Artificial Sweetners Side Effects on Health and Weight Gain
January 1, 2010Love Your Health Money Family & Relationship
I know a lot of people like sweets, but I personally am not one of its biggest fan because I have couple of rotten teeth from chewing on candies when I was a kid. People who do like sweet too much have raised concerned over too much sugar in our diets, and therefore many food companies started to make artificial sweeteners. A good example would be diet soda pops and artificial sugars such as Splenda, NutraSweet, Equal, Sweet One, Neotame and the most popular one being Sweet N Low. Are artificial sweeteners unhealthy? See if there’s any truth to the rumors that artificial sweeteners are bad for you. Why zero calories might not be good. There are some dangers to consuming them.
Side effects of artificial sweetener on health:
Weight gain: It is funny because consumers demand for artificial sweetener was majorly influenced by high calorie of natural sugars. People didn’t wanted to gain weight; so they moved to diet soda drinks and used sweetnlow for their all they long coffees. But now the studies are showing a correlation between use of artificial sweeteners and weight gain over a time period; this is due to how complex our body regulation of calories and other nutrients works. One thing for sure though that it doesn’t help with weight loss.
Addiction: I am not sure if this is the accurate term to use, but artificial sweeteners tend to habituate our taste buds to an extent where it starts to demand more intense sweet flavors to please itself. So it is recommended that people who use them do so on a limited basis. Depression, headache and panic attacks are common symptoms showing the dangers.
Confuses our brain: Usually when we consume sugary foods, our brain and internal hormonal systems triggers an action where it understands that we got glucose to use as an energy. But with diet sugar, this one might not happen. Some of the most popular artificial sweeteners such as Aspartame can cause side effect of mental disorders affecting our central nervous system leading to multiple sclerosis and fibromyalgia.
Stomach problems: More often than not we suffer from stomach problems when we try new foods, but sometimes it could be long lasting. Pay special attention if you get nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea after using an artificial sweetener brand. It could be that you are sensitive to it and showing allergic reaction.
Experimental synthetic chemical: Lets put it this way, artificial sweeteners are made out of synthetic chemicals and we still don’t know how exactly it could affect us, both physically and mentally, since there haven’t been enough studies done to cover this aspect. Only research done were those by the manufacturing companies to prove that it works as good as natural sugar.
Cancer risk: One study by Italian study did provoke a controversy whether artificial sweetener aspartame could be causing cancer after they noticed the over a thousands of rats they fed aspartame developed cancer in their lifetime. Cyclamate is also said to have the same side effect of producing bladder and reproductive organ cancer.
Be careful during pregnancy: Sweet’NLow which also goes by the name saccharin has been said to cross the placenta and may remain in fetal tissue. Therefore, women who are pregnant should take a careful consideration or talk with their doctors.
People who are Diabetic: Some experts raise the question about the effectiveness of using artificial sweeteners in diabetic patients. People who have diabetes often lose control of their diet and insulin regimen, whereas some even develop sever complications such as retinopathy, cataracts, neuropathy and gastroparesis.
Please not however though, the information we share here are not to be considered as medical suggestions or advices. This is only for general public’s educational purposes.
Topics: Health, Weight | 1 Comment »
January 2nd, 2010 at 9:51 am
Were you paid to blog these untruths? You certainly cite only those involved in this two-decade old conspiracy theory and whose credibility is near zero. So let me share the truth.
Aspartame is perfectly safe used as directed in healthy people. There are no published scientific studies even considering a link between aspartame and MS, so even the allegation is manufactured. And all the negatives you read on the web are seriously outdated, uneducated comments about aspartame that are so far out of bounds as to not be worthy of further consideration by regulatory agencies. The more you know, the more they are discredited. Read my comments on the web (for example, http://www.fleshandstone.net/healthandsciencenews/1600.html
that instead link the 90+ aspartame diseases, not with aspartame, but with personal issues like allergy (rare) or more likely folate or related vitamin problems (folate deficiency, folate polymorphisms (unlikely for you-see http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17113603?ordinalpos=2&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_DefaultReportPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum), B12, B12 related enzyme issues, and/or homocysteine accrual).
If you want to explore this MS issue further go to the National Library of Medicine website PubMed, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/ and type in (each without the quotes) “folate, multiple sclerosis” and find 42 references. Next, type in “homocysteine, multiple sclerosis” and find 29 references. Lastly, type in “B12, multiple sclerosis” and find 85 references. It is by far more likely that MS resides in one or more of these related issues than with any association to aspartame. The claim of 90+ diseases (like MS) being caused by aspartame is a false one, but those 90+ diseases are linkable to folate deficiency, folate polymorphisms, and/or to homocysteine accrual. That aspartame (methanol, formate) metabolism is linked to these issues can completely explain these allegations, but they also make clear that the real concerns here are these independent, personal issues, not aspartame safety. In this regard the reader should also know that caffeine metabolism produces formaldehyde and formate by oxidation and thus requires folate too. In fact for an equal molecular dose, caffeine produces twice the formadehyde and formate that aspartame produces and thus presents twice the risk.
[And by the way the Italian groups studies you cite have all been dismissed completely even for chemicals other than aspartame--their animals were sick, see http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19430000?itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum&ordinalpos=3].
John E. Garst, Ph.D. (Medicinal Chemistry, Pharmacology, Toxicology, and Nutrition)
(FYI, the author has absolutely no financial or biasing connection with the aspartame, the soft drink or their related industries. The author has a Ph.D. in Medicinal Chemistry (Pharmacy) from the University of Iowa, postdoctoral experience at Yale University (Molecular Biophysics & Biochemistry) and at Vanderbilt University and taught nutritional toxicology at the University of Illinois (Champaign-Urbana) besides having conducted federally funded research at Vanderbilt, UIUC, and at several other universities before recently entering into retirement.)