Is There a Price Type 2 Diabetics Pay For Using Artificial Sweeteners?

A good way to describe artificial sweeteners is as a little white lie. Hundreds of millions of people use them as a way to avoid cavities or calories. Hundreds of millions of Type 2 diabetics use them as a way to keep their blood sugar levels in control as they enjoy familiar sweet tastes. But is there a price to pay for trying to trick your digestive tract?

The food we eat contains literally millions of different proteins known in science as tastants. As each tastant whizzes by a taste bud, the taste bud sends an 'accept' or 'reject' inquiry to your brain. Faster than you can say 'Ptooey', your brain tells your mouth whether its safe to chew and swallow.

Your mouth has 25 different kinds of receptors for potentially dangerous bitter foods. It has just one kind of receptor for sweet and one more receptor for savory. Sweet foods and savory, umami foods (foods that have the tastes prominent in miso, meat, cheese, and tomatoes), tend to glide right by the taste buds as your brain sends signals to your salivary glands to make sure you salivate so the sweet or savory food has no difficulty reaching your stomach.

That's why saccharin, aspartame, sugar alcohols and, to a lesser extent, stevia, literally make your mouth water. They are sweet, and your taste buds and brain put out the welcome mat in your mouth. However, all these foods get tasted again in your stomach.

The taste receptors in your stomach don't connect to any functions that are under your usual conscious control. Instead, they connect to your endocrine system so that it generates the hormones that cells need to take advantage of the forthcoming digested food.

When your stomach senses sweetness, it sends signals to your pituitary gland that in turn directs your pancreas to release insulin. Your stomach also creates a hormone called GLP-1 that tells cells to get ready to absorb more glucose. Without the GLP-1 signal, cells more or less act as if the glucose weren't there.

One of the reason gastric bypass 'cures' Type 2 diabetes is that the operation leaves the cells that produce the most GLP-1 while shrinking the space of the stomach available to absorb food. Less sugar is released by digestion, but relatively more of the GLP-1 hormone is available to tell cells to absorb it. Insulin, it's important to understand, is not the only hormone that moves sugar out of your bloodstream. If you have a bitter taste in your stomach, however, your stomach sends signals that override the signal to absorb sugar... just to be on the safe side in case the bitter taste in your stomach is due to a toxin in food.

What happens if that sweet taste in your stomach is due to an artificial sweetener? In this case, your cells get a message to absorb sugar that won't be there. In response, in the future, they resist the action of insulin to keep from having to absorb whatever happens to be floating by in the bloodstream willy-nilly, and the net effect of not raising your blood sugar levels is still to become more insulin resistant. And insulin resistance, after all, is why Type 2 diabetics feel the need to use artificial sweeteners in the first place.

Artificial sweeteners aren't really a little white lie. They are a nasty trick on your stomach, one that is punished by increasing insulin resistance. You are actually better off to use small amounts of real sugar, paying attention to controlling your blood sugar levels, than large amounts of aspartame or sugar alcohols. Concerning stevia, the jury is still out... but moderation is advised.

Research has shown artificial sweeteners have been found as a possible cause in raising obesity levels my causing people to take up more calories or kilojoules later on. And obesity leads to insulin resistance and Type 2 diabetes.

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Beverleigh Piepers RN... the Diabetes Detective.
http://drugfreetype2diabetes.com/blog
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