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By Dr. Mercola

Most public health agencies and nutritionists in the United States still recommend no- or low-calorie artificial sweeteners as an acceptable, and even preferred, alternative to sugar. This flawed advice can have very serious repercussions for those who follow it.
Artificial sweeteners of all kinds have been found to wreak havoc with your health in a number of different ways. Aspartame (you have to have a look at the link), which is perhaps the worst of the bunch, has a long list of studies indicating its harmful effects, ranging from brain damage to pre-term delivery.

Aspartame is also the number one source of side effect complaints to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), with over 10,000 complaints filed and over 91 documented symptoms related to its consumption.

Most recently, studies are also starting to confirm lingering suspicions that artificial sweeteners like aspartame may play a role in the development of Alzheimer’s disease, a serious form of dementia that is now thought to kill over half a million Americans each year.

The key mechanism of harm appears to be methanol toxicity—a much-ignored problem associated with aspartame in particular.

The Link Between Aspartame and Methanol Toxicity
The artificial sweetener industry (and makers of artificially sweetened products) has fervently claimed that aspartame is harmless, and that there’s “no biological explanation” for the health problems reported by so many after consuming aspartame.

But as explained by Dr. Monte, there is indeed a biological and scientific explanation for aspartame’s pathway of harm, and as the latest research suggests, it’s related to the effects of methanol and formaldehyde, both of which are extremely toxic.

Aspartame is primarily made up of aspartic acid and phenylalanine—the latter of which has been synthetically modified to carry a methyl group. This is what provides the majority of the sweetness. That phenylalanine methyl bond, called a methyl ester, is very weak, allowing the methyl group on the phenylalanine to easily break off and form methanol.

You may have heard the claim that aspartame is harmless because methanol is also found in fruits and vegetables. However, in these whole foods the methanol is firmly bonded to pectin, which allows it to be safely passed through your digestive tract. This is not the case for the methanol created by aspartame. There, it’s not bonded to anything that can help eliminate it from your body. That’s problem number one…

Problem number two relates to the fact that humans are the only mammals who are NOT equipped with a protective biological mechanism that breaks down methanol into harmless formic acid. This is why animal testing of aspartame does not fully apply to humans.

According to Dr. Monte, the fact that methyl alcohol is metabolised differently in humans compared to other animals has been known since 1940.

Methanol Acts as a Trojan Horse in Your Body
As explained by Dr. Monte, in humans, methanol ends up acting as a Trojan horse, allowing toxic formaldehyde to wreak havoc in some of your most sensitive areas, such as your brain. Here’s how it works: both animals and humans have small structures called peroxisomes in each cell. There are a couple of hundred in every cell of your body, which are designed to detoxify a variety of chemicals. Peroxisome contains catalase, which help detoxify methanol.

Your cells also contain alcohol dehydrogenase (ADH), which converts methanol to formaldehyde. Other chemicals in the peroxisome in turn convert the formaldehyde to formic acid, which is harmless—but this last step occurs only in animals. Human peroxisomes cannot convert the toxic formaldehyde into harmless formic acid.

Certain locations in your body, particularly in the lining of your blood vessels, and in your brain, are loaded with ADH that converts methanol to formaldehyde. But since there’s no catalase present, the formaldehyde does not get converted into harmless formic acid. As a result, the formaldehyde is free to do enormous amounts of damage in your tissues.

Symptoms of methanol poisoning include: headaches, ear buzzing, dizziness, nausea, gastrointestinal disturbances, weakness, vertigo, chills, memory lapses, numbness, and shooting pains in the extremities, behavioral disturbances, and neuritis. The most well known problems from methanol poisoning are vision problems including misty vision, progressive contraction of visual fields, blurring of vision, obscuration of vision, retinal damage, and blindness. Formaldehyde, in turn, is a known carcinogen that causes retinal damage, interferes with DNA replication, and may cause birth defects.

Processed Foods Are Also High in Methanol
As I’ve discussed in previous articles, processed foods should be avoided as a proactive Alzheimer’s prevention strategy. In his book, Grain Brain, neurologist Dr. Perlmutter reveals how the toxic activity of sugar and carbohydrates in your diet promote Alzheimer’s disease. But we can also add methanol to the list of reasons for avoiding processed foods. Not only do many processed foods contain artificial sweeteners, but when fruits and vegetables are canned, for example, the methanol becomes liberated from the pectin.

At room temperature, it only takes one month for 10 percent of the methanol to be released. After about six months, virtually all of the methanol is liberated. Dr. Monte is convinced that methanol and the subsequent conversion to formaldehyde from certain processed foods (see listing below), as well as all foods containing aspartame, are a major culprit in a variety of diseases, especially multiple sclerosis (MS).

Again, methanol can slip through your blood brain barrier, and your brain is one of the areas where you find alcohol dehydrogenase, which converts methyl alcohol to formaldehyde. This causes the destruction of myelin basic protein, which is one of the triggers for MS. Demyelination also plays a role in the development of Alzheimer’s and several other brain-related diseases. According to Dr. Monte:

“We know that methyl alcohol is known to be a demyelinating agent… the symptoms associated with the demyelination… are identical between multiple sclerosis, and methanol poisoning, and people who consume aspartame.”

He believes many diseases can be prevented if we start avoiding methanol from all sources, and he even offers a methanol-free diet on his website.

Items to avoid include:
Cigarettes
Tomato sauces, unless first simmered at least 3 hours, no lid on pan
Diet foods and drinks with aspartame
Smoked food of any kind, particularly fish and meat
Fruit and vegetable products and their juices in bottles, cans, or pouches
Chewing gum, as most chewing gum in the USA contains aspartame
Jellies, jams, and marmalades not made fresh and kept refrigerated
Slivovitz and other fruit schnapps
Black currant and tomato juice products, fresh or processed
Overly ripe or near rotting fruits or vegetables

Another popular artificial sweetener is sucralose, sold under the brand name Splenda. Sucralose is a synthetic chemical created in a five-step patented process, in which three chlorine molecules are added to one sucrose (sugar) molecule. Some will argue that natural foods also contain chloride, which is true. However, in natural foods, the chloride is connected with ionic bonds that easily dissociate when ingested. In Splenda, they’re in a covalent bond that does not dissociate.

And, since your body has no enzymes to break down this covalently bound chloride, harm can ensue… The reason why your body has no enzymes for this task is because, in nature, there are NO covalent chloride bonds to organic compounds—they only exist in synthetic, man-made form. Aside from Splenda, other examples of synthetic covalently bound chloride compounds include DDT, PCBs, and Agent Orange.

Having a Hard Time Giving Up Artificial Sweeteners?
When you consume artificial sweeteners, your brain actually craves more calories because your body receives no satisfaction on a cellular level by the sugar imposter. This can contribute to not only overeating and weight gain, but also an addiction to artificial sweeteners.
Reference to extracts above