According to science, this is the drink you should order in bars if you want to lose weight.

If you’ve decided to take care of what you eat and lose weight as a New Year’s resolution, you may have doubts about what to drink when you come to the bar. Alcohol is not the best option if you want to take care of yourself. Soft drinks are also not suitable because they contain a lot of sugar. Fruit juices, no matter how natural they are, contain countless amounts of free sugars. What’s left for us? When faced with this question, many people choose drink sparkling water. It contains no calories and the gas makes you feel full. For that reason alone, it already seems like a good option. However, according to a new study, there may be more reasons to choose this drink over other drinks.

The authors of the study from Tesseikai Neurosurgery Hospitalin Japan, wanted to see if what other previous studies had suggested was true. According to them, drinking sparkling water could help us. reduce glucose levels in the blood, so its benefits go far beyond satiety and the absence of calories.

Previous studies have hypothesized this but have not provided any explanation. Therefore, this group of Japanese scientists wanted to test what this reason might be by comparing the consumption of sparkling water with something also well studied in the medical field, like hemodialysis. Thus, they saw that this is indeed the best drinking option if we want to take care of our health. Although with some exceptions.

What does dialysis have to do with drinking soda?

The lead author of the new study, Dr. Akira Takahashi He is a hemodialysis specialist at Tesseikai Neurosurgery Hospital. This procedure is used to cleanse the blood similar to what the kidneys do when they are too damaged to do it on their own.

In a broad sense, this process involves the passage of blood through a membrane through which waste products are filtered. A liquid called dialysate which contains salts that exchange bidirectionally with the blood so that the blood reaches adequate concentrations. On the other hand, the pores are too small for blood cells and large proteins to pass through. Both will remain in the blood and return to the patient’s blood vessels. In addition to all this, in this process there is also an exchange between carbon dioxide and bicarbonate.

Carbonated water is so sparkling because of the presence of carbon dioxide. So Takahashi and his team wanted to see if pre-dialysis blood could be compared to carbonated water once it reaches the digestive system. To do this, they took data from a 2004 study that analyzed the behavior of carbonated water in the stomach and compared it with what they already knew about dialysis.

According to what I have read, drinking carbonated water releases carbon dioxide. passes through the gastric mucosa similar to what happens when blood is filtered on hemodialysis membranes. When this happens, it enters the bloodstream and from there into the bloodstream. inner part of red blood cellswhere it is converted to bicarbonate. This salt has the ability to activate enzymes necessary to speed up the breakdown of glucose. Therefore, the more bicarbonate there is in red blood cells, the faster glucose metabolism occurs. This, logically, is very necessary if we want to lose weight. And for there to be bicarbonate, there must first be carbon dioxide. This is the benefit of drinking sparkling water.

All that glitters is not gold

Although these scientists showed how drinking soda can help you lose weight, they made two important points clear. On the one hand, the consequences are not as radical as one might expect. Talking about the amount of carbon dioxide and bicarbonate in relation to several liters of blood is not the same as talking about the concentrations that can be obtained by drinking carbonated water. So while we may experience some weight loss, it will be minimal. To get real benefits should be complemented by other habitssuch as exercise and maintaining a healthy diet.

On the other hand, these scientists made it clear that not everything is an advantage. Drinking sparkling water can be tiring for people with gas tendency or certain digestive conditions such as irritable bowel syndrome or esophageal reflux. Therefore, in your case there may be more disadvantages than advantages.

However, if you don’t usually have digestive problems and don’t know what to order when you go to a bar, try sparkling water. Just don’t stuff yourself. Even still water will not be beneficial if we drink it compulsively.