How Do Artificial Sweeteners Cause Weight Gain?

Cutting the connection between calories and sweets can confuse your body, making it more difficult for the body to regulate its caloric intake. If you desire to lose weight, it could help to throw the diet soda down the drain. Researchers have found that no artificial sweeteners can make it more difficult for people to control their food intake and control their weight.

Experiments have been done with lab rats in which one group of rats were fed yogurt sweetened with glucose and another group of rats were fed yogurt sweetened with saccharin. The results were that the rats that ate the yogurt sweetened with saccharin became hungry and wanted more calories and gained weight.

Humans often experience the same craving for more food when they ingest food and beverages sweetened with artificial sweeteners. More often than not, the people using artificial sweeteners on a regular basis are overweight. The human brain cannot tell the difference between glucose and artificial sweeteners. When you ingest artificial sweeteners, the body thinks it is being fed, but then there are not sufficient calories to satisfy the body's nutritional needs, and the person is hungry and eats more than if he/she had eaten regular foods containing glucose or sucrose.

When our body tells us it is time to eat, there are some physiological changes that take place. Our core body temperature changes slightly, and the metabolic engine responds to the ingestion of food. When the body thinks it is getting a high calorie meal, and then doesn't get sufficient nutrients, the body's metabolism changes and increases the need for more food to satisfy the body's need to eat.

Health risks associated with the use of artificial sweeteners

The health risks associated with the use of artificial sweeteners are insulin resistance, metabolic syndrome, diabetes, obesity, heart disease and high blood pressure. Why do artificial sweeteners backfire on us? Like sugar, artificial sweeteners provide an orosensory stimulus that is just as strong as or stronger than the stimulus we get from sugar. This is why artificial sweeteners taste sweeter than regular sugar.

Metabolic syndrome and using artificial sweeteners

There is a strong connection between metabolic syndrome and using artificial sweeteners. The body is fooled temporarily by the sweeteners, until it realizes there are no calories associated with the sweet taste. Many sweeteners stimulate insulin which makes us hungry. Insulin is the molecule that acts like a taxi (active transport system) which carries glucose across the cell membrane to feed the body's cells. When glucose is not available, the insulin in our blood causes us to become hungry and we eat more. With artificial sweeteners we get less nutrition with more food intake.

Conclusion

The good news is that you can avoid artificial sweeteners and become accustomed to using sugar in moderation or sparingly. Counting calories helps to regulate how much food intake your body needs to produce heat and perform its metabolic and energy requirements and still lose excess weight.

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Artificial sweeteners

Weight gain and artificial sweeteners