As
more research links aspartame to health risks, increasing numbers of people are
looking to avoid it in their diets. That's why Pepsi was proactive in removing
it from their diet soda.
The
U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved aspartame for use in dry foods
in 1981 and as a general artificial sweetener in 1996.
Unlike
other artificial sweeteners that move through the body without being digested,
aspartame can be metabolized by your body and exerts a number of concerning
effects. For instance, aspartame has been found to increase hunger ratings
compared to glucose or water and is associated with heightened motivation to
eat (even more so than other artificial sweeteners like saccharin or acesulfame
potassium).
For
a substance often used in "diet" products, the fact that aspartame
may actually increase weight gain is
incredibly misleading. Aspartame also exerts changes on the microbial
composition in your gut, the consequences of which are
unknown.
However,
emerging evidence suggests gut microbes play a role in metabolic diseases that
aspartame is known to increase, pointing to alteration of gut microbial
composition as one of its mechanisms of harm. According to research published
in PLOS One:
"Regular consumption of artificially sweetened soft drinks is
associated with disorders of the metabolic syndrome, including abdominal
obesity, insulin resistance and/or impaired glucose tolerance, dyslipidemia and
high blood pressure.
In particular, daily diet soda consumption (primarily sweetened
with N-a-L-aspartyl-L-phenylalanine methyl ester, aspartame, APM), is reported
to increase the relative risk of type 2 diabetes and the metabolic syndrome by
67 percent and 36 percent respectively.
Given this data, and the presence of APM in over 6000 food
products, there is a need to understand the potential role of APM sweetened
products in the development and maintenance of metabolic disease."
Independent
Studies Link Aspartame with Depression, Headaches and Other Adverse Effects
A
2004 BMJ study gave aspartame a clean bill of health, in part because it noted
100 percent of industry-funded studies concluded aspartame is safe. Yet, in an
editorial response published in BMJ in 2005, it's revealed that 92 percent
of independently funded studies found aspartame may
cause adverse effects, including depression and headaches.
A
recent study also found the administration of aspartame to rats resulted in
detectable methanol even after 24 hours, which might be responsible for inducing
oxidative stress in the brain.
Aspartame
is made up of aspartic acid and phenylalanine. But the phenylalanine has been
synthetically modified to carry a methyl group as that provides the majority of
the sweetness. That phenylalanine methyl bond, called a methyl ester, is very
weak, which allows the methyl group on the phenylalanine to easily break off
and form methanol. When aspartame is in liquid form, it breaks down into methyl
alcohol, or methanol, which is then converted into formaldehyde and represents
the root of the problem with aspartame.
Why
Aspartame May Be Toxic
Both
animals and humans have small structures called peroxisomes in each cell. There
are a couple of hundred in every cell of your body, which are designed to
detoxify a variety of chemicals.
Peroxisome contains catalase, which helps
detoxify methanol once it is turned into formaldehyde. Other chemicals in the
peroxisome then convert the formaldehyde to formic acid, which is harmless, but
this last step occurs only in
non-human animals.
When methanol enters the peroxisome of
every animal except humans, it gets into that mechanism. Humans do
have the same number of peroxisomes in comparable cells as animals, but human peroxisomes cannot convert the toxic formaldehyde into
harmless formic acid. According to Dr. Woody Monte, professor emeritus at
Arizona State University in food and chemistry:
"The methanol bounces off the catalase or
bounces off something there. What happens then is every cell in your body
cannot metabolize methanol. Wherein the animal body, every cell can metabolize
and turn it to formic acid, which is safe. What happens to the methyl alcohol?
That's the key. In humans, methyl alcohol
could just as easily not be metabolized at all. That would be the ultimate and
best outcome, and you could urinate it away or sweat it out and you would be
fine.
Unfortunately, there are some locations in the
human body, particularly in the lining of the vessels of your body, especially
in your brain, that are loaded with alcohol dehydrogenase (ADH) that converts
methanol to formaldehyde …
… [A]nd there is no catalase present so
enormous amounts of damage are created in the tissues."
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