What Happens To Your Body One Hour After Drinking A Soda?

Perhaps the most egregious ruse that mainstream food science ever devised was convincing Americans that high-quality fats made you unhealthy, but that processed sugars like high fructose corn syrup were perfectly safe.

Fructose is the form of high fructose corn syrup found in pretty much all processed foods such as frozen meals, fast foods, processed sweets, and sodas. So many people still do not understand the incredible toll that processed fructose takes on the body. In fact, many consumers still prefer versions of food claiming to be “low fat” when in actuality the ingredients have just replaced one form of flavoring for another, much more detrimental chemical substitute.

The problem with fructose is that it feels mentally like ingesting glucose, which the body craves for its cellular benefits. At 247Health, we are always advocates for doing anything that feels good to the body; but that doesn’t always mean satisfying a craving of the mind. Fructose will taste good, yes, but it will stress your liver instead of feeding your cells. Plus, it will not trigger any feelings of fullness to your brain, which is why people can drink multiple sodas with their heavy meal.

If you’re brand new to the idea of improving health and wellness on your own terms, the very best thing you can do first is to eliminate sugary fructose drinks immediately. You’ll feel better, you’ll likely lose weight, and you’ll stop the vicious cycle of unnatural liver stress that around 1.6 billion people inflict on themselves daily around the world.

Here’s what your body does in the first hour after drinking that fizzy soft drink

Congratulations, after that final sip of soda, you’ve just unleashed a whopping 10 teaspoons of sugar into the blood, which is 100 percent of your daily intake. If you tried to drink that much sugar dissolved in water, you’d probably vomit. But the kind scientists at your favorite soft drink company have added phosphoric acid to your drink to help the body keep it down. Be sure to thank them!

After just 20 minutes, your liver is working at full capacity. The blood sugar spike triggered an insulin burst, and the only way to combat it is to turn free sugar into fat as quickly as possible. Insulin resistance will eventually develop if the body performs this unnatural task too often in a lifetime. And we promise, there’s nothing beneficial about insulin resistance.

Once you hit the 40 minute mark, the caffeine absorption is complete. The pupils dilate, blood pressure rises, and the liver dumps more sugar into the bloodstream.

A few minutes later, the brain receives its “pleasure” signals in the form of dopamine. It’s a brief little chemical high that has come at the greater expense of your health, wellness, and bodily function. If that sounds a bit like a drug addiction, it’s because it’s exactly the same chemical reaction to the brain.

After about an hour, the phosphoric acid that helped cut the sweetness of all that sugar binds to calcium, magnesium, and zinc in the lower intestine. These are vital micronutrients and free electrolytes that your body uses for a myriad of positive functions in the body. But because they’ve bonded with phosphoric acid, and you’ve just consumed a diuretic in the form of caffeine, you’re going to pee them out very soon. Some studies also suggest an evacuation of creatine — a peptide we desperately want to increase in the body — during this post-soda urination.

Around the same time, once the liver has managed the fructose and you’ve peed out all of the water from the beverage along with your vital micronutrients, it’s time for the sugar crash! You’ll feel sluggish, foggy, and likely inflamed, all in exchange for a few minutes of flavor and a small caffeine high.

Do yourself a favor. If you need to “cheat” on your healthy lifestyle once in a while, choose something other than a soda.