As I continue to learn and grow as a health care practitioner, I stumble across similar information over and over again: ‘If it ain’t natural, don’t eat it!’

Here’s just another example of this message. A lab study is showing that artificial sweetener may be linked to weight gain. Read the article here.

I have been against artificial sweeteners for quite some time. It’s not natural and I feel it hurts the body in the long run. So, I did some digging around to find some facts about artificial sweeteners and I present them to you here for you to make your own informed decision. (This is a very short list compared to all the info out there.)

*Splenda (sucralose) has only had six human trials to date and the longest one lasted three months. Only two of these trials were completed and published using a total of 36 human subjects. No one really knows the long term effect on the body, and no trials included kids or pregnant woman.

*Some adverse effects reported in pre-approval research:
-Shrunken thymus glands
-Enlarged liver and kidneys
-Atrophy of lymph follicles in the spleen and thymus
-Decreased red blood cell count
-Extension of the pregnancy period
-Aborted pregnancy
-Decreased fetal body weights and placental weights
-Diarrhea

*Sucralose is made through a 5 step process that adds three chlorine molecules to a sucrose molecule, creating a fructo-galactose molecule. This molecule does not naturally occur in nature therefore your body does not possess the ability to metabolize it so it passes through your system. This is how they can claim ‘zero calories’. It is not that it doesn’t have zero calories. If your body could process it, it would have calories.

*Ingesting aspartame leads to the accumulation of formaldehyde in the brain, other organs and tissues. Formaldehyde has been shown to damage the nervous system, immune system, and cause irreversible genetic damage in humans.

*In 1977 saccharin was banned in Canada and the U.S. because of research showing increased rates of bladder cancer in rats. At that time saccharin was the only artificial sweetener available. Eventually U.S. Congress lifted the ban requiring instead that all saccharin-containing foods display a warning label indicating that saccharin may be a carcinogen. In 2000, the U.S. Congress repealed the law requiring saccharin products to carry health warning labels.