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how long of a disturbance do artificial sweeteners provide in extended fasts?

I am on 4th day of 7 day fast, mainly for weight loss but don’t wanna miss out on autophagy as well. I ordered some diet soda and flavored carbonated water to suppress my cravings. I wanna know that the insulin response that these sweeteners do, how long until I enter deep fasted state again for weight loss as well as autophagy.

Thanks!

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Answer

This is all about personal preference. I say this because there is a great deal of conflicting information in the medical literature on the subject, which you can check out on PubMed here. Biochemically, modern artificial sweetness are specifically designed to bypass the natural mechanisms of the pancreas in recognizing sugar, and as a result produce little measurable reaction in terms of blood sugar and insulin. To my knowledge researchers have never been able to prove otherwise, and it has not been for a lack of trying.

I know the assumption that they do provoke this response is widely touted in fasting communities, but the burden of proof lies squarely on the shoulders of the people making the claim that it does. No such convincing proof exists that I am aware of, though research is ongoing.

Answer

Buy a blood glucose monitor, ones that stick in your arm

Drink diet soda

Does your blood glucose never change? No insulin response

Does your blood glucose start dropping? You had an insulin response. You took in zero sugar, but your body released insulin which removes glucose from the blood stream.

I have tested this myself, and I do have an insulin response from artificial sweeteners.

Everybody is different though so maybe you don’t.

The confusion is that some people do and some people don’t.

I’m on my phone so I can’t get the research for you, but the body can release insulin when it tastes sweetness (it’s anticipating and prepping for the increased glucose), and even sometimes smelling food. The effect name eludes me at the moment, but it’s the same phenomena as your mouth watering when you smell something delicious. You didn’t eat anything, so why is your mouth producing a ton of saliva?

Anyway, the other person is extremely misleading and basically wrong. The burden of proof doesn’t lie on anyone. Test it yourself and see. If they think the burden of proof lies on “us”, I have personally tested it, and they are welcome to provide another explanation for rapid and unexpected blood glucose drops within 20 minutes of drinking diet soda when it’s otherwise completely steady through the day.

Beyond that, there is research that documents this and discusses the phenomena I was just describing, but again I’m on my phone so it’s not easy for me to pull up.

I would also take any research that suggests carcinogenic artificial sweeteners often found in diet sodas with a grain of salt (pun intended). It’s probably paid for by the same researchers who told us fat was bad in the 80s.

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