Interesting article about sucralose
One of the problems I have with testing the metabolic difference people who use artificial sweeteners and those who don’t is that that selects for people who know they have a problem with weight gain … because people who think they need to watch their weight try replacing sugar with artificial sweeteners.
Controlling for obesity doesn’t get rid of the confound because people who are not yet obese, but find it easy to put on weight know they need to watch their sugar intake. People with 2 obese parents who are not yet obese, know they need to watch themselves.
From the article
The effects of low-calorie sweeteners were strongest among adults who were obese, the team notes.
Yup.It would not surprise me in these subjects that their fat biopsy showed increase glucose transports on the surface, and an up-regulation in genes responsible for making fat from glucose.
The in-vitro part of this is interesting, tho. It seems that there is some effect to cause stem cells to differentiate into fat cells. That may actually be a good thing for reducing diabetes (new healthy fat cells protect us from diabetes).
I didn’t know that adipocytes have a similar sweet receptor to sweet receptors in the mouth. That was a genuinely fascinating rabbit hole to go down. Including the fact that this sweetness receptor is said to play a part in adipogenesis (@erdoke might be interested in this).
That might provide a mechanistic explanation - the detection of sweetness primes the system for transporting glucose (those transports do not however transport sucralose) and up-regulates machinery for dealing with that additional glucose.
That might imply that this sensitization is a good thing for making fat cells willing to take more glucose, it might not be good from an accumulating body fat perspective, but it might well be beneficial for a diabetes perspective (Allowing your fat cells to reduce more serum glucose).
Just speculating here … I would love to see more on those in-vitro tests.
yes, just replacing sugar with an artificial sweetener but continuing to consume other foods high on the glycemic index could show continued weight gain… but those foods are thought to be healthy so the blame lands on the artificial sweetener…
Increased insulin stimulated glucose uptake in fat cells is in fact a sign of insulin sensitivity.