The artificial sweetener ASPARTAME has been described as a pandora’s box of chameleon like toxins and tumour agents that have 92 Food & Drug Administration ways to ruin your life, including death.
Aspartame is 180 times sweeter than sugar with fewer calories, and many dieters and diabetics consume aspartame with the blessing of their doctor.
Why is it that cockroaches, cats, dogs, ants and flies do not eat aspartame? Do they have more natural intelligence when it comes to food than human beings? Politicians and food regulators worldwide consider aspartame safe for human consumption.
A synthetic, genetically engineered sweetener, aspartame is now found in everything from Coke and Pepsi diet drinks, all sugar-free chewing gum and Weight Watchers products, common over the counter sugar-free medicine and dietary supplements, to name a few. Labeled as additive 951, it has been available as a sweetener since 1981 under various names – Nutrasweet, Equal, Spoonful, Benevia or Equal Measure. Some warning labels avoid the number altogether and say: Phenylketonurics: contains phenylalanine, which has to be included for a small proportion of people in the general population that suffer from excess phenylalanine in their diet. In many cases aspartame is hidden in ‘natural and artificial flavours’. What’s more concerning is that, in Australia, medicines containing aspartame – some ‘sugar free’ liquids for example, do not have to be labeled.
Aspartame is a chemical combination of wood alcohol, aspartic acid and phenylalanine. Wood alcohol is the chemical name for methanol, a relative of ethanol that is, alcohol. Methanol is a poisonous clear liquid, it’s mixed with purple dye to make methylated spirits, used as a cleaner or fuel.
In their natural, non synthetic form aspartic acid and phenylalanine are present in the human body in tiny amounts as essential amino acids involved in vital body functions. Their presence is carefully monitored by the body’s natural balancing mechanisms.
Guzzling diet drinks and chewing continuously on sugar-free gum can cause the amounts of these critical chemicals to exceed the body’s need for them. At high temperatures, drinks left in the hot sun or in the human body – aspartame breaks down into hazardous components that break down again into more dangerous products.
Methanol produces toxic, carcinogenic formaldehyde and formic acid (ant sting poison). Phenylalanine converts to diketopiperazine (DKP), a tumour agent. Recent evidence demonstrates that formaldehyde – accumulates within cells and damages protein and DNA. Aspartic acid, (40% of aspartame) was first termed a neurotoxin/excitotoxin by Dr John Olney. He did studies on aspartic acid, 40% of aspartame, and found it caused lesions in the brains of mice. Although essential to normal brain function, in excess excitotoxins stimulates the nerve cells to death, ultimately making holes in the brain.
Victims of aspartame poisoning can go on for years getting gradually sicker with symptoms that copy a host of easily named conditions.
Aspartame is one of the most widely investigated food toxins in the past 50 years. It outranks MSG (monosodium glutamate) in the sheer volume of adverse reactions listed in more than 100 scientific papers.
Aspartame has been found to cause headaches, numbness, fatigue, blurred vision and blindness, heart palpitations, brain lesions and tumours, memory loss, dizziness, muscle spasms, miscarriages, sexual dysfunction, irritability, anxiety attacks, vertigo, epileptic seizures, rashes, tachycardia, tinnitus, joint pain, nausea, mood alterations, depression, hearing-loss, slurred speech, loss of taste, insomnia, eroding intelligence and short-term memory loss.
The sweetener also helps trigger multiple sclerosis, epilepsy, chronic fatigue syndrome, Epstein Bar, Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s, diabetes, mental retardation, lymphoma and birth defects.
In the medical text, Aspartame Disease: An Ignored Epidemic, Dr H. J. Roberts discusses the effect of aspartame on the brain. He found the phenylalanine in aspartame goes directly into the brain. It lowers the seizure threshold and depletes serotonin. When you lower serotonin it triggers manic depression or bipolar, mood swings, anxiety, suicidal tendencies, panic attacks, paranoia, hallucinations, etc. It also interacts with ALL antidepressants. In fact, it interacts with just about every drug used to treat the problems it causes.
There is growing evidence to suggest that aspartame may be a causative factor in the increasing incidence of anti-social behaviour, such as road rage, air-travel rage, assaults on hospital and ambulance officers, playground incidents, teenage and adult suicides and the almost epidemic depression now gaining wider media attention.
Did you know that aspartame was reviewed by the Pentagon as a biochemical weapon and was included in a list submitted to Congress prior to the accidental discovery of its sweetener action? In 1969, Dr Harry Weisman studied its affects on infant monkeys that were fed aspartame in milk. One dies and five others had major epileptic seizures. These findings were omitted in a report to the FDA.
Researchers at MIT surveyed 80 people who suffered brain seizures after eating or drinking products containing aspartame. These 80 cases met the FDA’s definition of a ‘hazard to the public health’, which requires the FDA to remove the product from the market. It wasn’t removed, 19988 GD Searle & Monsanto’s Nutrasweet Corporation had cranked out over 400,000 tonnes of aspartame. Nutrasweet was in over 9,000 foods by 1997 and on nearly every restaurant table in the western world. The greatest irony is that the two things used to sell aspartame, diabetes and weight loss are actually made worse by ingesting the substance.
Dr Roberts, a diabetic specialist, says aspartame can precipitate diabetes, aggravates and simulates diabetic retinopathy and neuropathy, destroys the optic nerve and can even cause diabetics to go into convulsions. It keeps blood sugar out of control and interacts with insulin.
Aspartame triggers a craving for carbs, which isn’t helpful if you are trying to lose weight. Many experts are pointing towards stevia as a healthier alternative to artificial sweeteners.
The FDA has received more than 10,000 consumer complaints over aspartame, representing approximately 80% of complaints about food additives since aspartame was introduced to the market.
Recently FSANZ (Food Standards Australia & NZ) has finalized approval of neotame, a derivative from aspartame which Monsanto/Nutrasweet say is safer for Phenylketonurics. However, Dr H J Roberts, a leading US critic of the product, says that the clinical effects from neotame will be the same as aspartame and the only reason Monsanto/Nutrasweet are changing the formulations is due to aspartame’s patent expiry. The neotame formulation restores patent control, monopoly and price control.
One group which is very quiet in the aspartame debate is the medical profession itself. Surely they should be in the front line opposing aspartame.
A final thought, please pass this article on to everyone you know and tell your friends to stop consuming this poison, tell your health care professional, contact politicians and let them know your concerns, complain to pharmacies, your local supermarket and health food shops. Diet drinks remain a top seller in most countries.
For more information & many case studies please visit, www.dorway.com (sites on aspartame) & www.holisticmed.com/aspartame/abuse/methanol.html.
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