American Fitness Professionals & Associates

By: Mark J. Occhipinti, M.S., Ph.D., N.D.c

Many individuals, in an attempt to avoid sugar, use sugar substitutes. Aspartame a chemical compound found in products such as NutraSweet® and Equal®, are in over 3,000 foods, including Crystal Lite®, diet soda, diet foods, and other drinks that are consumed heavily in the fitness industry.

Just about any food that once had sugar as an ingredient now can have aspartame instead. Aspartame is a combination of three substances: the amino acid phenylalanine, Aspartic acid (man made) and methanol (wood alcohol). Each of these ingredients have a long history of causing serious physical side effects. Phenylalanine, for example, lowers or blocks production of the neurotransmitter serotonin, which sends messages from the pineal gland in the brain.

This blockage has been linked a one cause of carbohydrate cravings, PMS symptoms, insomnia, mood swings, and migraine headaches. Aspartame removes the essential mineral chromium from the body, which is necessary in regulating the clearance of glucose from the blood while assisting insulin’ s capability for glucose regulation. Sudden weight gains, water retention and flu like symptoms have been observed in fitness people, especially in aerobic instructors. A classic example was an article in the Sept. 1991 issue of Idea Today. Aerobic instructors and other fitness participants that consume diet beverages after exercise are at risk for absorbing high levels of methanol.

Drinking between 1-3 12 ounce cans or glasses of diet beverage that contains aspartame on a hot day after exercise can expose you to 8 times the Environmental Protection Agency’s recommended safe limit for methanol. It has been found that methanol (free-form wood alcohol) can race through the system of a highly fit individual due to their high metabolic rate. Aspartame is not the answer to the high sugar consumption in ‘America today.

Actually the increased intake of aspartame over the past twenty-five years since it’s FDA approval are correlated with higher intake of sugar (over 150 pounds per year) and associated states of degenerative diseases that rack our country. Aspartame ranks number one for over a decade with complaints received by the FDA, representing over 85 percent of all complaints received yearly. There are over 73 symptoms associated directly to the use of aspartame, including dizziness, headaches, loss of equilibrium, ear problems, hemorrhaging of the eyes, and visual impairment. The dangers associated with aspartame are so widespread, that a report by 60 Minutes and Hard Copy in February 1997 illustrated the dangers and how the drug company who manufactures aspartame lied in the Senate Subcommittee Hearings both initially in 1973 and again in 1991.

There is an excellent source of research information on aspartame: Aspartame Consumer Safety Network (ACSN) in Dallas, TX. (214) 352-4268.

Three Senate hearings have been conducted on the safety of aspartame, and the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) in Washington, D.C. now list aspartame as the third-worst food additive of all time. Authors Jean Carper and Ann Louise Gittleman state we have no idea how much we are actually consuming during the course of one day if diet foods and diet drinks are being consumed. There is no safe level of Aspartame since it was originally classified by the Department of Defense as a neuro-excitatory toxin, and it is a cumulative effect in the body. Isn’t it interesting that the consumption of Aspartame has correlated with the increase in Alzheimer’s disease and other neurological diseases during the past twenty-five years?

This article was written based partially on the evidence presented in these studies/medical and scientific texts:

Bibliography

1. National Cancer Institute Cancer Statistics Review 1973-87. Bethesda, N111 Pub. No. 2.

2. Roberts, H.J.; Does Aspartame Cause Human Brain Cancer?. Journal of Advancements in Medicine. Vol. 4, No. 4, Winter 1991

3. Monte, Aspartame: Methanol and the Public Health. Journal of Applied Nutrition, Vol. No. 1, 1984.

4. Shaw, Excitatory amino acid receptors, excitotoxicity, and the human nervous system.

5. Current Opinion in Neurology and Neurosurgery 1993, 6:414-422 UK

6. Maher and R.J. Wurtman, Possible Neurologic Effects of Aspartame, a Widely Used

7. Food Additive. Environmental Health Perspectives. Vo. 75, p. 53-57, 1987.

8. Drake, Panic Attacks and Excessive Aspartame Ingestion. p. 631 The Lancet, Sept. 1986

9. Congressional Record, Senate. Saccharin Study and Labeling Act Amendments of 1985. May 7, 1985

11. Congressional Record Senate. Aspartame Safety Act of 1985. August 1, 1985, p. S10820-10847

12. Ishu, II: Incidence of brain tumors in rats fed aspartame. Toxicol Letters 1981, 7:433-437.

13. Walton, Seizure and Mania after high intake of aspartame. Psychomatics, 1986;

14. Wurtman, E.R.Walker, Dietary Phenylalanine and Brain Function, MIT Press May,

15. Remington, B. Higa, The Bitter truth About Artificial Sweeteners. Vitality House Press,

16. Roberts, Aspartame, NutraSweet. Is It Safe? The Charles Press, December 1989.

17. Mullarkey, Bittersweet Aspartame, A Diet Delusion. NutriVoice, Inc. ISBN -00-7 1992. 65 pg.

18. Excitotoxins: The Taste That Kills - Russell L. Blaylock, M.D. Health Press, Santa Fe, 1994

19. Gittleman, Ann Your Body Knows Best, Pocket Books, 1997

Brief History of Aspartame

1969 - Dr. Harry Waisman fed ASP mixed with milk to monkeys. One died after 300 days of (Aspartame) from here on referred to as “ASP”, and five others had grand mal seizures. Searle deleted this negative study when the company submitted safety evidence to the FDA.

1970 - The FDA banned cyclamate during the time that the safety of saccharin was being questioned. The time seemed ripe for ASP.

1971 - Dr. John Olney, a research psychiatrist, told Searle that Aspartic acid caused “holes in the brains of mice.”

1974 - Searle people said these studies raised “no health problems.” Searle told the FDA about these findings after approval was granted.

1975 - Many of the test animals fed ASP developed large TUMORS. These were NOT reported to the FDA.

1977 - Despite the many complaints about ASP, William Conlon and Thomas Sullivan, the US attorneys, took no action, in five years the statute of limitations for a grand jury investigation expired. A year later Conlon took a position with the law firm that represents Searle. (U.S. Attorney, Samuel Skinner did the same and ended up Chief of Staff in Bush’s White House. ed.)

1980 - A Public Board of Inquiry of three scientists was activated. These (2 MDs and one Ph.D.) voted to ban ASP. Because of those negative findings a five member Commissioner’s Team of Scientists was impaneled: Three said ban; two said it was safe. Another member was added. You guessed it: deadlock. Dr. Jacqueline Verrett, Ph.D., toxicologist on the team said, “Bureau officials were working up to a whitewash. Safety questions remain unanswered.”

1981 - Dr. Arthur Hull Hayes, Jr. was appointed the new FDA Commissioner and overruled the Public Board of Inquiry’s recommended ban of ASP. He said his approval was part of the Reagan administration’s new reform! Throughout the 1980’s Searle has pointed out that the best evidence of ASP’s safety was the fact that it had been approved in more than 60 countries. But these foreign approvals had been based on these controversial test, and the questionable approval of the FDA. It was approved as a “food additive,” and hence, exempt from continued safety monitoring. (Searle is not obligated to monitor any adverse reactions.)

1983 - THE NATIONAL SOFT DRINK ASSOCIATION wrote to the FDA that ASP was breaking down in warm climates. But the Association later accepted ASP. Dr. Hayes office approved the use of ASP in soft drinks just two months before he quit his job as FDA chief. He then obtained a job with a public relations firm who represents NutraSweet.

1984 - Seven million pounds of NutraSweet are swallowed by about 100,000 people.

1985 - Reports of side-effects mount.

1987 - ACSN is founded by Mary Nash Stoddard and consumer advocate, James Turner. They believe ASP should be recalled and retested as a drug.

Increasing Brain Tumor Rates: Is There a Link to Aspartame

Dr. Erik Millstone, MD
Science Policy Research Unit Mantell Building
University of Sussex Brighton
BN1 9RF England October 1996

The artificial sweetener aspartame is said by some commentators to be the most fully tested and safest food additive in industrial history. Because it is a dipeptide of two familiar and essential amino acids, namely Aspartic acid and phenylalanine, there are prima facie reasons for thinking that it should be safe. It is, moreover, one of the most successful synthetic chemicals every produced.

The dominant producer is the Nutrasweet Corporation (a subsidiary of Monsanto), and a recently published estimate suggested that world sales amounted to approximately $1,000 million in 1995.(1) Doubts about the safety of this compound have, however, surfaced repeatedly during its turbulent history, and a particularly serious set of fresh doubts have recently emerged in a paper in the journal Neuropathology and Experimental Neurology, focusing on the possibility that aspartame might be contributing to the increasing incidence of brain cancer.(2)

Prof. John Olney of Washington University St. Louis and his colleagues have based their hypothesis on several sets of considerations. Firstly, they analyzed the cancer statistics gathered by the US National Cancer Institute from catchment areas representing approximately 10% of the US population for the period since 1975. They found that the introduction of aspartame into the USA, into dry goods in 1981 and soft drinks in 1983, was followed by an abrupt increase (of approximately 10%) in the reported incidence of brain tumors. The change was most noticeable between 1984 and 1985, and it corresponded to approximately 1,500 extra cases of brain cancer per year in the USA.

Their second main finding is that there has also been a marked change in the incidence of particular types of brain tumors, with a reduction in the proportion of a relatively unaggressive (and often preliminary) type of tumor (astrocytomas) and a sharp increase in the incidence of a far more aggressive (and all too often terminal) type of tumor (glioblastomas). The investigators argue, moreover, that the reported changes in tumor incidence were unlikely to have been artifacts of improvements in diagnostic technologies.

The introduction and rapid diffusion of computerized tomography in the early to mid- 1970s, and of magnetic resonance imaging technology in the early to mid-1980s, certainly improved diagnostic precision. But they contend that the impact of those innovations upon the reported incidence of these central nervous system (CNS) tumors had fully worked their way through before aspartame was introduced.

Before these imaging technologies were introduced, it was far harder to diagnose brain cancer. Consequently, it was often not until tumors developed into glioblastomas that they were diagnosed, and a relatively high portion of tumors at the earlier astrocytoma stage went undetected. When the imaging technologies were introduced, brain tumors tended to be detected at the earlier stage, and consequently in the late 1970s the number of reported astrocytomas went up, while the number of glioblastomas exhibited a corresponding decline.

After aspartame was introduced, however, the opposite pattern can be found. The incidence of glioblastomas rose sharply, and starting in the late 1980s the number of astrocytomas declined even more sharply. Since those latter changes run counter to the direction which could be attributed to the introduction of better diagnostic technologies, it is hard to see how the reported changing tumor incidence could be ascribed to innovations in diagnosis. If the apparent increase in overall incidence had been due to improved diagnostics, then we should expect a marked change in post- diagnostic survival rates, but no such change was evident.

Olney and his colleagues suspect aspartame to be implicated in the etiology of the extra cases of brain cancer for three main reasons. Firstly, the type of CNS tumor found to be increasing most rapidly in the USA is the same kind of lesion as was found in one of the animal studies conducted on aspartame in the 1970s.(3) Indeed, when the safety of aspartame was considered by a Public Board of Inquiry in 1980, it recommended against the approval of aspartame primarily because of a concern that aspartame appeared to be a brain carcinogen in rodents. A team of scientists at the US Food and Drug Administration concurred with the judgment of the Board, and they too recommended that further studies be conducted to clarify the issue before aspartame could be considered acceptably safe for use. Both the Public Board of Inquiry and the FDA staff scientists were, however, over-ruled by the incoming FDA Commissioner, Arthur Hull Hayes, who asserted that the brain cancer risk was minimal and that further research was not necessary.

Olney and his colleagues have also drawn attention to the results of a study by Shephard et al published in 1993.(4) Shephard and her colleagues attempted to simulate in vitro the conditions that can occur in the human digestive tract, and in particular the conditions which result in the nitrosation of dietary ingredients. They reported that the nitrosated aspartame had significant mutagenic action. That evidence may be important because it suggests not only a mechanism through which aspartame could exert a possible carcinogenic action, but also why the interval between the compound’s introduction and the elevation of brain cancer rates appears to have been so brief.

Olney et al also suggest that aspartame may reasonably be suspected of responsibility because the other main candidates for responsibility, such as ionizing radiation, smoke inhalation, pesticides, electromagnetic fields and various other chemicals were gradually introduced over recent decades rather than all at once in the early 1980s. Exposures to those potential hazards are, furthermore, occupational linked and it is hard to see how they could explain why males and females seem to be equally affected.

If Olney’s hypothesis is to be substantiated it will be necessary to analyze several long-term brain cancer time- series data sets for other countries covering the period both before and since aspartame was introduced. That has proved difficult because while aggregate brain cancer statistics are readily available, information on tumors types is hard to obtain. If aspartame were to act by modifying an already present or nascent brain cancer, we should expect its impact to vary in different countries in ways which depend on the age structure of the consumers of this sweetener. Anecdotal evidence suggests that a larger proportion of 50 to 70 year old Americans consume aspartame-sweetened products than is the case in the UK or in other European countries. An alternative approach might therefore entail conducting new long-term animal feeding studies, but their relevance to humans is endlessly contestable.

While Olney and his colleagues have raised complex questions about the safety of aspartame, other questions have previously been raised without having been fully answered. The manner in which no fewer than 15 of the initial safety tests were conducted and reported during the 1970s has been repeatedly criticized. An FDA task force showed, for example, that in one particular study it was impossible to identify the occasion on which a particular animals had died. As the report says: “Observation records indicated that animal A23LM was alive at week 88, dead from week 92 through week 104, alive at week 108, and dead at week 112.”(5)

That represented just one of 52 significant shortcomings in the conduct and reporting of just one of those 15 studies. Those studies have, moreover, never been repeated. Several commentators have therefore argued that unless and until those 15 pivotal studies are repeated, no-one can be in a position confidently to assert that aspartame is safe. In the mid-to-late 1980s, a series of reports started to emerge suggesting that aspartame is capable of acute adverse reactions in a small proportion of sensitive consumers. The symptoms reported include headaches and blurred vision at the most mild through to epileptic-type seizures at the most severe. The accumulation of evidence, concerning both acute and chronic hazards, now poses a substantial problem for both regulatory officials and for the general public.

The challenge for policy-makers, as ever, is to decide how much evidence is sufficient to support a judgment that something is either sufficiently safe or that it poses a significant hazard. A decision of that sort, in relation to an artificial sweetener, will depend on a judgment about the balance of benefits and risks. It is, however, quite hard to demonstrate that artificial sweeteners are beneficial to any group other than diabetics. The period since the early 1980s has seen a rapid rise in the consumption of artificial sweeteners, but there has been no corresponding decline in the consumption of sugar, either in the USA, the UK or in the European Union as a whole. That implies that, in aggregate, artificial sweeteners are not acting as sugar substitutes but merely as supplements to sugar consumption.

Many of the products containing artificial sweeteners are labeled as ‘diet’ products implying that consuming artificially sweetened products helps people to control or even to reduce their weight. There is however no reliable evidence to indicate that artificial sweeteners actually help people loose weight. On the contrary, the bulk of the available evidence suggests that in relation to attempted weight loss, artificial sweeteners are at best ineffective and at worst counter-productive.

There is, in particular, evidence that artificial sweeteners are appetite stimulants, and while a particular mouthful of artificially sweetened food or drink may contain fewer calories than their sugar-sweetened analogues, the consumption of artificial sweeteners may provoke people into going on, what might be termed, ‘a calorie hunt’. If the likely benefits and risks of aspartame are to be properly explored, and if consumers are to be properly informed and protected, these complex issues need to be explored in a comprehensive and open fashion, and not behind closed doors, be they in Whitehall, in the European Commission in Brussels or at the World Health Organization’s office in Geneva. The public are entitled to be sure, in particular, that none of the experts advising the authorities are acting as paid consultants to the companies which either manufacture or utilize artificial sweeteners. Neither the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food nor the Department of Health, nor the European Commission nor even the WHO can provide such an assurance.

Footnotes

1. Chemistry and Industry, 21 October 1996, p. 776 Olney J. W. et al, ‘Increasing brain tumor rates: is there a link to aspartame?’, Journal of Neuropathology and Experimental Neurology, Vol. No 11, November 1996

2. Two year toxicity study in the Rat: Final Report and Appendix, Hazelton Laboratories study number P-T 838H71, Submitted to the FDA 25 January 1973, Master File numbers E-33 and E-34

3. Shephard S. E. et al, ‘Mutagenic activity of peptides and the artificial sweetener aspartame after nitrosation’, Food and Chemical Toxicology, 1993, Vol. 31, pp.

4. FDA Establishment Investigation Report on Searle Laboratories, to Richard Ronk, Bureau of Foods, by J. Bressler et al, 7 Aug. 1977, p. 2