Aspartame Almost Killed Me!

[leftchick]

by Cathy Alexander (Posted by Stephen Fox) Page 1 of 2 page(s)

www.opednews.com


My name is Cathy Alexander, age 52, from Tennessee. Here is my story: MY BATTLE WITH ASPARTAME POISON.

In 2005 I had an operation on my abdomen, and there were 100 days of recovery time.

A week after I got up one morning and my legs folded under me. I could not walk and my mind was so cloudy I could not remember what day it was. I was very frightened because I had never felt this way before, not once in my entire life! I would hold on to whatever was near, holding unto the walls to get down the hall to the bathroom, falling along the way.

I was so scared: I had never felt this way before. I had no insurance. I went to 3 different ER's at three different county hospitals. First, they all thought I was on drugs or drunk and I wasn't. With all kinds of testing they could not find anything.

I had to come up with the money to go to a Neurologist who tested me and did spinal taps. Nothing showed up. So the neurologist and another doctor said it was acute cerebellitis and that I would be better in about 6 months. By that time it was the same or even worse.

I had no balance or any motor skills. It was like my muscles were soft and did not work. I do not take prescriptions for nervous or antidepressants, but I was very shaky and very depressed. I did not care to live.

I would wake up and cry because I was still here another day. I was clumsy, dizzy, and suffered from blurred and double vision. I could not remember anything from the day before. My speech was slurred. I had to have around the clock care, so my best friend took care of me. I almost lost all my hearing and eyesight.

The doctors gave me all kinds of medications but nothing worked. I used a walker for a while and even then I would be walking across the yard and just fall, like mini strokes, 5 to 10 times a day.

My best friend heard the famous Aspartame/Neurologist, Dr. Russell Blaylock on a short wave radio telling about Aspartame and symptoms, and how to test to see if it is what you have. So i went back to talk to my own physician, Dr. Lewis

I told my doctor "When this first hit me, you asked me how many diet drinks I had a day.I did not lie to him but said at least one or two a day. He asked me to stop but I never did until the day came when I went back to him I told him i did not tell him the whole truth, that I drink 5 or more daily, as well as many other sugarfree products, Crystal Lite, and sugarfree gum, all having aspartame in it.



http://www.newswithviews.com/NWVexclusive/exclusive15.htm


DONALD RUMSFELD AND ASPARTAME


Posted: May 9, 2004
12:18 AM Eastern
by NWV Staff Writer
© 2004 NewsWithViews.com

Aspartame is an additive found in diet soft drinks and over 5,000 foods, drugs and medicine. It was approved in 1983 for use in carbonated beverages. However, there may be more sour than sweet when it comes to aspartame.

In reality, aspartame is a drug, not an additive in the sense many people associate with that word. It interacts with other drugs, has a synergistic and additive effect with MSG, and is a chemical hyper-sensitization agent. Dr. John Olney, who founded the field of neuoscience called excitotoxicity, attempted to stop the approval of aspartame with Attorney James Turner back in 1996. The FDA's own toxicologist, Dr. Adrian Gross told Congress that without a shadow of a doubt, aspartame can cause brain tumors and brain cancer and violated the Delaney Amendment which forbids putting anything in food that is known to cause Cancer. Detailed information on this can be found in the Bressler Report (FDA report on Searle).

Dr. Olney isn't alone in attempting to reach out to the medical community and warn the American people about this drug. Dr. Ralph Walton, Professor and Chairman of the Department of Psychiatry, Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine has written of the behavioral and psychiatric problems triggered by aspartame-caused depletion of serotonin.

According to the top doctors and researchers on this issue, aspartame causes headache, memory loss, seizures, vision loss, coma and cancer. It worsens or mimics the symptoms of such diseases and conditions as fibromyalgia, MS, lupus, ADD, diabetes, Alzheimer's, chronic fatigue and depression. Further dangers highlighted is that aspartame liberates free methyl alcohol. The resulting chronic methanol poisoning affects the dopamine system of the brain causing addiction. Methanol, or wood alcohol, constitutes one third of the aspartame molecule and is classified as a severe metabolic poison and narcotic.

Dr. Woodrow Monte in the peer reviewed journal, Aspartame: Methanol and the Public Health, wrote: "When diet sodas and soft drinks, sweetened with aspartame, are used to replace fluid loss during exercise and physical exertion in hot climates, the intake of methanol can exceed 250 mg/day or 32 times the Environmental Protection Agency's recommended limit of consumption for this cumulative poison."

Neurosurgeon Russell Blaylock, MD, author of "Excitotoxins: The Taste That Kills," wrote about the relationship between aspartame and macular degeneration, diabetic blindness and glaucoma (all known to result from excitotoxin accumulation in the retina).

edit for permalink...http://www.opednews.com/articles/Aspartame-Almost-Killed-Me-by-Cathy-Alexander-090329-33.html



And for the non-believers...

The Bressler report is one of the most damning documents about aspartame in existence. While the original owners of the aspartame patent, the GD Searle Company, were attempting to gain FDA approval of aspartame as an additive in foods, they were obliged to conduct tests with laboratory animals. When the tests began turning out badly, as the lab rats turned up with brain tumors, atrophied testicles, and other conditions and anomalies, and many of them began dying unexpectedly, they began a shoddy job of covering up the evidence. The FDA, which at that time was not under the influence of aspartame sellers, like it is now, investigated Searle and published a scathing, 76 page report uncovering the discrepancies, inconsistencies, and evidence of fabrication of records in Searle's lab work. They also performed their own autopsies on the remaining corpses of the rats and found a large number of pathological conditions which were caused by the aspartame but not reported by Searle in their analysis of the results.

The Bressler report was obtained by a health activist, Barbara Mullarkey, using the Freedom of Information Act. The FDA has since passed into the control of persons with economic and political ties to the new owners of the GD Searle Company - the notorious Monsanto Corporation - makers of poisons and political intriguers who are number one on the list of companies being watched by environmentalists worldwide for their campaign of destruction of the environment and disregard for human health in the name of corporate greed. The FDA, prior to turning the report over to Mullarkey, blanked out some of the attached charts and memos, as if they were some sort of state secrets.

The following is a statement by Barbara Mullarkey about the Bressler Report:


"The l977 Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) Bressler Report remains a key document against aspartame, the synthetic sweetener known as NutraSweet and Equal. This 76 page report was the culmination of a priority investigation at G. D. Searle's laboratory in Skokie, Illinois. It compared all the available raw and summary data of an 115 week oral tumorgenicity rat study, against the manufacturer's FDA submission.

"Jerome Bressler, the team leader, found missing raw data, errors and discrepancies in available data, exclusions of animals, organ masses and enlarged and atrophied organs. An undiagnosed uterine polyp increased the incidence to 15 percent of the aspartame-dosed animals. The FDA's Bureau of Foods officials chose to ignore the findings of the Bressler Report.

"In l981, FDA Commissioner Arthur Hull Hayes, Jr., M.D. approved aspartame in dry goods and in l983, Mark Novitch, acting for the commissioner, approved aspartame in liquids. The 92 symptoms, in the 10,000 plus consumer complaints reported to the FDA, include those suffered by the rats as noted in the Bressler Report. "


Dr. H J Roberts, MD, is considered by many to be a leading authority on aspartame's effects on human health. The following are his comments on the Bressler Report.


Forward to the Bressler Report by Dr. H. J. Roberts

In my book ASPARTAME (NutraSweet) IS IT SAFE? I discuss the aspartame studies and their shortcomings. These are exerpts from the chapter: The Myth of "The Most Thoroughly Tested Additive in History"

"Physicians and consumers who seek information from producers and governmental agencies about reactions to aspartame products are offered scores of reports published in scientific journals that seemingly reinforce the issue of their safety. I have previously discussed the major shortcomings of these studies. Let me summarize some of my objections:

* The failure of investigators to detect, or to report, tumors of the brain, uterus and ovary to the FDA.
* The failure of the senior investigator of a "negative" doubleblind study on behavioral reactions (presented at an international conference) to know, or to recall, the details of how the aspartame given to children being tested was constituted and administered when I asked for such information.
* The failure of double-blind studies on patients with alleged aspartame-induced headaches and seizures to use the same incriminated commercial products (easily obtained in any store) rather than aspartame-containing capsules.
* The failure to test MALE mice for tumors of the urinary bladder following aspartame implantation.
* The failure of an investigator to even respond to my inquiry about his published statistical data, from which he had concluded that aspartame does not adversely affect non-insulin-dependent diabetics.
* The failure of FDA administrators and attorneys to investigate animal studies (particularly seizures in monkeys) before the five year statute of limitations for prosecution expired - specifically, on October 10, l977 and December 8, l977.
* The failure of the FDA to act on a major concern expressed in correspondence (dated January 10, l977) from Richard A. Merrill, its own Chief Counsel. He requested a grand jury investigation of the manufacturer for its alleged "concealing material facts and making false statements in reports that the animal studies conducted to establish the safety of the drug Aldactone and the food additive Aspartame." Mr. Merrill prophetically projected


http://www.presidiotex.com/bressler/

[liberalhistorian]

1. I think this should be a no-brainer for a lot of people.

I stopped using all artificial sweeteners entirely several years ago after reading about this very kind of thing and reading that one sweetener actually turns into formaldehyde when metabolizing inside the body. I had quit diet drinks before that for bladder/kidney reasons but I was still using the sweeteners for iced tea. I quit using the sweeteners and felt better for it not even a couple weeks later. I now use just a tiny amount of sugar to sweeten the tea. Sugar isn't all that great for you either, but it's okay in tiny amounts and it's much, much better than any artificial sweetener, which are nothing but dangerous chemicals poured into your body.

I wish more people would realize that. We get enough poisons in our bodies daily from the air, water, and almost all foods without adding this shit to it.

[county worker]

4. Time for the popcorn machine to start cranking up again

:popcorn:

[MineralMan]

2. OK, a 5 year old Op-ed piece and a personal account

I can't even find at that link.

Neither one has a link to any scientific paper regarding aspartame. No actual evidence is presented.

Why should I believe this at all? Please.

If you're going to post medical stuff, please post articles that link to real research. Please.

[BonnieJW]

3. Stevia

It comes from a plant. It takes some getting used to, but if you mix it with sugar at first and then gradually decrease the sugar and increase the stevia, you won't even notice.

[SoCalNative]

11. Totally agree

I don't mix it with sugar, but I buy the box of 100 packets at Trader Joe's and have been using this in my coffee in place of artificial chemical sweeteners or sugar for quite sometime.

[Bluenorthwest]

14. Stevia recently got the nod as an ingredient

So I've been ejoying these Stevia sweetened sodas called Zevia...new and a bit spendy, but tasty. I hear there is also a good 'stevia in a sugar like form' product but I have not seen it yet.

[nc4bo]

15. We have a stevia plant in our herb garden. The leaves are extremely sweet.

I wish I knew how to get the sweet out of the leaves to use in my beverages.

[zagging]

5. I drink about two liters of diet soda every day

Two of the jumbo sodas. I feel pretty goddam good.

[rateyes]

6. Snopes is a friend.

http://www.snopes.com/medical/toxins/aspartame.asp

However, diet drinks do contain a helluva lot of sodium...not good for the old BP.

[MineralMan]

7. There you go. Anecdotal stories and books written by

chiropractors are evidence of nothing. Apparently this nonsense has circulated around the internet for some years now, but has no research behind it.

Someone has MS and drank beverages containing aspertame. Ergo, aspartame causes MS. Post hoc ergo propter hoc]/i]. One of the most commmon logical fallacies of all.

[cosmik debris]

23. Well, one anecdote is enough for me!

And the hundreds of millions of anecdotes that contradict the one are irrelevant.

:sarcasm:

[MineralMan]

8. Oh, wait...Snopes is well-known as a tool of Big Pharma, right?

I also heard they were a tool of the Radical Left. And of the Radical Right. Whatever they say that disagrees with the latest email forwarding campaign is evidence of that toolness, I'm sure.

[leftchick]

10. I could give a shit what the FDA thinks

they are as embedded as any other politician.

[rateyes]

13. It wasn't just the FDA...researchers at

The American Council of Science and Health, and the Clincial Research Center at MIT, etc. who did the testing also said it.

[leftchick]

17. The Bressler report

http://www.presidiotex.com/bressler/

The Bressler report is one of the most damning documents about aspartame in existence. While the original owners of the aspartame patent, the GD Searle Company, were attempting to gain FDA approval of aspartame as an additive in foods, they were obliged to conduct tests with laboratory animals. When the tests began turning out badly, as the lab rats turned up with brain tumors, atrophied testicles, and other conditions and anomalies, and many of them began dying unexpectedly, they began a shoddy job of covering up the evidence. The FDA, which at that time was not under the influence of aspartame sellers, like it is now, investigated Searle and published a scathing, 76 page report uncovering the discrepancies, inconsistencies, and evidence of fabrication of records in Searle's lab work. They also performed their own autopsies on the remaining corpses of the rats and found a large number of pathological conditions which were caused by the aspartame but not reported by Searle in their analysis of the results.

The Bressler report was obtained by a health activist, Barbara Mullarkey, using the Freedom of Information Act. The FDA has since passed into the control of persons with economic and political ties to the new owners of the GD Searle Company - the notorious Monsanto Corporation - makers of poisons and political intriguers who are number one on the list of companies being watched by environmentalists worldwide for their campaign of destruction of the environment and disregard for human health in the name of corporate greed. The FDA, prior to turning the report over to Mullarkey, blanked out some of the attached charts and memos, as if they were some sort of state secrets.

The following is a statement by Barbara Mullarkey about the Bressler Report:


"The l977 Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) Bressler Report remains a key document against aspartame, the synthetic sweetener known as NutraSweet and Equal. This 76 page report was the culmination of a priority investigation at G. D. Searle's laboratory in Skokie, Illinois. It compared all the available raw and summary data of an 115 week oral tumorgenicity rat study, against the manufacturer's FDA submission.

"Jerome Bressler, the team leader, found missing raw data, errors and discrepancies in available data, exclusions of animals, organ masses and enlarged and atrophied organs. An undiagnosed uterine polyp increased the incidence to 15 percent of the aspartame-dosed animals. The FDA's Bureau of Foods officials chose to ignore the findings of the Bressler Report.

"In l981, FDA Commissioner Arthur Hull Hayes, Jr., M.D. approved aspartame in dry goods and in l983, Mark Novitch, acting for the commissioner, approved aspartame in liquids. The 92 symptoms, in the 10,000 plus consumer complaints reported to the FDA, include those suffered by the rats as noted in the Bressler Report. "


Dr. H J Roberts, MD, is considered by many to be a leading authority on aspartame's effects on human health. The following are his comments on the Bressler Report.


Forward to the Bressler Report by Dr. H. J. Roberts

In my book ASPARTAME (NutraSweet) IS IT SAFE? I discuss the aspartame studies and their shortcomings. These are exerpts from the chapter: The Myth of "The Most Thoroughly Tested Additive in History"

"Physicians and consumers who seek information from producers and governmental agencies about reactions to aspartame products are offered scores of reports published in scientific journals that seemingly reinforce the issue of their safety. I have previously discussed the major shortcomings of these studies. Let me summarize some of my objections:

* The failure of investigators to detect, or to report, tumors of the brain, uterus and ovary to the FDA.
* The failure of the senior investigator of a "negative" doubleblind study on behavioral reactions (presented at an international conference) to know, or to recall, the details of how the aspartame given to children being tested was constituted and administered when I asked for such information.
* The failure of double-blind studies on patients with alleged aspartame-induced headaches and seizures to use the same incriminated commercial products (easily obtained in any store) rather than aspartame-containing capsules.
* The failure to test MALE mice for tumors of the urinary bladder following aspartame implantation.
* The failure of an investigator to even respond to my inquiry about his published statistical data, from which he had concluded that aspartame does not adversely affect non-insulin-dependent diabetics.
* The failure of FDA administrators and attorneys to investigate animal studies (particularly seizures in monkeys) before the five year statute of limitations for prosecution expired - specifically, on October 10, l977 and December 8, l977.
* The failure of the FDA to act on a major concern expressed in correspondence (dated January 10, l977) from Richard A. Merrill, its own Chief Counsel. He requested a grand jury investigation of the manufacturer for its alleged "concealing material facts and making false statements in reports that the animal studies conducted to establish the safety of the drug Aldactone and the food additive Aspartame." Mr. Merrill prophetically projected

[MineralMan]

22. Oh, sure...but they're all in cahoots with the FDA, doncha know!

Yes, indeedy. Better to listen to one woman's horror story and the ramblings of some folks who haven't done any actual studies than to listen to those who do real research.

Yeah...that's the ticket.

Disclaimer: I don't use artificial sweeteners. I don't like the taste. I like sugar. It's good. High-fructose corn syrup? It's not as good as sugar, but what's a guy to do? Karo™ RulZ!

[MineralMan]

21. That's interesting. You don't believe the FDA, but you're

willing to believe anyone who writes anything that opposes an FDA ruling? If you read 100 articles in peer-reviewed journals, do you throw them out because one person writes a book saying something else?

While one cannot always rely on bureaucracies, it seems worthwhile to me to investigate further before posting some random stuff that disagrees with the bulk of scientific research. None of the people who are saying what you are saying about aspartame have published any research in the normal channels for publishing such research.

None have conducted their own studies, either. They're just criticizing other studies or bandying about single cases.

If they believe they are correct, then they should conduct their own study and get different results from the other studies.

If Snopes.com says something's False, then it's time to take a long, close look at the information.

[Kalyke]

16. They also cause more kidney stones than their sugared counterparts.

My husband's urologist told him this after he passed a kidney stone.

[Orsino]

20. I took a swig of some Diet Sprite that had baked in summer heat...

...and could taste the formaldehyde. I don't worry much about Aspartame, but some minimal level of caution should be taken to keep diet soda chilled.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

25. LOL

No, you couldn't.

[Orsino]

26. And why couldn't I?

I know the smell of formaldehyde from years in chem labs.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

27. Because the reaction of aspartame to formaldehyde is enzymatic.

It does no occur in warm cans.

You should know that after all your years in chem labs.

[Orsino]

28. I'm not talking about reactions within the body, or in cans.

I'm talking about the strong taste and smell of formaldehyde in a just-opened, cool (not cold) plastic bottle of Diet Sprite. This is a smell that always takes me back to dissections in ninth-grade biology class, and I don't believe that I hallucinated it. I knew that the case of drinks in question had been kept in the back of an SUV for several days in that murderous Georgia summer of 2007.

I can't find any chemistry to explain the smell (the only other bottle I opened from the same case had it, too), and I now think I was wrong to assume any connection with Aspartame. People cook with the stuff from time to time--though they are doubtless disappointed with the result--so formaldehyde can't result only from heat. Was it something in the bottling? I'd had Diet Sprite before, and have enjoyed it many since, and surely others would have noticed such a problem affecting a whole batch.

Heck, I couldn't even find other credible accounts of people tasting formaldehyde in soda. If you try to Google that experience, you'll quickly be exhausted by Nutrasweet conspiracy mongering.

Just don't tell me I didn't taste formaldehyde.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

29. ...

Well, there are two logical explanations.

Somehow somebody adulterated your can with formaldehyde, or there was no formaldehyde.

Occams razor suggests there was no formaldehyde.

[salvorhardin]

31. No, there's a third explanation

The Diet Sprite resembled the smell/taste of formaldehyde. Most humans aren't very good tasters or smellers and it's easy for the brain to confuse two tastes.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

33. That would fall under #2.

i.e. the person is mistaken, "hallucinating," or just making it up.

[salvorhardin]

30. Aspartame loses some of its sweetness under prolonged exposure to high heat

If it was hot enough in the back of the SUV that might have happened. Is it possible that Diet Sprite without the cloying sweetness just happens to resemble formaldehyde in taste?

[Orsino]

32. Heh.

I can just imagine the commercials. "Now tastes less like formaldehyde than ever!" :7

[NeedleCast]

9. April Fools?

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

12. Did splenda turn her into a pathological liar?

[marketcrazy1]

18. I HATE sugar free crap!!

I never eat anything with sugar free or diet on the label. I do not take any prescription drugs or over the counter meds. only aspirin and only that rarely.... I get enough chemicals in the rest of the food i eat without adding to the mix with all this diet/sugar free crap.....

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

19. Then don't drink it, silly.

You don't have to make up crap about it.

[uppityperson]

24. "A week after I got up one morning and my legs folded under me."wtf?

Good grief that is poorly written. Hard to tell what the writer is talking about.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

34. Aspartame tastes weird to me

but I don't like sugary drinks, either.

My solution is plain seltzer with just enough fruit juice to give it some flavor.

By the way, sugar is an addiction of sorts. If you give it up (as I often do for Lent), the first couple of days are really hard, and when you resume it (e.g. dessert at Easter dinner), it tastes sickeningly intense.

[Mamacrat]

35. I agree.

It's always tasted funny to me. There are only certain diet drinks I can tolerate. My husband sometimes drinks Lime Diet Coke, and it tastes like bug spray to me!! There is something wrong with that, I'm sure. I think some of us are more sensitive to things like this than others.

I am in the unfortunate position of being pre-diabetic, so I can't drink sugary drinks anymore at all. (I gave up chocolate and real cokes, not diet, for Lent.) I have been using xylitol (not a brand name; my dentist first told me about it), which is derived from birch trees and other sources. We use dental and nasal products with xylitol in them. It has an antibiotic property like honey, but can actually help repair some dental decay. We've bought it in the powdered form, and I use it in my coffee now. I'm going to order some of the individual packets to start taking with me to add to drinks when I'm out. I recommend trying xylitol for all of those purposes if you're interested.

[LeftishBrit]

36. Note that the symptoms began a week after an abdominal operation...

I would think it more likely that they were linked to the operation, or to the condition that required the operation, than to the Aspartame.