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Aspartame aggravates atherosclerosis through insulin-triggered inflammation
- sambeau 2y agoSometimes I'm glad that artificial sweeteners taste incredibly bitter to me
- lenerdenator 2y agoI know that they've gone back and forth on artificial sweeteners over the years, but honestly, one of the best things I've done recently is switch over to seltzer water. Triggers all of the chemical receptors in the brain by repeating the "ritual" of drinking canned pop, but it's just water, so it's actually good for you. Also half the cost.
- amelius 2y agoExposing your bladder to a lot of CO2 might not be a good idea.
- marceldegraaf 2y agoWhy would that be? I'm no biologist but I'm quite sure the CO2 won't make it all the way to the bladder, when drinking plain carbonated water.
- kvgr 2y agoA lot of carbonated water gives me gas, especially when not eating enough. But I am not sure it is an issue. People have various gas levels, it just goes in and out.
- mort96 2y agoAnd this gas escapes through your urethra?
- MrMcCall 2y agoI won't read anything funnier on HN today. Thanks for the visual.
- SketchySeaBeast 2y agoKazoo orchestra, anyone?
- kvgr 2y agoFortunately I dont have cloaca ;)
- p0w3n3d 2y agoI always considered drinking a lot of sparkling water an antipattern. I think this is connected with microbiome or people who I knew and who abused the sparkling water. I'm refraining myself from such activities because of the same reason (gas) but I also am sick (SIBO or another inflammation, have to hit diet hard)
- thyristan 2y agoTo arrive in the bladder, the CO₂ would have to be absorbed into the blood stream first. Which it isn't, it is just burped out from your stomach. Also, CO₂ which is dissolved into the blood stream is removed through your lungs, and the blood CO₂ level is very tightly controlled by various regulators and reflexes. You would know instantly through your suffocation response that your blood CO₂ is elevated.
- wyldfire 2y agoIf gases show up in your urine, something has gone seriously wrong.
- lotsofpulp 2y agohttps://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10096725/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10096725/ >People with little saliva and a habit of frequently consuming acidic beverages are at increased risk for enamel erosion. The basic recommendations are to drink water as the first choice and eat fresh fruits as an integral part of a healthy and balanced diet. >Health professionals should motivate the population to change their behavior regarding the consumption of acidic drinks, and recommendations should be made at the policy level to discourage the consumption of sugary drinks. Interventions that would improve oral health and overall health are widely available.
- cj 2y agoI switched from sparkling to plain water a few weeks ago (for other reasons). I’m drinking significantly less than I was when drinking sparkling. So again, the question now becomes is it better to be fully hydrated drinking “acidic” sparkling water, or is it better to only drink plain water and be dehydrated? (Rhetorical question)
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- seamossfet 2y agoFrom that same study: >The increased amounts of calcium, phosphate, and fluoride in the drinks limited the severity of erosion by changing the solubility of the enamel [82]. The decline in enamel’s surface microhardness and mineral loss were both dramatically halted by the addition of CaGP to the carbonated drinks. Most seltzer water has fluoride in it, and your tap water has fluoride in it (if you're making your own at home). Also the methodology in this study was purely in vitro, not real world conditions. Notably, the lack of saliva. >Under normal circumstances, human saliva forms a physical barrier, a film, and prevents direct contact between the tooth enamel surface and acidic beverages, thus protecting teeth from erosive attack by acids [45,84,85,86]. However, the erosion tests were carried out without saliva Also, seems like the study was more on soft drinks in particular and not "other acidic drinks" which may include seltzer water. >Soft drink consumption during meals was linked to mild to severe tooth damage [65]. No matter when they were consumed, other acidic meals and beverages were not linked to tooth damage [40]. Anyway, net is this: I'm not saying sparkling water carries absolutely no risk, but linking a study like this and cherry picking quotes to make it sound like sparkling water is going to destroy your teeth is misleading. If drinking sparkling water helps you kick your soda habit, please definitely make the switch. It's so much better for you. The increased risk from drinking sparkling water compared to still water is not worth worrying about if sparkling water provides a quality of life increase for you. Everything in healthcare is about moderated risk and counterbalancing it against lifestyle.
- flocciput 2y agoI've found seltzer makes me sleepy or fatigued for some reason. Everyone I tell this to looks at me like I'm nuts but I swear it's real. I think it has something to do with the brain's expectation of calories and the subsequent lack.
- deinonychus 2y agoI can imagine that. If I drink a lot of diet soda, I get a bit wired but also tired in a weird way. It's like my body expects some sugar to fuel the caffeine's stimulation.
- MrMcCall 2y agoI get sleepy if I have too many vitamins/minerals (eg: a whole PowerBar or entire Orgain drink), so maybe it's the minerals, perhaps Magnesium? [Magnesium helps my wife sleep better, but she can only take it at night or it makes her sleepy. I take half in the morning, and I think it helps because we're likely not getting enough in our mineral-depleted foods.]
- n8henrie 2y agoConvo from 4d ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43313574 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43313574
- kreetx 2y agoEvery now and then there is an alarmist article about aspartame, and every time it's hard to tell whether moderate drinking of soft drinks is better when it had regular sugar vs when it has aspartame - can any person more familiar comment on this with regarding to current article?
- edhelas 2y agoJust drink water or low sugar beverages.
- morkalork 2y agoI would really like a low sugar soft drink, not artificial but one with like 1/4 the amount of real sugar. It would probably taste fine, I don't get why everything needs 32g in it!
- lifeinthevoid 2y agoKombucha can be low sugar and the acidity is quite nice.
- deinonychus 2y agoSeconding this. Whenever I'm at the store I can't help but grab a bottle of Health-Ade. A third of the sugar and it's effervescent and tart in a way that makes it so refreshing.
- bfmalky 2y agoBuy diluting juice. Water it down to your preferred concentration.
- mort96 2y agoWhile certainly an option, just watering out a drink more isn't really what they're asking for. There's lots of other flavor compounds that you don't necessarily want watered out just because you want less sugar.
- nisegami 2y agoSo it sounds like: 1. consuming aspartame triggers insulin release (unclear if this is novel information) 2. insulin release triggers inflammation that leads to atherosclerosis (they go into further detail on the mechanism here, which appears to be novel info) It really doesn't seem to me like the artificial sweeteners should be the critical aspect of this finding, as this affects anything that triggers insulin release. Is there any data linking sulfonylureas with atherosclerosis? Based on this finding, one might expect that to be a consequence of their insulin releasing effect.
- elhudy 2y agoI didn’t read the entire article and i am not a physician. That said, your point #2 sounds incorrect - aspartame doesn’t cause atherosclerosis, it aggravates atherosclerosis. The key difference there as it relates to type 2 diabetes patients is that presumably if they had atherosclerosis as an existing condition, they would qualify for a glp-1 with cvd benefits, and not be on sulfonylureas in the first place.
- glimshe 2y agoOver the years I got out of all carbonated drinks and excessive coffee by phasing in homebrewed black, green and herbal teas. I feel a lot healthier and my previously chronic heartburn and gastritis magically went away.
- coffeecantcode 2y agoYup, I was never much of a soda drinker but switching from coffee to loose leaf teas has been a huge move for me in my daily habits. I used to drink coffee until 3, 4, even 5pm and it was having negative effects on my health and sleep. Now I just start the day with a mug of loose leaf tea and keep re-steeping it as the day goes on. By the time noon comes around there is little to no caffeine left but I still get some tea flavor as well as the hit of hot liquid my body is used to. When at home I brew gong fu style which keeps more caffeine as I reload the gaiwan or tea pot but that’s just a preference of mine. Highly recommend Chinese/Taiwanese teas, especially Oolong if you’re looking for an alternative to coffee or soda.
- dinkblam 2y agothat aspartam is (or may be) evil is conclusive proof that ALL sweeteners are bad for you! they are the worst! all crazy people have been right!
- cynicalpeace 2y agoThe lesson again and again is to simply eat whole foods. ...cue the onslaught of wise-guy comments claiming sliced carrots aren't whole foods.
- tonyedgecombe 2y ago>...cue the onslaught of wise-guy comments claiming sliced carrots aren't whole foods. Also think of the poor, they can't afford carrots.
- nonethewiser 2y agoOne does not simply eat a grocery store chain.
- MrMcCall 2y agoHundreds of housands of years of the human body's evolution should be respected, neh? I like my day's first glass of water to have a half a lemon's worth of juice freshly squeezed into it. My cold-brew (or occasionally espresso) coffee gets real maple syrup (no Log Cabin bullshit sugar-fest) and half-and-half or maybe whole milk. Sometimes I mix yogurt into a mug of milk towards the end of the day. That's the fullness of my liquids, except that which comes naturally with food.
- SketchySeaBeast 2y agoI find this line of reasoning disingenuous. After all, we couldn't consume milk hundreds of thousands of years ago. Does your evolutionary heritage put you in places where hundreds of thousand of years ago you would have consumed lemons, coffee, and maple syrup? Is half-and-half natural? Is coffee? Is maple syrup? On a scale of hundreds of thousands of years all those are relatively recent. It's a bit of straw-man, but I'm try to point out that we can't appeal to being in alignment with our evolution when even those barebone items have been refined and we wouldn't have eaten them in our prehistory.
- MrMcCall 2y ago> After all, we couldn't consume milk hundreds of thousands of years ago. But for the past thousands of years, I'm pretty sure my lineage could. > you would have consumed lemons, coffee, and maple syrup? Citris? Beans? Tree syrup? > Is half-and-half natural? Sure is. And so is yogurt (a Turkish word, I'll have you). > It's a bit of straw-man I'd call it something else, completely. > I find this line of reasoning disingenuous. Duly noted.
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- Havoc 2y agoBeen avoiding it since day 1. At least with sugar the risks are somewhat understood. Then again...don't drink soda so neither here not there really
- shlant 2y ago> At least with sugar the risks are somewhat understood. Aspartame has been studied for 50 years. The risks are very well understood. This single study on mice does not shift that.
- SketchySeaBeast 2y agoThis feels kind of like "at least I know what I'm getting with the measles".
- samfriedman 2y ago>Data and code availability >No original code was generated in this study. Oh come on. I thought Cell was more strict than this.
- StableAlkyne 2y agoIt's a major problem in science, unfortunately You see it in the computational fields too - often the best you can get is an uncommented mess of Python and Shell scripting. If you get anything at all. The worst are those that train ML models to predict a property, spend several pages talking about how good it is... And just never bother including the model artifacts. IMO that's the stuff that should get papers rejected.
- mmaunder 2y agoHow well established is it that aspartame produces an insulin response? For me that’s the shocker. I don’t consume any but I’ve always suspected this. It suggests that many diet sodas, sugar free gums, and sugar free foods can contribute to insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes.
- nonethewiser 2y agoTIL aspartame is considered "healthier" because it takes far less of it in calories to achieve the same level of sweetness (~200x sweeter than sugar).
- kypro 2y ago> Here, we show that consumption of 0.15% aspartame (APM) markedly increased insulin Most food will "markedly increase insulin", and sugary food / drinks even more so. Obviously people should try to eat healthy and ideally avoid artificial sweeteners, but in reality people are not machines and they're not going to drink water and eat lean meat and veg every day just because that's what's best for them. It seems to me that for most people who like to occasionally consume soft drinks that switching to a comparable artificially sweetened alternative is going to be better for you even if there are still risks. A study titled "eating cake aggravates atherosclerosis through insulin-triggered inflammation" isn't reason to never eat cake. It's just reason to be sensible and consume in moderation. People have been consuming artificially flavoured foods and drinks daily for decades at this point. While these things are interesting to know and consider, no one should be concerned about this unless you're consuming an excessive amount of Aspartame. And even then it's almost certainly better for you to do that than consume excessive amounts of sugar.
- MrMcCall 2y agoDoesn't aspartame partly break down into methyl alcohol if it gets too hot? I regularly drank Diet Cokes 25 years ago, and remember some batches would be "worse" than others. And, whether from cans or plasic bottles, you're either also getting the can's lining or the plastic from the container mixed into the soda, right? I mean, it's an acidic liquid, so there is bound to be some dissolution of the lining into the fluid, by my understanding, with the more the warmer the temp. And I do wonder what temp the bottling takes place at.
- Aloisius 2y agoIt does. There's always a little methanol. Of course, when you drink it, your body will metabolize about 10% to methanol. Of course, there's methanol is fruit and vegetable juices and your body will metabolize pectin containing fruit to methanol too.
- eemil 2y agoWhat's with the double standard, around sugar and artificial sweeteners? Artificial sweeteners do not need to be as safe as bottled water. They just need to be less harmful than sugar. Which they are, because sugar is unequivocally, very very bad for you.
- simonsarris 2y ago> because sugar is unequivocally, very very bad for you. So all fruit is bad for you? Lactose is unequivocally bad? Even for nursing infants? How deep does "unequivocally" go exactly? I hope you really just mean "added sugar in soda-tier quantities" when you say sugar is "unequivocally, very very bad". But I think this kind of hyperbole is part of why food science has got an awful reputation. Even the most 'enlightened' sources (and there are plenty of competing enlightened sources right now) seem unable to stop the totalizing language.
- niam 2y agoOne refrain seems to be that "added sugars" are bad but then that's not quite true afaik either, because sugar is sugar whether it's "added" or not. To a first approximation, "sugar is bad for you" seems to be a succinct lie-to-children[1] default, from where exceptions can be established. Whole fruits with lots of sugars (as opposed to e.g fruit juices with a comparable amount) are purportedly less-bad because they're accompanied by enough fiber to slow digestion and make the sugar less bioavailable. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lie-to-children https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lie-to-children
- klipklop 2y agoIn mice with their genes edited and taking in 0.15% of aspartame in their diet. How am I supposed to take this seriously?