Soft Drinks "Soften" your DNA by Shortening your Telomeres

#61 2025 The Rowen Report

Dear Subscriber,

It’s now summer. Some really hot days are already here, and many more are coming.

You will be tempted to cool yourself with an ice cold soda. When I was young, I remember sticking a nickel into a COKE machine to get an 8 ounce bottle of cold COKE in a glass bottle, which we returned for 2 cents. My, my, our ignorance back then.

Modern dietary practices and industry has turned our taste for sweets into a nightmare for health. Industry attempts to make artificial drinks to the level of sweetness found in fruit juices. And just how are these made? Water, high fructose corn syrup (though in the past more chances of sugar), and a bunch of flavorings in carbonated water.

Turns out this is a rather harsh exposure to your body. This week my attention was attracted to the re-reporting of a 2014 article that found that those who consumed sodas were pulverizing their bodies. The stuff leads to shortening of your telomeres, the end caps of DNA, which when they get too short, that strand of DNA is useless, essentially unraveling like a shoe lace without its endcap. The sweeteners in soft drinks leads to insulin resistance meaning your body needs more insulin to control blood sugar. Higher insulin also means faster aging. And the higher sugar/fructose products in your blood stream lead to glycation of proteins in your body – markers of advanced aging. If your capillaries have a single molecule of a sugar lining them, your transfer of oxygen will be highly reduced. Hemoglobin A1c test is a good marker for glycation (aging)

Fruit juice will be superior but to what extent? If it is heated and pasteurized, most of the nutrients will be destroyed. Raw juice will be far superior to bottled juice for this reason. Juice by definition is stripped of its fiber, meaning the contents will quickly be absorbed and you will see a spike in simple carbs from the juice which would otherwise be blunted by the contents of the whole fruit. It is this spike that is the trouble maker.

The impact of sugary drinks, whether soda of bottled fruit juice, on insulin and blood sugar has been known for years. But the impact on telomere shortening is not well known, nor promulgated. I see soft drink consumption as a soft DNA poison.

I believe you have some good alternatives. I have to admit I like the feel of a carbonated beverage. We will make our own sparkling water out of our own reverse osmosis treated kitchen water and to “spice” it up, I might add a cherry, lime, lemon or other non-sweetener flavor/essence to it.

I’ve not had a Coke or Pepsi since 1983. The commercials used to program you to think that the Pepsi generation was the new or younger generation. No, I don’t think so. It is the drink of an aging generation. If you are 45, you do not want your telomeres as short as mine might be, and at 75, I would prefer my telomeres to be as long as one who is 45. Last I checked my telomeres, at age 60, mine were the length of an average 35 year old.

I believe that vegetable juices will be much more compatible than fruit juice for overall health. Water is best. I am not at all concerned about consumption of whole fruits for most people. Nature made fruit for us, and with plenty of water and fiber therein to blunt deleterious effects of the fructose in fruit. It is a whole food. Fruit is also loaded with nutrients such as minerals and especially bioflavonoids. Yes, some will come over in fruit juice, making such superior to soda. But better to get in the whole fruit.

We generally make a fruit smoothie to bring into the office the following day for our meal. Tonight, I found some apples AND pears (which was a surprise) from last fall’s harvest in an accessory refrigerator. Amazing to me that I can carry some of the harvest forward more than half a year.

I blended these with a just picked pumelo. I add three different nuts – walnuts, almonds and pecans with enough water for the right consistency. I threw in 2 different kinds of fresh sprouts we got at the farmer’s market. Often I’ll add our own kale of collards.

I will often add some whey protein, and colostrum to aid in our gut health. This drink is fabulously delicious, filling, and slow to absorb. Remember, this is a smoothie, not a juice.

Our fruit is generally what we have harvested while in season, so we have some peaches now coming on line for fresh fruit, and soon some plums and pluots. We have enough strawberries to eat but not enough yet for smoothie purposes. We will often get fresh blueberries from vendors during season, and used to do the same with strawberries, but now we have a small sustainable harvest coming in every few days.

My motto for me is to eat what grows around me, when in season, ripe If possible), organic, and undenatured by heat. I try to stick with that for over 70% of what goes in me. However, that is me, not you I understand fully that the next person might need much more heated (cooked) food, and non-vegetarian food. However, even these people should make it a point to get a goodly amount of fresh living vegetables in them, either in the form of salads or lightly cooked (not fried).

For the sake of your DNA, try to make it a point to make the soft drink sellers go out of business. And don’t feel guilty in the summertime about eating some chilled watermelon or other melon. This is what Nature’s bounty provides for us in the hot season, and eating the chilled fruit to me is far superior to consuming a chilled soft drink.

To Your Excellent Health,

Robert Jay Rowen, MD