Out of curiosity, @DSeid, have you seen a lot of patients with phenylketonuria? I might have seen two since my clinical clerkship.
I don’t want to discuss this sidetrack too much in this thread, but this putative link between poor sleep and dementia and neurodysfunction is also interesting. (NYT limited gift link, not a journal).
Well, that’s why, when I nap, i try to do so for about 90 minutes. That ought to give me a full sleep cycle.
Embarrassed that I can’t say for sure but less than a handful.
(Not a doctor)
I’ve seen a variety of research making me think that dementia becomes more likely with either of a) poor clearing of junk from the brain, and/or b) insufficient resources for the brain.
A healthy diet with omega-3s, choline, B6, B9, and B12 should keep one pretty good but with modern diets omega-3s can be more scarce, and too much overly white flour and rice and too few vegetables might harm you on the B vitamins.
It’s also possible that we’re deficient in CoQ-10 and Phosphitydilserine due to abandoning the consumption of offal and brains.
High dose creatine might help to provide more energy to the brain - and, in the modern, complex world, maybe we need more than our ancestors generally did.
During four years of medical school, we spent under a week discussing sleep. A lot less is known about it than one might expect. And good studies showing some of how the glymphatic system works took until 2012.
I’m going to take back my taking-back on the original comment, except the word “definitely” should be stricken in favour of “there is some evidence for weight loss from artificial sweeteners in some groups”.
Relevant quotes (SSB=sugar sweetened beverage, ASB=artificially sweetened, USB=unsweetened):
Although overall change in weight also was not different between groups, we found effect modification (P=0.006) by central adiposity. Among participants in the highest tertile of baseline trunk fat but not other tertiles, weight gain was greater (P=0.002) for the SSB (4.4±1.0 kg, estimate±SE) compared with ASB (0.5±0.9 kg) or USB (−0.2±0.9 kg) group.
Among the conclusions:
Among individuals with central adiposity, replacing SSBs with either ASBs or USBs lowered body weight.
Yeah the studies get mixed results. Definitely not definitively though!
My bias, and it is a bias, is that continuing to further entrain our brains to require big sweet hits is not good for our long term weight and fat control, even when it is one of the times it works short term.
So throwing this in here even though it is becoming a hijack and a deep dive nerding - looking for studies associating taste receptors polymorphisms with neurodegenerative diseases find this one. The association found in the African American population studied was for bitter taste receptors.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-71669-9.pdf
Already associated with longevity in some long lived sub populations.
More recent bad news for non-nutritive sweeteners:
Animal model. Not a human study. No certainty occurs in humans. But the impact across generations gives a real pause … and not one that refreshes.
The animals were mice. Data from such studies often extrapolates poorly to humans.
I’m not a fan of mice studies. Not that I’ve really concerned myself about it too much. There was that mouse that grew a human ear on his back. (Wonder what his ear worm was–eeek!). Gave me lab grown pancreatic hopes for a few minutes.
As a diabetic I use very little sweetener. There are times when I absolutely need sugars.
Usually plain white sugar in the way of sugar cubes. (Exact measurements are my peccadillo, sugar cubes are more exact). I like a drop or two of real honey in a certain tummy ache tea I was using during my recent problems. But that’s about it. I don’t play that sweetener game. If it’s not for me to eat I just don’t. I learned a long time ago it’s not worth the trouble it causes, for a candy bar.
It amazes me how much sugar and artificial sweetener people use. Gallons and gallons of coke, diet or regular. Every, nearly, food product you buy is bumped up with sugar.
Southern cooks put sugar in everything… Meats, beans, potatoes, veggies, sauces and of course desserts. I’ve adjusted that in my house back when my kids were little. So sugar in a pot of beans is foreign to them.
It’s scary.
I’m glad they’re looking into artificial sweeteners. I just don’t think it will help anyone. Peeps are chasing the sweet taste. Always.
Yeah no one is claiming this directly translates to humans. More just raising the possibility that intergenerational impacts may occur in humans as well. Still.
I guess we shouldn’t be so amazed? Sweet as a potent stimulus of our reward networks has been selected for, for a very very very long time. The unrestricted virtually unlimited availability to that reward system? Not.