JJ Virgin breaks down five ways artificial sweeteners backfire: they intensify cravings, feed harmful gut bacteria, disrupt your body's calorie signals, accelerate aging, and spike insulin. She shares a client who used 26 Splenda packets daily and still gained weight after gastric bypass, then walks through how to taper sweetness with fruit, sour foods, and natural alternatives like stevia and monk fruit.
Questions this video answers
1) Increased sweet cravings; 2) Feeding bad gut bacteria/SIBO; 3) Calorie dysregulation; 4) Formation of AGEs (glycation)/aging; 5) Linked to increased insulin, weight gain and diabetes risk.
The journal Obesity (speaker notes the study was funded by the American Beverage Association).
26 Splenda packets per day.
70% larger (as stated by the speaker).
Text 58885 and enter: 'Sweet' (or 'Suite' in the transcript) followed by a space, first name, a space, and an email address.
Chapters
It sounded so great. You can drink these sodas and not gain weight or maybe even lose weight or use this pretty little packet in your coffee to sweeten it up without adding any calories. Yep. I'm talking artificial sweeteners. In today's show, a science experiment that has gone wrong, leaving us as the victims. I'm going to share the real deal behind artificial sweeteners and what you can use if you need a little something something to sweeten things up that won't take down your health and your waistline in the process. So what's so bad about artificial sweeteners anyway? After all, they don't have any calories. And a recent study published in the journal Obesity showed that diet soda drinkers lost more weight than water drinkers. By the way, that steady was funded by the American Beverage Association. You figure that one out, and many more studies showed just the opposite. Now, I always like to go back to the science because ultimately, that's what your body's going to listen to. And number one, if you eat sweet, what do you crave? More sweet. So artificial sweeteners are 300 times sweeter than regular sugar. You know what that does? That. That sets your sweet tooth into overdrive. Remember, exposure equals preference. So the more sweet you eat, the more sweet you want, and the more sweet you eat. And around and around and around you go. Number two, artificial sweeteners can feed the bad bacteria in your gut. Now, this is really, really bad. It can create a condition called small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. Sibo. And what happens when you have an overgrowth of these bad bacteria in your gut is that you actually extract more calories from the food you eat. And get this, you store them as fat. How unfair is that? I had a client who had had gastric bypass, and so she really couldn't eat much. And to take her medications, she was using Splenda to sweeten it up because you had to crush them and eat them. She was up to 26 Splenda packets a day. Now, she had gastric bypass. She wasn't eating much, and she was gaining a pound a week. Remember, guys, calories count, but where they come from, so much more. And if something is creating a message in your body to store fat, it's not about the calories. Food is information. All right, number three, artificial calories can cause a phenomenon called calorie dysregulation. Here's what this is. They did a study. I'm not sure it was some germ. I don't know if it was A rat or a mouse? I think it was a rat. They did a rat study and what they did was they gave rats sugar water and then they allowed them to feed and the rats ate enough to maintain their weight. Then they gave the rats aspartame, sweetened water, and they allowed the rats to feed again. And this time the rats ate what they needed to maintain their weight. All good, all cool. Until the rats went back to regularly sweetened water. Because then they overate. You know why? They lost the ability to calibrate the degree of sweetness with the amount of calories. And all of a sudden now they're overeating. Calorie dysregulation. Yikes. Number four, artificial sweeteners can age you just like regular sugar. So we actually call this AGEs advanced glycated end Products. It's a process called glycation, where sugars and artificial sweeteners bind to protein to create these little evil substances. And actually these are a factor in creating or worsening all of the chronic diseases and aging. And five, they've been linked to increased insulin, weight gain and risk of diabetes. So a study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that diet sodas increase your diabetes risk more than regular soda. And another study presented at the American Diabetics association found that diet soda drinkers had a waist circumference 70% bigger than regular soda drinkers. And trends in epidemiology and metabolism found accumulating evidence that frequent consumers of these sugar substitutes may also be at an increased risk of excessive weight gain, metabolic syndrome, type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease. You know, I think my buddy Dr. Mark Hyman says it best. And so I'm going to quote him, there's no free ride. Diet drinks are not good substitutes for sugar sweetened drinks. They increase cravings, weight gain and type 2 diabetes and they're addictive. Alright, so then what the heck do you do? Is sugar the answer? Well, I do think that sugar is better than artificial sweeteners, but I'm not telling you have sugar either. So here's, here's what you're going to do. Number one, I want you to retrain your sweet tooth. You know, the deal is when you're doing artificial sweeteners or you're doing high fructose food foods like high fructose corn syrup and agave and honey. These are so sweet that you start to crave progressively sweeter and sweeter and sweeter foods. But you can lose that sweet tooth. And what you do is you start trading down. You know, you trade Higher sugar fruits like pineapple for lower sugar fruits like berries. And you start trading out the sweeteners you're using for things like stevia and erythritol. I'll talk about that in a minute. But, but here's another cool technique. You can actually lose your sweet tooth. Ready by eating sour and cultured foods, not only are they going to feed the good bacteria in your gut. Remember how I talked about artificial sweeteners? Sugar too can feed the bad bacteria in your gut, but cultured foods feed the good bacteria. And you want the good guys to win here. But also those sour foods totally take your sweet tooth away. Now you also want to look at what are some of the alternatives? And I still want you to taper. I want you to appreciate the natural sweetness of fruits. Cinnamon, Vanilla. But in the interim, as you're tapering it down, try the sugar alcohols, xylitol or erythritol or stevia and monk fruit. And you know what's cool here is that these things, as opposed to sugar, artificial sweeteners, actually have some health benefits instead of side effects and problems. What else I like here? I love cinnamon. Cinnamon, by the way, is very cool. Not only is it naturally sweet, but it helps balance blood sugar. So here's. It's sort of like a supplement. I've actually seen supplements with cinnamon. I'm like, well, why not just use cinnamon and vanilla? Vanilla can help raise serotonin. And as we know, stress lowers serotonin. And when serotonin is low, you crave more sugar because then sugar helps drive it back into the brain and, and make you feel good for a little short amount of time. Anyone who's done that knows it's just a short amount of time. I mean, the goal here is with any of those things, Xylitol, stevia, monk fruit, erythritol. So use the least amount possible because we want to retrain your taste buds again to appreciate the natural sweetness of food and to really dull down that sweet craving. And this can happen and it gets easier and easier. And then when you do have an artificial sweetener by mistake. Right? Right. You're going to realize how really nasty and awful these sweeteners are. Now, if you'd like a free transcript of today's show, just text 58885 and enter Sweet. And the number one, put a space, your first name, another space, and your email address. So again, that number is 558885. You enter Suite 1 space, your first name space, and your email address in the virgin diet I have, you swap seven foods for three weeks to uncover your hidden food intolerance so that you can finally lose the weight and feel better fast. Why wait? Start those three.
