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to be safe Iam sticking to SPLENDA it isnt a chemical!!! Subject: Warning about ASPARTAME (This was first brought to my attention back in 2000 or so by a friend who saw the article mententioned here and thought it might help explain my illness) This really makes me wonder about some of my aches and pains. Last October a friend started getting very sick, she had stomach spasms, she was having a hard time getting around, to walk was a major chore. It took everything she had just to get out of bed she was in so much pain. By March 2002, she had undergone biopsies and was on 24 various prescription medications. The doctors could not figure out what was wrong with her. She was in so much pain, and so sick, she knew she was dying. She put her house, bank accounts, life insurance etc... in her oldest daughter's name, and made sure her younger children were to be with her oldest daughter. She wanted her last hooray, so she planned a trip to FL (basically in a wheelchair) for March 22nd. On March 19th, I called her to ask her how one of her tests went, and she said they didn't find anything on the test, but they believe she had MS. I thought, oh my....then I recalled an article another friend of mine emailed to me. I asked her, "Do you drink Diet pop?" She told me "yes " As a matter of fact she was getting ready to pop one open that very moment. I told her not to open it, and to stop drinking all diet sodas; and I emailed her the following article. She called me within 32 hours after our phone conversation and told me she stopped drinking the diet pop, and she can walk. She went up the stairs, and the muscle spasms went away. She said she didn't feel 100% but sure felt a lot better. She told me she was going to her doctors with this article and would call me back when she returned home. She called me, and her doctor was amazed, he is going to call all of his MS patients to find out if they consumed artificial sweetener. In a nutshell, she was being poisoned by the Aspartame in the diet sodas, dying a slow death. When she arrived in FL March 22nd, all she had to take was one pill, and that was a pill for poisoning. She is well on her way to recovery.....and she is walking! No wheelchair! This article saved her life! If it says "SUGAR FREE," on the label, DO NOT EVEN THINK ABOUT IT!!! I have spent several days lecturing at the WORLD ENVIRONMENTAL CONFERENCE on "ASPARTAME" marketed as 'NutraSweet', 'Equal', and 'Spoonful'. In the keynote address by the EPA, it was announced that in the United States in 2001 there is an epidemic of multiple sclerosis and systemic lupus, that it was hard to understand what toxin was causing this to be rampant. I stood up and said that I was there to lecture on exactly that subject. I will explain why Aspartame is so dangerous. When the temperature of this sweetener exceeds 86 degrees F, the wood alcohol in ASPARTAME converts to Formaldehyde and then to formic acid, which in turn causes metabolic acidosis. (Formic acid is the poison found in the sting of fire ants.) The methanol toxicity mimics, among other conditions, multiple sclerosis. People were being diagnosed with having multiple sclerosis in error. The multiple sclerosis is not a death sentence, where as methanol toxicity is! Systemic lupus has become almost as rampant as multiple sclerosis, especially with Diet Coke and Diet Pepsi drinkers. The victim usually does not know that the Aspartame is the culprit. He or she continues its use, aggravating the lupus to such a degree that it may become life-threatening. We have seen patients with systemic lupus become asymptomatic once taken off diet sodas. In the case of those diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis, (when in reality, the disease is methanol toxicity), most of the symptoms disappear. We've seen many cases where vision returned and hearing improved markedly. This also applies to cases of tinnitus. During a lecture I said "If you are using ASPARTAME (NutraSweet, Equal, Spoonful, etc.) and you suffer from fibromyalgia symptoms; spasms, shooting pains, numbness in your legs, cramps, vertigo, dizziness, headaches, tinnitus, joint pain, depression, anxiety attacks, slurred speech, blurred vision, or memory loss......you probably have ASPARTAME DISEASE!" People were jumping up during the lecture saying, "I've got some of these symptoms! Is it reversible?" Yes! Not drinking diet sodas and keeping an eye out for aspartame on food labels.....Yes! We have a very serious problem. A stranger came up to me and Dr. Espisto (one of my colleagues) and said; "Could you tell me why so many people seem to be coming down with MS?" During a visit to a hospice, a nurse said that six of her friends, who were heavy Diet Coke addicts, had all been diagnosed with MS. This is beyond coincidence! Diet Coke and Diet Pepsi, etc.... IS NOT A DIET PRODUCT! The Congressional Record states that it makes you crave carbohydrates and will make you FAT. The formaldehyde stores in the fat cells, particularly in the hips and thighs. Once off these products with no significant increase in exercise, etc.... Dr. Roberts, in his lecture, stated that he had patients who lost an average of 19 pounds over a trial period. Aspartame is especially dangerous for diabetics. We found that physicians would believe that they have a patient with retinopathy, when in fact the symptoms are caused by aspartame. The aspartame drives the blood sugar out of control. Thus diabetics may suffer acute memory loss due to the fact that aspartic acid and phenylalanine are neurotoxic without the other amino acids found in protein. Thus it passes the blood brain barrier and deteriorates the neurons of the brain, causing in diabetics (as well as in patients not suffering from diabetes) various kinds of brain damage, seizures, depression, manic depression, panic attacks, rage and violence. (The Aspartame in thousands of pallets of Diet Coke and Diet Pepsi consumed by men and women fighting in the Gulf War, may be partially to blame for the well-known Gulf War Syndrome.) Dr. Roberts warns that it can cause birth defects, e.g. mental retardation if taken at the time of conception and early pregnancy. Children are especially at risk for neurological disorders and should NOT be given NutraSweet. I can relate different case histories of children having granmal seizures and other disturbances being on NutraSweet. Unfortunately it is not always easy to convince a mother that Aspartame is to blame for her child's illness. Only by trial and success will she be able to warn other mothers to take their children's health in their own hands. Stevia, a sweet herb, NOT A MANUFACTURED ADDITIVE, which helps in the metabolism of sugar (which would be ideal for diabetics) has now been approved as a dietary supplement by the FDA. For years the FDA has outlawed this sweet food because of their loyalty to MONSANTO, who actually owns the brand names NutraSweet, Equal, and SpoonFul. Yes that's right !! The flooring company MONSANTO, owns the artificial sweetener in diet drinks , ASPARTAME. So what do they care if you live or die using their product, they make flooring !!!! Books on this subject are available: EXCITOTOXINS: THE TASTE THAT KILLS - written by Dr. Russell Blayblock (Health Press 1-800-643-2665) and DEFENSE AGAINST ALZHEIMER'S DISEASE - written by Dr. H. J. Roberts also a diabetic specialist. These two doctors will be posting a position paper with some case histories on the deadly effects of Aspartame on the Internet. According to the Conference of the American College of Physicians "we are talking about a plague of neurological diseases caused by this deadly poison." Here is the problem: There were Congressional Hearings when Aspartame was included in 100 different products. Since this initial hearing, there have been two subsequent hearings, but to no avail. Nothing has been done. The drug and chemical lobbies have very deep pockets. Now there are over 5,000 products containing this chemical, and the PATENT HAS EXPIRED! I assure you, MONSANTO, the creator of Aspartame knows how deadly it is.

This came from http://hoaxbusters.ciac.org/ I did a search of Equal, I remember getting this via email a few years back. just for your info: Aspartame Hoax March 2001 If you search the web for "aspartame" (also called NutraSweet) you will find dozens of websites devoted to the perceived horrors of this sugar substitute (Actually, you have to search for the misspelling, "asparatame" to find most of them). All of this seems to go back to a study done in 1996 where the increase in brain tumors was found to correlate with the increase in aspartame use. That study did not show any causal link, only that both brain tumors and aspartame use seemed to both be increasing at the same time. That correlation has since been broken as brain tumor rates have leveled off and aspartame use has continued to increase. Around December of 1999, a letter started making the rounds of the Internet that claims that almost every ailment known to man is caused by aspartame. It was supposedly written by a Betty Martini who was supposedly lecturing at the World Environmental Conference. A second version of the letter is identical to the first but the author has been changed to a Nancy Markle. In this letter, aspartame is blamed for hundreds of aliment including multiple sclerosis. The title of the article claims that the Multiple Sclerosis Foundation and others are suing the makers of aspartame. However, the Multiple Sclerosis Foundation has disavowed any knowledge of a problem with aspartame and any relationship with the author. The letter also claims that it causes "memory loss, confusion, and severe vision loss" among diabetics but that has been debunked by the American Diabetes Association. The FDA has attested to the safety of the chemical and if you check the scholarly studies listed at the following site http://www.aspartame.org/ you will not find any showing significant problems with its use. The worst that has been found are occasional headaches. The "research" on the Aspartame Horror sites is, for the most part, anecdotal. The href="http://urbanlegends.about.com/science/urbanlegends/library/blasp.htm">UrbanLegends.com website does a really good job debunking this warning and the supposed facts it contains. It is also debunked at the Junk Science website.

sorry for the flub perhaps pixiechick will eliminate this post since it is a flub

“The FDA has attested to the safety of the chemical and if you check the scholarly studies listed at the following site http://www.aspartame.org/ you will not find any showing significant problems with its use. The worst that has been found are occasional headaches. The "research" on the Aspartame Horror sites is, for the most part, anecdotal.” The FDA does not do any testing of any kind. The company it self does all it's own testing and they give the results to FDA. (I work at medical device company.) And what do you think a company testing it's own product does?? It can't falsify test results but it can test for things it wants to and test for things that will support a conclusion it wants. So just because the makers of Aspartame say it’s safe doesn’t make it so.

But I do agree, it is a chemical and we should try to eliminate chemicals from our diets. Have you tried Stevia? It's made from a plant and is an all natural sugar substitute. I have Epilepsy and have been told by my Neurologist to stay away from Aspertane. And from what I have read on the Epilepsy Foundation website many other patients have been warned as well. (Can trigger seizures) So I guess it's not as safe as it's supposed to be. Funny..... now that you think about it. Ellie

I dont know if Aspartame can cause all the major problems that i have heard about, but i do know that when i started converirting all my recipes to use artificial which had Aspartame in them i got headaches worse than any migrain than i ever had before. My doctor recomended that i should stay away from it.

i like stevia a lot also. but i've been using splendida because its easier to find.