Sickness-induced insomnia is common because of link between brain and immune system.

Fighting off illness- rather than the illness itself- causes sleep deprivation and affects memory, a new study has found.

University of Leicester biologist Dr Eamonn Mallon said a common perception is that if you are sick, you sleep more.

But the study, carried out in flies, found that sickness induced insomnia is quite common.

The research has been published in the journal PeerJ here.

Dr Mallon said: "Think about when you are sick. Your sleep is disturbed and you're generally not feeling at your sharpest. Previously work has been carried out showing that being infected leads to exactly these behaviours in fruit flies.

In the last article of this series I discussed artificial sweeteners, and gave you my take on whether you should include them in your diet. This week, I want to talk about sugar alcohols, which are another popular low-calorie sugar substitute.

Xylitol is the most popular and most extensively researched, so I'll focus my discussion on it, but the general takeaway of this article applies to other sugar alcohols as well, such as sorbitol and erythritol.

What exactly are sugar alcohols?

Sugar alcohols are a type of 'low-digestible carbohydrate,' a category that also includes fiber and resistant starch. Sugar alcohols occur naturally in many fruits and are also known as 'polyols,' which you may recognize as a FODMAP. Unlike artificial sweeteners, sugar alcohols aren't completely calorie-free, because we are able to digest and absorb them to some extent. The absorption rate varies among sugar alcohols, from about 50% for xylitol to almost 80% for sorbitol, depending on the individual. (1) Erythritol is almost completely absorbed, but is not digested, so it provides almost no calories. (2)

Compared with artificial sweeteners, sugar alcohols have very few safety and toxicity studies, and are generally accepted as safe. (3) In one long-term human study, 35 participants consumed xylitol as their primary dietary sweetener for two years, and no adverse effects other than GI distress were observed, and GI symptoms dissipated after the first couple months. (4) The amount of xylitol consumed during this trial regularly exceeded 100g per day, often going over 200g per day, depending on the participant.

Metabolic effects of sugar alcohols

Sugar alcohols are a popular choice for weight loss due to their reduced calorie content, and for diabetics due to their low glycemic index. There's not nearly as much research on the metabolic effects of sugar alcohols as there is on artificial sweeteners, but the evidence we have suggests that sugar alcohols are at least harmless, and possibly beneficial.

For the most part, sugar alcohols cause no appreciable changes in blood glucose or insulin in humans, and sorbitol and xylitol have not been found to raise blood glucose following consumption. (5) In diabetic rats, 5 weeks of xylitol supplementation (as 10% of their drinking water) reduced body weight, blood glucose, and serum lipids, and increased glucose tolerance compared with controls. (6) Two other rat studies also found that xylitol-supplemented rats gained less weight and fat mass compared with control rats, and had improved glucose tolerance. (7, 8)

Because sweetness does not predict caloric value in sugar alcohols, one might expect that they would cause the same 'metabolic confusion' that is seen with noncaloric artificial sweeteners. Unfortunately there isn't enough evidence to form a conclusion about this, but my feeling based on what I've read is that this isn't a significant issue for sugar alcohols.

For one, sugar alcohols aren't 'intense sweeteners' like artificial sweeteners, which are hundreds of times sweeter than sugar. In fact, many are less sweet than sugar. Also, sugar alcohols do provide some calories, so there's not as much of a discrepancy between the caloric load your body expects and the caloric load it actually gets.

To answer the question of why we have to sleep, research conducted at the Mexican Metropolitan Autonomous University (UAM) revealed that chronic sleep loss can cause certain neurotoxic molecules, which normally circulate in the blood, to be transported to the central nervous system and interfere with the function of neurons.

Beatriz Gómez González, professor and researcher at UAM and head of the scientific project, explained that this phenomenon arises due to an alteration in the central nervous system called blood-brain barrier, which is the component responsible for protecting the brain from potentially neurotoxic agents.

Through the induction of sleep loss on some animals, the specialist at UAM and his staff corroborated that during periods of insomnia, joints vessels in the blood-brain barrier began to degrade. "We observed that some elements could cross that barrier and reach the brain tissue itself," explained the researcher.

By entering the brain, some nerve agents could potentially affect neuronal function and even promote neuron death. For example, the specialist said, an agent called monosodium glutamate found in a wide range of processed foods may cause neuronal damage by overactivation of these cells (excitotoxicity), although the range of neurotoxic agents circulating in the blood is very extensive.

You are insane if you are drinking Biotech's GMO-infused Kool-Aid. Here's why...

Let's put aside the debate about antigenic proteins introduced by transgenes in GMO crops. Transgenes are genes from species that are not naturally present in crops of feed or food importance, e.g. spider genes, bacterial genes, viral genes, etc. These transgenes are capable of producing proteins in the plants that have never been in the human diet over the course of human evolution, stretching back thousands, even millions of years. GM proponents and regulators claim pseudo-scientifically that these novel new GM foods are 'substantially equivalent' to conventional ones, despite a lack of human clinical toxicology studies to prove it; or, they claim that these proteins are inconsequential and do not represent a threat to human health, or the health of the biosphere as whole because they say so - a plea to their own self-appointed, baseless authority.

Would you be fascinated to know that there is a journal Gut?

Just Gut. One journal completely devoted to gut studies in the realm of gastroenterology. As far science trends are concerned, the gut has become a sexy topic, if you can believe it. But it should be more than that.

A lot of people hear "exercise" and think "yeah, yeah, blah, blah..." Or maybe it's only a means to become sexy.

But it should be more than that...

This particular study published in journal Gut - albeit a small one - if true, should be all the more proof that movement is a part of diet and not just a separate entity for the body.

But instead of acknowledging the vaccine's problems, the CDC and mainstream media blame people who don't vaccinate.

Mumps is a nasty virus - it can cause fever, headache, and painfully swollen glands. In serious cases, it can cause meningitis, deafness, and even testicular inflammation. Mumps is also easily spread through mucus: if an infected person sneezes, coughs, or even talks, they can pass it on.

For these and other reasons, most Americans are vaccinated against mumps through the MMR (measles, mumps, and rubella) shot, which is also one of the more dangerous vaccinations. But in the early 2000s, researchers began to notice an alarming pattern: those vaccinated against mumps were still becoming ill with it - at alarming rates.

This worrisome trend is accelerating: in April 2014, the New Jersey Department of Health warned of an outbreak of mumps at the Stevens Institute of Technology. Eight cases of mumps were confirmed - yet all of those infected had been fully vaccinated with two documented doses of the MMR shot.

The United States uses about 1.1 billion pounds of pesticides each year.^{1, 2}Worldwide pesticide use amounts to approximately 5.2 billion pounds annually. There's little doubt that the current pesticide load is taking a toll, as mounting research has linked pesticides to an array of serious health problems.

Processed foods form the basis of nearly everyone's diet, as 95 percent of the food Americans buy is processed. If this is you, then you can consider yourself in the highest risk category, as such fare tends to contain the greatest amounts of hidden genetically engineered (GE) ingredients, and hence the highest pesticide load.

Avoiding pesticide exposure - around your home, in your community, and via the food you eat - is important for reducing your risk for a number of chronic and devastating diseases, including Parkinson's and DNA damage indicative of early-stage cancer.^{3, 4}

Now, with the publication of a new meta-analysis,5 the evidence linking pesticides to cancer is stronger than ever. The analysis, which included 44 papers exploring the impacts of pesticide exposure on non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, concluded there appears to be a strong link between the two.

The study, which was done by a team at the International Agency for Research on Cancer in France, covering nearly three decades' worth of epidemiologic research, will likely be taken seriously worldwide.

Gluten is a nutritional problem

One of the biggest problems facing those with gluten related issues is doctors. For years, doctors have dismissed gluten sensitivity and other food allergies as a potential health problem for those suffering with disease. It is the proverbial 8,000 pound gorilla in the room. Everyone knows it, many ignore it. Choosing to ignore it doesn't make it go away. You are what you eat. The wrong food can impact your health in a detrimental way.

Why are medical doctors part of the problem? They simply don't understand nutrition well enough. Now before any of you start getting upset, remember that this is not a blanket statement that encompasses all doctors. There are many doctors that study nutrition and have a wonderful knowledge of the science. Problem is, they are few and far between. For example, let's look at gluten. This nutritional disease was originally identified as a food based problem in 1952. 61 years later, we have come to accept it as a society (kind of). You see, despite the massive quantity of research that has been conducted, many doctors continue to blatantly ignore gluten and its associated diseases (beyond Celiac). The question is why?

How much nutritional knowledge does your doctor have?

The truth is, unless they seek a post graduate education on the topic, not much at all. The last few studies investigating nutrition taught in medical schools had this to say...

...data suggest that medical students' perception of the importance of clinical nutrition can decrease during medical school.

Source: Curr Gastroenterol Rep. 2011 Aug;13(4):376-9

Over the course of a decade, 60,000 women were studied to confirm the effects of aspartame on their system. Drinking diet soda that has been sweetened with aspartame has been linked with a 50 percent rise in death and a 30 percent rise in heart attacks. Sounds to me like drinking diet soda isn't so good for your health after all. Just because it has less calories, that doesn't mean it is actually good for you.

What are they doing about these findings?

In reality, the findings have already been hidden by giving the public a false explanation as to why diet drinks aren't really the cause of these risks. They claim that the drinks are simply correlated with all of the risks. One article on CNBC claimed that women who were drinking too many diet sodas were only trying to make up for all of their other unhealthy habits. Regardless of what they said, there wasn't any evidence that substantiated their claim.

Remember, any synthetic vitamin that correlates with an increase in your mortality is automatically deemed as causing the death. Correlation should only be constituted as the cause when scientists have said that it is.