Does Soda Cause Acne?

Soda is sweet, tempting, and delicious, but it's certainly no health food. The chemicals, colorings, and sugars in soda can affect your body in all kinds of ways — but do they affect your face?

Since soda can be sugary — or filled with sweeter-than-sugar additives — the rumor has spread that drinking soda can make you break out. But there's actually no direct evidence to prove there is a connection.

There are, however, some conclusions that can be drawn by looking at what drinking soda does to your body. Some of these effects have been known to instigate breakouts.

Soda does have a ton of sugar — some cans can even rack up 10 teaspoons each. Your daily recommended limit of added sugar is just six teaspoons if you're a woman and nine if you're a man; so that's a hefty portion to consume in just one drink.

Drinking too much sugar every now and then won't kill you — but if you're drinking sugary sodas every single day, there could be some long-term health effects. Drinking a soda won't immediately give you diabetes. Sure, you might experience an uncomfortable sugar crash, which will then pass and your life will go on. If you get stressed every time you drink a soda because you're anxiously anticipating all these breakouts and problems, you're actually more likely to have long-term health effects — simply because of the negative effects of stress.

However, continuous overconsumption of sugar has been linked to developing hormonal differences in your body. Insulin, for instance, is a hormone affected by sugar. High levels of insulin can have a domino effect on the other hormones in your body, such as estrogen and testosterone. These hormones' imbalance, in turn, may cause a breakout on your skin.

Hormone imbalances are just one of many potential causes of facial acne — so just because you have a pimple doesn't necessarily mean you need to cut back. Again, no studies have ever definitively connected soda consumption with acne. But this sugar domino effect is where that rumor comes from. For that reason, and that reason alone, soda is one of the many drinks people suspect could cause a breakout.