On Thursday, April 27, 2017 at 10:09:10 AM UTC-4, Neon John wrote:
On Mon, 24 Apr 2017 13:53:33 -0700 (PDT), Norman Yarvin
wrote:


My beef with artificially sweetened soft drinks is that
they fool the body: when taste buds register sweetness,
the body reacts by increasing blood sugar in anticipation
of its carbohydrate storage being replenished by the
incoming food. When no carbohydrate is really incoming,
this leaves the body's storage more drawn-down than it
should be.

Norman, I'm an insulin-dependent diabetic with an A1C of 5.2 so I know
a thing or two about how the sugar control system works. The taste
buds have no effect on insulin production. When I first heard that
rumor, I tested it out by consuming an unholy amount of splenda while
checking my sugar every 15 minutes for several hours. No deviation
from my normal ebb and flow.

I just did what I should have done before posting that, which is to
go to Pubmed and check out what indeed was just a "rumor" I'd read
a while ago. It looks like they're still arguing over the details
of this, but in general they find the same thing that you did;
to quote one article, "Cephalic phase insulin response has been
observed before swallowing non-sweet nutritive substances and
artificially sweetened energy containing substances in humans.
However, sweet non-caloric stimuli alone have not been sufficient
to generate an expectatory, cephalic phase response in humans."

The way the system works is that there is a blood sugar sensor built
into our bodies, located in the neck area if I recall correctly. It
releases a hormone that causes the Islet cells (the part of the
pancreas that makes insulin) to make more or less insulin as required.
The pancreas stores a small amount of insulin in normal people and
when the sensor detects a sudden increase in blood sugar, causes that
reservoir to be dumped. Derivative action, as it were. A very
sophisticated closed loop control system.

Oh, there are a hell of a lot more sensors and feedback loops involved
than just that. At least it's not like the immune system, which is
deliberately obfuscated:

http://yarchive.net/blog/medicine/im...omplexity.html