Do DIET sodas affect your brain?

History has shown every time a "new and innovative" artificial sugar substitute or weight loss product is created more studies prove how these "sugars" affect brain health. Do you, like thousands of others, drink diet sodas to control weight through calorie consumption? A 2012 study suggests that it may be time to reconsider the role of artificial sweeteners in your life. In a paper published in the journal Physiology & Behavior, researchers found that diet soda — along with other artificially sweetened foods — may sabotage weight-loss plans by changing how the brain’s reward center responds.

This study out of the University of California, San Diego split 24 young adults into two groups: one group drank at least one serving of diet soda every day, while the other avoided artificially sweetened drinks. After several weeks, participants had their brains scanned while they switched between drinking naturally and artificially sweetened water. This allowed researchers to track exactly how the brain responded to sweeteners.

The brains of the adults who had consumed diet soda regularly responded very differently from those of non-drinkers, notably in brain areas related to reward. And the more participants had drunk, the more pronounced this difference.

According to researchers “[Diet soda drinkers] who consumed a greater number of diet sodas had reduced caudate head activation. These findings may provide some insight into the link between diet soda consumption and obesity.”

How artificial sweeteners confuse your BRAIN:

The caudate head is a part of the brain involved in controlling food intake and signaling reward — a kind of mental red light that says “enough!” Decreased caudate head activity in diet soda drinkers suggests that this careful reward system was thrown off.

Researchers posit that consuming diet soda confused the caudate head’s normal reward processing behavior: because sweet tastes didn’t always signal incoming energy, the brain trained itself to dampen its reactions. These inaccurate caloric predictions made diet soda drinkers more likely to consume additional calories later in the day.

Small choices can affect your BRAIN:

While further research remains to be done, this findings provide insight into how simple lifestyle choices can influence your brain. Inundate your brain with artificial sweeteners, and it responds in one way — but give it positive, stimulating experiences, and it could respond in another. Various other studies have found positive changes in the brain as a result of regular exercise, proper sleep, and many other factors. 

So pick your habits wisely, for your body and your brain!

References:

-lumosity  abstracts

-physiologic behavior 2012 nov 5 107(4):560-7