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When you see the words sugar-free or
zerocalorie or maybe keto friendly on a
label, what do you think? Most people
assume that this is going to be that
healthier choice, right? Can
significantly increase the risk of heart
attack and stroke. What the researchers
were finding is that there are
substances, additives in ultrarocessed
foods that can actually knock out some
of these healthy gut bacteria. What are
my practical tips for you and how to be
aware and dodge these artificial
sweeteners that can actually have
adverse effects that are actually to be
harmful to you? Well, number one,
[Music]
[Applause]
I want to start with the sugar
substitute called.
It's a mouthful and it's difficult to
spell. E R Y T H R I T O L. This is an
artificial sweetener that you're going
to find in sugar-free drinks and candy,
keto snacks, low carb, baked goods that
you might find in the grocery store,
flavored waters, protein powders, you
know, for athletes. And now protein is
such a big trend. Watch out for what's
actually in that can or a bottle. And
even you can find arythrtol in some
dietary supplements. And if a product is
labeled zero sugar or keto friendly,
there's a good chance that it contains
some arythrtol. But here's what you need
to know. Researchers are looking at
arythrtol for their health implications
and they've discovered that arythrtol
can significantly increase the risk of
heart attack and stroke. Now that's
actually a big statement to make, but
it's a big finding. And the study that's
been looking at this uh that I want to
talk about is coming from Cleveland
Clinic's Learner Institute. And in the
study, the researchers gave healthy
volunteers arythril in the amounts that
you would typically find in a sugar-free
drink or snack. And here's what they
found. That when they gave the subject
arythril, same amount that you'd get in
a drink or a snack, boom, you ate it,
the blood levels arythrtol spiked a
thousandfold as high as from the
beginning. So, this is a substance that
when you eat it, gets right into your
bloodstream. And if it gets into your
bloodstream, some of you may have heard
me talk about this, our bodies contain
60,000 miles worth of blood vessels. And
these are the highways and byways of
health. And they bring everything that
we eat or drink and including the things
that are not so good for us, in this
case, arythrtol, they'll deliver to
every single organ and every single cell
in the body, thousand times spike. All
right? And what was concerning in these
human subjects is that while the
arythrtol was in their body, their blood
platelets, now these are tiny little
celllike particles that are in our
blood, their platelet activity, meaning
the platelets got activated
significantly. Platelets are basically
cell fragments that are naturally found
in our blood. So when you donate blood,
there's platelets in there. And the job,
the natural job of the platelet is to
help form blood clots when you're
injured. When you have any kind of
injury, right? Cut yourself in the
kitchen or the kitchen knife, uh, scrape
your knee, falling off a bike or
whatever, okay? You get some bleeding
and the reason the bleeding stops is
because the platelets rush to the scene,
race to the seam, and they become
activated. And that activated platelet
begins to form a clot, right? So
activated platelets form clots. People
who ate a lot of arythrtol but a lot
meaning what you get in a normal snack
actually had activation their platelets.
Now to me that is a red flag that gets
immediately sent up. Now when the
platelets become too active as in this
case like arythrtol cause all right what
happens is that the platelets that
wouldn't normally clot start to form
little clots in the body. Just what you
don't want. This is dangerous because if
you wind up actually triggering blood
clotting, you can actually interfere
with blood flow to the organs when the
clot forms in the blood vessels that are
trying to feed organs your oxygen and
nutrients through your blood. Now, when
the blood clots happen in your heart,
that is a heart attack. When a blood
vessels clot in your brain, your
platelets are activated in your bl brain
circulation. All right, there's 400
miles worth of blood vessels in your
brain. Clots form there. Guess what?
That is a stroke. really really eye
opening to think about something that we
would eat that's so common could
potentially be linked to activating
platelets that could cause this problem.
Now most people probably could have some
as most people do without a big problem
but think about the people who are at
highest risk for heart attack or stroke
right that's something to think about.
The other thing that's interesting is
that the researchers um also looked
besides arythrtol, they wanted to
compare it to just plain old regular
table sugar to see if sugar would
actually activate the platelets as well.
Right? Is this a sugar and sugar
substitute effect? Guess what the answer
is? Nope. This was not caused by regular
sugar activating platelets increasing
the clotting but it was found in
arythrtol but not normal sugar. All
right. So, you know, we hear about all
the so-called harms of regular sugar,
here is a sugar substitute, that really
should open your eyes to maybe a problem
that you want to actually dodge, right?
So, just because something was found
even through a blood sample from people
who atethrital, the real question is did
we actually see human clinical
correlations? In other words, is there
was there a natural problem that was
found in in humans? So basically they
also looked at people who actually had
high ariththral levels, okay, who were
consuming a lot of arythril and those
who consume consumed the most arythrtol
had twice the risk two times the risk of
having a heart attack or stroke over
three years that uh the study clinical
study was conducted. So you got an
observation that just feeding arythrtol
at normal snack and drink doses could
actually activate the platelets. And
then when you looked at people, okay,
and see how they did it over three
years. Yep. Actually, there was an
increase in exactly what that platelet
activation would cause, which is heart
attack and stroke. So here's the thing.
Most things that we eat, our body will
metabolize really fast to try to get rid
of any toxins and anything harmful,
right? Because it sounds like this might
be a harmful thing, but guess what? Your
body does not does not metabolize
arythrtol very well. Arythl enters the
bloodstream. It lingers in your tissue
and then eventually it'll exit through
your urine. You'll pee it out. All
right? But guess what? If you have
repeated exposure to arythrtol day after
day, week after week that could cause
those levels of arythrtol to build up in
your tissues and in your bloodstream
over time, right? And that would not be
a good thing for your platelets. All
right? So remember, arythrtol has been
shown to activate platelets, which would
actually increase blood clotting and has
been found to correlate arythrtol
consumption with a two-fold increase in
having heart attack or stroke. Something
to be careful about in my book. Here's
another one. The common artificial
sweetener called xylitol. All right.
Also linked to similar effects as
arythrtol. Now, where do you find
xylitol? Sugar-free gum, right? I mean,
most of us have grown up surrounded by
sugar-free gum. Some forms of peanut
butter actually have xylitol to sweeten
it. Mouthwash, toothpaste might actually
have xylitol as well. Watch out. All
right. And by the way, just so you know,
a lot of people might know this if you
have a dog and you've spoken to your
veterinarian. Xylitol is very toxic to
dogs. If you have a pet dog, you don't
want xylitol around. It can cause their
blood sugar to plummet dangerously
because they actually overproduce
insulin. Now, this doesn't happen in
humans, but it's just another reason to
be aware that xylitol is not just a
sweetener that does stuff to bodies,
including dogs bodies. You might be
saying, "Well, I bet ariththrtol and
xylitol are marked somewhere as having a
potential danger to some people at
least." But guess what? Both of those
substances, artificial sweeteners,
arythrtol and xylitol, are considered
generally regarded as safe. generally G
regarded R as a safe S called grass gr R
A S by the FDA at least historically
that's how it's been considered and the
reason is because you get a little tiny
bit of arythrtol and you can get a
little bit of tiny xylitol that are
naturally occurring in fruits and
vegetables but nowhere near what you
would actually have it in ultrarocessed
foods. All right. So, we are not talking
about the trace amounts you'd find
naturally in nature. We're talking about
concentrated highdose uh forms that you
find concentrated in artificially
sweetened products that people consume
every single day. And this actually
brings me to another point, which is
that the dose of what we have actually
matters, right? Have a tiny little bit,
rarely, probably you're going to bounce
right from that. It's not going to cause
any real problems. You have a high
amount day after day, day in day out,
week after week, year after year. Guess
what? That's where the problems are
actually going to come in. All right?
But we tend to be creatures of habit
when we actually eat and drink things.
So, this is why you need to know about
this latest research and think twice
when you're about to buy something that
might have arythrtol or xylitol in it.
Okay. What are my practical tips for you
and how to kind of be aware and dodge um
these artificial sweeteners that can
actually have adverse events effects
that actually could be harmful to you?
Well, number one, anything that you're
going to buy in a box or a bag or a can
or a tin, especially the stuff in the
middle aisle of the grocery store, read
the labels carefully. I can't emphasize
that enough. Whatever you pick up, take
a look at the side, look at the label.
By my book, what I would recommend is
avoiding products that contain arythrtol
and xylitol, especially if it's in a
protein bar or sugar-free drink or a
keto product. And by the way, you can
actually find a safer sweetener, right?
Raw honey is safer. Maple syrups is a
safe sweetener. Monk fruits a sweetener.
And stevia is also a natural sweetener,
but you got to be careful about stevia
because some types of stevia actually do
do have stevia in it, but they're also
doctorred up with some of these
artificial sweeteners because stevia is
kind of expensive. And by the way, even
a small amount of regular table sugar is
safer than some of these artificial
alternatives. All right, if you want a
sweet hit for your pallet or your brain,
you can get that sweet hit by eating a
whole food. fruits, vegetables, all
right, all naturally sweet. Most of them
are naturally sweet. Think about this
like there's nothing I like more than a
juicy sweet orange in the morning. Or
you want to think about it like a juicy
pear in the summertime or peach in the
winter. But when you eat uh whole foods,
you can get mother nature's sweet sugar
hit sweetness hit without actually
having to resort to the artificial
sweeteners. All right, so the study I
just told you about is a wakeup call.
Sugar-free doesn't always mean
risk-free. Now, if arythrtol can affect
your heart and your brain, what about
your gut? There are other researchers
that are taking a look at what's the
effect of artificial sweeteners on gut
health. We know that gut health, which
is really basically the health of your
healthy gut bacteria, your microbiome,
the 39 trillion bacteria that live
inside our gut, mostly in our colon. We
know that the gut is connected to the
brain, the immune system, your your
healing capacity, your stem cells, lots
of things our gut is actually connected
to. And researchers from Brazil at the
State University of Compinas in Brazil
looked at how food additives and
artificial sweeteners affect healthy gut
bacteria. You may have seen me talk
about some of the healthy gut bacteria,
but I would just tell you to remind you
they have really, really long
complicated names. Don't worry about
trying to memorize the names, but leave
it to people like me that can pronounce
them even. Lactobacillus,
bifidoacterium,
lactocus. All right, these are just
three bacteria that are very healthy and
have been studied. These are friendly
gut bacteria helpful that help you
digest food, fight off bacteria and
viruses. And by the way, these bacteria,
Lactobacillus, bifidobacteria, and
Lactocus, they produce anti-inflammatory
compounds that lower inflammation in our
body too, right? All good. What the
researchers were finding is that there
are substances, additives in
ultrarocessed foods that can actually
knock down or knock out some of these
healthy gut bacteria. All right? And
some of the biggest offenders, you might
be surprised, potassium sorbate. Go
ahead, take a look in your pantry of
something that's ultrarocessed or a bag
of something and take a look at the
ingredient label. See if you find
potassium sorbate, sodium benzoate, very
common additive, sodium bulfite, another
very common additive. Saccharine, very
common artificial sweetener. And
polyorbate 80. This is a thickener.
You're going to find this on a lot of
foods. All right. potassium sorbate,
sodium benzoate, sodium bulfite,
saccharine, and polyorbate 80. All
right, now that might seem like a
mouthful, but I guarantee you probably
have something in your kitchen. Maybe
you have a lot of things in your kitchen
that will contain one or more of those
additives. They didn't just reduce the
population of good bacteria,
lactobacillus, bifidobacterum, okay,
bacterium, and lactocus. But the ones
that they didn't knock out, they
actually impaired their function. They
reduced the number and then they
crippled the ones that were left. Not
good, right? And by the way, saccharine,
artificial sweetener, and potassium
sorbate preservative significantly
reduce the production by your healthy
gut bacteria of shortchain fatty acids.
These are scaff
fatty acid a scfa. We sometimes call
them scaffas for short, acetate,
proprianate, butyrate. You've probably
heard other people talk about this, but
potassium sorbate and saccharine very
common in in ultrarocessed foods. They
actually reduced the the production of
these healthy anti-inflammatory products
that your normal gut bacteria actually
makes. And by the way, these short-
chain fatty acids not only lower
inflammation, they support your gut
lining strength. You don't want leaky
gut. You need these short- chain fatty
acids. And they support your immune
health, right? These are the super
soldiers in your body that protect you
against um invaders from the outside,
bacteria and viruses. And inside your
body, they protect you against invaders
inside like cancer. What about
polyorbate 80? That's an emulsifier or a
thickener if you want to just have
everyday speak. An emulsifier is just a
thickener that's put in the foods,
right? found in ice cream and salad
dressings, a lot of baked goods. Guess
what? Polyorbate 80 was linked to
increased intestinal permeability.
What does that mean in English?
Increased gut leakiness.
You don't want that. All right. Now, why
does why is um having a non-leaky gut
important for your health? Because your
gut actually is sealed off. So whatever
goes through the gut, which is the food
you eat, the digested matter that goes
further down your gut and ultimately is
poop. You don't you want everything to
be stay in that tube and not leak out.
When the gut is leaky, uh guess what?
All that stuff comes out into your body
really bad. When the gut barrier is
compromised, stuff leaks out. You get
chronic inflammation.
Not surprising when you when I tell you
about all that stuff in your guts are
leaking out. Weakened immunity. All
right. So, your immune system goes down.
Now, you're more vulnerable for a whole
range of chronic diseases, including
potentially cancer. Got to be careful
about this. Like, this is what we're
learning about how important our immune
system is linked to our gut health and
that leaky gut really not a good thing.
So, what are your practical tips? Number
one, again, read the label. Check that
ingredient label. Look for things that
you might not want to add to your body
that I've just told you about. potassium
sorbate, sodium bulfate, sodium
benzoate, saccharine, polyorbate 80.
Actually, when you look for those
things, you're going to find it's not
that easy to avoid them because they're
so common everywhere. And this is what
sort of the wakeup call for us is not
just to, you know, say that we can avoid
ultrarocessed foods. It's really to
avoid some of the ingredients that might
be present in some of them. You might
have some some processed foods that are
actually better than others because they
don't have these elements. And by the
way, what do these additives do? They
make foods have a very, very long shelf
life. If something looks like it can
stick around for months or years, and
you know that food shouldn't last that
long, it probably has one of these kinds
of of um additives in it. All right? And
also these hard to pronounce
ingredients. If you can't pronounce it,
it's a probably not that great for you.
Okay, back to the sweeteners, right? So,
practical tip. How do you sweeten your
food if you don't want to use saccharine
or ariththrtol or xylitol? Okay, just
look for foods that are naturally
sweetened. Honey, maple syrup, stevia,
monk fruit, make sure it's pure stuff.
Those are actually fine. And by the way,
some of the juices that you can squeeze
out of a fruit also have natural
sweeteners as well. What you want to do
is you want to protect your healthy gut
bacteria at all times. Fiber richch
foods. Eat foods with a lot of fiber.
tree nuts, walnuts, pecans, macadamia.
All right, broccoli, avocados, kiwi, all
these things are good source of dietary
fiber. All right, lots of vegetables,
fruits and vegetables, legumes, great
source of dietary fiber and protein and
micronutrients and minerals. Legumes,
uh, what are they? beans, white beans,
black beans, pinto beans, you name it.
Lentils, chickpeas, they are all, it's
soybeans, they're all going to have all
these good things that help feed your
gut microbiome. And whole grains,
ancient grains, whole grains, it's all
going to be better for you rather than
the ultra refined uh stuff that that you
know, most of us grew up with. When you
actually eat these whole foods that help
feed your gut bacteria, make them
healthy, healthy ones grow more healthy
bacteria, guess what? It supports your
body, your gut bacteria's production of
shortchain fatty acids. Scaffas,
healthier bacteria, more scaffas, short-
chain fatty acids, more beneficial
benefits, lowering inflammation, better
sealing of the gut lining, better immune
strength, all the things that you want
for long-term health. There are some
very specific foods have been studying
research that can really support good
production of scaffas. You want to know
what they are? Chory root, garlic,
onions, those actually have been studied
by researchers and they're really good
for producing short- chain fatty acids
in your gut. Right? Remember, your gut
is a foundation to your health. The more
you support your gut health, the better
your overall body health is going to be
as well. So far,
we've looked at how artificial
sweeteners and additives that are in
ultrarocessed foods can affect your
heart, your brain, and your gut. I want
to come back to the brain because not
only do we want to avoid stroke. All
right? But artificial sweeteners
actually can have a different kind of
effect on the brain. And I want to talk
about that because the two artificial
sweeteners I want to talk about very
very common uh can have an effect on
your brain. One is called sucralose also
sometimes found as Splenda. That is an
artificial sweetener that's about 600
times sweeter than normal table sugar.
No wonder actually companies will use
it. You can don't have to use regular
sugar. A little bit of that 600 times
sweetener. And sucralose was approved by
the FDA in 1999. That's more than two
decades ago, 20 years ago. And since
then, it's found its way into all kinds
of foods uh that we encounter, right?
Diet sodas, coffee syrups that are very
sweet. Think about that drive-thru and
you want the seasonal something or other
coffee that's got that's sweetened. It's
got some syrup in it. Might have
sucralose in it. sugar-free ketchup,
sugar-free barbecue sauce. You know,
like in the quest to develop localal
sugar-free foods, the food manufacturers
have actually been, you know, taking
these rather remarkably sweet artificial
substitutes for sugar, throwing them in
there, thinking that they're going to
help us dodge more calories. But guess
what? There are unanticipated, unourred
side effects, collateral damage that now
we begin tying to some of the chronic
diseases that we want to dodge. By the
way, what else has sucralose? Low
calorie salad dressings, protein
powders, chewing gum, even some whole
wheat breads and cereals and things you
might want. Even that, make sure you
look at the ingredient label. Now,
sucralose does contain zero calories,
but what? Guess what? Once you eat it,
it gets into your bloodstream. It
lingers around. It loves to hang out in
body fat. And by the way, sucralose
after you eat it has even been found in
breast milk. Now, think about that. Now,
you're feeding an infant, right? So
there's a new study that shows that
sucralose can actually affect your brain
and your brain's control of appetite as
well. Okay. So this is the research from
the KEK School of Medicine at the
University of Southern California. And
what they did is they ran a study on 74
healthy adults, 37 women, 37 men. These
were people that were in the first half
of their lives, age 18 to 35, so young
people. and they were assigned to have
be one of three groups had a drink
sweetened with sucralose which is what
we're interested in. One had a drink
that was sweetened with real sugar and
one had sucralose and carbs. Right? So
basically that was intended to say like
if you're going to have food that has
carbs in it bowl of pasta and a diet
soda with sucralose drink it together.
What's going to happen? because the
carbs are actually from the food are
going to gang up with sucralose, right?
Which doesn't doesn't have a caloric
effect. What's going to happen? So, in
this particular case, they weren't
looking at blood sugar. They were
looking at brain uh activity. So, they
researchers subjected the people, the
patients, the subjects to functional
MRI. Now, some of you may know an MRI is
kind of taking a picture of your body at
a pretty high resolution. You get pretty
clear images. But functional MRI
actually gives you a sense of what's
going on while the picture is being
taken. It's dynamic and you can observe
brain activity using functional MRI. So
that's what these researchers did. They
gave people either sucralose sucralose
plus carbs a carb meal or just a drink
with plain sugar. Okay? And they were
looking at the area of the brain that's
responsible for reward and appetite
control. And here's what they found.
Sucralose by itself did not activate the
brain's reward center. When you hit like
the way normal sugar did. So when you
have normal sugar, you activate the
reward center and there's a feedback.
Basically, it's like, all right, you're
getting your reward now. Let's, you
know, we got some of it. We don't keep
on needing it. The brain with sucralose
did not activate the satisfaction signal
that would shut down your drive. In
fact, it just made you kind of dodge
that and you just keep on eating it.
sucralose um plus carbs actually blunted
the brain's ability to say that you're
full. That's interesting, right? Because
if you're eating food with a bunch of
carbs and you're having a beverage in
this case in the research that has
sucralose, guess what? Your brain should
normally at some point say, "All right,
guys, let's slow down. We got enough
now." Here, adding the sucralose on a
carb meal actually allows you to bypass,
skip that fullness, so you just keep on
eating. That's interesting. All right.
So, you're eating more sucralose. Brain
doesn't get the message you're full. You
keep eating stuffing more calories in
your system, overloading your metabolism
over time. What does that lead to? If
you're somebody who drinks a lot of
sugar-free diet sodas with sucralose and
you eat a lot of high carbs, you're
going to overeat. It makes you more more
likely to have weight gain, insulin
resistance, and metabolic dysfunction.
That's basically where your metabolism,
the energy generating system of your
body gets derailed. Now your blood
sugars rise. Now you become
pre-diabetic. Now you gain body fat. You
know uh blood pressure goes up. All
kinds of badness can actually happen. So
sucralose can affect the part of your
brain that affects hunger and then you
can actually over easily overeat. What
about the gut microbiome? Guess what?
Sucralose like the other artificial
sweeteners we talked about arythrtol,
xylitol. Okay. Sucralose also damages
the gut microbiome and increases
inflammation and puts stress on your
healthy gut bacteria. So, what is a
healthy takeaway from this part of the
video? Well, I'm going to repeat it
again. Read your labels. Look for
sucralose. All right. It is found in way
more products than most people realize.
You can find it in salad dressings, in
yogurt, in flavored waters, in gum,
chewing gum. I told you baked goods, um,
cereals, protein powders. Got to check
out this stuff because especially
protein powders, you know, made by the
supplement companies or fitness
companies, they're all well-intentioned.
They do have protein in, but in order to
make it palatable, they throw stuff in
it like sucralose. So, just check the
ingredient label and you'll pick it up.
Very, very important. That's it for now.
I hope you found this helpful. I'm just
going to bring to the surface things
that we encounter every day that you
need to know about. It's a best to be
able to make your own choices. So, you
don't want to be deprived of the
choices. But when you see it, you want
to know something about it and that'll
allow you to make decide whether or not
you want to put it in your body or not.
If you found this helpful, hit the like
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with somebody who you think could use
this kind of information today. I will
see you in the next video. Dr. Lee out.
Hey, if you like that video, then you're
going to love this one. Check it out.