Insulinogenic response is it Pavlovian?

(Consensus is Politics) #1

I’ll make an assumption that it’s been proven that the response to non-sugar sweeteners cause an insulinogenic response.

Two questions.

1- is this a Pavlovian response? Simply put, our body has been conditioned to recognize sweet as incoming sugar, so it preemptively raises insulin to speedily remove the poison from the blood.

2- if it is a Pavlovian response (a learned response) can our bodies unlearn this? Essentially if we aren’t eating things that need insulin to shuttle glucose around, is it possible to stop the response to it? Essentially untraining the dog, to stop him from salivating at the sound of the bell.

(Central Florida Bob ) #2

FWIW, just my take on this (which I have also thought about for a long time)

  1. Yes, it is Pavlovian.
  2. For us to unlearn it, there has to be a negative effect of the extra insulin that gets released. That translates to asking what response would be negative in chemical terms to our bodies such that it could learn to make sure blood glucose is really going up before it releases insulin to bring it back down. If it just dumped a ton of insulin, our blood glucose crashed and we passed out, would the biochemical “sensors” recognize that as bad?

If not, the raised insulin level is just the state of insulin resistance, and the biochemical queues don’t seem to regard that as negative.

That tends to make me think unlearning that response is slow if at all.

OTOH, one of the things we hear a lot of is “our bodies aren’t stupid”. Kind of hard to reconcile those ideas.

#3

Should be easy to prove. If true, non-caloric sweeteners should lower the blood sugar levels.

(Central Florida Bob ) #4

Some people have done those tests and seen reduced blood sugars.

I’ve tested myself with all the artificial sweeteners around the house (meaning I didn’t go try everything I could buy) and have never seen that result. Which may mean my pancreas is a slow learner.

(Brian) #5

Very good questions, Bob Johnson. I have wondered about that myself, more than once. And I don’t have an answer, really.

I, too, have wondered whether the response would change over time if the expected stimulus never came.

For instance, if I walk up to a person and pretend I’m gonna slap them in the face but never actually hit them, the first time, it’ll freak them out and they might react as though they actually have been hit. If I do the same thing the next day, I might still get a similar reaction but maybe not as strong. By the 20th consecutive day of doing exactly the same thing, I suspect I’d get very little reaction other than perhaps irritation that I’m threatening the same thing as every other day and never following through. The first day, 5 seconds after, the heart rate and BP would be through the roof. The 20th day, 5 seconds after, it would probably not move much.

And with that kind of thing in mind, I also wonder whether the body would continue to dump insulin into the system when, despite the sweet taste, no (or little) sugar is forthcoming.

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #6

From what I have gathered from these forums, there are people who will get an insulin spike from erythritol, say, but not from sucralose, whereas other people might see an insulin spike from sucralose and not from erythritol. I have never seen a post by anyone who gets an insulin spike from all non-caloric/artifical/non-sugar sweeteners, they appear to react only to one or another of them. In other words, each one of those sweetners causes an insulin reaction in some people, but there don’t appear to be any people who react to all of them. So it’s clearly not a learned response, if people are observing and reporting their responses accurately. Which is actually a pretty big “if.”

Unfortunately, the reserch on these sweeteners has never studied what effect they might have on insulin secretion. The research has only been done to verify that these sweeteners have no effect on glucose levels.

The reason for this is that diabetes is, as we all know, a disease of high glucose levels and insufficient insulin, caused by the eating of red meat. :rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl:

(Brian) #7

That one is always a puzzle to me. It almost sounds like they’re skipping the T2 and immediately sending us all into T1, for the reason, “they said so”, the end. Kinda head scratching to try to follow their logic.

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #8

Simple: eating animals is evil and disgusting. Plants are pure, wholesome, and good for us.

For the antidote to that particular meme:

(Consensus is Politics) #9

:man_facepalming:t2:
Silly me. I forgot the real cause a diabetes. Lucky for me the cure for something is just to go overboard on what causes it right? So eating nothing but meat ends up having the reverse effect, undoing the diabetes. You know, like falling down the stairs can twist an ankle or break a leg. So you just keep repeating what you did until it fixes itself.

[an early morning attempt at being facetious, or humorous. Maybe better classified as pointing out the absurd by being absurd? Not at you PaulL, I liked what you said. Just my attempt to add onto it. I need coffee]

(Todd Gamel) #10

I agree Paul, Dr.Fung in his book ‘The Obesity Code’ pretty much tells his readers to stay away from all artificial sweeteners. Personally, I use liquid sucralose because it does not affect my ketone levels. I know this as I have experimented with water fasting in which I drank nothing but water, and then another fast in which I drank kool-aid or tea made with liquid sucralose. I have done this many times and for me my ketone levels were stable.

Whether, or not this caused a small spike in my insulin during the day I cannot say for certain. What I can say is that in my experience sucralose does not raise my blood sugars, or if it does it is by such small amounts that it is negligible. I have been using sucralose for more than 2 years, my Hgb A1c was 5.2 on December 12th, 2018. It has been stable at this level for over 18 months.

To use artificial sweeteners is matter of personal choice. Each type my affect each of us differently. What is good for me and Paul, may not be good for you. Even the leading authorities in the keto community (Phinney, Volek, and Fung) disagree on their use.

(Karen) #11

@Richard can you do this as a study? Do you have to have a thesis? Any way it would be great to know.

(Brian) #12

Odd as it may sound, I’m glad there is some disagreement. If there were complete unity, it would be pretty boring, plus, there would be no need to dig deeper, to study, to learn more about how stuff works. (FWIW, that could be said for not only the physical world, but might be just as applicable to the spiritual world, for those so inclined. Just an out-there thought…)

(Todd Gamel) #13

This is the statement on page 512 from the research article “Effects Of oral Ingestion Of Sucralose On Gut Hormone Response and Appetite in Healthy Normal-Weight Subjects ”, published in the European Journal of Clinical Health (2011). Regarding the oral ingestion of the artificial sweetener sucralose.

Furthermore, we show that sucralose ingestion does not affect plasma glucose and insulin. This is consistent with previous human studies in which no effect on plasma glucose and insulin was observed following ingestion of encapsulated sucralose in diabetic patients (Grotz et al., 2003) or following intragastric infusion of sucralose in healthy subjects (Ma et al., 2009). Similarly, oral gavage of sucralose in rats did not improve glucose homeostasis following an intraperitoneal glucose-tolerance test (Fujita et al., 2009), suggesting that there was no incretin effect mediated by the sucralose gavage".

Take it for what it is worth, the sample size of volunteers is really small in this study with only eight participants. While I do use sucralose, I would like to see a study with a larger sample size. Smaller sample sizes may not give us an actual representation of the overall potential response of the general population. I will attach the article for those interested. The complete article is available for free for download by clicking on either of the links in this response. Stay ‘Keto Strong’ my friends…

European Study of Insulin Response of Sucralose

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #14

Well, that’s a nice surprise. At least someone has thought to check—and in more than one study, apparently.

It’s mystifying, though, why the sucralose was administered in capsules or placed directly in the stomach; I’d have thought that ingesting it in the normal way would have been more illluminating (it might have had something to do with the dose; nobody wants to eat too much sweetness all at once). Apparently even the rats wouldn’t eat the stuff and had to be force-fed it!

(Todd Gamel) #15

Most likely to do with the control study parameters of dosage control, and the fact they they were interested in studying the effects of three different variables 1) sucralose with no additives, 2) sucralose which also contained maltodextose (Which is what Splenda is) and plain water in the GI tract.

In the lab when sucralose was added to gastrointestinal endocrine cells in vitro (a test tube) sucralose, appeared to increase glucagon-like peptide (GLP-1) secretion. This peptide then stimulates the release of glucagon which causes an increase in endogenous insulin production. What this study found was that in a living person when administered directly into the Gi-tract, sucralose did not increase appetite, nor did it affect or increase GLP-1 secretion therefore there was no rise in insulin production.

Among the things they wanted to try and look at was the claim by many that artificial sweeteners increase appetite as well as an insulin response due to the incretin hormone GLP-1. In order to measure this correctly, you need to have a standard measurable dosage for all subjects. In addition, 1 drop of liquid sucralose that is commercially available is equal to 1 teaspoon of sugar as far as sweetness goes, so a little definitely goes a long way.

Unfortunately, as I mentioned in a previous response, eight subjects is by no means a representative sample size of the human population. I would like to see a 100 tested at a minimum, a 1000 or more would be better you would then have less room for error and variance in your results. The bottom line is that no drug or food company is going to pay for this type of research. No one wants to find out that the artificial sweeteners they add to their “diabetic friendly” foods causes insulin to increase. Stay ‘Keto Strong’ my friends.

This limited study concludes:

Water does not increase insulin production (Duh).
Sucralose does not increase insulin production.
Sucralose + Maltodextrin does increase GLP-1 secretion which increases insulin production. (The powdered forms of both Splenda and many Setvia products contain maltodextrin as a bulking agent).
Sucralose + AceK does increase GLP-1 secretion which increases insulin production (AceK is used in most diet soft drinks).

(Consensus is Politics) #16

Amen! “Thats a fact, Jack!”

I used Metamucil for a few years, because well, you know, it’s well known that more fiber is good for you :roll_eyes:. Of course I used the sugar version. Because fat was bad and caused diabetes :roll_eyes:.

So when the doctor diagnosed me with T2D I had several questions on the spot. Around the tenth one or so (trust me there were dozens, most of them technical enough he couldn’t answer them) so it was a simple question, could/should I continue to use Metamucil? He said yes. It’s a very healthy thing to do, just buy the sugar free king to keep your BG level low (the one and only time I doctor recommended staying away from sugar :astonished:).

So I went and bought sugar free Metamucil. On the package it states “safe for diabetics”. I felt relieved, there is still hope for leading a somewhat normal life even with diabetes! [stop laughing. I was 99% ignorant about diabetes. Ok ok, go ahead and laugh. :rofl:]

I didn’t take it very often. I started mixing it with low carb Greek yogurt. Made a nice orange mousse. I had been ketogenic for a month or so by this point. Suddenly my BG readings where wacky. Sudden spikes for no reason as far as I could see. This went of for a couple of weeks. I had been tracking my food very carefully trying to track down the culprit. I was seriously looking into fluorescent lighting as the culprit somehow (I had a supervisor in the Air Force who would pass out from low blood pressure every time she walked into the base Credit Union. Her doctor took it upon himself to do some science. He looked at both the Credit unions lights and the Bank of America’s lights in the adjacent building and compared them. BofA lights were local purchase at Kmart (yes long time ago) and the CU lights had no English on them, but had Cyrillic alphabet only on it. This was the early 1980’s. The Cold War was at a very uncomfortable point for us, especially in the USAF, and out unit. Our aircraft would be the first to fly in and take out radar sites, missile sites, and basicallly anything that communicated with weapons systems. We were the Wild Weasels.

After the AFOSI went in, evacuated the CU, searched the building for spy tools, bugs, cameras, etc… and vetted everyone in hat worked there (paranoia was nearly as high as the McCarthy era). She could then walk in and no longer pass out. Sorry about the story, I had all but forgotten about it until I mentioned my own lights…

Which weren’t the problem of course. Microwave leakage? EMF from our fridge? I was grasping at straws. Then I realized I hadn’t been logging my Metamucil. I looked at the times of my BG spikes, and best guess was they indeed correlated with the times I would have taken it. So I looked at the ingredients. “Maltodextrin”, first item on the list. A little research showed its used as an anti caking agent. A little more research showed it has about twice the glycemic index as table sugar. SAFE FOR DIABETICS MY ARSE!.

Stopping the Metamucil, the only change to my routine, fixed my BG issue.

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #17

Ah! Well, that makes sense then.

Like you, I would also like to see a much larger study . . . so that we can be sure water doesn’t increase insulin production. :rofl: