Hello there and welcome to the Nutrition Diva podcast. I'm your host, Monica Reinegel.

And today I want to update you on some new research that adds to the ongoing debate about

artificial sweeteners and whether they help or hurt with weight loss. And we're also

going to talk about how this might apply to natural zero calorie sweeteners like those

that are made from stevia and monk fruit. But first just a little background. It's long

been observed that people who use artificial sweeteners are more likely to be overweight.

Now of course that doesn't prove that zero calorie sweeteners cause you to gain weight. In

fact defenders of zero calorie sweeteners argue that the association between the use of these

sweeteners and the increased risk of diabetes or obesity is actually a case of reverse causation.

That is people aren't developing diabetes because they're using these sweeteners. Rather

they're using these sweeteners because they have diabetes. However a growing number of studies

including the one that was just released offer a potential explanation for how these supposedly

inert ingredients might actually be contributing to health issues. Although they don't directly

raise your blood sugar artificial sweeteners may affect how your body responds to the sugars

in other foods leading to elevated blood sugar and possibly insulin resistance or weight gain or

even type 2 diabetes. And the key to all of this looks like it may be found in the trillions of

microbes that populate your gut. People who are overweight tend to have different intestinal

flora than normal weight individuals. Furthermore it appears that these microbes actually play a big

role in promoting obesity. When intestinal bacteria are transplanted from the guts of obese

subjects into the guts of subjects without obesity those subjects start gaining weight and vice versa.

Now this is a pretty big revelation. Have you ever known someone who ate very little but

remained overweight anyway or someone who could eat whatever they wanted and not gain a pound?

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