Sweeteners harm your health

Sweeteners change the intestinal flora and promote diabetes

08/10/2014

Countless foods are sweetened with sweeteners such as aspartame, saccharin or sodium cyclamate. Whether yoghurt, lemonade, ice cream, candies or jam - sugar is considered a fattening and is therefore often replaced by the sweeteners. Most are low calorie „Light“- or „Wellness“-Products. However, sweets are anything but healthy, as well as helping to lose weight, according to an Israeli study. As various studies on mice showed, Aspartame & Co. favor type 2 diabetes and obesity, as the artificial sweeteners affect the glucose metabolism and intestinal flora negative.

Glucose intolerance as a precursor of diabetes
People who like sweetening with artificial substances apparently increase their risk of glucose intolerance, a pre-diabetes. Like Israeli researchers now in the journal „Nature“ As a result of a change in the intestinal flora, the synthetic sweeteners lead to impaired glucose tolerance, in which the body is no longer able to properly utilize carbohydrates such as sugar. Glucose intolerance is not only a risk factor for diabetes, but also for cardiovascular diseases.

Use of sweeteners must be reassessed
The research team led by Eran Segal and Eran Elinav from the Weizmann Institute in Rechovot initially identified changes in the metabolism of mice after they were given sweeteners. In subsequent tests, they then observed the same effect in humans. The study result is considered the first concrete proof of a harmful effect of sweeteners. „The results require a reassessment of the massive use of sweeteners“, so the scientists. Sweeteners are among the most widely used additives in foods worldwide. These are artificially produced substances that have a much stronger sweetening power than sugar. Because of their low calorie content, they are considered a healthy alternative to high-calorie sugar. Not only diabetics, but also people who want to avoid obesity and obesity, fall back on them.

Increase in overweight and diabetics
The researchers were skeptical that despite the widespread use of sweeteners in recent decades, the number of overweight and diabetes sufferers worldwide continues to increase. In a first experiment, the scientists added one of the three commonly used sweeteners saccharin, sucralose and aspartame to mice's drinking water. The control group was mice which received pure water or sugary water. It turned out that in the animals consuming sweeteners, the blood sugar level rose over eleven weeks, but not in the control group. After the researchers killed intestinal bacteria to study their influence, the consumption of sweeteners no longer affected blood sugar levels.

Researcher surprised by negative effects
In a test with seven healthy, normal-weight individuals who consumed foods containing sweeteners for a week, most of them rose in five to seven days, the blood sugar level and the intestinal flora changed. „At first we were really surprised“, the authors declared at a press conference. Although critics have in the past pointed to health dangers of sweeteners, the Israeli researchers did not expect such negative effects. Nita Forouhi of the University of Cambridge commented on the findings, explaining that the new study shows that sweeteners may not be the most effective „harmless miracle weapon against obesity and diabetes“ are.

Experts have been speculating about health hazards for years
New is the suspicion that sweeteners may increase the risk of diabetes, not. A French study published last year by the medicine research institute INSERM showed that consumers of sweetened and sweetener-containing soft drinks both had a higher risk of diabetes than women who preferred unsweetened fruit juices. Experts have speculated in the past that sweeteners might also cause cancer, allergies, headaches or epilepsy. However, none of this was scientifically proven. In the meantime, however, it has proven to be certain that even though this has not yet been proven conclusively by a study, foods containing sweeteners increase the feeling of hunger. Why this is so, however, is not clear. There are only different theories about it. Whatever the reason, this effect has so far played no role in the risk assessment of sweeteners.

Artificial sweeteners promote diseases
The current study now provides an indication of physical injury. If the observed glucose intolerance were actually due to the use of sweeteners, this could be a possible aspect of the massive spread of diabetes. As the German Diabetes Association clarified in the meantime, there must be other risk factors in addition to the increase in overweight and lack of exercise. In this context, a role of the sweetener would be fatal. The scientists from Israel reported: „Our results suggest that the artificial sweeteners promote exactly those diseases that they were originally introduced to control.“ (Ad)