I Used To Drink 20 Cans Of Fizzy Drinks A Day And Now I Have Heart Disease

[NellieGirl]

I used to drink 20 cans of fizzy drinks a day, mostly coke and irn bru.

A month ago, I was diagnosed with heart disease and I got told I needed to stop drinking fizzy drinks completely or I would be at risk of a heart attack.

I am allowed to drink all other drinks that are not fizzy. I don't like milk, and water is boring and so is fruit juice. It's not only boring, I'm also sad that I'm not allowed to drink fizzy drinks anymore, not even occasionally. I feel sad pretty much all the time.

It is making me never want to go to parties or go out for dinner. Me, my dh, and my two dc used to watch films on Friday night and Saturday night, and even watching films is boring when I can't drink fizzy drinks.

Is anyone in a similar situation? Or does anyone know anything I can do to get over it?

I thought Irn-Bru did have some sweetener, although I don’t know what kind.

A lot of full sugar drinks reduced sugar and added sweetener when the sugar tax came in. I know Coke didn’t, but think most others did.

This isnt neccessarily true. Since the sugar tax (thanks jamie oliver!) many many products that were aparently the 'full fat' version now use a combination of sugar and sweetener to lower the tax, they then have a 'diet' version that has no sugar but all sweetener. There is generally no indicator that this has happened unless you check the ingredients. Ribina and Appletise are two that this have happened to, and i can't buy them any more, they dont taste as good anyway.

But most squash is the same. I've only found a couple of brands that don't that you can buy in regular supermarkets. Belvoir and Rocks squashes are the only ones I buy now.

Lots of people on this thread are suggesing things that still contain sweetener even if it's not aspartime which i think is poor advice.

Pure fruit juice or sweetener free squash with fizzy water shuld be fine as are the many lovely suggestions for non sweetened drinks (the lime iced tea sounds great) andi think it would be a really good idea if OP learns to cut down on sweet drinks generally.

I don’t know how anybody could tolerate that level of drinking shit. I occasionally have a sparkling water with some cordial but the immediate bloaty feeling is enough to put me off. 20 cans a day? Bloody hell. I’m not sure this is real.

There’s a nice raspberry and lemon Robinsons diluting juice. It’s quite sweet so you might enjoy it if you like irn bru.

Almost all fizzy drinks contained aspartame or other artifical sweetners. We have Jamie Oliver to thank for that. Most of the "sugar" versions contain sugar snd sweeteners.

Only widely available exceptions I can think of are Coke, Appletiser (just fruit juice) and IrnBru 1901.

Yeah I'm not actually convinced this is real to be fair, it's too odd!

This is the oddest thread. I almost feel like a fizzy drink now😁

For carbonation, do you just use shop bought sparkling water?

I'm addicted to Pepsi max at the mo, went cold turkey whilst travelling Asia in 2019, then only drank it out for pub/meal, which I went to infrequently. The last 8 months or so I'm full on addicted, 4-5 cans a day. Would like to get back to 2 or 3 cans a week tbh! But I need an alternative!!

Any peach tea? Or I'm growing herbs, maybe some kind of minty fresh goodness .. hmmm

Can you have those orange eviescent vitamin c tablets? Those are kind of fizzy

If this post is real you need to grow up. Your habit caused you to lose a very large number of teeth and your doctor has told you it has contributed to heart disease. It’s shocking to me that this hasn’t motivated you to protect your children from the same consequences. Rather than focusing on how you feel about giving it up you should focus on your children’s health.

It's loaded with artificial sweeteners, however.

I would suggest that your diagnosis should stop you allowing them, as against just stopping them wanting it?

It was actually the amount of sugar I had that caused my heart condition, and not the apartame, but my doctor did mention something about apartame not being good for you, I was trying to think back to what my doctor said there. I sometimes tried to have the diet fizzy drinks instead of the full fat ones, and every time I tried to switch to diet fizzy drinks, I found that I liked the full fat ones better so I always went back to them. The reason the doctor mentioned about apartame was I told them I sometimes have the full fat ones and I sometimes have the diet ones.

Agree with @SheridansPortSalut something is off 🤔

This.
OP either you haven’t understood what’s been said, or you’re making it up as you go along.

Sweet fizzy drinks will rot your teeth.
Excess sugar will cause obesity and increase risk of type 2 diabetes, both of which increase the risk of vascular disease.
Smoking is a huge cause of vascular disease.
An abdominal aortic aneurysm is in your abdomen, not your heart. Although the same pathological processes that cause aneurysms will also cause heart disease.

Aspartame is a sugar-free artificial sweetener. I’m not aware of any proven adverse effects of it, although I’m sure research is always being done.

Carbonated drinks might not be good for your teeth (I’m not sure, as I’m a doctor not a dentist), but there is no reason I can think of why fizzy water would cause heart disease.

Are you sure you didn’t misunderstand the advice you received?

I'm surprised how few people on this thread know that soft drinks are a leading cause of diet related disease which of course includes heart disease. They kill more than 300,000 people globally every year; and are linked to more than 2 million additional cases of Type 2 diabetes and more than a million cases of cardiovascular disease.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/06/health/sugary-soda-beverages-diabetes-heart-disease.html

Cordial would be slightly better but not that much as it's also highly sugary. And fruit juices also contain extremely high sugar levels. Obviously not as bad in their totality but if you drank 20 fruit juices a day you would also be in big trouble teeth and health wise.

Same. Like saying I smoked 25 fags a day for 30 years and now I have lung cancer… hardly a surprise…

So 20 cans at 139 cals a can is 2780 calories a day just on fizzy drinks. Add food onto that and im
not surprised you’re heading for heart disease. I’d listen to your doctor.

OP my guess is that with all these sugary drinks you’re probably overweight, and I suspect your diet isn’t great either. And you smoke. So it’s the combination of things that have caused your aneurysm. Are you aware that an abdominal aortic aneurysm is not the same as heart disease?

I'm afraid you're just going to have to get over it. Life will be a hell of a lot more boring when you're bed bound on oxygen.

Why does the absence of pop make a film boring anyway? Is it your only pleasure in life?

Thanks for this and @BlueyNeedsToFuckOff i had no idea.

Aspartame is really not good for you especially considering it’s affects on the brain

Im going to have to check everything we eat after this revelation

Holy cow, I like a fizzy drink but that’s a crazy amount of full whack chemical badness everyday. This is an addiction issue not about finding a healthier drink. Have you tried hypnosis? CBT? Proper therapy even? You’ve gotta address this much deeper before it finishes you off because it’s really not worth losing your health or your teeth over fizzy pop.

Just drink ones that don't have aspartame. Or just fruit juice mixed with carbonated water.
Coca cola doesn't have aspartame. But obviously it's not healthy!

The full sugar drinks don't usually have aspartame, though?

Is this a chinny reckon? 🤔🤣