Every kid likes sweets, and many adults do too. But sugar is responsible for the poor dental health of a considerable amount of the population – which is why a part of the big pharma started developing sugar-free medicine. But as it turns out, these drugs do much more harm than good.

Sugar in medicine is a minuscule, almost negligible part of the total sugar intake, and there has been no evidence that this intake in particular causes any damage. A recent British Heart Foundation survey found that nearly one in three UK children are eating sweets, chocolate and crisps more than three times a day – so it’s easy to see the occasional medicine, which has very little sugar in itself practically does no harm.

But imagine the other side of the coin: kids don’t like to take medicine. Give them bitter medicine, and the whole situation becomes even more complicated. It is actually extremely hard to give sugar-free medicine to kids who eat a lot of sweets, and this poor compliance often leads to complications, which often leads to inadequate treatment of illness. Hence sugar free medicine in fact do a lot of damage, instead of helping, as proposed by some companies, concludes a study written by S. Sundar, a consultant at the Department of Oncology, Nottingham University Hospitals.

So bear in mind, especially if your kid enjoys a lot of sweets and/or if you have difficulties giving him a treatment: sugarfree medicine is not the answer, it will most likely only cause even more problems.

Research published in Nature

Enjoyed this article? Join 40,000+ subscribers to the ZME Science newsletter. Subscribe now!