Aspertain

[disgruntled]

does anyone here know anything about the effects of aspertain? i hear that it is bad, but i have not read anything on the subject.

personally i love the taste of it.... i know weird.... but lately i have been wondering if i should strive to cut back

[DOCBROWN1705]

Aspartame!! Stop taking it!!.... I know that they advertise it as a good sugar alternative, however it is not necessarily good for you. At first glance the product seems safe, however after the product has been digested its breaks down and releases formaldehyde, and formic acid into the body. in 1995 a study was done that showed 75% of the health complaints related to food supplements could be traced back to Aspartame.

Aspartame can spike blood plasma levels of aspartate to extreme levels. This spike can be traced to many heart, and circulation problems. Aspartylphenylalanine diketopiperazine (DKP) is another by product found when Aspartame breaks down over time. In the stomach this product can undergo a nitrosation process. This can lead to many other health problems. They are currently studying the connection between DKP/Nitrosation and brain tumors.

No serious death or injury has been attributed to Aspartame as yet, however I would caution anyone using, or ingesting high amounts of the chemical.

[sirdarksol]

Aspertame has not been shown to cause negative effects in most people...
However, I agree entirely with DocBrown. The stuff, at the very least, has the ability to break down into formaldehyde (wow, got the spelling right on the first try), and does so in at least a small percentage of the population. It's my belief that it does so in all, but most people's bodies can handle the small amounts.
Still, I wouldn't want to be consuming even a small amount of formaldehyde if I could avoid it.
In people with fibromyalgia, apertame is horrific. My wife spent about a year in utter agony because she was drinking diet soda in an attempt to lose weight (more on the irony of that in a moment). Fibromyalgia patients' bodies can't get rid of the formaldehyde quickly enough, and it builds in their muscles.

On to the irony. In addition to all this, there's likely little point to using sugar substitutes unless you're diabetic and need to watch your sugar intake. Several studies have reported that artificial sweeteners trigger the same body mechanism that causes you to store calories as fat. Other studies have shown that children who drink diet soda have the same increased chance of obesity as children who drink regular soda.
Your best bet is to just avoid foods that have high fructose corn syrup, and stay away from sweets as much as possible. When you do have something sweet, try to find something that's sweetened with cane sugar, raw sugar, or crystalline fructose, as these are slightly harder for the body to break down than HFCS.

[disgruntled]

i actually drink it because i cannot have that much sugar.... i am suspected of being a pre-diabedic (sp?)..... and i do like the taste... but thanks for the info.... i do need and want to cut back on the diet stuff.

[sirdarksol]

Originally Posted by disgruntled

i actually drink it because i cannot have that much sugar.... i am suspected of being a pre-diabedic (sp?)..... and i do like the taste... but thanks for the info.... i do need and want to cut back on the diet stuff.

That's a crappy situation to be in. Weight gain can be linked to worsening diabetic problems, yet ingesting high fructose corn syrup can immediately make a diabetic worse. About your best option would be to back off on soda altogether, but I know just how difficult that is.
One thing that I've been doing is turning to Snapple's White Iced Tea. The sweetener is, I think, crystalline fructose, and there's less sugar in it than soda. The stuff tastes sweet, though, so it can help with the sweet tooth. Even better, there's something about it that's really refreshing (at least to me). There are a few other brands of green and white iced tea that are lightly, naturally sweetened, but I can't think of them right now (Fuse used to have an Orange Blossom White tea that was divine, but I can't find it anymore). Sobe Lifewater is another good one.
Of course, neither of these options beats out water, but as I said, I understand the draw of sweet drinks.

[disgruntled]

thanks for the advice...

has anyone heard anything about splenda? it is a alternative to sugar. i have not heard anything about the effects of it.

[sirdarksol]

Originally Posted by disgruntled

thanks for the advice...

has anyone heard anything about splenda? it is a alternative to sugar. i have not heard anything about the effects of it.

It is supposedly risk-free. No studies have linked any health issues (other than the same weight gain that can be found with both sugar and sugar-replacements).
I don't like the taste of the stuff. Supposedly there is only a small amount of the population that can tell the difference between Splenda and sugar, but about half of the people I know can tell the difference. Aside from that, it's horrible to bake with (cookies end up looking like dried-out playdough.)
My other issue comes from the source of Splenda. Splenda starts out as a normal sugar molecule. To make it so that the human body can't digest it, a chlorine molecule is added to it. First of all, I am leery about eating large quantities of anything that is engineered. Second, the chlorine molecule worries me.
Again, I would like to say that Splenda (and Xylitol, which is a natural alcohol sugar that has very few calories) has not had any major studies linking it to any health problem not experienced with regular sugar. (Though xylitol does have an unpleasant effect in dogs. Even a pack of gum sweetened with xylitol will trigger a dog's body to use up all of its sugar in a short period of time.)

[disgruntled]

what do you mean by will use up their sugar in a short time?

[sirdarksol]

Originally Posted by disgruntled

what do you mean by will use up their sugar in a short time?

I think what happens is that something in the xylitol triggers the sugar sensor in a dog's body. The body then produces insulin. This part is normal. The problem is that the body "reads" xylitol as being lots and lots of sugar, causing the body to produce a lot of insulin. The insulin causes/allows the body to use the sugar that is floating in the bloodstream. The quantities of insulin in the dog's body basically send it into near-instant diabetic shock.

In checking some info on what I typed above, I also discovered something interesting that would explain why artificial sweeteners cause the body to store fat. A dog's reaction to xylitol shows that at least some of these chemicals are close enough to sugar to trigger the release of insulin. In turn, insulin triggers fat cells to store energy in the form of triglycerides.

[disgruntled]

hmm... interesting..... in that case it is not the best alternative for diabetics...

damn this processed food world we live in!