Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Flat Carbonated Drinks not Suitable for Oral Rehydration

If you care about your health, you should seriously limit your intake of sugary, chemical-y (and, it's made out of tap water, fyi), phosphorus-draining soda. And don't think drinking flat gingerale is doing yourself any favors either, especially for children!


From Newswise, the journalists'-only site:

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Newswise — ‘Flat’ carbonated drinks should not be used as an alternative for oral rehydration solution to prevent dehydration in children with acute vomiting and diarrhoea, according to advice published in the May issue of Archives of Disease in Childhood.

Oral rehydration solution is a liquid containing the ideal balance of salts and sugars for avoiding dehydration in people with gastroenteritis who are losing fluids, salts and sugars through diarrhoea and vomiting.

It is commonly believed that ‘flat’ carbonated drinks are an effective alternative to these solutions, particularly for children who don’t like their taste. However, researchers at the children’s emergency department at Watford General Hospital were unable to find any published trials to back this up, so they looked for information about the contents of different types of liquids and compared them.

Carbonated drinks were found to contain too much sugar and not enough salts.

...The authors concluded there was little information available from clinical studies on the effectiveness of using carbonated drinks compared with oral rehydration solution for the prevention of dehydration in children with gastroenteritis, but that there were many scientific analyses demonstrating their inappropriateness.

“Carbonated drinks, ‘flat’ or otherwise, including cola, provide inadequate fluid and electrolyte replacement and cannot be recommended,” they conclude.

Click here to view the paper in full: http://press.psprings.co.uk/adc/may/ac142521.pdf

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hello

I really enjoyed reading your blog. I guess you can say that I am a health freak!! I always read health blogs and ask health questions. I have even tried herbal products for the last ten years and I have to say the combination of herbal and modern medicine has changed my life. I find a lot of my herbal info and products from http://www.youherbal.com . well, I look forward to all the updates. Thanks again.

Jessica

Anonymous said...

I really enjoyed the information.
Hey have you considered having purple? Try it I drink purple while my 4 mile run everyday. Thought I should share a health tip for weight loss and the immune system to sustain us, given to me by my trainer, thought it would maybe help, since high antioxidant levels boost the immune system, and boundless energy and endurance levels and also it helps prevent premature ageing and cancer and I get all these benefits from this drink called purple. If you want more information to check whether what I am saying is right you can get it at www.drinkpurple.com , You can get it at GNC and drug stores. Please let me know if you tried it and liked it or not. I substituted purple for all corbonated drinks and just by doing that I lost 10 pounds!