There is a massive industry centred around artificial sweeteners, with the idea being that they are good for managing weight and decreasing your risk of diabetes - but what does the actual science say? Tune in to find out.
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Hey, everybody, welcome to another edition of Wisdom Wednesdays. Today, we are diving into a topic that has been gaining a lot of attention recently, and it's that of sugar substitutes. Now, you probably heard about all the benefits of swapping out sugar for zero calorie alternatives, and lots of people do that because they're trying to lose weight. But all these sugar substitutes really as harmless as they're made out to be. Well, today we're going to explore what they research actually says. So first off, let's talk about what sugar substitutes actually are. So they are either low calorie or no calorie alternatives designed to replace sugar and everything from your morning coffee to lots of different types of baked goods, and some of the most common ones you'll have heard of asperteam sucralow, saccherin. And then there's a class of things called sugar alcohols like aerythtratol and xylotol. Now they're often tided as being see if and actually recommended for diabetics because they don't spike your blood sugar levels, but emerging research suggests that their effects on our health might be much more complex than that and much more harmful potentially than we once thought. So let's start with aspartam That is one of the most widely used artificial sweeteners in the world. But the World Health Organization recently made headlines when it classified aspartain as a possible car synogen. Now, this label means that there's some evidence that aspar team could increase the risk of cancer, although it's not completely definitive, and the World Health Organization's decision was based on a review of several studies, including long term research, that linked aspartain consumption to increase risk of certain cancers, particularly liver and lung cancers in animal models, and some people, particularly those who have been nudged by the sugar industry or the sugar industry themselves, have criticized those models in saying that some of the studies the animals, we're giving very very high amounts of aspertain. But that is a way that we actually do things to try and understand mechanisms, right, But let's leave that to the side for a minute. Let's talk about erythratol. So this is an increasingly popular sugar alcohol that's used in many natural sweeteners like stevia and monk fruit. So I've read lots of stuff about using stavia. Monk fruit is really beneficial for our health because it looks like sugar, it tastes like sugar, and it can be used for baking. But it has been in a spotlight recently due to some pretty alarming findings. So a pilot study, and we do need to be a word, it's only a pilot study from the Cleveland Clinic in the United States found that erythritol could more than double the risk of blood clotting in healthy individuals. So the study was led by lead author doctor Stanley Hazen, and he's the director of the Center for Cardiovascular Diagnostics and Prevention at the Cleveland Clinic Learner Research Institute. Jesus, that's a bit of a worthy title, isn't it. But he noted that in the study, consuming a drink with an equal amount of glucose or sugar did not affect blood platelet activity in a control group of ten people, but that in every single subject that had a drink with erythratol in it, every single measure of cleatelet responsiveness known as clotting went up. Following the ingestion and this worrying to Stanley, hazard is the first direct head to head comparison of the effects of ingesting glucose versus ingesting erythritol on multiple different measures of platelet function. And he stated that glucose doesn't impact upon clotting in the body, and this is human bodies, but a erythritol actually does. Now, interestingly, the amount of the erythritol used an each drink in the study was thirty grams, and that is reasonably equivalent of what you find included in typical sugar free soft drinks or ice creams or muffins, of which people often have more than one serving. Now, these clots are an issue because they can travel to the heart of the brain, leading to heart attacks or strokes. And this research is particularly troubling because a erythritol is very widely used as a sugar substitute, particularly in keto friendly products or low sugar products, which are generally consumed by people who are trying to manage the way at other blood sugar levels or their health in general. Now, we should note that this was just a pilot's study, but the very good design of the study that there was a control group as well that was drinking glucose. Plus the fact that the clotting markers went up in every single one of the subjects consuming erythrotol, and the fact that it's a human study, not an animal study. This is enough to convince me never to use that stuff. Now. Beyond a erythrotol, other studies have shown that different sugar substitutes have their own sets of risks. So, for example, sugarlose, which is another common sugar substitute that has actually been shown to reduce insulin sensitivity in some people, which could then ironically increase the risk of developing diabetes, the very condition that these sweeteners were supposed to help manage. And then saccharin, which is one of the oldest artificial sweeteners. I remember my mum when I was a little kid, put saccharine in our tea that was at one point linked to bladder cancer in animals, although later research in humans didn't confirm these findings. But there is a common feature with these things. Now, let's talk about the mechanisms of action of artificial sweetness. For me, one of the most concerning aspects of sugar substitutes in general is their impact on the gut microbiome, that really important community of bacteria that lives in our digestive system and plays their crucial role in our overall health. And numerous studies have actually shown that artificial sweeteners like sucralose and saccharine and others can alter the balance of gut bacteria, which then contributes to the development of metabolic disorders like insulin resistance, diabetes and other metabolic disorders. So, for instance, a study published in Nature, which is one of the top journals in the world, that found that these sweetness could induce glucose intolerance, a precursor to diabetes, by disrupting the gut microbiome. So for me, there's a bigger picture really about our metabolic health, and what's becoming increasingly clear is that sugar substitutes aren't the benign alternatives that we once thought they were. They might help to reduce calorie intake in the short term, and they certainly do, but the long term consequences could be far more damaging. And for me, it's the combination of proven disruption of the gut microbiome and increased risk of metabolic diseases and the potentially carcinogenic effects, and now the potential effects on clutting. That really says that we need to be extremely cautious about this stuff. And even more concerning is that these sweeteners are often consumed in combination with other unhealthy dietary choices such as ultra processed food, Like you don't find the sweeteners in real food, and that really exacerbates their negative effects. And I've talked about ultra processed food, and it's not just the sweeteners, but it's also things like a multifiers, flavorings, and also preservatives that when you put them in together, just completely messes with our biology. So words that leave us. While sugar substitutes might offer some short term benefits for reducing calories and managing our way our thinking that you could manage diabetes, for me, the potential long term risks definitely is pointing to outweighing these advantages. And the research still needs to evolve, but for me, it's becoming increasingly clear that these artificial sweeteners are things that we should stay away from, or at least not have a lot of, and the best way to do that is to reduce our concer umption of ultra processed foods. If you look at a food and it hasn't been alive, then it probably isn't good for you. And again, I think a key thing for us to do is to try and wean ourselves off this real addiction to sugar. And we need to realize that really in nature, it's stuff like fruit and honey. But even the fruit that we have today is much sweeter than natural fruit because it has been bread to be much sweeter. And then when you eat these ultra processed foods, they are super super sweet. So when kids then are eating lots of those, it recalibrates what sweetness actually is. So I think the longer term strategy needs to be getting off the sugar. And I remember twenty thirty thirty years ago, actually I used to drink sugar in my tea and I went off it and I just committed to drinking no sugar in my tea for two weeks, and it was disgusting for the first week, and then actually it tasted fine, and there's no way that I kind of sugar in my tea. As well. The other thing that I did, I've got a bit of a sweet tooth, and I used to eat milk chocolate and I switched completely the dark and then after a few weeks I couldn't eat milk chocolate again. So we can get ourselves off this bandwagon, and for me, that's a much more effective strategy than just using these sugar substitutes that we really are starting to see and now I are not what we thought they were. So that's it for this week. Catch you next time, folks,