Last week, I started exploring the artificial sweetener, aspartame, much included in many food items as a “harmless” additive to encourage its acceptance and use by diabetics and obese as well as healthy adults and children, making them believe that it maintains slimness and health and protects teeth from decay. Little do they know how “damaging” it is to both body and brain. Because of this innuendo, I shall pursue my investigation today by exposing some “unpublicized” scientific studies and experiences about the side effects of this chemical. The unaware public has the right to be educated about the long-term use and aftereffects of the “isolates,” aspartame has introduced in many beverages, foods, snacks, and medications. Each one of us should also know that each component of aspartame by itself produces noxious effects, let aside what the three compounds and their byproducts combined generate in the system. I shall start by briefing you again about aspartame and its compounds. Here, we go!
Aspartame comprises three compounds: Aspartic acid, phenylalanine and methanol. The first two, isolated amino acids, are neurotoxins, which affect the central nervous system and brain, damaging nerve cells. Methanol, alcohol extracted from wood, is a poisonous, inflammable substance used as an additive for gasoline, paint removers, car engine cleaners and more (notice what methanol is added to!). Isolated methanol, inhaled, absorbed by the skin or ingested in big amounts, is highly toxic. In small amounts and in combination with the first two compounds, aspartic acid and phenylalanine, methanol (10%) is quickly broken down, becoming formaldehyde, another neurotoxic chemical.
I would like to add more about a characteristic of methanol. This information was provided to me by Jim McDonald of the United Kingdom Aspartame Awareness Campaign (UKAAC). Once in the body, methanol in aspartame (44 times higher than safe levels) accumulates in the system over the years to produce "severe neurological, organ, and tissue damage.” According McDonald’s graphic description, "Aspartame's job is done, as soon as it reaches the taste sensors at the tip of the tongue, it then discharges its toxic waste into the gut for our bodies to get rid of!"
Another fact I would like to point to is that aspartame is included in small amounts in thousands and thousands of diet beverages, soda drinks, foods, flavored yogurt, snacks, chewing gum, throat soothers, cough syrups and children and adult medications and antibiotics. When the body is continuously bombarded with the “detrimental” chemical, its cumulative effect becomes so high that the body systems are unable to detoxify. That is when damage occurs. The condition becomes too difficult to diagnose and the cause too complex to identify.
You must be wondering if aspartic acid is an amino acid, a nutrient, why does it become harmful. When a nutrient is isolated and is not part of its natural chain of amino acids, the “isolate” assumes a different activity in the body. In this case, it becomes offensive by over-stimulating nerve cells. By crossing the blood-brain barrier, especially through soda drinks, it impairs the central nervous system.
The other “isolate,” phenylalanine damages neurons and reduces serotonin production, leading to aggressive behavior and depression. The three compounds, aspartic acid, phenylalanine and methanol, synergistically act on the body by producing a variety of physiological, psychological, and neurological disruptions.
Beverages containing APM carry higher risk. Because they are rapidly metabolized, the sweetener affects the brain faster by becoming a neurotoxin. The effect is more magnified when the drink’s temperature rises above 30° C. That was why after their return, American troops of Dessert Storm during the Gulf War developed “unexplainable” neurological syndromes, misdiagnosed as ‘trauma.’ Their symptoms were similar to the chemical poisoning of formaldehyde, also an aspartame byproduct.
Moreover, aspartame along with phosphoric acid in Colas and soda drinks disrupts the blood pH balance and enzymatic functions, leading to major health complications like renal failure, cellular damage, seizures and coma.
There is a lot more to add, but before I close my article for today, I would like you to read the following passage sent to me by Barbara Metzler of New Jersey, USA. This is a mother’s “horrific” experience with her daughter’s health due to aspartame overconsumption.
I shall leave you to decide whether you still want to use the “detrimental” artificial sweetener or not. It is your choice to save your health and of those around you! I have other alarming stories, but I chose this one for the time being. In my next articles, I shall display for you alternative harmless sugar substitutes as well as some of the other “harmful” sweeteners to avoid.
Next week, I shall present to you more appalling side effects of this “harmful” chemical, “blessed” by the American FDA and United Kingdom FSA to become part of many “supposedly safe” diet beverages, sodas, snacks, and foods as well as medical drugs. The least we can do is blacklist products that contain aspartame in order to prevent catastrophic health consequences. When you are unaware you are blameless, but consuming it knowingly you share part of the guilt.
More than 20 years ago, when my daughter was in her early 20’s and studying for a Master’s Degree, she noticed that she was experiencing bizarre symptoms that were quite alarming. This truly bright girl, whose college tuition was entirely funded by scholarships and who won a Telluride Association Scholarship in competition with more than one million students from the entire US, realized that she was becoming very confused. In addition to her intellectual deterioration and drastic personality change, she developed epileptic-type seizures, and she began to lose her vision in both eyes.
She also began having severe headaches, panic attacks, tremors, profound exhaustion, insomnia, suicidal thoughts and numerous other problems including joint pains. My daughter consulted a neurologist, and he told her that she had temporal lobe epilepsy. He began treating her with medication, but the medication didn’t work, because the doctor was wrong in his diagnosis and he was treating her for a condition she didn’t have! What she really had was ASPARTAME — POISONING/TOXICITY!
I had heard about Dr. H. J. Roberts (Florida), so I contacted him and he confirmed what I suspected — that she was suffering from a reaction to the artificial sweetener in diet soda, even though she drank only 1 or 2 cans a day. My daughter owes her life to Dr. Roberts, because thanks to him, she stopped drinking diet soda, and gradually, every one of her problems disappeared. Today, she is a successful computer programmer and financial analyst. Dr. Roberts is listed in Who’s Who in America, Who’s Who in Science and Technology, Who’s Who in Medicine and Healthcare, and The Best Doctors in the US.
To follow up, my daughter went to Boston for special studies on her brain, and the doctors at the Clinical Research Center at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology confirmed that it was the aspartame that had made her so sick. They said that she had been totally misdiagnosed by the neurologist and that she did not have temporal lobe epilepsy at all. She also saw a highly-respected ophthalmologist who explained why her vision loss was due to aspartame.
She was fine for 12 years. Then, she began drinking diet soda again and had the same severe reaction. Luckily, I realized what was happening to her and was able to convince her to stop using aspartame. Why did she start again? It’s addictive! (Aspartame has three components: Phenylalanine (50 percent), aspartic acid (40 percent) and methanol, also termed wood alcohol (10 percent). Think about the 10 percent of aspartame that is absorbed into the bloodstream as methanol (wood alcohol)! The Environmental Protection Agency defines safe consumption as no more than 7.8 milligrams per day of this dangerous substance. A one-liter beverage, sweetened with aspartame, contains about 56 milligrams of wood alcohol, or eight times the EPA limit!).
By approving aspartame, the FDA caused many problems for many innocent people. Aspartame is marketed under names such as NutraSweet, Equal, Equal Measure, Spoonful, Naturataste, Canderal, Benevia, E951, Nutrataste, Joe Sweet, Indulge, Hermesetas Gold (both ace-k and aspartame), Sanecta, and Tri-Sweet. (Crystal-Lite is a beverage mix that contains aspartame.)
My daughter’s experience was a terrible waste of time and money — from something as avoidable as diet soda. And, why did it take so long to help her? Because most physicians and their patients are clueless when it comes to connecting the myriad of bizarre symptoms of aspartame poisoning with the consumption of what is supposedly a safe substance — approved by the FDA! Since the FDA says aspartame is “safe,” doctors don’t notice “side-effects” when they are staring them in the eye.
Barbara Metzler
New Jersey, USA
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