Splenda may increase blood sugar spikes and insulin levels
Study this: Splenda and blood sugar; focus and IQ; hormones and breast cancer.
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The artificial sweetener Splenda may be doing more than sweetening your coffee.
New research published in the journal Diabetes Care shows it can be affecting your insulin response.
Researchers from the Washington University School of Medicine studied in the impact of Splenda, also known as sucralose, in 17 severely obese people who didn’t have diabetes and didn’t usually use sweeteners.
They had each participant drink water followed by glucose, and then sucralose followed by glucose. When people drank the sucralose first, their blood sugar peak was higher.
“Insulin levels also rose about 20 per cent higher. So the artificial sweetener was related to an enhanced blood insulin and glucose response,” said lead author Yanina Pepino, PhD, research assistant professor of medicine.
She said more research is necessary to determine whether the observation means long-term use could be helpful.
Smart people are better at ignoring irrelevant information
Research published in Current Biology has found a correlation between higher IQ and the ability to focus.
Researchers asked study participants to watch videos showing movement of small and large objects. Those with higher IQs were better at tracking the movement of the small objects and worse at tracking the large ones. That suggests they’re suppressing larger moves, which are often irrelevant background in nature.
“These findings link intelligence with low-level sensory suppression of large moving patterns background-like stimuli that are ecologically less relevant,” the study said.
Hormones fight breast cancer
Researchers from Western University in Ontario have identified hormones that fight breast cancer.
Until now, the hormones in question — 5a-dihydroprogesterone (5aP) and 3a-dihydroprofesterone (3aHP) — were thought to be metabolic waste products and not given much attention.
“Many endocrinologists still consider these metabolites waste product but they’re not. We’ve found that they are potent hormones that can play a vital role in the fight against breast cancer,” said Western biology professor John Wiebe.
The discovery, published in the journal Breast Cancer, provides direction for future research on some of the most difficult-to-treat forms of breast cancer. Of the nearly 1.4 million new cases of breast cancer diagnosed each year, almost half are characterized as hormone receptor negative, meaning they lack estrogen receptors and/or progesterone receptors.
Unfortunately, patients with receptor-negative tumours do not respond to current steroid hormone-based therapies, and can only be treated with chemotherapy or radiation
“Our findings provide unequivocal evidence that 5aP and 3aHP deserve to be considered active hormones in their own right, rather than inactive waste products, and that they need to be considered in the development of new approaches to prevention, detection and treatment of breast cancers,” Wiebe said.
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