You have a fetish for all things sweet, and cannot stay off sugar – yet your doctor says you must, because may be you’re a putting on too much weight. Well, until a few years ago you had every reason to lose heart and hope – but not now. Artificial sweeteners are the latest boon for anyone looking for a sugar-substitute. The food-industry is brimming with companies trying to cash in on this latest craze. But throw in the health concerns and you’re really prompted to ask: are artificial sweeteners really good news?

A Healthy Farce
Artificial sweeteners are making their presence in most edibles and every-day products these days. Right from aerated drinks to toothpastes, they are everywhere. In the case of edible foods, artificial sweeteners have comfortably crept inside almost everything popularly eatable today. True, artificial sweeteners definitely live up to the expectation of ‘lighting up’ one’s taste-buds, however, dig for facts and you’d realize an artificial sweeteners are more than a mere ‘sugar-coating device’.

Artificial sweeteners can cause problems like obesity, increased cholesterol, tooth decay, mood-swings, mineral depletion and also high triglycerides. Artificial sweeteners come labeled with having ‘zero-sugar’. In truth however, over-consuming them could worsen the diabetic situation of a patient.

Moreover, an unregulated intake of artificial sweeteners has been credited for giving rise to problems such as heart palpitations, constipation and also, reports have indicated swelling of certain body parts as well. And here’s something interesting: consuming artificial sweeteners can also lead to a change in the taste-buds, activating the pleasure-centers – hence kick-starting an addiction. Adverse reactions of artificial sweeteners also include ailments like headache, seizures and attention-deficit disorders.

Weighing the Scales
Artificial sweeteners may come with the ‘zero-sugar’ tag and may make promises of helping you keep a tab on your sugar-levels, but recent research has come up with facts that counter the claim. Psychologists at the Purdue University’s Ingestive Behavior Center conducted experiments on nine rats and drew primary conclusions that artificial sweeteners may in fact be encouraging weight-gain.

The nine rats were fed no-calorie saccharine yogurt and it showed the rats ended up consuming more food, leading to weight-gain – as against another set of eight rodents who were fed yogurt with old-fashioned plain glucose. Researchers derived that the consumption of artificial sweeteners actually messes up the brain – leading to over-intake of foods.

Common Side Effects
Health experts and researchers have inked down a list, jotting down the illnesses likely to happen due to the usage of artificial sweeteners. Possible ailments include muscle-spasms, depression, fatigue, weight-gain (obvious!), insomnia, hearing and vision problems. If these weren’t really alarming – the list also includes anxiety-attacks, vertigo, emotional disorders, brain cancer, Lupus, epilepsy, birth defects, brain tumor, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease,.

Bitter Truth
Clearly artificial sweeteners are very popular alternatives today. However, it is important that you be smart and do not slip on the sugar-coat – because studies and research do provide ample evidence that artificial sweeteners are a sweet-deal with a ‘hazardous’ tag on them.

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Category: Wellness, Fitness and Diet
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