Health & Talk
__________________________________ by Dr. Feel Good

Bad to the bone - Too much soda guzzling can take a toll on healthy bones, increasing your risk of fractures — both early and later in life.

If you are like most Americans, you’ve consumed countless colas and other carbonated
beverages since having your last glass of milk. People down bottles, cans, and cups of the fizzy stuff all day long and often drink even more at mealtimes. There was even a marketing effort a few years ago to
promote cola as a breakfast beverage.

Research has suggested that all this soda guzzling can take a toll on healthy bones, contributing to an increased risk of fractures — both early and later in life.

The latest study finds no direct link between soft drink consumption and bone loss. The researchers warn, however, that the findings are not a license to chug the sweet stuff all day long. Although there is no single soda ingredient seeming to contribute to bone loss, problems still can happen if these
beverages replace healthier ones.

Lead researcher Robert P. Heaney, MD, explains his team found nothing that specifically
pointed to soda causing bone loss. “But somebody who is drinking six cans of cola a day and getting no milk at all is going to be in trouble,” he adds. “It is not because they are drinking the cola. It is because they are not drinking milk.”

Connie Weaver, PhD, who heads the department of food and nutrition at Indiana’s Purdue University, says children and adolescents have the most to lose by trading in milk and other calcium-rich foods for sugary soft drinks.

“You spend the first part of your life
building up bone, and that is the most fruitful time to try and make a difference,” she says. “If you build more bone when you are young, you are going to be more resistant to fractures later in life.”

It is important for people of all ages to consume a calcium-rich beverage or food with every meal, Weaver says, whether it is milk, fortified orange juice, cereal, yogurt, cheese, or something else.

Parents often give up trying to influence food choices about the time their children hit their teens. But Weaver says adolescence is the most critical time of life for building strong bones.

“Parents often pick their battles with teens, and food doesn’t seem all that important,” she says. “Hopefully, their kids will make it through all of the other issues of adolescence without too many scars. But they will live with the diet choices and
exercise patterns they set up for the rest of their lives.”