The Side Effects of Artificial Sweeteners.
Body fat loss stuck on hold? Can't seem to lose that last little bit of fat?
This may be the problem.......
Artificial Sweeteners will over stimulate the hormones that make you
hungry and create a resistance too the hormones that suppress
hunger...... IT'S A DOUBLE EDGED SWORD!!!
Contrary to popular belief, studies have found that artificial sweeteners such as aspartame can stimulate your
appetite, increase carbohydrate cravings, and stimulate fat storage and
weight gain. In one of the most recent of such studies, saccharin and
aspartame were found to cause greater weight gain than sugar.
Aspartame is perhaps one of the most problematic. It is primarily
made up of aspartic acid and phenylalanine. The phenylalanine has been
synthetically modified to carry a methyl group, which provides the
majority of the sweetness. That phenylalanine methyl bond, called a
methyl ester, is very weak, which allows the methyl group on the
phenylalanine to easily break off and form methanol.
You
may have heard the claim that aspartame is harmless because methanol is
also found in fruits and vegetables. However, in fruits and vegetables,
the methanol is firmly bonded to pectin, allowing it to be safely passed
through your digestive tract. Not so with the methanol created by
aspartame; there it’s not bonded to anything that can help eliminate it
from your body.
Methanol acts as a Trojan horse; it's
carried into susceptible tissues in your body, like your brain and bone
marrow, where the alcohol dehydrogenase (ADH) enzyme converts it into
formaldehyde, which wreaks havoc with sensitive proteins and DNA. All
animals EXCEPT HUMANS have a protective mechanism that allows methanol
to be broken down into harmless formic acid. This is why toxicology
testing on animals is a flawed model. It doesn't fully apply to people.
Now a little education on the two hormones that artificial sweeteners effect.
A lot is known about what causes obesity. The simplest explanation is
that the genes that have protected us from famines for millions of years
are at the core of the cause of obesity. These powerful biochemical
systems are centered on a small area in the middle of the brain called
the hypothalamus. A specialized area in the hypothalamus, called the
arcuate nucleus, is where the signals that control metabolic rate,
hunger and satiety are located.
In the arcuate nucleus are two
cells types. One cell is the NPY/AGRP (Neuropeptide Y/Agouti Related
Protein) cell. This is the hunger cell. If it is stimulated you feel
hungry and your metabolic rate drops. The other cell is the POMC
(Proopiomelanocortin) cell. This is the satiety cell. If it is
stimulated you feel full and your metabolic rate increases.
The
two major hormones that control the hunger and satiety cells are
ghrelin and leptin. Ghrelin is produced by the stomach and travels to
the brain where it turns on the hunger cell and turns off the satiety
cell. Leptin is produced by the fat cells of the body and travels to the
brain where it turns on the satiety cell and turns off the hunger cell.
When you are obese you have lots of fat cells and thus your leptin
levels are high. The high leptin levels in combination with high insulin
levels turn off the stomach cells that make ghrelin so your ghrelin
levels are low. Now if that seems backward, your right. The problem is
that high leptin levels over time make the satiety cell insensitive to
leptin and low ghrelin levels make the hunger cell hypersensitive to
ghrelin. The result is that even though the leptin levels are high and
the ghrelin levels are low, the hunger cells are turned on and the
satiety cells are turned off.
This is exactly the situation
that occurs in a famine, hunger cells on and satiety cells off. So if
you are obese, even though you have plenty of fat stores, the brain
behaves like you were starving. This has many consequences. First and
foremost is a loss of the conscious signals that tell you when you are
full and when you are hungry. A common sign of this is that most obese
people don't feel hungry when they get up in the morning. As a result
they often skip breakfast. The brain interprets this as more starvation
signals and further shuts down the metabolism. In fact the number one
risk factor for obesity was skipping breakfast.
Ghrelin is also
important in many other functions of the body. One of the most
important is sleep. In order to efficiently progress though the normal
cycles of sleep you need adequate ghrelin levels. If you don't have them
you will not sleep as efficiently, you will dream less and get less
restorative sleep. This will make you more tired the next day and since
dreaming promotes leptin production, you will be hungrier and have a
lower metabolic rate.
The imbalance of leptin and ghrelin are at the heart of the cause and consequences of obesity.
Now I know your thinking to yourself this only effects obese people not
someone like me that only needs to drop a few more pounds, right?
WRONG, I am especially talking you you folks that just need to drop a
few pounds and in particular those of you getting ready for a
competition.
You see the leaner your body becomes the more
sensitive it becomes too. Drop the artificial sweeteners and see the
difference for yourself. You will be amazed at how quickly your body
will respond and those last few fat pockets will vanish.
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