
Aspartame and formaldehyde - ecaradec
http://whatdoesthesciencesay.wordpress.com/2010/06/13/aspartame-and-formaldehyde/
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ukdm
I rely heavily on aspartame-filled drinks because I have rejected most other
drinks as not suitable to drink throughout a working day.

I've attempted to drink normal sugar-filled soft drinks and felt terrible
after a few days. That's based on 3 cans a day. The amount of sugar is just
too much for me to handle.

I can drink water, but it is quite boring. I actually find drinking just water
stops quenching my thirst and my mouth dries out progressively. Drinking fruit
juice is also not going to work as it is very acidic, and I just can't handle
more than a couple of glasses.

A mix of these drinks is fine, but not ideal. I just want a constant I can
drink without preparatiog.

Diet soda fits all the criteria for me. It has a taste, unlike water, contains
caffeine (diet coke is my poison), and rehydrates. I can also drink it all day
without any real side-effects. The downside being the aspartame and
phenylalnine it contains which may or may not be an issue depending on what
you read.

I do limit myself to 3 cans per day, but then aspartame is contained in other
things I consume every day. The most frequent of which is sugar free gum.

If there are any alternatives to aspartame-using diet drinks, sugar filled
drinks, or just plain water I should be trying I'd appreciate some
suggestions.

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Aegean
OK this study has some perspective to aspartame converting to formaldehyde.

But what about the excitotoxic effects? I've heard aspartame excites nerve
cells in the brain in unusually increased levels which eventually causes the
cells to burst and die. How about the truth on that?

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jdewald
I touched a bit on excitotoxins in the article, but decided to leave that for
another one if there was enough interest. The major issue is that the biggest
proponent of the excitotxin theory is Blaylock (based on some initial ideas
from JW Olney). I do not see Blaylock as being at all credible and it was
actually during the research for the article that I first stumbled on upon
that idea.

By far most people are worried about the formaldehyde and mood/headache
effects, so that's what I ended up reducing the article to.

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Osiris
I've heard from people, including my wife, that Aspartame causes cancer. We
had a 'discussion' earlier about supplements where I argued that I wouldn't
spend money on anything that didn't have scientific studies to show a
statistically significant impact by the supplement.

It really bothers me when people trust more in word-of-mouth than they do in
science.

~~~
Yaggo
> It really bothers me when people trust more in word-of-mouth than they do in
> science.

Me too. Still I have some sympathy for them, because science is not on-off
type of thing. You can't just research if particular substance is safe or
dangerous. You must know what you are searching for. You must figure out a
level for "safe exposure". Thus it can take long time (even decades) before
substance x is found and agreed to be harmful. Considering the history of
human evolution and huge changes in our diet and chemical environment in the
last 50 years, it's perfectly acceptable to be skeptical, until proven
otherwise. Bisphenol A makes good example.

~~~
Bjoern
This reminds me of Paracelsus famous quote. "All things are poison and nothing
is without poison, only the dose permits something not to be poisonous."

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khafra
Allow me to quote at length from ET Jaynes' book, "Probability: The Logic of
Science."

> A common error, when judging the effects of radioactivity or the toxicity of
> some substance, is to assume a linear response model without threshold (that
> is, without a dose rate below which there is no ill e ect). Presumably there
> is no threshold effect for cumulative poisons like heavy metal ions
> (mercury, lead), which are eliminated only very slowly if at all.

> But for virtually every organic substance (such as saccharin or cyclamates),
> the existence of a finite metabolic rate means that there must exist a
> finite threshold dose rate, below which the substance is decomposed,
> eliminated, or chemically altered so rapidly that it has no ill effects. If
> this were not true, the human race could never have survived to the present
> time, in view of all the things we have been eating.

> Indeed, every mouthful of food you and I have ever taken contained many
> billions of kinds of complex molecules whose structure and physiological
> effects have never been determined, and many millions of which would be
> toxic or fatal in large doses. We cannot doubt that we are daily ingesting
> thousands of substances that are far more dangerous than saccharin, but in
> amounts that are safe, because they are far below the various thresholds of
> toxicity. But at present there is hardly any substance except some common
> drugs, for which we actually know the threshold.

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nhebb
Having Type II Diabetes I probably consume more Aspartame than I should, so
it's nice to see misinformation like this debunked. I have talked to other
diabetics who have even had physicians warn them about Aspartame. There is so
much bad information dominating the SERP's that I prefix all my medical
searches with "site:mayoclinic.com"

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freshfey
The problem is that a lot of people worry about their aspartame intake
although their diet sucks and they don't exercise at all. Aspartame in this
case is your least problem. If you get 90% of your nutrition right, then you
can worry about the amounts of aspartame in your soda.

I'm interested in the current state of stevia as it is a real (maybe hyped)
alternative sweetener.

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binarymax
Whether or not it has been proven to be unhealthy, I personally feel very
strange after consuming even the smallest amount of aspartame. I become
nervous and jittery, and feel an odd sensation in my jaw that tempts me to
grind my teeth. Others may not have the same symptoms as me, but I steer well
clear of anything containing the chemical.

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almost
That sounds like caffeine to me!

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binarymax
It happens even when I consume non-caffeinated drinks with aspartame

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volomike
Then how come I get really bad headaches when eating the stuff, but not with
sugar, HFCS, or saccharin?

~~~
jdewald
There's obviously no way for anyone to claim that you specifically don't, but
one of the studies I looked at (and there have been others) specifically used
patients who believed they got headaches from aspartame. They turned out to be
more likely to get one from the placebo control than from aspartame.

