What causes diet sweets to give you diarrhea? what actually happens inside your body?
In: Biology
The main culprit in sugar-free snacks is going to be the sugar alcohol known as *sorbitol.* You should see it featured fairly prominently on most, if not all, sugar-free snacks.
It works by causing the body to draw water into the large intestine, which normally functions to pull water out.
The polyols used in place of sugar have fewer calories because they’re not completely absorbed in the body.
Because they’re not completely absorbed, you have these polyols ending up in your lower intestine, your colon, where they have the same effect as fibers. They ‘attract’ liquid. Into your colon.
Which leads to your watery diarrhea.
It is the sweeteners found inside them. They are similar enough to glucose and other sugars our body uses for our taste receptors to think they are sweet, however ij our gut there are more specialist transporters that only work with specific sugars, mostly glucose. The sweeteners aren’t compatible with them so they stay inside the gut. This is why sweeteners can taste sweet but be zero calories, your body physically cant use them.
Now these sweeteners stay inside your intestines to be excreted in your poo. But if you rat them in a high enough amount it will draw water into your gut via osmosis (or prevent water already in their being absorbed by the body) extra water in your pool causes diarrhoea or loose stools.
Latest Answers