Is Allulose REALLY the best sweetener? | Safety profile and latest evidence review 2022

with all the concerns emerging regarding sweeteners or sugar substitutes one alternative that has been gaining a lot of traction is allows it seems it doesn't have the same baggage or red flags that other sweeteners do like disruption of the microbiome or associated weight gain or worsening of metabolic health while it does seem to have pretty amazing benefits when it comes to diabetes and weight loss but is that actually the case and does the most recent evidence support it more importantly are there any safety concerns that have emerged now that more people are using it well in this video i'll give you the latest evidence regarding the effects of alleles on your health focusing on recent trials done in humans which is important since much of the hype surrounding alulos was based on animal studies done in rats and mice i will also talk to you about important safety considerations regarding allelos and discuss scenarios in which you may reconsider using it and at the end of the video i'll give you my favorite alternative if you decide that allulose is not for you hi i'm dr leonid kim i am board certified in internal and obesity to medicine and on this channel i discuss the most up-to-date and evidence-based information on the topics of weight loss metabolic health and longevity let's get into it allulose has quickly become one of the favorite sweeteners especially in the low carb community over the past few years and man there's a lot to like about it first allelos itself is real sugar classified as a rare sugar that's found naturally in small quantities in foods like raisins figs and maple syrup so it actually tastes like sugar well it's about 70 percent of sweet as sucrose or your regular table sugar but it doesn't have the weird chemical aftertaste that you get with sweeteners like aspartame or splenda and it is almost fully absorbed in the small intestine so it doesn't give you the gi side effects like nausea bloating and diarrhea that you get with alcoholic sugars like xylitol and erythritol unless you're consuming large doses but more on that a little later now once it's absorbed through the gi tract close to 90 of it is excreted by the kidneys without being converted into energy so though technically it is a carbohydrate because of how allulose is metabolized or actually not metabolized by our bodies the fda stopped labeling it as an added sugar in 2019 and because of these properties allelos does not raise your blood sugar accounts for negligible calories and carbs utilized and in fact data from animal studies noted benefits like improving insulin resistance delaying onset of type 2 diabetes and lowering the glycemic index of other carbohydrates all that sounds exciting but it's hard to draw any conclusions based on animal studies so i'm glad we're finally starting to see studies done in humans first one meta-analysis published in clinical nutrition in 2020 looked at 40 trials encompassing about 400 subjects in total and found that small doses of value lows can actually lower the glycemic index or post brain glucose after ingesting other carbohydrates so not only does allelus not raise your blood sugar itself it actually helps lower the blood sugar and insulin when consumed with other carbohydrates and that certainly makes sense since allelos is created by the kidneys and in the process it pulls additional glucose out of the body and into the urine another study published in the british medical journal last year was a small but a prospect of double-blind randomized crossover study that looked at 30 subjects without diabetes and found that given allulose along with a 50 gram sugar dose reduced postprandial plasma glucose and insulin levels compared to placebo and another small study published last month looked at postprandial hyperglycemia after break of fasting during ramadan and noted that the addition of allulose before iftar improved glucose in the target range and lower excursions of glucose outside the target range and finally a randomized control study in 2018 looked at 121 korean subjects and found that supplementation with allulose significantly decreased body fat percentage and abdominal fat mass measured by ct scans when compared to the placebo group as you can see as we're moving beyond animal studies and into small human trials the benefits of valueless are still holding up and using allelus has noticeable effects on blood sugar levels and fat mass reduction now you may be thinking what's the catch is it really the holy grail of sweeteners well the biggest downside of value lows is the lack of studies regarding a safety profile and the human studies which is discussed are promising but still very small or based on observational data but enough information is accumulated to where you can start making an informed decision on whether allulose is right for you now when it comes to safety the fda labeled allulose as generally recognized as safe in 2012 meaning it's considered safe by experts under the conditions of its intended use as study published in fundamental toxicological sciences in 2019 noted that a 12-week continuous ingestion of value loss in borderline diabetes and type 2 diabetes did not show any clinical problems and actually show some improvement in hepatic function another study to look at the side effect profile of allulose noted that it's generally well tolerated until reaching the dose of 0.4 grams per kilograms of body weight at which point people start developing gi symptoms like nausea and diarrhea so for example a 70 kilogram or 154 pound person can consume up to 28 grams of allulose before starting to feel any gi upset now individual results may vary and some will get gi upset even at lower doses but most people usually don't come close to reaching that limit if using it for coffee or tea however you may have to be careful if you're using allulose for cooking and have to use larger quantities and finally there's one group of people that i think may need to be a little bit more careful when switching to allulose and it's people who get frequent urinary tract infections since allulose is excreted in your urine and as we discussed actually pulls extra sugar out of your body and into urine it resembles the mechanism of action of a diabetes drug class called sgo2 inhibitors so drugs like farzika guardians or invokana which also works for getting rid of glucose through the urine this class of drugs has some reports suggesting they may be associated with utis so the fda has required sgl2 inhibitors to include a warning about a risk for severe utis now does that mean if you have issues with dtis then you shouldn't take allulose well i do think it's still safe to take alleles for a couple of reasons first the amount of glucose is created with allulose is just a small fraction of what you see while taking sgl2 inhibitor second subsequent studies monitoring the safety of sgl2 inhibitors have not shown an increased risk of etis there is also no evidence that those drugs cause increased risk of bladder cancers which is also a concern that was raised with these drugs and allulose but as i said before everyone is different and if you do notice increased utis or yeast infections after switching to allulose i would stop and see if allelos was the reason lastly a paper in the british journal of nutrition raised concern that consumption of allulose may result in an overgrowth of a bacteria called klebsiella pneumoniae as it is one of the few bacteria that can actually utilize allulose as a substrate the concern is that even though klebsiella pneumonia is part of the normal floor of the mouth skin and the intestines it can cause serious infections in people with weakened immune system and lung disease especially if this bacteria is allowed to overgrow which can theoretically happen with alus now i personally do not think it's anything to be worried about unless more robust studies corroborate such concerns as all of this is based on in vitro studies so only seen in the test tube or a petri dish and not even animal and let alone human studies overall i really do not see any significant concerns with alus and would actually recommend it over any other sweetener on the market today with only caveat being a little close monitoring if you had issues with frequent urinary tract infections or if you develop gi symptoms even at lower doses now if you decide that allelos is not for you then the next best alternative i would recommend is monk fruit which also has promising animal studies however it's often so combined with other sweeteners so it may be a little tricky to find it as an extract by itself this video is already getting a little too long so if you'd like for me to review the evidence behind monk fruit let me know in the comments below i hope this video was helpful and provided a little bit of clarity in the confusing world of sweeteners and sugar substitutes i'll see in the next one

Channel: Leonid Kim MD

Views: 202,836

Keywords: allulose, is allulose safe?, allulose benefits, sweetener, sweetener for diabetes, best sweetener, keto sweetener, artificial sweetener, best tasting sweetener, sweetener alternative, how to use allulose, what is allulose, allulose diarrhea, allulose glycemic index, allulose sugar, allulose nausea, allulose bloating, allulose uti, allulose infection, allulose yeast, allulose urine, allulose taste, how much allulose, metabolic health, diabetes, doctor recommends

Id: Kj1QwVqZJOk

Length: 9min 18sec (558 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 20 2022