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Aspartame

I recently read the e-mail warning of the dangers of aspartame, and I'm sorry but it's full of nonsense and inaccuracies.

The author claims that her sister was dying of aspartame poisoning, the doctors didn't know what was wrong but thought it was MS and had her on 24 medications, and that the sister's avoidance of diet drinks saved her life. The author also cites another e-mail that claims that aspartame not only causes multiple sclerosis, it produces chemicals that mimic MS symptoms.

I'm sorry, but that's nonsense. The whole e-mail is full of exaggerations and misunderstandings. First off, no physician is going to put anyone on 24 different medications, for God's sake -- the drug interactions would be unmanageable.

It IS reasonable that the doctors could not yet pinpoint a diagnosis. There are a lot of ways the human body can break down, and many of them have similar, non-specific symptoms. With some diseases, like multiple sclerosis, you get that diagnosis because everything else in a particular category has been eliminated.

The problem with autoimmune diseases like MS is that the flare-ups don't follow any sort of pattern. When you wake up in the morning, you don't know how you'll feel. Your legs may be weak; your vision may be affected; your speech may be slurred; you may be fine. You can drink diet soft drinks or avoid them, take various herbs or avoid them, exercise, meditate, rub raw goat's liver in your hair -- whatever. It makes no difference. MS and lupus are terribly hard to deal with because of this. Steroids will help, but nothing cures these diseases. What makes it even worse is that we do not yet know what causes the body to attack itself, either. We're still working on that.

Now, in the e-mail, a meeting was mentioned in which "the keynote address by the EPA" was about MS and lupus. Someone named Clarise Gaylord announced that there were a lot of cases of MS and lupus and she didn't know why. Of course, Gaylord phrased it a lot more dramatically; she called it "an epidemic," which got a lot of people very excited. And although she is referred to as "DR. Gaylord," she doesn't have a medical degree. She's not a doctor.

Gaylord did work for the EPA – in fact, she's currently in San Diego, tracking pollution on the Mexican border – but her remarks at this meeting were not the result of EPA research, investigations, or studies. They were Gaylord's personal opinions. She is as qualified to make definitive announcements about lupus and MS as is the janitor.

The next section of the e-mail claims that aspartame will produce a methanol molecule at room temperature. I'm sorry but it doesn't. A stable molecule that is a solid at room temperature will not break up at the extremely low temperature of 30 Celsius.

And even if it does throw methanol during metabolism, this doesn't mean anything terrible. A small amount of methanol is naturally present in fruit, and the body has no trouble dealing with it. There is an interesting site, listed below, that discusses this subject. Quote: "the dose makes the poison. Too much vitamin A, iron, selenium, even pure water will make you very sick, permanently injure, even kill you. Does that mean smaller quantities are bad for you? Not necessarily."

Furthermore, formaldeyde and methanol are extremely volatile; they're gases, and when you exhale, they leave. Quote: "when you drink orange juice or any other product that releases methanol, you must remember to keep on breathing. If you forget, and stop breathing for several hours, the methanol will probably not get evaporated, and you might find yourself in trouble."

Next in the e-mail comes some loose talk about "methanol toxicity" and how people become asymptomatic when "taken off" diet drinks. Again, autoimmune diseases flare up and subside at unpredictable intervals, regardless of what people are drinking. Or rubbing in their hair.

And "methanol toxicity" -- I assume every one of these people are suffering from serious vision problems, because that is an extremely well-known effect of methanol poisoning. But you'll notice that the one blazing, well-known result of methanol poisoning is not on that enormous list of symptoms.

Next comes the claim that formaldehyde is "stored" in the fat cells of the hips and thighs. This is more nonsense. Formaldehyde does not "store" anywhere in the human body – as said above, it is a gas, and your body gets rid of it. It can evaporate out through your skin and it goes out with the carbon dioxide when you breathe out.

I don't have the time to sort through the claims of the ills suffered by diabetics; the fact is, diabetes is a terrible problem and one's body degenerates because of the swings in glucose and insulin levels in the bloodstream. Diabetic retinopathy is caused by a breakdown in the tiny blood vessels in the eyes; diabetics inevitably develop circulatory problems. Eyes, toes, fingers -- the blood vessels break down, circulation is impaired, and sometimes amputation follows. This breakdown in circulation has been recognized as a problem ever since diabetes has been diagnosed; it's not new. And it's not caused by a diet drink.

I'll finish by saying that this e-mail is a collection of scare tactics consisting of jumbled medical and chemical terms and wild claims. I'm not saying that aspartame is particularly good for you, but it certainly isn't the immediate toxin this e-mail claims it is. Some people don't react well to aspartame (headache, upset stomach), but some people are also highly allergic to peanuts. These things happen.

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