eli5: why are artificial sugars bad for my blood sugar, when they aren’t actually glucose or fructose?
In: 35
Artificial sweeteners *aren’t* bad for your blood sugar. Extensive research has repeatedly shown that artificial sweeteners don’t increase your blood sugar and there’s no such thing as “tricking” your body.
A few small studies have claimed that artificial sweeteners have some other effects on your body, but none have been proven. All available proof shows that they’re perfectly fine.
Artificial sweeteners do not directly affect your blood glucose level by a significant amount. But when you eat something sweet, your body expects to need to turn some sugars into energy, and when it doesn’t get them, it can increase desire for real sugars later, and that is what causes the problem.
There’s no such thing as “artificial sugars”. If it’s a sugar, it will have an effect on your blood sugar. If it’s an artificial sweetener, it won’t. Artificial sweeteners are by and large not metabolized so they just get excreted by your body unchanged.
If you are talking things like sucralose or aspartame, as a diabetic who regularly checks their sugar, I can assure you they do not at all. It’s not something you want to consume a bunch of because of other non diabetic concerns, but I just use it to sweeten my drinks with meals (water flavoring or tea).
Ok, ok, we know from extensive study that insulin production occurs in the presence of artificial sweeteners. Over time, the body creates more receptors, and the body then releases more insulin to deal with the presence of “sugar” in the blood stream. People are getting bogged down in the if/or. I’ve gotten to the point of *why*??
How does the body recognize artificial sweeteners as sweet??? On a 5 year old level, how does the body get that sugar alcohols, which don’t actually have calories like sugar, and are built with OH groups instead of sugar chains, are sweet?? Is there some mechanism in the body (bad example, like a taste bud,) that says, “hey, this is sweet! Better release the sugar absorbing molecules?”
[Here is a simple but scientifically sound article supporting my basic question.](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7014832/)
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