We Finally Know How Artificial Sweeteners Impacts Your Gut & Brain | Dr. William Li

[00:00:00]Okay. What are my practical tips for you and how to kind of be aware and dodge um uh these uh uh artificial sweeteners that can actually have adverse uh events effects that actually could be harmful to you. Well, number one, anything that you're going to buy in a box or a bag or a can or a tin, especially the stuff in the middle aisle of the grocery store, read the labels carefully. I can't emphasize that enough. Whatever you pick up, take a look at the side, look at the label. By my book, what I would recommend is avoiding products that contain arythrtol and xylitol, especially if it's in a protein bar or sugar-free drink or a keto product. And by the way, you can actually find a safer sweetener, right? Raw honey is safer. Maple syrups is a safe sweetener.

[00:00:42]Monk fruits a sweetener. And stevia is also a natural sweetener, but you got to be careful about stevia because some types of stevia actually do do have stevia in it, but they're also doctorred up with some of these artificial sweeteners because stevia is kind of expensive. And by the way, even a small amount of regular table sugar is safer than some of these artificial alternatives. All right, if you want a sweet hit for your pallet or your brain, you can get that sweet hit by eating a whole food. fruits, vegetables, all right, all naturally sweet. Most of them are naturally sweet. Think about this like there's nothing I like more than a juicy sweet orange in the morning or you want to think about it like a juicy pear in the summertime or peach in the winter. But when you eat uh whole foods, you can get mother nature's sweet sugar hit sweetness hit without actually having to resort to the artificial sweeteners. All right, so the study I just told you about is a wakeup call.

[00:01:37]Sugar-free doesn't always mean risk-free. Now, if arythrittol can affect your heart and your brain, what about your gut? There are other researchers that are taking a look at what's the effect of artificial sweeteners on gut health. We know that gut health, which is really basically the health of your healthy gut bacteria, your microbiome, the 39 trillion bacteria that live inside our gut, mostly in our colon. We know that the gut is connected to the brain, the immune system, your your healing capacity, your stem cells, lots of things our gut is actually connected to.

[00:02:10]And researchers from Brazil at the State University of Compinas in Brazil looked at how food additives, I artificial sweeteners affect healthy gut bacteria.

[00:02:19]You may have seen me talk about some of the healthy gut bacteria, but I would just tell you to remind you, they have really, really long complicated names.

[00:02:27]Don't worry about trying to memorize the names, but leave it to people like me that can pronounce them even.

[00:02:32]Lactobacillus, bifidoacterium, lactoccus. All right, these are just three bacteria that are very healthy and have been studied. These are friendly gut bacteria helpful that help you digest food, fight off bacteria and viruses. And by the way, these bacteria, Lactobacillus, bifidobacteria, and Lactocus, they produce anti-inflammatory compounds that lower inflammation in our body too, right? All good. What the researchers were finding is that there are substances, additives in ultrarocessed foods that can actually knock down or knock out some of these healthy gut bacteria, right? And some of the biggest offenders, you might be surprised, potassium sorbate. Go ahead, take a look in your pantry of something that's ultrarocessed or a bag of something and take a look at the ingredient label. See if you find potassium sorbate, sodium benzoate, very common additive. Sodium bisulfite, another very common additive.

[00:03:31]Saccharine, very common artificial sweetener. And polyorbate 80. This is a thickener. You're going to find this on a lot of foods. All right. potassium sorbate, sodium benzoate, sodium bulfite, saccharine, and polyorbate 80.

[00:03:46]All right. Now, that might seem like a mouthful, but I guarantee you probably have something in your kitchen. Maybe you have a lot of things in your kitchen that will contain one or more of those additives. They didn't just reduce the population of good bacteria, lactobacillus, bifidobacterum, okay, bacterium, and lactocus. But the ones that they didn't knock out, they actually impaired their function. They reduced the number and then they crippled the ones that were left. Not good, right? And by the way, saccharine, artificial sweetener, and potassium sorbate preservative significantly reduce the production by your healthy gut bacteria of shortchain fatty acids.

[00:04:28]These are scaff fatty acid a scfa. We sometimes call them scaffas for short, acetate, propriionate, butyrate. You've probably heard other people talk about this, but potassium sorbate and saccharine very common in in ultrarocessed foods. They actually reduced the the production of these healthy anti-inflammatory products that your normal gut bacteria actually makes. And by the way, these short- chain fatty acids not only lower inflammation, they support your gut lining strength. You don't want leaky gut. You need these short- chain fatty acids. And they support your immune health, right? These are the super soldiers in your body that protect you against invaders from the outside, bacteria and viruses. And inside your body, they protect you against invaders inside like cancer. What about polyorbate 80? That's an emulsifier or a thickener if you want to just have everyday speak. [snorts] An emulsifier is just a thickener that's put in the foods, right? found in ice cream and salad dressings, a lot of baked goods.

[00:05:35]Guess what? Polyorbate 80 was linked to increased intestinal permeability.

[00:05:42]What does that mean in English?

[00:05:43]Increased gut leakiness. You don't want that. All right. Now, why does why is um having a non-leaky gut important for your health? Because your gut actually is sealed off. So whatever goes through the gut, which is the food you eat, the digested matter that goes further down your gut and ultimately is poop. You don't you want everything to be stay in that tube and not leak out. When the gut is leaky, uh guess what? All that stuff comes out into your body really bad.

[00:06:13]When the gut barrier is compromised, stuff leaks out. You get chronic inflammation.

[00:06:19]Not surprising when you when I tell you about all that stuff in your guts are leaking out. Weakened immunity. All right. So your immune system goes down.

[00:06:26]Now you're more vulnerable for a whole range of chronic diseases, including potentially cancer. Got to be careful about this. Like this is what we're learning about how important our immune system is linked to our gut health and that leaky gut really not a good thing.

[00:06:40]So what are your practical tips? Number one, again, read the label. Check that ingredient label. Look for things that you might not want to add to your body that I've just told you about. potassium sorbate, sodium bulfate, sodium benzoate, saccharine, polyorbate 80.

[00:06:57]Actually, when you look for those things, you're going to find it's not that easy to avoid them because they're so common everywhere. And this is what sort of the wakeup call for us is not just to, you know, say that we can avoid ultrarocessed foods. It's really to avoid some of the ingredients that might be present in some of them. You might have some some processed foods that are actually better than others because they don't have these elements. And by the way, what do these additives do? They make foods have a very, very long shelf life. If something looks like it can stick around for months or years and you know that food shouldn't last that long, it probably has one of these kinds of of um additives in it. All right? And also these hard to pronounce ingredients. If you can't pronounce it, it's a probably not that great for you. Okay, back to the sweeteners, right? So practical tip.

[00:07:46]How do you sweeten your food? If you don't want to use saccharine or ariththrtol or xylitol, okay, just look for foods that are naturally sweetened.

[00:07:54]Honey, maple syrup, stevia, monk fruit, make sure it's pure stuff. Those are actually fine. And by the way, some of the juices that you can squeeze out of a fruit also have natural sweeteners as well. What you want to do is you want to protect your healthy gut bacteria at all times. Fiber richch foods. Eat foods with a lot of fiber. tree nuts, walnuts, pecans, macadamia. All right, broccoli, avocados, kiwi. All these things are good source of dietary fiber. All right, lots of vegetables, fruits and vegetables, legumes, great source of dietary fiber and protein and micronutrients and minerals. Legumes, uh, what are they? Beans, white beans, black beans, pinto beans, you name it.

[00:08:37]Lentils, chickpeas, they are all it's soybeans are all going to have all these good things that help feed your gut microbiome. And whole grains, ancient grains, whole grains, it's all going to be better for you rather than the ultra refined uh stuff that that you know most of us grew up with. When you actually eat these whole foods that help feed your gut bacteria, make them healthy, healthy ones grow more healthy bacteria, guess what? It supports your body, your gut bacteria's production of shortchain fatty acids. Scaffas, healthier bacteria, more scaffas, short- chain fatty acids, more beneficial benefits, lowering inflammation, better sealing of the gut lining, better immune strength, all the things that you want for long-term health. There are some very specific foods that have been studied in research that can really support good production of scaffas. You want to know what they are? Chory root, garlic, onions, those actually have been studied by researchers and they're really good for producing short- chain fatty acids in your gut. Right? Remember, your gut is a foundation to your health. The more you support your gut health, the better your overall body health is going to be as well. So far, we've looked at how artificial sweeteners and additives that are in ultrarocessed foods can affect your heart, your brain, and your gut. I want to come back to the brain because not only do we want to avoid stroke. All right, but artificial sweeteners actually can have a different kind of effect on the brain. And I want to talk about that because the two artificial sweeteners I want to talk about very very common uh can have an effect on your brain. One is called sucralose also sometimes found as Splenda. That is an artificial sweetener that's about 600 times sweeter than normal table sugar.

[00:10:20]No wonder actually companies will use it. You can don't have to use regular sugar. A little bit of that six times sweetener. And sucralose was approved by the FDA in 1999. That's more than two decades ago, 20 years ago. And since then, it's found its way into all kinds of foods uh that we encounter, right?

[00:10:37]Diet sodas, coffee syrups that are very sweet. Think about that drive-thru and you want the seasonal something or other coffee that's got that's sweetened. It's got some syrup in it. Might have sucralose in it. sugar-free ketchup, sugar-free barbecue sauce. You know, like in the quest to develop lowcal sugar-free foods, the food manufacturers have actually been, you know, taking these rather remarkably sweet artificial substitutes for sugar, throwing them in there, thinking that they're going to help us dodge more calories. But guess what? There are unanticipated, untored side effects, collateral damage that now we begin tying to some of the chronic diseases that we want to dodge. By the way, what else is has sucralose? Low calorie salad dressings, protein powders, chewing gum, even some whole wheat breads and cereals and things you might want. Even that, make sure you look at the ingredient label. Now, sucralose does contain zero calories, but what guess what? Once you eat it, it gets into your bloodstream. It lingers around. It loves to hang out in body fat. And by the way, sucralose after you eat it has even been found in breast milk. Now, think about that. Now, you're feeding an infant, right? So there's a new study that shows that sucralose can actually affect your brain and your brain's control of appetite as well.

[00:11:57]Okay. So this is the research from the Kek School of Medicine at the University of Southern California. And what they did is they ran a study on 74 healthy adults, 37 women, 37 men. These were people that were in the first half of their lives, age 18 to 35, so young people. and they were assigned to have went one of three groups had a drink sweetened with sucralose which is what we're interested in. One had a drink that was sweetened with real sugar and one had sucralose and carbs. Right? So basically that was intended to say like if you're going to have food that has carbs in it, bowl of pasta and a diet soda with sucralose, drink it together.

[00:12:36]What's going to happen? because the carbs are actually from the food are going to gang up with sucralose, right?

[00:12:42]Which doesn't doesn't have a caloric effect. What's going to happen? So, in this particular case, they weren't looking at blood sugar. They were looking at brain uh activity. So, they researchers subjected the people, the patients, the subjects to functional MRI. Now, some of you may know an MRI is kind of taking a picture of your body at a pretty high resolution. You get pretty clear images. But functional MRI actually gives you a sense of what's going on while the picture is being taken. It's dynamic and you can observe brain activity using functional MRI. So that's what these researchers did. They gave people either sucralose, sucralose plus carbs, a carb meal, or just a drink with plain sugar. Okay? And they were looking at the area of the brain that's responsible for reward and appetite control.

[00:13:30]And here's what they found. Sucralose by itself did not activate the brain's reward center. When you hit like the way normal sugar did. So we have normal sugar. You activate the reward center and there's a feedback. Basically it's like all right you're getting your reward now let's you know we got some of it. We don't keep on eating it. The brain with sucralose did not activate the satisfaction signal that would shut down your drive. In fact it just made you kind of dodge that and you just keep on eating it. sucralose um plus carbs actually blunted the brain's ability to say that you're full. That's interesting, right? Because if you're eating food with a bunch of carbs and you're having a beverage, in this case in the research that has sucralose, guess what? Your brain should normally at some point say, "All right, guys, let's slow down. We got enough now."

[00:14:21]Here, adding the sucralose on a carb meal actually allows you to bypass, skip that fullness, so you just keep on eating. That's interesting. All right.

[00:14:29]So, you're eating more sucralose. Brain doesn't get the message you're full. You keep eating stuffing more calories in your system, overloading your metabolism over time. What does that lead to? If you're somebody who drinks a lot of sugar-free diet sodas with sucralose and you eat a lot of high carbs, you're going to overeat. It makes you more more likely to have weight gain, insulin resistance, and metabolic dysfunction.

[00:14:53]That's basically where your metabolism, the energy generating system of your body gets derailed. Now your blood sugars rise. Now you become pre-diabetic. Now you gain body fat. You know uh blood pressure goes up. All kinds of badness can actually happen. So sucralose can affect the part of your brain that affects hunger and then you can actually over easily overeat. What about the gut microbiome? Guess what?

[00:15:15]Sucralose like the other artificial sweeteners we talked about arythrtol, xylitol. Okay. Sucralose also damages the gut microbiome and increases inflammation and puts stress on your healthy gut bacteria. So, what is a healthy takeaway from this part of the video? Well, I'm going to repeat it again. Read your labels. Look for sucralose. All right? It is found in way more products than most people realize.

[00:15:44]You can find it in salad dressings, in yogurt, in flavored waters, in gum, chewing gum. I told you baked goods, um, cereals, protein powders, got to check out this stuff because especially protein powders, you know, made by the supplement companies or fitness companies, they're all well-intentioned.

[00:16:00]They do have protein in it, but in order to make it palatable, they throw stuff in it like sucralow. So, just check the ingredient label and you'll pick it up.

[00:16:07]Very, very important. That's it for now.

[00:16:09]I hope you found this helpful. I'm just going to bring to the surface things that we encounter every day that you need to know about. It's a best to be able to make your own choices so you don't want to be deprived of the choices. But when you see it, you want to know something about it and that'll allow you to make decide whether or not you want to put it in your body or not.

[00:16:26]If you found this helpful, hit the like button, subscribe if you're not already subscribed to me and share this video with somebody who you think could use this kind of information today. I will see you in the next video. Dr. Lee out.

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