...what was wrong with aspartame?

Barbara M:

Sorry for the delay in writing back. I object to your claim that I am "misleading readers when he claims that aspartame is safe." You in fact are rather alone in your questioning of this substance, because no established scientific regulatory authority in the educated world agrees with you. In fact the European equivalent of the US FDA on April 20 just again revalidated the safety of aspartame, http://www.efsa.europa.eu/EFSA/efsa_locale-1178620753812_1211902454309.htm.

I am sorry about your troubles and those of your daughter. But again I doubt they really have any connection to aspartame, even if they occur directly in response to aspartame or are repeatable after aspartame exposure. That is because aspartame's methanol is directly utilized by the folate metabolic cycle and many people are folate deficient or have folate enzyme abnormalities that better explain their sensitivity. Folate issues have been known for years to be directly related to blindness and folate itself can completely overcome high, poisoning doses of methanol http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1469176?ordinalpos=35&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_DefaultReportPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum. Moreover there is growing evidence that folate issues may foster autism and other problems in children, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19440165?ordinalpos=3&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_DefaultReportPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum
You simply can’t blame aspartame for a vitamin deficiency or a vitamin function issue. However, even if they completely avoid aspartame, the real folate problem will plague the susceptible person years later with cancer (breast and many other types) and many other issues directly linked to folate deficiency and folate cycle issues. In this manner aspartame sensitivity might just be a blessing testing tool should susceptibility prove identifying of this unique susceptibility issue that occurs in some 20-40% of people. Also those suffering these specific genetic issues frequently have headaches that can be completely prevented by supplemental folate treatment. Hypersensitivity consequent to insect stings especially if they occurred at a very young age can also foster sensitivity to these issues. But methanol and its oxidation formaldehyde and formate are vital to life, being part of the folate cycle that produces methyl groups that regulate DNA and cellular responses, see http://cebp.aacrjournals.org/cgi/reprint/14/12/2999 and specifically the figure on the second page.

John Garst claims that he has absolutely no financial or biasing connection with the aspartame, the soft drink or their related industries. And that may be true. Nevertheless, he is misleading readers when he claims that aspartame is safe. It isn't.

Many years ago, aspartame nearly destroyed my daughter. On one can a day, this brilliant girl developed intellectual deterioration, a drastic personality change, epileptic-type seizures and she began to lose her vision in both eyes.

Studies on her brain and vision in Boston confirmed that it was the aspartame that had made her so sick. She stopped drinking it and recovered.

Aspartame gives me classic migraine headaches. And, it causes a multitude of additional problems for others who consume it.

All I can guess is that Dr. Garst drinks it and as a result, he suffers from intellectual deterioration as my daughter did. Otherwise, he would realize how dangerous aspartame is!

Taskm12:

There is no data suggesting any adverse effect for aspartame that cannot simply and completely be explained by an underlying folate deficiency/homocysteine paradigm that I discussed in my writing. If you showed a reaction to aspartame (and that was not a simple acute allergy response that is always possible with even food stuffs, e.g. milk, peanuts, etc.), you are likely to have serious problems with your folate metabolism. You need to see relevant physicians and concentrate on that underlying ill health issue. Presumably you have stopped aspartame consumption, but your susceptibility to folate deficiency borne-disease has not and will not stop. FYI, these folate deficiency is not only abundant in society, but some people have a genetic problem with their folate metabolism, for one example see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MTHFR, in from 10-40% of the population; that can make you more susceptible than others to disease. And not coincidently those diseases to which you are likely susceptible are the exact same ones claimed by critics to be tied to aspartame.

John E. Garst, Ph.D. (Medicinal Chemistry, Pharmacology, Toxicology, and Nutrition)

Dr. Garst is using a fancy title to pass around disinfo. Aspartame is a toxin, pure and simple, and it is being used to drug the entire country. Aspartame is a pharmaceutical drug - nobody can deny that!

I suffered aspartame poisoning and thankfully it was discovered before it probably caused any long term physical damage. The stuff is nasty, and puts thousands of people in the hospital each year.

Use NATURAL STEVIA! It's cheap, very strong, and has a thousand year history of safe use. These synthetic sweeteners are nothing more than poison.

Comparing aspartame to naturally occurring substances is typical science ignorance. Always being reductionists to the point of ignorance. Nature often buffers things, and nature works through balance and synergy, something science can't even begin to understand.

For example Fluoride in nature arrives as Calcium-Fluoride, which means the fluoride is buffered by the calcium, making it non-toxic to humans, we only get tiny trace amounts that we need from it. Science comes along, and tries to convince people that Sodium-Fluoride is safe and natural, what a SHAM!

Willow Bark is natural aspirin, however willow bark is BUFFERED by other natural things in synergy. So willow bark cures headaches without the intestinal bleeding that normal aspirin has. Willow Bark also contains a lot of other important things that boost health. Science of course breaks it down into 1 ingredient, synthesizes it, then calls it a "Miracle". (yet it rots your stomach, and is unhealthy). What a SCAM!

People have had enough of this drug company and science nonsense that has been so destructive for so many years. It's time for something better! Time to show the white coated hoodlums the door!

The information reported here about aspartame is old and quite outdated. All aspartame research prior to 2009 is seriously and fatally flawed, because it was all done in a scientifically unacceptable manner. That was established by preliminary work presented at the Society of Toxicology (Seattle) and the American Chemical Society (New Orleans) national meetings in early 2008 and is currently being preparing for regular publication. In that work it was demonstrated that inappropriate controls were used in all aspartame research starting with the original Searle work and extending through the Soffritti et al work published over the past several years (and even other work thereafter). The standard control-versus-treated animal experiments are invalid for aspartame, because aspartame is hydrolyzed to methanol and methanol has long been known to deplete a vitamin, namely folic acid. No properly done experiment can deplete a vitamin, but all experiments to date have done just that! Hence, both controlled and treated groups of animals must be provided either the appropriate amounts of folic acid supplement to counter methanol-induced loss OR both controlled and treated groups of animals must be provided the same intake of methanol, one directly and the other from aspartame. However, the latter is an experimentally more challenging option. No experiments to date have done these experiments correctly; hence all aspartame research is seriously and fatally flawed.

Strong associations are clear between all aspartame animal work and the many consequences of folate deficiency, which include the leukemia/lymphomas and mammary tumors claims reported by Soffritti et al in all their work. The consequences of that poorly controlled work and the folate deficiency that results only for the aspartame treated group is the accrual of homocysteine, because of insufficient methylation of methionine. Much has been written about the “excitotoxic” amino acids in aspartame (phenylalanine and aspartic acid) by critics. However, those excitotoxic amino acids occur at far greater concentrations in everyday food, so neither of these amino acids are issues for most people. However, what seems to be consistently missed by the antiaspartame critics is that homocysteine is a far stronger excitotoxin than any constituent of aspartame. Either a direct deficiency of the antitumor folic acid leading to insufficient methylation of DNA bases causing direct DNA damage and/or the accrual of homocysteine from insufficient folate-mediated methylation of homocysteine to methionine can explain all alleged health issues with aspartame. There is no data suggesting any adverse effect for aspartame than cannot simply and completely be explained by the folate deficiency/homocysteine paradigm. This new information only suggests aspartame is even safer, now that what I have reported above is known to all the regulatory authorities. In that regard the suggestion that FDA and a newly appointed commissioner should reexamine this issue is ludicrous. It implies that they now will have an opposite opinion from their past decisions or different from all the remainder of the world-wide regulatory scientific community given these new, stronger indications of safety. It is all the more ludicrous given that the Obama administration touts science as their guiding light and science no longer has any reason to doubt the safety of aspartame.

John E. Garst, Ph.D. (Medicinal Chemistry, Pharmacology, Toxicology, and Nutrition)

(FYI, the author has absolutely no financial or biasing connection with the aspartame, the soft drink or their related industries and have made not one penny from my opposition, unlike many critics on the other side. The author has an undergraduate degree in chemistry (with emphasis in organic and biological chemistry) from the University of Kansas, a Ph.D. in Medicinal Chemistry (Pharmacy) from the University of Iowa, postdoctoral experience at Yale University (Molecular Biophysics & Biochemistry) and two postdoctoral fellowships at Vanderbilt University (physiology-pharmacology (mentor moved), then nutritional toxicology) and taught nutritional toxicology at the University of Illinois (Champaign-Urbana, UIUC) besides having conducted federally funded research at Vanderbilt, UIUC, and at several other universities before recently entering into semi-retirement.)

Thanks for posting this. Writing the FDA may "head them off at the pass" ; for me, this is the litmus text for the "CHANGE" over the next four years.

THANKS FOR POSTING THIS. WRITING THE FDA COMMISSIONER CAN HEAD THESE GUYS OFF AT THE PASS. IF THEY APPROVE IT, SO MUCH FOR OBAMA'S CHANGE AND REFORM. THIS IS MY OWN PERSONAL LITMUS TEST FOR THE NEXT 4 YEARS! see also:
http://www.opednews.com/articles/22-members-of-Hawaii-House-by-Stephen-Fox-090319-10.html