By Patricia Uyeh

Usually full of sugar, chemicals and (usually) with zero nutritional value, fizzy drinks are something nutrition and health experts have warned against it’s consumption on countless occasions, even if, they do look appealing when the sun comes out.
As much fizzy drinks are affordable and much needed to quench thirst and often serve as complement for most meals and snacks  , they can also have extremely harmful effects.

These include:

1. They can increase our risk of cancer
There have been many studies that have looked at the links between various types of cancer and fizzy drink consumption. Drinking just one-and-a-half cans a day can increase a girl’s breast cancer risk.

Some chemicals that are used to colour soft drinks can cause cancer.

2. They can raise our risk of heart disease
Scientists in America found a strong link between the proportion of daily calories from foods laden with added sugars (like fizzy drinks) and death rates from cardiovascular disease. They claimed that drinking three cans a day could triple the risk of heart disease.

3.  They can lead to diabetes
A study conducted between 1990 and 2000 estimated that the increased consumption of sugar-sweetened drinks contributed to 130,000 new cases of diabetes.

4. They can cause liver damage
A study from 2009 found that sugary drinks can cause fatty liver disease and drinking just two cans per day could lead to liver damage.

5. They can make us violent
A study carried out on teenagers found a link between drinking fizzy drinks, violence and the likelihood of them carrying a weapon. The researchers found that even teenagers, who drank just two cans a week were more aggressive towards their friends and those who drank five or more cans a week were also more likely to have drunk alcohol or smoked at least once in the previous month.

6. They can cause premature birth in pregnant women
Pregnant women were warned against drinking diet fizzy drinks after a study in Denmark dones on 60,000 women. Those who drank artificially sweetened soft drinks, whether fizzy or still, were found to be more likely to give birth prematurely. It was thought that the chemicals in the artificial sweetner changed the wombs of the women.

7. They can change your brain
As well as affecting the body, fizzy drinks have been found to alter the protein levels in the brain, which could lead to hyperactivity.

8. They can cause premature aging
Phosphates used in fizzy drinks, as well as many other processed foods, has been found to speed up the ageing process. This is not bad just in terms of wrinkles, but also health complications that some with age, such as, chronic kidney disease and cardiovascular calcification.

9. They can cause early puberty
A Harvard Medical School study of 5,583 girls aged nine to 14 found that those who drank just one-and-a-half cans of soft drink a day had their first periods earlier than those who did not. This consequently meant that their risk of cancer increased.

10. They can make us fat
This one may seem obvious. However, what you may not know is that diet soft drinks can still affect our waistline dramatically. A study found that those who drank diet fizzy drinks saw their waistlines expand nearly three times as much as non-drinkers and even more so than those drinking non-diet versions.

11) They can increase our risk of Alzheimer’s
Scientists in America found that mice fed the equivalent of five cans of sugary drinks a day had worse memories and twice the amount of brain deposits associated with the disease than mice without added sugar in their diet. This suggests that fizzy drinks could be linked with Alzheimer’s.