Millions of people around the world consume diet drinks with artificial sweeteners to lose weight or to prevent diabetes. They are sabotaging their weight-loss efforts. Artificial sweeteners cause diabetes and obesity.
Research at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel was done on the big three artificial sweeteners:
1. Aspartame, found in many diet drinks.
2. Saccharin, found in Sweet ‘n Low.
3. Sucralose found in Splenda.
All of them raised the risk of diabetes.
How Is This Happening?
“Especially intriguing is the link between use of artificial sweeteners – through the bacteria in our guts — to a tendency to develop the very disorders they were designed to prevent,” says Lead researcher Professor Eran Elinav.
Researchers studied the gut microbes found in both humans and mice. They found that artificial sweeteners altered the composition and function of bacteria in the intestines. This bacteria lives naturally in our digestive system and helps us to digest food and nutrients.
This altered composition and function of bacteria can affect the body’s ability to deal with sugar.
Altered Bacteria = Glucose Intolerance
Glucose intolerance usually develops when the body, flooded with large amounts of sugar, responds with inflammation . The body in this situation loses the ability to absorb and burn that sugar in the cell. The sugar therefore either stays in the bloodstream and causes more high blood sugar (and eventually diabetes) OR it is stored as fat.
Dr. Elinav theorizes that certain bacteria react to the chemical sweeteners by secreting substances which also provoke an inflammatory response. This inflammatory response then causes a similar gluten intolerance.
“The magnitude of the differences (between those who were eating artificial sweeteners and those who abstained) were not just a few percentages. These were actually very dramatic differences we saw both in the mice and in the human settings,” said Eran Segal, Weizmann Institute computational biologist.
Professor Eran Elinav has stopped using artificial sweeteners and removed sugar from his diet.
There have been other studies linking artificial sweeteners to diabetes:
- Study in 2007 in the journal Diabetes Care found similar results.
- A study on Insulin Sensitivity in 2012 found aspartame decreased insulin sensitivity and affected brain function negatively.
Still larger-scale human studies are urgently required says Dr Katarina Kos, a diabetes expert, University of Exeter.
Artificial sweeteners (saccharin, aspartame, acesulfame K, neotame and sucralose) are all approved for use in the U.S. by the FDA. Thus, millions consume artificial sweeteners daily because they think they are doing a good thing. You can read all about the various artificial sweeteners at: Are You Dying To Be Thin?
We need to stop drinking diet and sweetened drinks. The best beverage is water. Water helps cleanse our body, keeps us hydrated and does not raise our blood sugar. It’s cheaper too!
Sugar-Free Lemonade
Drink and eat Real Food.
At Real Food For Life, I try to inspire people to eat foods that your body can recognize and digest. This means whole foods – what I call real foods. Below are two real food recipes.
