Is Sweetener Sweetening Your Life?

Aspartame, or Amino Sweet as it has been renamed, is an artificial sweetener currently used to sweeten over 6000 of the foods we eat. Anything marked ‘diet’ or ‘light’ is likely to contain this sugar substitute. Most people have come to conclude that using sweetener instead of sugar is healthier and will help you achieve weight loss, or help in maintaining your skinny physique. Unfortunately this couldn’t be farther from the truth.

The fact is that consuming products like diet soda will actually increase your risk of metabolic syndrome, which in turn can double your risk of obesity. The intake of artificial sweeteners, like Aspartame, will cause your body to lose it’s ability to count calories and therefore end up stimulating your appetite leading you to consume more….and gain more. However, I’m sorry to say that when it comes to Aspartame, weight gain is the least of your worries.

Aspartame is to date, the most controversial food additive the FDA has ever approved, and when it did so, it was not based on scientific grounds but rather due to the strong political and financial push it was being given behind closed doors. Over the past thirty years there have been 10,000 complaints to the FDA in regards to the side effects people have been suffering due to consuming Aspartame. Side effects like headaches, change in vision, convulsions and seizures, hallucination, nausea, vomiting and joint pain, to name a few. The sad reality is that only about one percent of all the people affected by these symptoms are actually reporting it. That would mean that the actual number of people suffering is close to 1 Million.

Perhaps another shocking detail would be that, before the FDA allowed Aspartame to become mainstream, it was previously listed by the Pentagon as a BIOCHEMICAL WARFARE AGENT. Kind of makes you wonder if the government is at war with its people and simply failed to mention it.

The horror doesn’t stop there. About two thirds of the side effects are neurological, while the remaining third is mostly gastrointestinal. While we would hope that our physicians would be able to diagnose these problems as caused by Aspartame, most of them simply aren’t familiar enough with the product and its adverse effects. Of course it doesn’t help when so many of the symptoms mimic those of other health conditions. For instance -

Multiple Sclerosis

Alzheimer’s Disease

Arthritis

Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

Panic Disorder

Lupus

Birth Defects

Lyme Disease

Parkinson’s Disease

Fibromyalgia

Multiple Chemical Disorder

Attention Deficit Disorder

Diabetes and Diabetic Complications

Lymphoma

Hyperthyroidism

So, here’s how that plays out….someone gets diagnosed wrong, starts being treated, likely consuming multiple medications they don’t need, that may or may not be harming their health and, worst of all, they continue to suffer…because they continue to consume Aspartame and no one has told them to stop. Where does it end?

How many people are suffering from depression, forfeiting days, months, even years of their lives to feeling lost and alone, all because the Aspartame in their favorite diet beverage has caused an increase in their dopamine levels and screwed with the dopamine / serotonin balance. Who do you know that suffers from unexplained chronic migraine headaches, so severe, it interferes with their daily activities? How would it change their lives if the answer was as simple as avoiding artificial sweeteners?

As if all of this wasn’t bad enough…the ester bond in Aspartame breaks down to formaldehyde and methanol. Both toxic as I’m sure you are aware, and both have also been found to cause cancer.

So I’ll ask you again – Is sweetener sweetening your life? Or is it robbing you of it, while leaving behind a bitter aftertaste?!