Artificial Sweetener Side Effects: Weight Gain, Diabetes, & Metabolic Syndrome?

Another study, a literature review from the Department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology at Yale University, found that aspartame, acesulfame potassium and saccharin all heightened the motivation to eat more — on top of the appetite-enhancing trait of all sweets, whether sugar or artificial.

The review by researcher Qing Yang speculated that artificial sweeteners encouraged weight gain by failing to activate the food reward pathways of the brain in the same satisfying way as natural sweeteners.

Daily drinkers of diet soda are also 36 percent more likely to develop metabolic syndrome — the group of health conditions that put sufferers at higher risk for diabetes, stroke and heart disease.





This was the finding of a 2009 study by Jennifer A. Nettleton of the Division of Epidemiology at the University of Texas Health Sciences Center.

Symptoms of metabolic syndrome include a “spare tire” around the abdomen and a pro-inflammatory state.

The results, reported in the April 2009 issue of the medical journal Diabetes Care, also found the daily consumption of diet soda significantly increased the risk of developing a large waist circumference.

Daily diet soda drinkers are also 67 percent more likely to develop type 2 diabetes in comparison to those who don’t drink it, Nettleton’s study also concluded.

Other dangers
According to Dr. Ludwig, concerns about cancer have been largely dismissed, but artificial sweeteners may cause headaches and other reactions in sensitive individuals.

Other studies done in the past years exposed the possible dangers of using artificial sweeteners.

A Danish study which examined the soft drink consumption of 60,000 Danish women, showed a link between drinking one or more artificially sweetened carbonated diet drinks a day and premature birth.

The national study, conducted by Centre for Fetal Programming in the Division of Epidemiology at Statens Serum Institute in Copenhagen, Denmark concluded that women who regularly drank artificially sweetened carbonated diet drinks were 78 percent more likely to have an early delivery than women who never drank the beverages and even women who drank just one or more of the diet drinks were 38 percent more likely to deliver early.

The study, published in the September 2010 issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

But says Dr. Alan R. Fleischman, medical director of the March of Dimes: “additional research is needed to understand the impact of these beverages.”





Artificial Sweetener Side Effects: Weight Gain, Diabetes, & Metabolic Syndrome? posted 12 January 2012. Latest update on 2 October 2016.