Stuff Your Brain Likes

This is a product that maybe your brain doesn’t like.

The artificial sweetener aspartame.

You know – Equal® and NutraSweet®

This article highlights some recent studies of aspartame with some startling results.

First, it seems that 100 percent of industry-funded studies conclude aspartame is safe, 92 percent of independently funded research and reports identified aspartame as a potential cause of harmful effects.

Funny how that works.

In a review published this month in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition, scientists in South Africa assessed the potential effects on the brain of some aspartame’s components: methanol, phenylalanine and aspartic acid.

The article explains how aspartame can destroy cellular walls, which makes cells more permeable, thus compromising the blood brain barrier, which is what keeps certain substances from making their way from the blood stream into the brain.

Don’t mess with your serotonin production.

The authors also detail the ability of phenylalanine to disrupt the chemistry of the brain. For example it can lower serotonin levels which can influence your mood, behavior, sleep, and appetite.

They also suggest that phenylalanine can disrupt amino acid metabolism, nerve function, and hormonal balance and has the ability to destroy nerve cells. This damage may cause Alzheimer’s disease.

The authors describe the ability of methanol to create formaldehyde, along with the cancer-causing agent diketopiperazine and a “number of highly toxic derivatives.”

Sugar free? There’s no such thing as “free.”

There are other studies that contradict this research but, given the dubious results of industry funded studies, I think I’m avoiding the stuff.
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