No water, no juice, no tea, only cola. That was the beverage diet for 16 years for a 31-year-old woman until her 2 liters of daily soda consumption caused heart problems.
After fainting and being taken to the hospital, blood tests showed very low potassium levels, as well as abnormal electrical activity in her heart causing erratic heartbeats. The woman, who wasn’t identified and lives in Monaco, a country near southern France, told doctors she
drank nothing but cola since she was 15 years old, according to a LiveScience report.
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One week after she quit drinking soda, the woman’s potassium levels and heartbeat returned to normal, the report said.
Researchers in the report say drinking cola at that level can cause health problems like diarrhea and potassium loss, not to mention the caffeine can increase urination and hinder potassium reabsorption.
The woman’s case was presented at the European heart Rhythm Association meeting in Athens, Greece.
Another 31-year-old woman in New Zealand, Natasha Harris,
died in 2010 after reportedly drinking two-and-a-half gallons of Coca-Cola a day for 15 years, ABC News reported. A coroner’s report linked her death to the sugar and caffeine she got by drinking that much soda daily, although the woman also reportedly smoked heavily and skipped meals.
“When all of the available evidence is considered, were it not for the consumption of very large quantities of Coke by Natasha Harris, it is unlikely that she would have died when she died and how she died,” the coroner wrote.
Harris’s habit of drinking that much Coke would have made her intake of sugar about 2.2 pounds daily, the coroner’s report estimated.
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