Why Are Americans Becoming Wary of Aspartame?

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."

In Health, 

Dr. Brad Niewierowski 

Aspartame and Shame

January 12, 2016  Mercola.com

Does fructose damage your body?

With all of the confusing information circulating out there concerning how bad sugar is for our bodies and debating whether sugar itself or artificial sweeteners are worse to ingest, it can make it very hard to feel like we’re not damaging ourselves by eating anything sweet. Most people tend to enjoy having something of that flavor profile in their diet, so it can be helpful to know, if you can’t abstain all together, which ones tend to be more or less harmful. Of all the types of sugar you could consume, refined fructose is by far the most damaging. Research as shown high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is more toxic than table sugar (sucrose). Mice fed a high-HFCS diet had nearly twice the death rate of mice fed a diet high in sucrose. Table sugar consists of two molecules, which separate in your gut: fructose and glucose. Glucose travels throughout your body and fuels your muscles and brain, making it our primary and most readily available energy source. But fructose, on the other hand, goes straight to your liver where all sorts of problems result. Your liver readily turns this fructose into liver fat, which causes a slew of metabolic problems. When we see elevations on lab results for AST and ALT liver enzyme tests, fatty liver becomes a likely suspect, especially if other values like triglycerides and cholesterol are also high.

Excess fructose shuts down the part of your brain that tells you when you’re full, making overeating likely. This is triggered by the hormone leptin. Leptin is a very powerful and influential hormone produced by your fat cells. Your fat, by way of leptin, tells your brain whether you should be hungry, eat and make more fat, whether you should reproduce, or (partly by controlling insulin) whether to engage in maintenance and repair. In short, leptin is the way that your fat stores speak to your brain to let your brain know how much energy is available and, very importantly, what to do with it. You become leptin-resistant by the same general mechanism that you become insulin-resistant – by continuous overexposure to high levels of the hormone. If you eat a diet that is high in sugar (particularly fructose), as the sugar gets metabolized in your fat cells, the fat releases surges in leptin. Over time, if your body is exposed to too much leptin, it will become resistant, just as your body can become resistant to insulin. The resulting insulin resistance is at the core of a long list of serious health problems, including cancer, Alzheimer’s, and heart disease. And the list seems to grow longer by the day. Research published in The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA)3 shows your risk of dying from heart disease nearly triples if 25 percent or more of your daily calories come from sugar. 

You may not realize that insulin resistance affects each organ differently. For example, insulin resistance may be the first step toward the development of hyperlipidemia and cardiovascular disease. Added sugars, especially fructose, may play more of a role than salt in high blood pressure. When certain organs experience insulin resistance, specific diseases may develop. Type 2 diabetes results from the muscles not being able to properly uptake glucose, and if it starts affecting the nerves, that’s when peripheral neuropathies set it. We already mentioned its effect on the liver, which is non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. If it develops in the ovaries there is polycystic ovary syndrome, and insulin resistance by brain cells can lead to brain fog and ultimately Alzheimer’s disease.

Therefore, we need to limit the fructose-containing foods in our diets in order to minimize our risk. The majority should come from natural sources only, such as fruits, which are typically higher in fructose but also have numerous vitamins, antioxidants, phytochemicals and fiber to help offset the negative effects. Agave syrup has been touted as a better alternative to some sweeteners, but it is very high in fructose content as a result of the processing techniques. Honey is a little better but only in raw form as, once again, processing increases the concentration of fructose. Pure maple syrup in small amounts can be used occasionally and stevia tends to currently be the best option as a sugar replacement. Enjoying healthy sweet foods should be able to be part of a balanced diet, but if you find that you need to get your “sweet fix” more frequently or it leads to making bad food choices, start by eliminating the poor sources of fructose from your diet and have yourself checked for insulin resistance.

In Health, 

Dr. Brad Niewierowski

Psoriasis and how Vitamin D can help!

Psoriasis is often thought of as a contagious rash, and most psoriasis sufferers are often judged by the appearance of their skin.  What a lot of people don’t know is that psoriasis is actually an autoimmune disease where a type of white blood cell called a T cell mistakes healthy skin cells as a foreign invader and attacks them.  These overactive T-cells then trigger other immune responses that increase the growth cycle of the skin cells, causing them to move to the outermost layer of your skin in a matter of days rather than weeks.   These skin cells then build up into thick patches because the dead skin cannot be removed quickly enough.  The skin may become so inflamed that is cracks and bleeds.  Up to 30 percent of sufferers also develop psoriatic arthritis, which can cause debilitating damage.  Those who suffer from psoriasis are also at a higher risk for other chronic diseases such as type 2 diabetes, hypertension and heart disease. (Mercola)

One vitamin that is extremely important for managing autoimmune diseases, including psoriasis, is vitamin D.  If you have psoriasis, it is imperative that you have your vitamin D levels tested and maintain levels in the therapeutic range of 50-70 ng/ml year-round.  Vitamin D plays an important role in immune system regulation and is thought to effect psoriasis on multiple levels, such as regulating skin cell growth and differentiation, as well as influence the immune function of T lymphocytes and other cells.  It also inhibits cytotoxic T cells and natural killer cell activity, potentially helping to regulate skin cell growth. (Mercola)

In Health, 

Dr. Amber Watson 

Works Cited

Mercola, Dr. Mercola. 6 January 2015. 14 August 215 <http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2015/01/26/psoriasis-costs-billions.aspx>.