A PHD comments on my aspartame post

This is why I love the internet and learning as much as I can about everything that I can..Not sure why a PHD reads my blog but I dont blame him, truthfully..


Alex, I admire your effort to understand this issue, but you are listening to misguided people, who really don't know anything about aspartame, biology, or toxicology. They blame aspartame for ills perceived twenty years ago, but which were in reality endemic personal issues most generally related to folate deficiency. Realize that by 1998 this folate deficiency issue was so bad that mandatory folate fortification of cereal grains was undertaken in the USA, Canada, and Chile to reduce birth defects in human babies (www.cfp.ca/cgi/reprint/54/1/36; www.cfp.ca/cgi/reprint/54/11/1545). That second paper lists just some of the cancers thought to associate with folate issues; it neglects cancers and other diseases linked to folate related processing issues. 

Aspartame, through its hydrolysis to its methanol constituent, generates low doses of formaldehyde and formic acid. At these doses these substances are not toxic, but in fact are critical for proper function. They are required by folate and related enzymes (along with cofactors like vitamin B12) to make methyl groups. These methyl groups convert the DNA base uracil to thymine (methyluracil). Its incorporation into DNA in place of uracil reduces both DNA strand fragility and broken DNA that can cause cancer. Those groups also methylate and detoxify a true excitotoxin, homocysteine, to form vital methionine (S-methylhomocysteine). This is required for many other detoxifications, including direct DNA methylation that serves to silence that DNA from being expressed at the wrong time. Thus a low, steady intake of food-borne methanol is absolutely required to prevent cancer and disease (cebp.aacrjournals.org/cgi/reprint/14/12/2999, figure page 3000). Aspartame is not an issue, because there is more methanol in many fruit juices than in aspartame drinks. 

The fact is that aspartame is perfectly safe used as directed; no regulatory authority in the Western world disagrees. Given that and 20+ years of safe use by a very large part of the population, my examination of the issue has found nothing in all the aspartame literature [both pro and con] that cannot be explained by one simple, alternate paradigm. That is, ALL issues with aspartame arise, not from any aspartame safety issue, but from heightened PERSONAL sensitivities in just some users caused by a deficiency of the vitamin folic acid (folate deficiency is not uncommon and is still a big cause of birth and other defects), by genetic folate enzyme differences (called polymorphisms that require more folate for the same function; up to 40% of certain populations), by related methyl cycle issues like low B12 (not uncommon), by high homocysteine (not uncommon), by ethanol abuse (a potent folate enzyme inhibitor, linked to 'fetal alcohol syndrome' birth defects), and by still other related issues possibly including childhood insect stings that might make a person frankly allergic (see www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20199453). Folate deficiency and these related issues have been linked to many different diseases, including depression (www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17353937; geriatric depression that can lead to suicide, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18852559), and many cancers (www.cfp.ca/cgi/reprint/54/11/1545). In fact breast cancers linked to folate deficiency issues may be more important than some BRC genetic issues (www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16162645). The lupus issue seems more connected to the B12 side of this personal sensitivity problem than the folate side (www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12720045). Amongst claimed complaints I have found no exceptions to this paradigm. But more importantly, no aspartame critic can show me an aspartame-sensitive person that has even been checked for one of these issues. But the point here is that even if susceptible people don’t use aspartame, they are still at risk from the issues raised.

John E. Garst, Ph.D. (Medicinal Chemistry, Pharmacology, Toxicology, and Nutrition)