In: Nursing
Sarah is a freshman high school student who is also holding down a 20-hour-a-week job. She drinks diet cola several times a day to keep her energized without adding calories, and she has given up all dairy products as part of her newly embraced vegan diet. At a routine checkup, her physician warned against excessive soda consumption and recommended that she add more sources of calcium to her diet. Why?
Several studies have shown that high intake of carbonated drinks in adolescent women causes loss of bone mineral density especially in the hip due to reduced calcium uptake eventhough they did not avoid milk.
The exact cause for this is not known. But the best proposed mechanism is that phosphoric acid(phosphate) used in carbonated soft drinks to enhance flavour causes reduced uptake of calcium leading to reduced bone mineral density.