“Results of the review also suggest that there may be potential undesirable effects from long-term use of NSS, such as an increased risk of type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, and mortality in adults.”
I’m just posting the reference. What to do (or not) is your own decision.
I gave up using them several years ago. I decided it was playing games with my metabolism. Essentially eating something sweet where your body expects calories and doesn’t get them and I think it slows your metabolic rate in response.
Mostly though I just don’t use any sweetener and if I want something sweet, I’ll just eat sugar or maple syrup in very small quantities.
It also makes me not crave sweets the way I did when I was eating artificial sweeteners.
I doubt there is any real risk like cancer or something like that, but for me, I just realized I don’t need them.
I haven’t used artificial sweetner in many years. Since following Mastering Diabetes I have used maple syrup, agave and dates. I learned to drink my coffee and tea black. I try to just eat whole non processed food, but that is just me.
A little while ago a lady who had been the editor (I think) of Nature Neuroscience wrote a book called Why Diets Make Us Fat. For many good scientific reasons, she is against weight-loss dieting for almost everyone.
About your post:
One of the suggestions she does make is to avoid ‘processed foods’ as much as is reasonable. The more ‘processed’, the worse.
I take her ideas seriously, after having done some fact-checking myself.
You might want to read her book. I liked it. I think that you can also find free recordings of her TED talks, etc., on the Web.
Thanks MapleSugar. I have always heard that weight loss diets don’t work, because as soon as the weight is lost, most people go back to their old ways of eating and gain all the weight and more back.
That’s reasonable, however what if you weigh more than you want to weigh? You will need to restrict calories in order to burn fat. I was at a loss when I started gaining weight when I started pumping, because I had better control and I thought it meant I could eat whatever I wanted. So I gained weight to where I ended up 36 lbs overweight.
I tried everything and I couldn’t lose because it caused my sugar to crash. But then I tried intermittent fasting. It’s not for everyone but I like it. And I’ve been able to lose weight, I have another 17 lbs to go and then I’ll just do it less.
Diets can work if you change your diet to a healthy diet and you are dedicated to eating healthy.
If you are just with holding from yourself and it makes you unhappy, then it won’t work.
I follow mastering diabetes but I consume a tiny bit of dairy and lean meat once a week. And I do 24 hour fasts on the weekends. And I think I could do it for the long haul. We will see after a while
I totally agree, but the majority of people can’t seem to stick to a weight reduction diet. We are constantly bombarded with ads for fast food and junk food. It can be very hard to walk away from good looking food, even if you know that it is bad for you.
If I didn’t have heart stents, I don’t know if I could stick to an extremely healthy way of eating.
Perhaps no one on these panels is actually diabetic with a nasty sweet tooth! If that IS one’s State, one is delighted to experiment with these things until one finds a good “fit” for one’s Everyday Life!`
I’m not big on sweetners, but I do drink and eat stuff that has flavor. There was a time I carried a bag of redbull everywhere and had two on every leg of every trip. They didn’t raise my heart rate, but I liked the taste. A diagnosed diabetic now, I don’t even do the sugar-free redbulls. I do drink some sugar free drinks, occasionally; a coke zero, and I’ll put a five-hour energey in a bottle of water and drink that over an hour or two. I experimented with both to see how they’d affect my blood sugar, and neither had discernable effects. Caffeine appears to lower my blood sugar, slightly.
My wife is big on Stevia. I avoid that and most other sweetners, and stick to the occasional coke zero. I do chew caffeine gum (maax gum) a fair amount, as I’m not a coffee drinker and a certain amount of stimulant use is commonly recommended in my line of work.
Artificial sweetners (epecially stevia) often come laced with other sweetners. What one thinks one is getting, often is something else, or something more. Not necessarily a good thing.
I think artificial sweeteners are a horrible assault on us.
I used to drink a lot of diet drinks and ate diabetic foods with them.
I gave them up and I feel better and I really don’t miss them.
They screw with us in more than one way.
The get us accustomed to sweeter tasting food so we crave that ever increasing sweetness
Our bodies get fooled by artificial sweeteners and expect that rush of sugar and it doesn’t come so our bodies reduce our metabolic rate to prevent starvation in a way that makes us more prone to gain weight
Then of course eating chemicals can’t be good for us , doesn’t seem like they are directly bad but there is really no need for them
You will find you can adjust back to a baseline within a few weeks.
If I want sugar, I eat sugar but mostly I don’t even coffee is best black once you try it a while
I blame all the diabetic educators I used to have, telling me Diet Coke is a free food and I can have all the Splenda I want. Sugar alcohols were also pushed on us as a good choice
I was not a big sweets eater before dx and I was very active and lean , after eating all that artificial sweetener , I learned how to eat poorly and believed it was good for me
It took time to redirect my brain and habits to really healthier eating
Just avoiding processed carbs was a game changer
