Sugar and Aspartame: Why It's Essential to Avoid Them

Sugar and artificial sweeteners, such as aspartame (NutraSweet) and sucralose (Splenda) are two of the most harmful "food" substances for your health.  But, as bad as sugar is, artificial sweeteners are much worse.

Avoiding sugar and artificial sweeteners:

Nothing puts the human body into stress mode like refined sugar.  Called a "skeletonized food" and a "castrated carbohydrate" by Edward Howell, Ph.D., and a "metabolic freeloader" by Ralph Golan, M.D., sugar actually drains the body of vitamins, minerals and other nutrients in the process of being burned for energy.  Sugar also stresses the pancreas, forcing it to pump out a surge of unneeded digestive enzymes.  And, while it wouldn't be fair to blame sugar all of the insulin resistance and diabetes in America today (the over consumption of grains — especially overly-refined grains — plays and important role, as well), refined sugar has a unique place in the destruction of America's health.

Sugar and your body's immune response

Sugars also undermine and retard immune response.  One study measured the effects of 100 grams of sugar (sucrose) on neutrophils, a form of white blood cell that comprises a central part of immunity.  Within one hour of ingestion, neutrophil activity dropped 50 percent, and remained below normal for another four hours (Castleman, 1997).

Sugar and chronic inflammation

Sugar also creates a kind of internal rot, raising acid levels in the body and increasing inflammation, which causes a number of other negative effects — from simple pain to diabetes, heart disease and cancers.  Studies have been done that are very enlightening in this regard.  In one study, rats were either given sugar in their water or injected with a sugar solution.  As expected, the rats that were given sugar water developed dental cavities; what was not expected, however, was that those injected with sugar water developed cavities, as well — even though the sugar never passed through their mouths.  The conclusion of the study was that the effects of sugar on the teeth are not caused by acids formed in the mouth (as is commonly thought), but by metabolic changes in the whole system.

Aspartame is, by far, the most dangerous substance on the market that is added to foods.

But, the worst dangers to your health are not found in natural sugars, but in the use of artificial sweeteners.  Seventy-five percent of the adverse reactions reported to the U. S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) come from a single substance: the artificial sweetener, aspartame.  Aspartame is marketed today as NutraSweet, Equal, Spoonful and Equal-Measure.  With so many Americans on one diet or another, the market for aspartame is simply enormous.  And, it matters not that aspartame users are suffering from symptoms ranging from headaches, numbness and seizures to joint pain, chronic fatigue syndrome, multiple sclerosis and epilepsy.

This toxic artificial sweetener is made up of three chemicals: aspartic acid, phenylalanine and methanol.  What these chemicals do in our bodies is anything but sweet.

Aspartame: A recent book, Excitotoxins: The Taste That Kills, by Dr. Russell L. Blaylock, professor of neurosurgery at the Medical University of Mississippi, explains that aspartame is a neurotransmitter, facilitating the transmission of information from one neuron to another.  But, aspartame allows too much calcium into brain cells, killing certain neurons and earning aspartame the name of "excitotoxin."

With aspartame now in over 9,000 products such as instant breakfasts, breath mints, cereals, frozen desserts, "lite" gelatin desserts and even multi-vitamins, it's no surprise that there is a virtual epidemic of memory loss, Alzheimer's disease and multiple sclerosis.  In a move, much like a telephone company selling your phone number to telephone solicitors, and then charging you to block their calls, G. D. Searle (the Monsanto company that manufactures aspartame) is searching for a drug to combat memory loss caused by excitatory amino acid damage, most often caused by aspartame.

Phenylalanine: The chemical phenylalanine, a byproduct of aspartame metabolism, is an amino acid normally found in the brain.  You may have heard of testing infants for phenylketonuria (PKU), a condition where phenylalanine cannot be metabolized, and which can lead to death.  It has been shown that excessive amounts of phenylalanine in the brain can cause serotonin levels to decrease.

Now, let's think about this a bit.  Doesn't it seem that half the people you know are on Prozac, or some other SSRI medication?  Perhaps the flooding of American foods and soft drinks with aspartame is contributing to this pervasive depressive state — and other mental disorders — and the need for drugs like Prozac and Zoloft.

But, depression is not the most worrisome result of excessive phenylalanine levels in the brain.  Dr. Blaylock writes that schizophrenia and susceptibility to seizures can occur as a result of these high levels of phenylalanine.  The Massachusetts Institute of Technology surveyed 80 people who suffered seizures following the ingestion of aspartame.  The Community Nutrition Institute concluded that these cases met the FDA's own definition of an imminent hazard to the public health, but the FDA made no move to remove this dangerous product from the market.  (See more at Discover the Deadliest Health Deception: Sweet Deception.)

Do you fly the friendly skies?  You may be interested to know that both the Air Force's magazine, Flying Safety, and the Navy's publication, Navy Physiology, detailed warnings about pilots being more susceptible to seizures after consuming aspartame.  The Aspartame Consumer Safety Network notes that 600 pilots have reported acute reactions to aspartame, including grand mal seizures in the cockpit.  Many other publications have warned about aspartame ingestion while flying, including a paper presented at the 57th Annual Meeting of the Aerospace Medical Association.

Methanol: Another byproduct of aspartame is methanol (you may know it as wood alcohol).  When ingested, wood alcohol can cause blindness — and even death.  The EPA considers methanol to be a "cumulative poison", due to its low rate of excretion, once absorbed.

One quart of an aspartame-sweetened beverage contains about 56 mg of methanol.  It is formed when aspartame is heated to temperatures higher than 86 degrees F.  So, if you cook a sugar-free pudding containing aspartame, you are creating free methanol.  But even more to the point, since your body's internal temperature is roughly 98.6 degrees, simply ingesting aspartame will start the release of this toxic chemical.

But, there is another problem with aspartame: storage of products that contain it.  Many of the troops who served in Desert Storm developed unusual symptoms (Gulf War Syndrome).  These symptoms are similar to those of people chemically poisoned by formaldehyde.  How can this be explained?  Our Desert Storm troops, while waiting for action in Saudi Arabia, were treated to free diet drinks that had sat in the hot desert sun; and one way that methanol harms your body is by breaking down into formic acid and formaldehyde.  Formaldehyde is a known carcinogen, and can cause birth defects by interfering with DNA replication.

It shouldn't take a brain surgeon to figure out that sugars, artificial sweeteners and high fructose corn syrup don't belong in anyone's diet.  Personally, I'm not a zealot about avoiding sugar (I like ice cream and cookies), but, if you have any health issues to speak of, or are trying to recover and heal from any significant health problem or injury, eliminating these harmful substances from your diet will go a long way to helping you achieve the degree of health you hope for.