This Medical Minute is sponsored by Avera. How much sugar is in your drinks? Doctors say it may be more than you think and it could be harmful to your health. KSFY News reporter Michaela Feldman explains how sugary beverages can increase your risk of cardiovascular death.
If you are getting the most of your calories from what you're drinking, you're getting your calories the wrong way. Many people don't always think about what we're putting into our bodies. That includes what we drink.
And whether or not a beverage has a sweetener or actual sugar, your risk of cardiovascular disease is increased. In the case of sugary beverages, that there is an insulin response that tells your body to store fat. In the case of sweeteners, artificial sweeteners, we think there may be some kind of an impact on your gut health, but there also may be some kind of an insulin response that we're not detecting. Dr. McKay says those drinks are full of calories. and not a lot of nutrition, which often leads to weight gain.
And once you start digging into how many sugars are in each of these particular items, you start being a little bit shocked about not realizing what you were ingesting. So how much sugar is in what you drink? We took 10 different beverages and measured the amount of sugar cubes that are in the can.
Then we compared that to what your daily recommended amount should be. Women should consume no more than six cubes, while men should have no more than nine. But most drinks...
have more than that. I think people would be shocked to find out there's quite a bit of sugar in the vitamin water. Seven of the ten drinks all have more sugar cubes than the recommended amount for both men and women. Mountain Dew had the most with 19 cubes of sugar in one 20 ounce drink. It's making you more insulin resistant so it's impacting your body's ability to deal with sugars in general and over time what that can do is lead to insulin resistance, diabetes some of those types of things.
But ending up with a disease like that can be confusing. That's where Avera Health Plan's heart disease care management team comes in. We're actually an additional layer of support between the member and the provider.
They lean on us and we walk them through the journey of their health. It basically does increase the quality of care that we do deliver, and also it contains the costs. Knowing is half the battle, and then executing on how you're going to make your life different might be a little bit more of the challenge. With your Avera Medical Minute, I'm Mikayla Feldman, KSFY News.
Dr. McKay says you should look at how many calories and carbohydrates are in what you will be drinking before you do so. For more information, you can head on over to Avera.org.