The Paleo Diet’s doing good things for me.

For a while there, I was not sure whether or not the paleo diet was making any real difference in my life. As of Valentine’s Day, I am sure that it’s doing good things. What significance does Valentine’s Day have? I broke diet for half the weekend. Chocolate. Sushi. Cheeseburger. Pad Thai. I was loving the break… until Saturday night (1 full day into the sugar and wheat binge), when I had so many time-travel seizures that even Adam lost count.

I am now trying to figure out if I have a problem with wheat (since gliadin antibodies are higher in folks with MS, suggesting a sensitivity to wheat), dairy (which would make sense since MS has been linked to consumption of cow’s milk), a combination of the two, or something completely different. I’m not too worried about legumes, since the only legumes I had were crushed peanuts in the pad thai, and that was during Saturday night’s seizure funfest.

I got back to sticking to the diet on Sunday, and had a total of 1 seizure that day, which was a simple partial. (No time travel!)

Splenda – not so sweet.

In the last several days, I’ve also been doing some research on Splenda. There have been a lot of hoaxes and half-true infographics circulating around FB recently, and I’m genuinely worried for my folks, who drink it in beverages regularly. I found a bunch of studies that claim that sucralose is totally safe for you as long as you don’t have too much. I was more concerned with finding peer-reviewed studies that were not funded by the makers of Splenda or a sugar corporation.

Here’s what I found:

Splenda is not an inert compound.
“Sucralose and one of its hydrolysis products were found to be mutagenic at elevated concentrations in several testing methods. Cooking with sucralose at high temperatures was reported to generate chloropropanols, a potentially toxic class of compounds. Both human and rodent studies demonstrated that sucralose may alter glucose, insulin, and glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1) levels. Taken together, these findings indicate that sucralose is not a biologically inert compound.” http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10937404.2013.842523#.UwFpL_ldUkZ

Splenda is immunosupressive.
“The cumulative suppression of Interleukin-6 and Interleukin-10 levels induced by sucralose may contribute to the inability in mounting an effective humoral response when posed with an exogenous threat.” http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24063614

“[E]xposure to sucralose induces a reduced humoral response that may be associated with adverse effects on the immune system.” http://etd.uwc.ac.za/usrfiles/modules/etd/docs/etd_gen8Srv25Nme4_5780_1319022717.pdf

Splenda can reduce glucose absorption and can increase the presence of cholesterol in your blood.
“It could be concluded that consumption of sucralose didn’t induce oxidative stress, has no effect on insulin, reduce glucose absorption and intensify hypercholesterolemia in STZ-induced diabetic rats. Accordingly it is advised that diabetic people consuming high amount of sucralose must check their lipid profile to avoid diabetic complications.” http://www.scirp.org/journal/PaperInformation.aspx?paperID=34006#.UwFqI_ldUkY

The more Splenda you consume, the higher your likelihood of developing leukemia.
“Dr. Morando Soffritti, director of the Ramazzini Institute in Bologna, Italy, and team fed 843 laboratory mice varying doses of sucralose from when they were fetuses until they died. Post-mortems showed an association between leukemia risk and lifetime sucralose consumption – the more sucralose they consumed, the higher their risk of leukemia.” http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/262475.php

Splenda is a known migraine trigger.
“This observation of a potential causal relationship between sucralose and migraines may be important for physicians to remember this can be a possible trigger during dietary history taking.” http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1526-4610.2006.00543_1.x/abstract?deniedAccessCustomisedMessage=&userIsAuthenticated=false

Splenda can negatively affect your insulin response, if you’re obese and haven’t been regularly using it.
“[S]ucralose affects the glycemic and insulin responses to an oral glucose load in obese people who do not normally consume NNS.” http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/36/9/2530.short

I don’t think there’s such a thing as a safe artificial sweetener right now. Thankfully, liquid stevia, raw honey, and maple syrup are ok.