Years ago, yes, even I used to enjoy the taste of sugar from time to time. These days, however, I know better than to touch the stuff, and I always advise my patients to avoid it as well. Sugar is such an awful, addictive and damaging substance that it’s best to think of it as a biohazard and keep it well out of reach! What makes sugar so dangerous is that this way-too-popular ‘flavor enhancer’ feeds the development of so many of the diseases we fear the most, like diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and Alzheimer’s. Making matters worse: it’s also highly addictive -- it stimulates the same areas in the brain as cocaine and heroin, as it pumps up glucose and insulin levels in the bloodstream, and drives weight gain. Truly the worst of all possible worlds.

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As people have become conscious of the dangers of sugar, many are making an effort to purge it from their lives – and that’s a big step in the right direction. If you’re in the process of kicking sugar, keep up the good work, and give yourself a pat on the back. But I’ve got some news for you that you may not want to hear, even though you need to. If you’re relying on non-sugar, ‘non-nutritive’ artificial sweeteners (NNS) to ease the transition, you’ve got to kick them too. The problem is, sweeteners of any stripe are as crappy for your body as sugar, but in different ways. Non-nutritive sweeteners’ numerous downsides include increasing cravings, weight gain , mood problems and even promoting damage to the brain. They can also be an under-the-radar trigger for numerous health complaints including migraines, gas, bloating, dizziness, cramps, diarrhea and skin eruptions, just to name a few.

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Another biggie: the fake stuff also interferes with your gut microbiome, the health-sustaining bacterial world inside you. How are sweeteners messing with your microbiome? Let us count the ways:

Artificial sweeteners undermine – and even kill – good gut bacteria.

When we’re talking non-nutritive sweeteners, usually we’re referring to the classics, as in the stuff in the pink, blue, yellow packets, also known as saccharin (Sweet’N Low), aspartame (Equal) and sucralose (Splenda). If you eat processed foods and drinks that are labeled as low or no-sugar/sugar-free, chances are you’re also ingesting some combination of these NNS’s.

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While they do add sweetness, NNS’s also deliver another lesser-known and incredibly unwelcome side-effect. Turns out, they’re very effective at killing off large numbers of your beneficial gut bacteria – as in, the ones that are essential to keeping your gut bacteria balanced and the rest of you well.

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Though many in the integrative community have long questioned the wisdom of NNS use for many years, especially in regard to gut health, a 2015 Israeli animal study took that idea mainstream. It concluded that ingesting artificial sweeteners could lead to obesity and related ailments such as diabetes. While this metabolic link has turned up in other studies, the Israeli study was the first to find evidence indicating that NNS’s appear to impact the population of intestinal bacteria that help regulate metabolism (in animals). They’re likely to have a similar negative impact on human gut bacteria as well.

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A later study, in 2017 shed more light on the gut connection when it showed that sucralose caused microbiome changes that led to inflammation, leaky gut and liver damage, results that paralleled another study that year confirming that gut dysbiosis was one of the significant (and certainly unwanted) side effects of artificial sweeteners.

But what about the green packets?

Sorry to say but the green packets aren’t a bacterial hall pass either. If you’ve already made the switch to the slightly less artificial but ‘health-washed’ alternative, Truvia, keep in mind, the sweetener is far from ideal and comes with its own set of issues. First up, it’s very, very processed stuff, developed by various food conglomerates (including Coca-Cola) in the lab. It’s also a long way from stevia, the sweet leaf that it’s often confused with, mostly because they sound so similar. While Truvia and stevia share one of the same sweetening compounds, thinking of Truvia as stevia-based or ‘plant-based’ is a bit of a stretch.

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What’s more, the less processed, straight-up raw stevia may have its own downsides as well, according to a study recently published in the journal Cell. That study indicated that NNS’s, including stevia, alter the gut microbiome, which in turn impacts glucose tolerance – how readily the glucose clears the blood and enters the muscle cells -- and can lead to boosted weight and diabetes risk. So, while stevia and Truvia may not be killing your good gut bacteria outright, they likely are causing an unhealthy shift in your bacterial balance, aka gut ‘dysbiosis,’ impacting glucose and insulin regulation, and interfering with the optimal functioning of numerous other systems in your body. Bottom line: the less you use sweeteners – even the ones thought of as slightly healthier than aspartame, saccharin and sucralose – the better off your microbiome, and you, will be.

Break up with all the sweet stuff.

Another reason to kick NNS? They all share another unhealthy characteristic: they’re sweet, crazy sweet, as in, hundreds of times sweeter than sugar. All that artificial sweetness overstimulates your tastebuds so they’re both overwhelmed and dulled, pushing your sweetness threshold to sky high levels, in effect priming the body to expect bona-fide sugar and throwing off its ability to properly metabolize the real thing when it does eventually arrive. So, how to get off the fake sweet train? Here are few healthy ways to do it:

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• Change your mindset, and maybe grow up a little: Remind yourself that it’s time to outgrow sweet stuff. You don’t actually need it; it’s a bad, unhealthy habit that needs to be broken. It’s had the upper hand for too long and like a bad relationship, now its time to let it go.
• Develop a de-sweetening plan: Go at the pace that works for you, and chip away at it every day, or if you prefer the cold turkey approach, then go for it. For slow and steady types, gradually cut the amount you use every day, reducing use in increments, over time. For example, if you habitually put one packet in your iced tea, drop it down to a half a packet, then to a quarter and so on over the course of a few days, so your taste-buds can re-connect with the real unadulterated taste of food and drink.
• Boost flavor in a healthy way: Instead of sweetening, enhance flavors with fragrant dashes of vanilla extract, almond extract, cacao, coriander, nutmeg, cloves, cinnamon, allspice, anise, fennel, etc., all of which can also be helpful for tamping down cravings to boot.
• Use a light touch with the real stuff:  Trade sugar and NNS’s for small amounts of raw unprocessed honey; a few home- grown unprocessed stevia leaves; small amounts of monk fruit (lu han guo fruit extract); and even crushed mint leaves. Remember though, a very light touch is absolutely essential.
• Give yourself a fighting chance: If you’re really sugar-dependent and consider it to be something of a daily struggle, taking 1000 -2000 mg of L-glutamine every few hours can take the edge off cravings.