Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Microbiome-driven effects of non-nutritive sweeteners on human glucose tolerance

cell.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 75 posts

Re: Microbiome-driven effects of non-nutritive sweeteners on human glucose tolerance

#21

Post by FollowingTheDao »

TaupeRanger wrote: post #14
FollowingTheDao wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone always with this "noise"! Of course there is noise! They are looking at the "noise" and telling you what it is from! Genetics! If you average any trial out in a large population there will be "noise", but these people who live with the "noise" are the ones affected and suffering. Does everyone have microbiome-driven effects of non-nutritive sweeteners? Probably not, but what about the ones that do?

Yikes. When someone makes a comment about "noise" in this context, they simply mean "we can't tell whether the effect observed is due to the thing we're measuring". You'd need a much larger study with totally different design to even begin to approach the question of "do non-nutritive sweeteners make peoples' lives worse or shorten their lives compared to whatever else they might be ingesting". No need for the confro…

> You'd need a much larger study with totally different design to even begin to approach the question

Yes, that is my point. As the OP remarked; "The others may be “complicated” but the effect also looks close to noise. " is disregarding that data.

When one thinks of the word "noise" one hears something that bothers them, like "there is too much noise in here". This is the problem with research. By getting rid of the "noise" they will only zero in to the thing they wish to hear clearly.

Re: Microbiome-driven effects of non-nutritive sweeteners on human glucose tolerance

#22

Post by mlyle »

FollowingTheDao wrote: post #10
api wrote: post #2

A glance suggests that Saccharine and Sucralose may be problematic. The others may be “complicated” but the effect also looks close to noise. They should have included some non-sweetener molecules of a similar nature as controls. Sucralose was an instant no to me when I saw the molecule. “Here let’s hang a chlorine off this here sugar.” Nope. I recall seeing similar sentiments in a thread over at Reddit where a bioch…

Everyone always with this "noise"! Of course there is noise! They are looking at the "noise" and telling you what it is from! Genetics! If you average any trial out in a large population there will be "noise", but these people who live with the "noise" are the ones affected and suffering. Does everyone have microbiome-driven effects of non-nutritive sweeteners? Probably not, but what about the ones that do?

> If you average any trial out in a large population there will be "noise", but these people who live with the "noise" are the ones affected and suffering.

If you do a trial in a large population of a drug, device, or clinical practice that does nothing- a perfect placebo- you'll see a variety of effects: statistical noise.

If you do a trial in a large population of a drug, device, or clinical practice that has an effect-- you'll measure that effect, plus the statistical noise.

You can't generally tell for any individual whether the drug helped or hurt. But you can tell that more people did well (or badly) in group A than group B.

You can't even really know exactly how big the effect is precisely: just a range of likely effect sizes.

The more things you try to measure to more precisely zero in on an effect, the greater the chance that statistical noise spuriously makes one of these look important (and the larger the effect must be to be reliably measured). https://xkcd.com/882/

Re: Microbiome-driven effects of non-nutritive sweeteners on human glucose tolerance

#23

Post by FollowingTheDao »

mlyle wrote: post #22
FollowingTheDao wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone always with this "noise"! Of course there is noise! They are looking at the "noise" and telling you what it is from! Genetics! If you average any trial out in a large population there will be "noise", but these people who live with the "noise" are the ones affected and suffering. Does everyone have microbiome-driven effects of non-nutritive sweeteners? Probably not, but what about the ones that do?

> If you average any trial out in a large population there will be "noise", but these people who live with the "noise" are the ones affected and suffering. If you do a trial in a large population of a drug, device, or clinical practice that does nothing - a perfect placebo- you'll see a variety of effects: statistical noise. If you do a trial in a large population of a drug, device, or clinical practice that has an e…

> You can't generally tell for any individual whether the drug helped or hurt. But you can tell that more people did well (or badly) in group A than group B.

That is what they found in this study, but the OP said it was likely "noise" and had no scientific basis for saying that. My point; saying something is "noise" is a way to look cool on HN and dismiss any finding that does not fit your world view.

Re: Microbiome-driven effects of non-nutritive sweeteners on human glucose tolerance

#24

Post by refurb »

balderdash wrote: post #3
api wrote: post #2

A glance suggests that Saccharine and Sucralose may be problematic. The others may be “complicated” but the effect also looks close to noise. They should have included some non-sweetener molecules of a similar nature as controls. Sucralose was an instant no to me when I saw the molecule. “Here let’s hang a chlorine off this here sugar.” Nope. I recall seeing similar sentiments in a thread over at Reddit where a bioch…

As someone that is relying on a single high school chemistry class as a base of knowledge, why would Cl here give you pause? In other words why is the Cl here bad, but ok in say salt?

Alkyl halides (carbon chains with halogens off of them) can be alkylating agents - basically they can bond to molecules within your body and if it's things like DNA, can cause mutations and other bad stuff.

Nitrogen mustards (highly reactive alkyl halides) are used in chemotherapy. They basically damage DNA which is used to kill off fast reproducing cancer cells (but they also kill off normal cells).

I was a little surprised when I first saw the structure of sucralose. Chlorides aren't that reactive (bromides and iodides are much more reactive), but a person might consume grams of sucralose so concentrations are high.

That said, many experiments have been done and sucralose isn't reactive at all. Due to the shape of the molecule and steric interactions, the chlorines are very difficult to knock off.

I wouldn't be concerned with taking it.

Re: Microbiome-driven effects of non-nutritive sweeteners on human glucose tolerance

#25

Post by vanilla-almond »

I use stevia as a replacement for sugar. This research is difficult to understand for a layperson like me (I'm too thick). Is anyone able to answer the questions below?

---

Extract: "non-nutritive sweeteners (NNS), such as saccharin, sucralose, aspartame, acesulfame-K, and stevia, that do not contain calories and are thereby presumed to be inert and not elicit a postprandial glycemic response."

Question: Does this research confirm that stevia elicits a postprandial glycemic response? (Does stevia stimulate insulin?).

---

Extract: "Notably, all four tested NNS (saccharin, sucralose, aspartame, and stevia) significantly and distinctly altered the human intestinal and oral microbiome, as would be expected for these chemically diverse compounds."

Extract: "Degradation of steviol glycosides by gut bacteria is an established component of their metabolism although some species may be more proficient than others in performing this task and thus, pre-exposure microbiome heterogeneity may conduce to differential responses to stevia."

Question: So stevia alters the human intestinal and oral microbiome. Are these changes a negative outcome and thus a concern for anyone using stevia?

Re: Microbiome-driven effects of non-nutritive sweeteners on human glucose tolerance

#26

Post by ta988 »

anjel wrote: post #20
heisenbit wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By messing with part of the fructose transport mechanisms sugar alcohols are messing with the microbiome so likely would have stood out. There is a reason at least here there are labels warning of too much consumption.

Erythritol as a NNS is claimed/marketed not to effect the gut biome, indeed to pass through the body unmetabolized.

This is a bit more complicated, it is not really metabolized but it does have a big impact because it is absorbed by the gut and also change bacterial populations... https://academic.oup.com/advances/article/10/suppl_1/S31/530...

Re: Microbiome-driven effects of non-nutritive sweeteners on human glucose tolerance

#27

Post by ta988 »

api wrote: post #2

A glance suggests that Saccharine and Sucralose may be problematic. The others may be “complicated” but the effect also looks close to noise. They should have included some non-sweetener molecules of a similar nature as controls. Sucralose was an instant no to me when I saw the molecule. “Here let’s hang a chlorine off this here sugar.” Nope. I recall seeing similar sentiments in a thread over at Reddit where a bioch…

you can't just read a molecule and say "oh it looks like something safe". Digitalin and the cardiac glycosides [1a,1b] may look like completely innocuous compounds (just have to remove a group and they are inactive). Some hormones look like cholesterol. Some steroisomers [2] (think of it as just changing the order atoms are connected in space but not what they are connected to) of molecules kill you while some other forms are safe and that's even harder to grasp on a 2d representation of the structure.

[1a] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardiac_glycoside

[1b] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steroid

[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enantiopure_drug

Re: Microbiome-driven effects of non-nutritive sweeteners on human glucose tolerance

#28

Post by dataangel »

anjel wrote: post #20
heisenbit wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By messing with part of the fructose transport mechanisms sugar alcohols are messing with the microbiome so likely would have stood out. There is a reason at least here there are labels warning of too much consumption.

Erythritol as a NNS is claimed/marketed not to effect the gut biome, indeed to pass through the body unmetabolized.

generally any alternative sugar that isn't metabolized by you is metabolized by bacteria

Re: Microbiome-driven effects of non-nutritive sweeteners on human glucose tolerance

#29

Post by dataangel »

naasking wrote: post #15
adrian_b wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In salts and in sea water, the chlorine is in the form of free chloride ions, which is also the normal form of chlorine in your body. In sucralose, chlorine substitutes a hydroxy group and it is covalently bonded to a carbon atom. Most of the organic substances where hydroxy groups are substituted with chlorine atoms are more or less toxic and some are carcinogenic. For example, substituting the hydroxy groups in car…

> Most of the organic substances where hydroxy groups are substituted with chlorine atoms are more or less toxic and some are carcinogenic. This kind of argument is so... "weird" to put it politely. H2O also becomes toxic if you add an oxygen atom. The safety of chemical compounds does not follow from a naive classification of bonds.

It's a heuristic. If you haven't done a randomized placebo controlled double blind exhaustive study of the compound and all you have to go on is the layout of the molecule, is it a bad guess?

Re: Microbiome-driven effects of non-nutritive sweeteners on human glucose tolerance

#30

Post by clusterhacks »

vanilla-almond wrote: post #25

I use stevia as a replacement for sugar. This research is difficult to understand for a layperson like me (I'm too thick). Is anyone able to answer the questions below? --- Extract : "non-nutritive sweeteners (NNS), such as saccharin, sucralose, aspartame, acesulfame-K, and stevia, that do not contain calories and are thereby presumed to be inert and not elicit a postprandial glycemic response." Question : Does this…

I just skimmed this study but other RCTs say no to your first question:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7103435/#:~:tex....

You can go down a rabbit hole with the references in this paper - I think a generally interested layperson is definitely capable of understanding papers like this. My instinct is that the hardest to understand papers are often actually so special-area related that those papers don't contain useful information except for researchers. So you can skip them.

Don't know about the second question and suspect no one else does either.

As an aside - how did you manage that transition to stevia? I despise non-sugar sweeteners and can detect them in very small amounts. For "reasons" I don't eat meat and I supplement protein intake with whey. If it wasn't for a small number of high-quality unflavored (and thus lacking artificial sweeteners) whey isolates I would probably re-introduce meat into my diet.

Post reply on HN