While artificial sweeteners were once touted as healthy alternatives to sugar, research continues to prove otherwise. Yet another study has now come along saying that six popular sweeteners might be truly terrible for our brains.
It's hard to find any good news about artificial sweeteners these days. This year alone, we've reported on how consuming just one diet soda a day that contains artificial sweeteners can increase type 2 diabetes risk by 38%; how aspartame works to cause cardiovascular disease; and how the popular sugar substitute, erythritol, can increase stroke risk.
Another study from 2023 pointed to aspartame's negative impact on learning and memory. Now, a new study from researchers in Brazil concludes that it's not only aspartame that can hurt our brains. The sweeteners aspartame, saccharin, acesulfame-k, erythritol, sorbitol, and xylitol were all found to impact overall cognition.
To reach their conclusion, the researchers examined questionnaires completed by 12,772 adults across Brazil with the average age of 52. Based on their answers, they divided the group into three subgroups based on their consumption of foods containing artificial sweeteners.
The highest group contained people who consumed about 191 mg/day, which is about the amount of aspartame found in a can of diet soda. The middle group took in about 64 mg/day of artificial sweeteners in their food, and the lowest group consumed an average of 20 mg/day.
The group was followed over the course of eight years and given cognitive tests at the beginning, middle, and end of the study. The tests measured working memory, word recall, processing speed, and verbal fluency.
After adjusting for natural aging and variables such as blood pressure, history of cardiovascular disease, and gender, the team concluded that those in the high-consumption group showed a 62% faster decline in cognitive health than those in the lowest group. The researchers say that this corresponds to about 1.6 years of brain aging. The middle group showed a 35% faster cognitive decline than the lowest group, equaling about 1.3 years of aging.
Additionally, the study revealed that the link between artificial sweeteners and cognitive decline was higher in those who had diabetes.
“While we found links to cognitive decline for middle-aged people both with and without diabetes, people with diabetes are more likely to use artificial sweeteners as sugar substitutes,” said study co-author Claudia Kimie Suemoto from the University of São Paulo in Brazil. “More research is needed to confirm our findings and to investigate if other refined sugar alternatives, such as applesauce, honey, maple syrup or coconut sugar, may be effective alternatives.”
There was a bit of good news – sort of – in the study. The researchers found that the links they discovered were not present in people over 60. They also discovered that consumption of the artificial sweetener, tagatose, did not correspond to cognitive decline regardless of how much was consumed.
The researchers acknowledge that a weakness in the study is that it relied on self-reported data from the questionnaires filled out by participants and that not all artificial sweeteners were included in the analysis. Still, they feel their work adds to the growing body of knowledge that refutes the health benefits of sugar substitutes.
“Low- and no-calorie sweeteners are often seen as a healthy alternative to sugar, however our findings suggest certain sweeteners may have negative effects on brain health over time,” concluded Suemoto.
The research has been published in the journal, Neurology.
Source: American Academy of Neurology via EurekAlert
