Welcome to The Rise – your weekly dose of circadian sunshine, decentralised health wisdom, and actionable tips to help you live healthier, stronger, and more empowered.

In the last 12 months, the 6,000+ people in this tribe have been reading something the other 99% of health newsletters won’t cover — the science your GP hasn’t read. Get healthier and stronger this week by learning:

• The health risks behind artificial sweeteners and why scientists are saying it’s “something you should not be eating”
• The sugar-free sweeteners now being linked to blood clots, heart attacks and cancer
• A no-jargon guide to the entire artificial sweetener landscape (and a chart that will leave you jaw dropped)
• Plus, a very special guest joins us for Sandy’s Sunshine this week

Have suggestions or something you’d love to see covered here? Help me better serve this vibrant community of health rebels and send me your feedback here.

Much love and sunshine, ☀️

Sandy xx

Issue #116 • 19 April, 2026

🌅 Rise Report

What Artificial Sweeteners Could Be Doing to Your DNA

For decades, we were told sugar was the enemy. And look, eating mountains of it isn’t a great idea, we know that. But it was hard to give up that sweet flavour, so the food industry handed us a golden ticket: you can have your sweetness AND skip the calories and the blood sugar spike. Here, have an artificial sweetener instead.

And so, people all over the world went about their day, tearing open little packets of white powder into millions of cups of tea and coffee. Relief. Problem solved. But what if that little packet of sweetness… was anything but?

Researchers at North Carolina State University have found that sucralose, the main ingredient in Splenda, and one of the world’s most common sweeteners, produces a byproduct called sucralose-6-acetate. It’s formed when your body metabolises sucralose, but it’s also already present in the product before you’ve even touched it.

It seems that byproduct is genotoxic ie. it damages DNA. Lab studies using human cells showed it caused chromosomal breaks linked to cancer risk. It also disrupts the tight junctions holding your gut wall together, creating a “leaky gut” effect. And it appears to interfere with the liver enzymes that break down many medications.

The kicker? A single sucralose-sweetened drink may exceed the European Food Safety Authority’s safety threshold for genotoxic substances, before accounting for what your body produces during digestion.

Lead researcher Susan Schiffman’s verdict was direct:

“It’s something you should not be eating.”

The decentralised wisdom? Flip over anything labelled “sugar-free,” “diet,” or “no added sugar” and scan for sucralose (or E955 in Australia). It hides in protein powders, flavoured waters, soft drinks, and yoghurts. A drizzle of raw honey or a medjool date in your baking beats a lab compound in your DNA any day.

The “Safe” Sugar Substitutes Now Being Linked to Blood Clots, Heart Attack and Stroke

So we’ve talked about sucralose. But maybe you’re thinking, “I don’t use Splenda. I use the natural stuff”. Erythritol, sylitol. The ones that are friendlier. Made from plants and found in fruits. Even produced by your own body in small amounts. Surely those are fine?

That’s what we all thought.

A Cleveland Clinic research team has spent the past few years quietly dismantling that assumption, and the findings are hard to ignore.

Their 2023 study in Nature Medicine, tracking over 4,000 patients across the US and Europe, found that people with the highest erythritol levels in their blood were up to 2.2 times more likely to experience a serious cardiovascular event, heart attack, stroke, or death, within three years. A 2024 follow-up confirmed it in healthy volunteers: after consuming one erythritol-sweetened drink, blood levels spiked over 1,000 times and every measure of blood clotting increased significantly. Sugar (glucose) produced no such effect.

Then xylitol joined the conversation. A separate 2024 European Heart Journal study found people with the highest xylitol levels faced a 57% higher risk of cardiovascular events. Same clotting mechanism. Same concern.

And in 2025, researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder went looking for why. Exposing human brain blood vessel cells to erythritol at doses equivalent to a single sweetened drink, they found it increased oxidative stress by around 75%, reduced nitric oxide production, the compound that keeps blood vessels healthy and flexible, and blunted the cells’ ability to dissolve clots. A possible mechanism, hiding in plain sight.

The takeaway? Check labels for erythritol and xylitol in protein bars, sugar-free chocolates, energy drinks, and kombucha. (Found it in mine too so it’s — back to mineral water with lemon for this girl. 🍋)

They Were Supposed to Help You Lose Weight. About That.

So here’s the ultimate irony. After everything we’ve just covered, the DNA damage, the heart risk, the blood vessel damage, you might assume at least the weight loss promise held up. Bad news, my friend. It didn’t.

In 2023, the World Health Organisation reviewed the evidence and issued a clear verdict: artificial sweeteners should not be relied upon as a strategy for weight control. The science, they concluded, simply doesn’t support it.

A large prospective study tracking nearly 79,000 women found that after a year, sweetener users differed from non-users by less than two pounds in weight change. In either direction. Two pounds. For all that label-reading and diet-drink swapping.

The likely reason? Your gut. Researchers found that artificial sweeteners alter your gut microbiome, the community of bacteria governing your metabolism in ways that may actually make your body better at extracting energy from food and storing it as fat. Essentially, the sweetener may be training your gut to work against you.

More Bad News & Health Risks We Shouldn’t Ignore

And while we’re here, aspartame, the sweetener in NutraSweet and Equal, was classified as “possibly carcinogenic” by the WHO in 2023. In the largest trial to date on the effects of aspartame, researchers followed more than 100,000 people over about eight years and documented what they ate and drank. They found that people who consumed aspartame at high levels were about 15% more likely to develop cancer than people who didn’t have aspartame in their diet. That included an increased risk of breast, endometrial, colon, stomach and prostate cancer.

If you thought the whole proposition of have your sweetness, eat what you like and lose the weight was too good to be true. You’re right!

The decentralised wisdom? If weight management is your goal, whole foods and less sugar will serve you far better than a lab-engineered substitute. Your gut knows the difference.

🤓 Smarty Pants

Artificial Sweeteners: The Fake Sweet Talkers of the Food World

You’ve heard the names. Aspartame. Sucralose. Erythritol. Stevia. They’re on the back of your yoghurt, your protein powder, your chewing gum, your “healthy” soft drink. But do you actually know what they are, and why they’re so different from each other?

Let’s fix that.

Artificial sweeteners are compounds that mimic the taste of sugar without the calories. Because they’re so intensely sweet, only tiny amounts are needed to achieve the same hit of sweetness. And when you look at that sweetness chart I’ve included below, the numbers are genuinely jaw-dropping. Sucralose (Splenda) is 600 times sweeter than table sugar. Saccharin hits up to 700 times. And Advantame, one most people have never heard of, clocks in at a staggering 20,000 times sweeter than sugar. Twenty thousand.

I know what you’re saying. But companies would just use a lesser amount…so let’s break this down.

Artificial sweeteners don’t actually make your drink taste 1,000 times sweeter – yes, manufacturers use tiny amounts so the sweetness roughly matches sugar. But here’s the catch: even in those small doses, these compounds bind very strongly to your sweet taste receptors and can deliver a more intense or longer-lasting signal. So while it tastes “normal,” your brain and body may not be interpreting it the same way. It’s not just the amount of sweetness that matters, it’s the strength and nature of the signal, and that’s where things can start to shift beneath the surface.

What can happen when your body gets hit with ultra-sweet signals?

• Taste buds get warped: real food starts to taste bland
• Cravings increase: especially for sugar and ultra-processed foods
• Appetite signals get confused: hunger and fullness feel off
• Insulin response becomes dysregulated: even without real sugar
• Gut bacteria shift: impacting metabolism and blood sugar control
• Sweet tolerance rises : you need more to get the same hit

The Different Types of Artificial Sweeteners

Artificial sweeteners fall into a few distinct camps.

Synthetic sweeteners: made entirely in a lab, think aspartame, saccharin, sucralose, and acesulfame potassium (Ace-K).

Sugar alcohols: erythritol and xylitol, occur naturally in small amounts in fruits and vegetables but are added to processed foods at concentrations far beyond anything nature intended. And then there’s the…

Plant-derived category: stevia, monk fruit – which sound the most wholesome of the lot, but are heavily processed and purified before they end up in your food. The actual stevia leaf? Not even approved by the FDA as a food ingredient. Only the extracted, refined glycosides make the cut.

Here’s what they all have in common.

Whilst all these artificial sweeteners have been approved by the official authorities, they also all have some degree of murkiness and concerns around them. And what has been positioned as inert, harmless and your answer to your sweet tooth – may not be so innocent.

My take? This is my sugar practice. Choose the real thing. I enjoy a little honey in my tea, use maple syrup when cooking and raw sugar when baking a special treat. There are lots of good options like coconut sugar. I would prefer to use the real deal any time and have less of it, than the artificial stuff and opt for low sugar everything. And in the words of another famous Sandy from Grease….here’s my take on artificial sugar…”you’re a fake and a phoney. And I wish I’d never laid eyes on you.”

☀️ Sandy’s Sunshine – Special Guest Edition

This week I have something special to share, that I’m super excited about it.

We have a special guest joining us. Laura, a nutritionist, health coach and mum of three who helps women calm chronic inflammation and balance blood sugar so they can actually feel like themselves again.

This week Laura is tackling two things that are deeply connected but rarely talked about together: anti-inflammatory eating and emotional eating. If you’ve ever stood in front of the pantry at 9pm wondering what on earth is actually going on, this one’s for you.

Over to you, Laura. 🙌

What an Anti-Inflammatory Diet Actually Looks Like, And Why It Matters for Emotional Eating

When people hear anti-inflammatory diet, they often picture a sad plate of steamed vegetables and a long list of foods they can never touch again.

That’s not what I mean.

An anti-inflammatory diet is less about eating “perfectly” and more about lowering the stress load on your body so it can function better. For most women, that means fewer cravings, steadier energy, better blood sugar, less inflammation, and a whole lot less food chaos.

Here’s the simplest way I teach it:

1. Eliminate the foods that are inflammatory to all humans

This is the baseline.

We’re talking about the foods that create problems across the board: ultra-processed foods, industrial seed oils in heavily processed packaged foods, excess added sugar, and refined starches that hit the bloodstream fast and keep people stuck on the blood sugar roller coaster.

This is not about obsessing over every ingredient. It’s about removing the biggest daily offenders first.

2. Balance blood sugar

This is the part too many people skip … and then wonder why they’re still struggling with cravings, mood swings, and evening “willpower” crashes.

If your meals are built around carbs alone, skipped meals, or little snacky bites that don’t actually satisfy you, your body is going to keep asking for fast energy. A simple blood-sugar-supportive meal usually looks like:

protein + fiber + healthy fat + color

It’s not glamorous, but it works.

3. Load up on nourishing and healing foods

Once you stop focusing only on what to cut out, this gets a lot easier.

Think: quality protein, vegetables, berries, herbs, spices, olive oil, avocado, nuts, seeds, legumes, and other whole foods that actually give your body something to work with.

The goal is not just to “eat less bad stuff.” 

It’s to build meals that help you feel better.

4. Trial trigger foods only if needed

Not everyone needs to remove dairy, eggs, gluten, corn, or nightshades forever and call it wellness.

Sometimes a deeper trigger-food trial helps. Sometimes it just makes women more stressed and confused.

Start with the universal stuff first. Then, if symptoms are still hanging around, you can test specific foods with intention instead of throwing your entire kitchen into chaos.

That’s what an anti-inflammatory diet looks like in real life.

Not punishment. Not perfection. Just a smarter way to eat that supports your body instead of picking a fight with it every day.

And yes — this connects directly to emotional eating

This is where things get personal for me. 

For years, I didn’t just “like food.” I used it. I leaned on it. I chased it. I felt controlled by it. Call it emotional eating, food addiction, compulsive eating (whatever label fits best) I know what it feels like to be stuck in that loop where food feels louder than you are.

And here’s what I learned the hard way:

Emotional eating is rarely just about food. It’s about what food is doing for you.

Sometimes it soothes stress. Sometimes it numbs. Sometimes it gives relief, distraction, reward, or a break from holding everything together.

And sometimes the whole cycle gets worse because your body is already underfed, inflamed, exhausted, and bouncing through blood sugar highs and crashes all day. 

That’s why white-knuckling it usually fails.

You can’t just rip away the coping tool and expect peace to magically appear.

What actually helped me was moving through the work in layers.

First, I had to become aware of what was really happening … not just what I was eating, but when, why, and what I was feeling before the urge hit.

Then I had to create some space between the feeling and the reaction. Not perfectly. Just enough to stop living on autopilot.

Then I had to learn how to meet the actual need underneath the urge instead of demanding food do every emotional job in my life.

And over time, I had to build a new way of living and eating that felt supportive enough to stick.

That’s the part people want to skip. They want the cravings gone by Tuesday.

But lasting change usually comes from understanding the pattern, interrupting it, supporting yourself differently, and repeating that enough times that the old loop starts to lose its grip.

A few practical shifts that help

Eat enough during the day.
A shocking amount of night-time “emotional eating” is just the rebound from under-eating, over-restricting, or surviving on caffeine and chaos.

Pause before the pantry.
Ask: Am I hungry, overwhelmed, tired, avoiding something, or needing comfort?
Sometimes the answer is food. Sometimes it isn’t.

Make your meals more supportive.
If your food keeps leaving you hungry an hour later, it’s not helping. More protein, more fiber, more actual nourishment.

Stop making this a morality issue.
You are not “good” because you ate a salad. You are not “bad” because you ate chips in the car. Shame makes the cycle louder.

The bottom line

An anti-inflammatory diet can help calm a lot more than physical symptoms.

It can make your body feel safer. More stable. Less frantic.

And when your body is less inflamed, your blood sugar is more balanced, and your meals are actually nourishing, emotional eating often becomes a lot easier to work with because you’re no longer fighting from such a depleted place.

That doesn’t fix everything overnight.

But it does change the ground you’re standing on.

And that matters more than most people realize.

For more support, you can subscribe to Laura’s The Balanced Body Brief here for practical help with anti-inflammatory eating, blood sugar balance, and getting out of the food struggle for good. (Plus you get a free Quick-Start Guide in your Welcome Email 💖)

Laura xo,

🔢 Number Crunch

38% – the increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes by drinking just one can of artificially sweetened soft drink a day. For the record, this is even higher than for those who drink sugar-sweetened beverages, for whom the risk of developing type 2 diabetes was found to be 23% higher. You can read the study here.

 

“The food you eat can be either the safest and most powerful form of medicine or the slowest form of poison.”
– Ann Wigmore