I have hypoglycemia, which is a condition that occurs when your blood sugar is too low. When they first told me that I had it, the first thing I asked was if I could have any type sugary food or drink, they said no and told me to avoid sugary things. I asked whether or not I had to change the sugar I use in my coffee, my doctor sadly said that instead of sugar I should try sweeteners and that’s what brings me to this, is sweetener bad or good for hypoglycemics?

The first thing here is that most of these studies have been done in animals and scientist doesn’t know whether they are going to have the same effect on humans. Supposedly, sweeteners are better for diabetic and hypoglycemic people because is just a sweetener and its not going to affect your blood sugar, but while looking for more information about this, I found out that its not true. According to a Huffington Post, the intake of sweetener could affect your body’s insulin response. They made a new study in which they picked 17 severely obese and which did’t consume sweetener products regularly. The tests consist of “drinking a sugary solution before undergoing blood sugar measurements in order to see how well the body responds to sugar. Researchers found that consuming the sweetener associated with higher blood sugar peaks and 20% higher insulin levels. They say that this study is not enough and that they need to do more studies in order to find out whether or not  this is true.

I think they need to do more studies in people with diabetes, hypoglycemia, and people without this conditions to see if it is certain. Doing a randomized trial, would be good because that way they could see how it works with different people, of different ages, etc.

I do have to say that based on my experience when I started using Splenda my blood sugar levels stabilized, for what I know it didn’t have a bad effect on me or in any other of my friends with the same condition.  I’ll probably still going to use it after reading the information because, regular sugar or anything with sugar is horrible for me.

References

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/03/splenda-blood-sugar-sucralose-insulin_n_3362122.html