Here’s to Your Health

By Tamara J. Lesnar
Contributing Writer

Back in high school I began chewing gum all the time. I didn’t start until high school because the good old Catholic nuns in my grammar school (elementary school to my younger readers) would not let us chew gum in class.

Most gums had sugar as their main ingredient and that was okay with me. I like sugar.

But then one of my favorites changed to aspartame. Since I chewed this gum every day, it did not take me long to realize that I was having an adverse reaction to it. I would get headaches every day. As soon as I quit chewing it, the headaches went away.

From then on I swore off aspartame. Since then, I’ve tried every new no-calorie sweetener
and have found every one appalling. My taste buds are very sensitive and I always find
an aftertaste that’s hard to enjoy.

Therefore it is safe to say that sugar and I are best friends. Saccharin studies showed that rats who were given saccharin developed cancer. Who wants to consume that? So I’m always skeptical about man-manipulated compounds.

In a study of 59,334 women, researchers found an association between artificially
sweetened drinks and premature birth.

In this study, almost 60,000 women were followed from 1996 through 2002 in
what is called the Danish National Birth Cohort.

Researchers asked these women about various factors at the midpoint of their pregnancies. They collected information about diet and the consumption of diet drinks, both carbonated and non-carbonated. Later, the researchers determined how many women delivered “preterm” (meaning 3 weeks or more before the due date).

The study found that drinking even one such beverage a day at or before the midterm of pregnancy increased the risk of premature birth. For women who drank as many as four servings a day of an artificially sweetened drink, the risk was even greater. This risk was not found in women who drank drinks sweetened with sugar. The risk was present in both women who were overweight and those of normal weight.

Maybe it would be best to limit use of artificial sweeteners during pregnancy.

Our canine friends have problems with these compounds as well. A recent article
in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association had to do with xylitol and
dogs. Xylitol is found in many artificially sweetened candies and gum. If your dog gets
into your pack of xylitol gum, she could develop liver failure, internal bleeding, and die.
You should check your labels. Xylitol gum is very common and is widely touted to help
prevent cavities in homo sapiens.

This does not mean sugar is getting a free pass here. Let’s look at another interesting study. Some researchers at Georgetown University examined a group of people in Singapore. Over 60,000 people were studied over 14 years in the Singapore Chinese Health Study. A number of health-related items were studied in this group including smoking and diet. To make the study a reasonable comparison, they compared intake of sweetened soft drinks (with sugar or high fructose corn syrup) and those who drank juice.

They found an increased risk of pancreatic cancer for those who drank sweetened soft drinks at least two times a week, and no such increase for those who drank juice or did not drink any sweet drinks. Think about that. Two drinks per week! How many of us drink sweetened soft drinks every day; sometimes many such drinks.

Ready for more? One of the main ingredients in sweetened soft drinks (and many other foods we eat) is high fructose corn syrup. These days people have some sense that this is not good for them but really don’t know why. Because of this we are vulnerable to commercials that say that high fructose corn syrup is okay in moderation.

Of course advertising is always designed to work by making us somehow feel we are inadequate without their products, or stupid without their special knowledge, or deficient in some other way. In the case of fructose, we are getting the same kind of semi-truth that characterized tobacco advertising years ago.

What we know now from years of study is that the body handles fructose differently than sugar. Fructose does not cause as much insulin to be released as sugar and therefore you remain hungry and eat more. The fast food restaurants know this. Also, your body is more likely to produce fat from fructose than it does from sugar. So you wind up with more food intake and a greater likelihood that your calories will turn to fat.

So what should you do? Perhaps we should drink more water. Being well hydrated can help your spine, muscles and joints. Water is the main ingredient of our bodies and needs replacement on a regular basis, not to mention the beautiful skin you’ll have.

But if you must drink something sweet, fruit juices seem to be better than artificially sweetened drinks or drinks with high fructose corn syrup.

And these unpleasant compounds are in foods other than drinks, so we should be reading labels at the grocery store. You can change what is provided to us by making the right choices when you purchase your groceries and selections at restaurants.

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