Artificial Sweeteners May Heighten the Risk for Strokes and Dementia

Surprisingly, sugar is barely sweet compared to the other options. As the body grows accustomed to the alternatives, cravings for sweets grows and usually participants in the study gain more weight in the long run than they did while eating sugar! A. Aleisha Fetters from Fox News reports, “In one Journal of Neuroscience study, rats that consumed the popular artificial sweetener saccharine for 14 days ate more food and gained more weight than rats that ate sugar. Plus, their core body temperatures actually dropped and their metabolisms slowed. That may be because artificial sweeteners are up to 13,000 times sweeter than sugar, which can not only trigger your body to crave more of the sweet stuff but also damage your body’s ability to gauge how many calories you’ve consumed—and how many more you should crave, according to the Harvard School of Public Health” (Fetters).