If you鈥檝e turned to artificial sweeteners to curb your daily sugar cravings but you鈥檝e seen little success, it may very well be your gut that鈥檚 giving you away.
New research shows that the cells in your gut can tell the difference between sugar and artificial sweeteners鈥攅ven if your taste buds are oblivious鈥攁nd can communicate the difference to your brain in milliseconds, providing evidence as to why sugar cravings can be so hard to kick.
The peer-reviewed research, , focused on a cell in the gut called the 鈥渘europod,鈥� which plays a critical role in the connection between what鈥檚 inside the gut and its influence in the brain.
Researchers say their latest findings suggest that neuropods are sensory cells in the nervous system, acting like taste buds in the tongue or the retinal cone cells in the eye that help us see colours.
鈥淭hese cells work just like the retinal cone cells that that are able to sense the wavelength of light,鈥� Diego Bohorquez, led researcher with the Duke University School of Medicine, said in a press release.
鈥淭hey sense traces of sugar versus sweetener and then they release different neurotransmitters that go into different cells in the vagus nerve, and ultimately, the animal knows 鈥榯his is sugar鈥� or 鈥榯his is sweetener.鈥欌��
Using lab-grown organoids鈥攎iniaturized versions of an organ produced in vitro鈥攆rom mouse and human cells to represent the small intestine and upper gut, the researchers showed in a small experiment that real sugar stimulated individual neuropod cells to release glutamate, a chemical that nerve cells use to send signals to other cells, as a neurotransmitter.
Artificial sugar, on the other hand, triggered the release of a different neurotransmitter.
Using a technique called optogenetics, a biological technique to control the activity of neurons or other cell types with light, the researchers were then able to turn the neuropod cells on and off in the gut of a living mouse to show whether the animal鈥檚 preference for real sugar was being driven by signals from the gut.
With their neuropod cells switched off, the animal no longer showed a clear preference for real sugar.
鈥淲e trust our gut with the food we eat,鈥� Bohorquez said. 鈥淪ugar has both taste and nutritive value and the gut is able to identify both.鈥�
Bohorquez argues that the gut talks directly to the brain, which can change our eating behaviour.
The researchers hope that with more study, these findings may lead to new therapies targeting the gut.
鈥淢any people struggle with sugar cravings, and now we have a better understanding of how the gut senses sugars (and why artificial sweeteners don鈥檛 curb those cravings),鈥� co-first author Kelly Buchanan, internal medicine resident at Massachusetts General Hospital, said in the press release.
鈥淲e hope to target this circuit to treat diseases we see every day in the clinic.鈥�
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