Artificial Sweeteners May Leave You Absolutely Gutted
The Primal Kitchen Podcast
Mark Sisson & Morgan Zanotti
4.4 • 717 Ratings
🗓️ 23 September 2014
⏱️ 11 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Mark expands the Primal Blueprint Podcast by recording select Mark's Daily Apple posts for your listening pleasure!
We’ve known for awhile that artificial sweeteners can affect the gut biome. A famous 2008 paper found that 12 weeks of sucralose had negative effects on the gut bacteria in male rats, including reduced beneficial bacteria, increased fecal pH, and inhibition of pharmaceutical bioavailability.
While the science is far from settled, I think there’s enough that we can start making some decisions about whether or not to consume artificial sweeteners.
(These Mark's Daily Apple articles were written by Mark Sisson, and are narrated by Brock Armstrong)
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | The following Mark's Daily Apple article was written by Marksissons and is narrated by Brock Armstrong. |
| 0:14.4 | Artificial sweeteners may leave you absolutely gutted. |
| 0:19.7 | Several years ago, I covered the popular artificial sweeteners, sucralose, |
| 0:24.2 | Asylphammy K, Aspartame, and saccharin, finding mixed results and little to confirm the |
| 0:30.3 | widely held view that they provoke an insulin response. |
| 0:33.9 | I also wrote about diet sodas in general, coming out generally against them while acknowledging |
| 0:39.4 | the lack of hard evidence either way. |
| 0:41.9 | But artificial sweeteners may be interfering with our metabolic response to food by an entirely |
| 0:47.6 | different avenue. |
| 0:49.1 | The gut biome. |
| 0:51.3 | According to a new study that has nothing at all to do with the cephalic phase insulin response, |
| 0:56.4 | artificial sweeteners induce glucose intolerance by altering the composition of our gut microbiota. |
| 1:03.7 | There were a few different stages to the study. |
| 1:06.7 | Number one, in mice adding any of the artificial sweeteners, AS, to their drinking water, for 10 weeks induced glucose intolerance. |
| 1:15.6 | The researchers tried saccharine, sucralose, and aspartame. |
| 1:19.7 | Mice, in the water, water plus sucrose, or water plus glucose control groups, all maintained normal glucose tolerance over the same period. |
| 1:29.5 | The changes were sweetener-specific, with saccharine having the most pronounced effect. |
| 1:34.9 | Number two, given previous studies showing alterations to the gut biome with artificial |
| 1:40.4 | sweetener consumption, the researchers wondered if these changes were involved with |
| 1:45.2 | the glucose intolerance. They dosed the mice with various antibiotics. If changes to the gut bacteria |
| 1:51.3 | were causing or involved with the glucose intolerance, eliminating the bacteria should have an |
| 1:56.8 | effect. It did. Antibiotic treatment abolished the glucose intolerance. |
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