Be kind to your MICROBIOME! Diet Soda May Alter Our Gut Microbes And The Risk Of Diabetes. Turns out, artificial sweeteners, saccharine, aspartame, & sucrolose can negatively alter gut bacteria, in some people (& mice) to cause glucose insensitivity--a precursor to metabolic disease, obesity, & type 2 diabetes. Its certainly counterintuitive that a sugar substitute can have this effect, but thats what a team at Weizmann Institute in Israel recently discovered. Even Dr. Martin Blaser, the head of NYUs Human Microbiome Program skipped his diet soda yesterday! Read on: Excerpts from NPR tinyurl/m3gdqnj : Now, a new study published in the journal Nature introduces a new idea: Diet sodas may alter our gut microbes in a way that increases the risk of metabolic diseases such as Type 2 diabetes — at least in some of us. In the paper, researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel describe what happened when they fed zero-calorie sweeteners, including saccharin, aspartame and sucralose, to mice. To our surprise, [the mice] developed glucose intolerance, Weizmann researcher Eran Elinav tells us. Intrigued by the findings, Elinav and his colleague Eran Segal set out to determine whether this might happen in people as well. First, they analyzed data collected from a group of about 400 people who are enrolled in an ongoing nutrition study. They found that people who were heavy consumers of artificial sweeteners had slightly elevated HbA1C levels (a long-term measure of blood sugar) — compared with people who rarely or never consumed artificial sweeteners. Next, they recruited seven volunteers — people who were not in the habit of drinking diet drinks — and asked them to start consuming the equivalent of 10-12 of those fake sugar packets during a one-week experiment. What we find is that a subgroup [four of the seven people] developed significant disturbances in their blood glucose even after short-term exposure to artificial sweeteners, Elinav says. For example, results of a glucose tolerance test found that some individuals blood sugar temporarily shot up to levels that are characterized as pre-diabetic within just a few days of introducing the artificial sweetener. This was a surprise to us, Elinav says. And how its happening may be even more surprising. Their experiments showed that artificial sweeteners can alter the mix of bacteria in the guts of mice and people in a way that can lead some to become glucose intolerant. I found this work exciting, because to me its a new idea, says physician Martin Blaser, who directs the Human Microbiome Program at New York University. After reading the paper, he says: I can just tell you ... as a middle-aged man whos concerned about his diet and his waistline — and [as] somebody who drinks diet soda — I didnt drink any yesterday. While the findings are preliminary, the paper could begin to explain why studies of diet soda point in opposite directions. All of us have a microbiome, made up of trillions of organisms. [Its] extremely complex. Everybodys microbiome is a little different, Blaser says. And the ways our microbiomes respond to what we eat can vary, too. NOTE: No mention of stevia in this study. Its a natural substance, so fingers crossed that it has no adverse effect upon gut bacteria.
Posted on: Thu, 18 Sep 2014 11:18:20 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015