Another bacteria in the gut thread

[glatt]

Rather than throw this in some existing thread that isn't a good fit and that may go off on an undesirable tangent, I thought I'd start a new one.

Just read in the paper today how a new study published in Nature shows that consuming sugar substitutes instead of sugar can actually make blood sugar levels spike much more than the real sugar would have. The really interesting thing to me is that the researchers then speculated about why the results were what they were.

They theorize that the saccharin is changing the bacteria in the gut.

In a series of experiments, researchers found that several of the most widely used types of non-calorie sweeteners in food and drinks — saccharin, sucra*lose and aspartame — caused mice to experience increased risk of glucose intolerance, a condition that can lead to diabetes.

“We are talking about very dramatic increases,” said one of the study’s co-authors, Eran Segal, a computational biologist at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel.

The same scientists also monitored what happened to seven human volunteers who did not typically use artificial sweeteners but were given regular doses of saccharin over the course of a week. Four developed significant glucose intolerance. Separately, the researchers analyzed nearly 400 people and found that the gut bacteria of those who used artificial sweeteners were noticeably different from people who did not.

It seems like everywhere we turn, there is new evidence coming out that problems with bacteria in the gut are causing a wide range diseases.

We've discussed at length the relationship between the gut and autism, and studies are now supporting that more than ever. This new study show the relationship between diabetes and the gut. And I even posted way back in 2006 a study about obesity caused by gut bacteria.

I think it's time for research money to be focused heavily on studying gut bacteria instead of other areas of health. I think there is a lot to learn there and the potential payback on those research dollars is greater than in other areas of research.