water consumption and salt intake could be controlled and measured,” the researchers said in an article in GlobalNews.ca.

The study found that higher salt intake resulted in increased salt content in the urine. The researchers also noted an increase in urine volume in participants. However, the increase was not due in part to higher water intake. According to researchers, high salt diet caused the participants to drink less. The study also revealed that salt appeared to trigger a mechanism in the kidneys that promote water retention.

It has been previously believed that charged sodium and chloride ions bind into water molecules and flush them out through urination. However, the study showed that salts were retained in the urine, while the water moved back into the body’s system. (Related: Be on the lookout with the latest scientific findings at Discoveries.news).

Further experiment sheds light on baffling mechanism

The researchers replicated the experiment on mice and inferred that urea — a compound that forms in the liver and muscles to promote nitrogen elimination — might be involved in water retention. According to the research team, the compound accumulated in the animals’ kidneys and countered the water-drawing effects of both sodium and chloride. The kidneys served as a biological barrier that distinguishes osmolytes from water, thus preventing water loss, researchers said.

The study also revealed that this mechanism did not induce thirst, but instead raised the animals’ hunger levels. This effect was reflective of the experiment done in human participants, who reported being hungry throughout the study.

The findings provide new insight on the functions of urea in the body. “It’s not solely a waste product, as has been assumed. Instead, it turns out to be a very important osmolyte — a compound that binds to water and helps transport it. Its function is to keep water in when our bodies get rid of salt. Nature has apparently found a way to conserve water that would otherwise be carried away into the urine by salt,” said study co-author Professor Friedrich Luft in ScienceDaily.com.

The results also give new knowledge on how the human body processes water homeostasis. “We now have to see this process as a concerted activity of the liver, muscle and kidney. While we didn’t directly address blood pressure and other aspects of the cardiovascular system, it’s also clear that their functions are tightly connected to water homeostasis (maintaining a proper amount and balance of water) and energy metabolism,” study co-author Jens Titze added.

The findings were published in The Journal of Clinical Investigation.

Sources: 

ScienceDaily.com

GlobalNews.ca

Healthy and hydrated: How much water should you drink daily?

Most health authorities recommend that we drink eight glasses or 64 ounces of water a day. Others, however, think that we should drink much more. Those who fall in the latter category believe that we need to drink water constantly, even if we’re not thirsty. As with a lot of things, writes Kris Gunnars of AuthorityNutrition.com, how much water you truly need is dependent on a number of factors.

Are you thirsty?

Our bodies will let us know when we need to drink up. The feeling of thirst hits us whenever our total water content dips below a certain level. We drink to alleviate this sensation. This deep-seated thirst instinct ensures that we keep our bodies well-hydrated. Sometimes, however, circumstances demand that we increase our water intake. We lose water when we sweat during exercise or when exposed to hot weather. Health conditions such as vomiting require us to replenish the fluids we lost. Breastfeeding mothers should also consume more water.

Since the human body is a little over 60 percent water, it should come as no surprise that water is essential to our survival. Water is necessary for our organs and systems to continue functioning properly. Among the many jobs water does for us is aiding digestion, regulating body temperature, and normalizing body pressure, reports Heidi Goodman, as seen in Health.Harvard.edu. Water has even been said to temporarily increase our metabolism.

Additionally, if you suffer from constipation or kidney stones then water may be able to help you with those health issues.

Not drinking enough water puts us more at risk of becoming dehydrated. When we’re dehydrated, we feel dizzy and weak. Severe dehydration can make us feel some confusion and fall unconscious. Even mild dehydration can negatively affect us, so one should never ignore our thirst. (Related: Need another reason to drink more water? Check out these amazing health benefits)

How to stay hydrated

Water isn’t the only thing that supports our fluid balance. Other drinks such as caffeinated beverages like coffee and tea contribute to our daily water needs. These drinks are widely considered to be diuretics or substances that increase the production of urine. However, a study published by the National Center for Biotechnology Information states that this might not necessarily be true, since the diuretic effects of coffee and tea are weak. Even most foods are full of water, so eating your three square meals can help maintain your fluid balance.

Going on from the above, having a drink with each meal is a good way to avoid dehydration. There’s no need for you to ingest massive amounts of water all at once. Do this gradually throughout your day.

A dry mouth is one the earliest signs of dehydration, noted Nicole McDermott of Greatist.com. If your mouth is starting to feel a bit parched, grab your water bottle and take a sip.

Another way to gauge how hydrated or dehydrated you are is to take a bathroom break and check the color of your pee. Dark-yellow urine could indicate that you need more water in you.

For most people, your body knows what it wants and when it wants it. If it’s telling you that you’re thirsty, then you need to drink. Once you’re no longer thirsty then you can stop drinking. You will lose more fluids if you’re working out or experiencing high heat so increase your fluid intake.

You can read up on water filters by visiting WaterFilters.news.

Sources:

AuthorityNutrition.com

Health.Harvard.edu

Greatist.com