A conspiracy that really hit home - Aspartame Poisoning

reply to post by Macabees


I've done my research. You are preaching to the choir on this one brother..... my mother is poisoning herself with the sh*t, to the tune of a half gallon minimum of Diet Pepsi per day and pot after pot of Equal-laden coffee. She has at least 3 petite mal seizures a day at this point. Her nervous system is shot to hell. Breaks my f*cking heart that she won't listen to me or give up the habit.

Thanx for this thread.

reply to post by ItsEvolutionBaby


Chewing gum.........my stepson and I were just talking about this on Sunday. He told me the only gum he could find without some kind of artificial sweetener is Fruit Stripe gum. You know the one that is advertized with a cartoon zebra?

I've been telling everyone about artificial sweeteners for a while now. One of my young nieces is very overweight, she is in a children's hospital run weight loss program. Her family and grandmother were giving her sugar free drinks all day long, even though I begged them to limit (actually, stop) her intake, and switch her over to mostly water.

My mother in law used to drink coffee with Equal in it all day long, and I used to tell her how bad it was and how she should quit using it. Finally I went over there one day, and she told me she ran out of Equal and just decided to try sugar for a while. I don't think she listened to me, but a woman she knows that owns her own business eats pretty much only organic.....and SHE told MIL that it was bad for you.

I DID tease her about not listening to me about it.....but as long as the message gets through...

And now that she's off it, she told her daughter, and she took HER daughter off of it too!

Originally posted by OnceReturned
reply to post by Hongkongphooey

 

Consider your signature:
"Condemnation without research is the height of ignorance!" - Einstein

The American Diabetes Association, among the many other reputable scientific organizations that have examined the issue, disagree with you.

A number peer reviewed papers addressing aspartame and diabetes and weight:
care.diabetesjournals.org...
www.ajcn.org...
www.ajcn.org...
www.ajcn.org...

Keeping in mind your quote, I believe the research fails to justify your condemnation.

Why do you suppose the aspartame is responsible for your diabetes? You consumed it along with countless other compounds in addition to struggling with weight, how can you rule out other potential causes? If aspartame causes diabetes, why isn't that connection born out in the extensive research that has been done?

Yes I know all the 'sponsored' peer reviewed papers say aspartame is good for you, right? All research done on the effects of aspartame are mute because it's not 'peer' reviewed, sponsored or approved by TPTB which in this case are the FDA and AMA.

However, I have looked at your 'peer reviewed' research and aspartame research (not approved by you, of course) and I know what I know as well as what my body tells me. I know that when taking aspartame my blood sugar was out of whack but taking equal amounts of stevia its not, go figure?

As to my signature, I've done the research and experienced the effects so I guess i have a right to condem the 'party line'. have you researched 'independent' data and research on aspartame????

Wow. I have always been aware of what Aspartame could potentially do to the human body. My household are all habitual coffee drinkers. I drink I would say an average of 2 large cups a day, with a Aspartame based sweetener. Plus I usually drink a can of diet cola or two with a meal.

I'm 27, and I have always drank coffee with this sweetener and been a consumer of Diet sodas... and I have poor eye sight, trouble with teeth, occasional memory blocks and being overweight (245 lb, 6 feet tall).

Reading everyone's reports really made me wonder, so for the next month I am going to try not drinking or consuming anything containing Aspartame. I am curious if I will notice any symptoms disappearing after having cut it from my system. I'll just have to sweeten my coffee with a bit of more natural sugar unless there is a better alternative?

I used to use equal, I switched to something called Truvia...
I never had any real issues using equal mind you, and drinking tons of diet pepsi...I get more wonked out from the caffine than anything, I stopped because ultimately "I heard enough to decide to move away from it...best not to tempt fate kinda thing if there are alternatives.

reply to post by Macabees


I agree that Aspertame is most certainly not good for you and the public doesn't need it in its drinks whatsoever, I think it's important to note that 20 packs of any kind of sweetener daily is very unhealthy. Sodas are also horrible for you, and it's quite easy to notice a difference when one stops consuming them completely, especially for regular drinkers.

if you don't already, I highly suggest everyone get that really huge Nutritional Healing book. It's fantastic and worth living by (however, it is not a replacement for a doctor)


edit: Agave Nectar is a good substitute for all types of sweetener.

reply to post by irishiz

As a trainer, would you mind helping me out a bit for her sake? Is real sugar THAT bad?

Actually I am not a trainer, I am a chemist but my doctor when I was a kid always used diet as part of her treatments. She told us that Doctors are not required to take ANY classes in nutrition! (that was in the 1960's) Therefore I have had a life long interest in nutrition. My best friend was a biologist and she and another friend (diabetic) diagnosed me as having hypoglycemia at the age of 19 after I passed out in a cave of all places. The doctors refused to test me for the problem because I was "too young" so I had to do the research myself.

Hypoglycemia is low blood sugar. The pancreas becomes super sensitive to sugar and produces too much insulin. This lowers the blood sugar to below what is normal and produces cravings for sweets and sleepiness. Hypoglycemia will result in type II diabetes later in life if not caught early and controlled through diet. This is the damage that too much sugar early in life can do to a person.

Back to diet. I stay away from junk food and processed food (It is full of salt, sugar and hydrogenated fats) Partially hydrogenated vegetable oils provide about three-fourths of the total fat in the U.S. diet. This is the stuff that is REALLY bad news for you and is where "fat" got the bad reputation even though it is a need part of your diet, just not chemically produced partially hydrogenated vegetable oils. I also stay away from grains (reflux) and starchy (root) veggies. But then I am over 60.

If you eat what humans are SUPPOSED to eat veggies, nuts, fruits and meats and stay away from the stuff you can not grow in your home garden or pasture. You are eating what your body was designed to eat.

For a child, if they have no other health problems a natural diet, without the junk food and candy and loads of starchy crap certainly will not hurt them. Fruit or carrot sticks or nuts will taste very sweet once you are off the sugar and can be used for dessert. It is amazing how "sweet" an onion will make a soup taste! Bye the bye use milk or water as her beverage NOT FRUIT JUICE! A little OJ or better yet a bowl of berries from your garden is a much better way to consume fruit without the pesticides. Most commercial fruit juices have High Fructose Corn Syrup which is another big NO NO and found in many processed foods.

Remember all those "convenience foods" and sodas and candies and junk food was not available on a routine basis to most people until fifty to a hundred years ago. You ate what was grown in your area. You certainly did not eat food laced with salt, High Fructose Corn Syrup, and Partially hydrogenated vegetable oils.

I hope that helps. You can look up a lot of the stuff on the internet but remember the FDA and USDA put out a lot of the stuff to help the big corporations. See The government-industry revolving door and source watch

Atkins has a lot of scientific papers on nutrition so you can see what the other side has to say and make up your own mind: www.atkins.com...

For berries just put them on a cookie sheet (separated)and freeze them raw. Pour the quick frozen berries into a container and you have them for the rest of the year. Blackberries and everbearing raspberries are very easy to grow. (If the goats don't eat them - Sigh)

I've not read the full thread, but just wanted to say that I try to avoid any type of artificial sweetener, the thing is it can be quite difficult to find products that don't have it one form or another.

It seems to be everywhere. Still the less taken the better I guess.

A few years ago, after drinking a 20 oz regular Pepsi every morning for some 5-7 years, I bought a six pack and it immediately tasted like diet. I figured the bottling company messed up and put diet in the regular bottles. Even brought it back to the store and got another 6 pack. Same "artificial sweetner" taste.

To this day, it still tastes to me like they are at least using some artificial sweetener in regular Pepsi. I would suspect that aspartame may be less expensive to use than real sugar, which could explain things.

reply to post by ItsEvolutionBaby


google stevia gum. Unfortunately, I cannot find it anywhere except online so far. but if you are in a larger city it might be in health stores.

The only "artificial" sweetener I know of that's safe (so far) is Stevia. There are other ways of adding sweetness, such as using bee honey, agave nectar, and unprocessed cane sugar.

NutraSweet, Aspartame, etc... are all toxic... turning into formaldehyde during the chemical processes inside your body. Some micro-biologist friends explained how the formaldehyde from these sweeteners ends up coating our neurons and axioms, and then coats every organ. The formaldehyde slows and impedes the nervous system and then shuts down reception of neurological commands to the organs.

It's pretty much slow suicide. Thanks to our special-interest FDA, this is deemed "healthy."

Also, "sucralose" is a popular ingredient... because it's corn. Corn is heavily subsidized by our tax dollars, so industries like to use it. It's in so many things.

Sucralose, just like other corn products (including high-fructose corn syrup) contain neurotoxins (from pesticide build-up) and have been found to be linked to all kinds of diseases/disorders, including migraines, diabetes and cancer.

There's a much bigger danger than taking too much aspartame in food and that is taking too much sugar.

Excess consumption of carbohydrates, including sugar, increases the incidence of obesity. This is a major contributor to the incidence of diabetes and other serious diseases including cancer and heart disease. Unfortunately around 20 million Americans have diabetes (probably more are obese) and it leads to a wide variety of other conditions including heart disease, blindness, kidney disease, nerve damage, depression and skin problems.

It also one of the big killers, with diabetes being involved in the deaths of over 200,000 people a year in the US (many people do not die of one thing alone but when trying to treat one problem they die because their treatment options are limited by other contributing diseases -- ask anyone who works in a hospital what actually happens when people die!).

Now apparently it isn't totally clear whether sugar itself kills people (except I think when hyperglycemia leads to untreated diabetic coma). It may not even be clear if it is obesity that kills or the lack of exercise associated with it that is more deadly. And furthermore, there isn't a great deal of evidence that better diet alone reduces the death rate. There is however substantial evidence that lack of exercise in combination with poor nutrition does significantly increase the death rate.

So, with all those caveats, it is clear that excess consumption of sugar does indirectly lead to the deaths of many people.

What there isn't evidence for is aspartame consumed at normal levels significantly increasing the incidence of serious disease.

There are numerous differences between anecdotal evidence (what we're getting in this thread) and the evidence coming from large scale scientific studies.

* Large scientific studies work with sample sizes of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of people. The results are statistically significant and therefore meaningful. Anecdotal evidence is limited to one or two or a handful of people's personal anecdotes or stories. This sort of information is not statistically significant.

* The large scale scientific studies attempt to control for other effects, such as selection bias, preexisting health conditions, known contributors to serious disease, genetic and racial factors, and many other biases.

* In large scale studies the participants don't generally know that the study is looking for the effect of aspartame or sugar on their health, thus the placebo effect and other psychosomatic effects can be eliminated. Anecdotes to the effect that "I was feeling ill and stopped taking aspartame and all of a sudden I am better" are suspect due to the fact that the person may have believed they would get better. The placebo effect is extremely strong! (It is also possible that something else, e.g. caffeine or colourings or acids or other additives in the drinks they cut out was adversely affecting them, or that their consumption levels were really excessive).

Having said all that, there are some known health effects from *excessive* consumption of aspartame. To put this in balance, excessive consumption of water can kill you -- even purified water. Excessive consumption of food can kill you. Excessive consumption of red meat is believed to be very bad for you, same for white bread and a multitude of other things.

I understand that the caffeine in many diet sodas has a much more severe effect on your health than the aspartame, and caffeine really tastes disgusting, whereas aspartame is sweet tasting. You can buy pure caffeine and aspartame in powdered form over the internet and taste them and you'll see where the nasty taste comes from in many drinks.

Personally, I drink caffeine free diet soda. Every time you drink a soda sweetened with sugar, that's 150 calories you don't need. Diet soda eliminates that. I've been drinking caffeine free diet coke very regularly for years and so far no serious health effects (caffeine on the other hand does cause me severe pain in my gut). I'm sure there are healthier things to drink, and the acids in diet soda don't do my teeth any favours. But so far I've stabilised my weight and don't have diabetes. The water where I live is basically treated sewerage and I just find bottled water to be disgusting (probably comes from the tap anyway -- why should I pay for that!).

Find me a better drink and I'll drink it. But the science tells me I don't have as much to fear from aspartame as I do from sugar. It's also been reported that when people try to judge whether they have had enough calories or not, taking calories in drinks don't register with the body in the same way as with food. The body kind of mentally adds up the calories taken in food and knows when it has had enough. But it virtually ignores any extra calories that might be coming in from drinks. Unfortunately those extra calories still get converted to fat just like the calories coming from food.

Anyhow, people telling me that they personally think aspartame is poison because its produced in a chemical factory or because huge doses of it are carcinogenic in rats (so are huge doses of methanol!) is not going to convince me to stop drinking sodas sweetened with aspartame. I prefer not to die young of a stroke or heart disease or cancer brought on by obesity which has been brought about by excessive caloric intake.

What makes me laugh really hard is people who believe that aspartame is going to kill them, but they drink, smoke, do little exercise, eat bacon, refuse to take medicine to control their blood pressure later in life, drive like maniacs, spend a lot of their life angry at other people and stressed with their work and basically do all of the very things that we know beyond a shadow of a doubt substantially increase the risk of early death.

reply to post by XtraTL


So 'Lab-Rats' never got any brain tumours in the lab tests, studies and reports that you mention from being fed aspartame!

Manufacturers haven't paid to have results manipulated?

Anecdotal evidence against (FAKED) lab reports???? I have yet to meet one person, ONE, who have not felt better after giving up aspartame! Sugar if taken at normal levels (not excess) is far safer than aspartame, whatever you say or cite!

I used to get regular headaches, suffered from high blood pressure, could never lose weight no matter how much I dieted, I had bloated feet and ankles and many other problems, until I learned the truth about Aspartame! It took me a while to believe but eventually I eliminated it as much as possible from my diet and I no longer suffer any headaches (none for 5 years) no swollen feet or ankles, no more high blood pressure (although damage was done and I need to be a little careful) and I naturally lost about 8 kilos without dieting. I was 136kg when I was using aspartame products to lose weight (and was constantly increasing weight) now I way 115kg and I am currently doing the Hcg diet to lose weight, I have lost 7kg in just over 22 days and feel great).

I still have a sweet tooth and use stevia (nustevia which is not bitter).

I encourage everyone I care about to stop using aspartame products and those that listen always feel better after doing so. I encourage everyone to educate themselves on what they feed themselves and their families. Of course there are people that do not want to listen (and I don't drive them too crazy LOL) but they will learn when they are ready.

What woke me up? My slim and healthy brother dying from cancer 5 years ago, tomorrow to the day! Feb 8th 2006.

I just wish I would have known 7-8 years ago about food that I know today. My brother had his voicebox removed and could only sustain himself via a tube through his nose of which he had to inject a sugar based yoghurt. The doctors know so much but they didn't seem to know that cancer feeds on sugar!

Whilst I state that sugar is safer than aspartame in normal situations, don't feed sugar to your loved ones that suffer with cancer.

reply to post by Macabees
Aspartame is created by replacing a carbon molecule with a chlorine molecule which your body cannot digest and will reject as poison...this is one of the reasons for the problems people are facing...research it your self it is true.

Originally posted by twoandthree
Also, "sucralose" is a popular ingredient... because it's corn. Corn is heavily subsidized by our tax dollars, so industries like to use it. It's in so many things.

Sucralose, just like other corn products (including high-fructose corn syrup) contain neurotoxins (from pesticide build-up) and have been found to be linked to all kinds of diseases/disorders, including migraines, diabetes and cancer.

Sucralose is not corn. It is an artifical sweetener made by taking a sugar molecule and replacing three hydrogen-oxygen groups with three chlorine atoms. It also has many side effects like Aspartame the build up the longer you use it. The chlorine can build up in areas of the body causing severe joint pain, headaches and other symtoms.

Splenda is the brand name of sweetener sucralose. It's another artifical sweetener to avoid.
www.karlloren.com...

reply to post by Macabees


the FDAs official documents said numerous times to not add this to food, they went ahead with it though
it attacks organs and the immune system as well as casues sterility at elast it did in every animal they tested it on

To the Op, who has cut out tap water from his diet, watch the documentary "Tapped" and you might think twice about your water source. Point is, platic bottled water is not healthy.

It's rather amazing that I sign onto this site for probably the fourth time in my life and the first time in months, and the first thing I see is this piece on aspartame. All my life I've been able to lose weight just by thinking about it. Now 49, that's no longer the case. I initially attributed it to basic aging. But then there's the issue of not being able to sleep through the night for 18 years. (I've been consuming roughly 2 liters of Diet Coke per day since 1987). Having most symptoms of hypothyroidism, I decided to eliminate aspartame from my diet and see what changes after 90 days.

Today is day 15. I normally have the constitution from Hell; I will *maybe* get one cold every 5 years and that's usually gone within 24 hours. Not the case here. The day I cut aspartame out of my diet completely, I was immediately hit with an absolutely crippling chest cold that lasted all of 7 days. It got so bad that I was lucky to get one hour of sleep at a time during the night before having to wake up and fight the congestion. I was so desperate that I was drinking a cup of water with a full tablespoon of salt in hopes that if I could dehydrate myself enough, I might be able to turn off the faucet long enough to get a couple hours of sleep. (I immediately had a level 8 nightmare that put a stop to that practice in very short order).

The chest cold sequed directly into a head cold which lasted another 6 days. Pure torture every day. Only now, on day 15, am I about 95% back to normal. Weight is falling off. Sleep patters are still erratic; it's only been 15 days, but at least two of the last four days, I've slept 6 and 6.5 consecutive hours - an 18 year record for me.

The point is that the response to eliminating aspartame from my life appears to have been an all out, absolutely violent purging by the body of formaldehyde that's been accumulating for nearly two and a half decades. It was pure hell to go through, but I'm sticking with it. My guess - completely unfounded; it's just a guess - is that thyroid production is not directly affected by aspartame however it might as well be since the body's receptors to whatever stuff the thyroid produces are blocked. Same result either way - if you can't process what you need, what's the difference whether the chemicals are not there, or they're there and can't be processed by the body?

I hate zealotry with a passion - people who read some zealot raving on about how this and that will kill you so others follow suit. I want hard evidence, not emotional tirades. For me, this is hard evidence. I'm looking mainly at weight loss and hair regrowth (not bald, just became VERY thin on top) to at least begin showing signs after 90 days.

reply to post by Macabees


I've heard it was originally formulated as an ant poison. Since it is sweet, the ants carry it back to nest and it kills them. We use it around here as a very effective ant killer!!! It blows my mind that ppl consume that cr@p!!