6 ms·

Aspartame (Nutrasweet) is pretty controversial in how it got approved by the FDA. See: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robbie-gennet/donald-rumsfeld-and-the-s_b_

Aspartame (Nutrasweet) is pretty controversial in how it got approved by the FDA. See: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robbie-gennet/donald-rumsfeld-and-the-s_b_805581.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robbie-gennet/donald-rumsfeld-... When I was 8 years old, I started having grand mal seizures and my parents noted a strong correlation between drinking a Diet Coke and having a seizure. When they eliminated it from my diet, my seizures declined. Fortunately I stopped having seizures around 12 years of age. But given my experience, I continue to avoid all artificial sweeteners. I know sources like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspartame#Safety_and_approval_controversies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspartame#Safety_and_approval_... claim that it is safe... and I agree that for most people it is probably okay in moderation. But based on my experience and the history of how Aspartame (Nutrasweet) got approved, I have serious doubts about its safety.

ethanbond 11y ago
Interestingly enough, a low carbohydrate (often including a switch to artificial sweeteners) is a well-established treatment for childhood epilepsy.
- vowelless 11y ago
  The validity low carb diets is generally orthogonal to artificial sweeteners and probably should not be conflated.
  - ethanbond 11y ago
    Thus the phrase "often including..." I wasn't attempting to disprove or contribute to his claims. Just to point out an interesting intersection of diet and seizures.
    - vowelless 11y ago
      Can you give a source for aspartame/artificial sweeteners being often included with low carb diet for treating childhood epilepsy? It doesn't seem intuitive to me that a diet to treat such a disease would often include something like aspartame.
      - ethanbond 11y ago
        Well a ketogenic diet is used to treat epilepsy, and artificial sweeteners don't generally conflict with ketosis. I didn't mean to imply artificial sweeteners are prescribed to epileptics. Maybe they're even specifically forbidden as well, I'm not sure.
      - darkarmani 11y ago
        > It doesn't seem intuitive to me that a diet to treat such a disease would often include something like aspartame. It's the avoiding carbs part that means they look to eat something sweet that isn't a carb. They don't prescribe aspartame; they just say don't leave ketosis.
- darcyparker 11y ago
  Really? Can you point to a source? Many people with epilepsy and migraines have discovered different food triggers. In my case Aspartame was the leading trigger. Anyone who has seizures should seek out and eliminate potential triggers to see if it helps. I suppose a high carb diet could be a trigger for someone... I didn't have a high carb diet... but I know eliminating aspartame helped me. I am still amazed how Donald Rumsfeld was able to influence its approval by the FDA.
  - AnkhMorporkian 11y ago
    They're likely referring to a ketogenic diet. They were quite common in the past before anticonvulsant meds were created, and are still used in intractable cases today, particularly in pediatric care. There's lots of information out there about their use in epilepsy. Some to get you started: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2898565/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2898565/ http://www.epilepsy.com/learn/treating-seizures-and-epilepsy/dietary-therapies/ketogenic-diet http://www.epilepsy.com/learn/treating-seizures-and-epilepsy... http://www.mayoclinic.org/medical-professionals/clinical-updates/neurosciences/pediatric-epilepsy-mayo-clinic-managing-seizures-related-comorbidities http://www.mayoclinic.org/medical-professionals/clinical-upd...
    - darcyparker 11y ago
      Interesting - thanks. [Edit] - The ketogenic diet is interesting. And I can see how some would want to substitute sugar for an artificial sweetener to help achieve a low carb diet. But given Aspartame is a known trigger for many types of seizures, it should be introduced carefully.
      - AnkhMorporkian 11y ago
        Do you have a source re: aspartame and seizures? I did a cursory search and the only non-anecdotal thing I could find was a study[1] that showed there was no link in people who described themselves as sensitive. [1] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7614911 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7614911
canvia 11y ago
That article has a lot of fear mongering about artificial sweeteners and then at the bottom an ad for "certifiedorganicevaporatedcanejuice.com". Maybe it's not the most objective source of information?
- jjoonathan 11y ago
  certified organic evaporated cane juice.com For those who struggle to parse without spaces :)
- darcyparker 11y ago
  Rumsfeld was the CEO at Searle - the makers of Aspartame... And he used his political influence to replace the FDA commissioner so Aspartame could be legalized. That's a conflict of interest.
  - sosborn 11y ago
    While scummy, that doesn't necessarily mean that Aspartame is dangerous.
    - b08aa8b0dcfce 11y ago
      It doesn't mean it's safe either. More importantly, it discredits completely the approval and its related studies.
  - jheriko 11y ago
    its legal in plenty of other places and the bulk of research (some very recent) seems to show that it is very safe within the constraints of those studies, with the well documented and understood exception of people with phenylketonuria. this makes it very hard for me to believe in the corruption argument, no one individual has the power or money to do something on that scale. maybe its a coordinated effort, but such arguments strain credibility. even if we assume corruption, it is not relevant to the safety discussion if we have piles of evidence that something is only dangerous in well understood cases. on the other hand, we will never really know for sure, and we don't even have a complete picture until enough people have been consuming it for long enough 'in the wild'... but the same is true about anything discovered recently. and of course, the individual case you point out is shocking regardless as to the safety of aspartame.
nathanvanfleet 11y ago
I got a job at a company that had free soda. I was happy with that. I started drinking 1 diet coke in the afternoon every day. until after a few weeks I realized I was also getting a headache in the afternoon everyday. Fixed by switching to Perrier over the Diet Coke.
- jleyank 11y ago
  Granted, one person is an anecdote not data but switching from coke to diet coke lost me 20 lbs in a year. 500-1000 calories less each day.
  - lucaspiller 11y ago
    You must have been drinking around 2 litres of Coke for that many calories. Have you tried switching from Diet Coke to water? You'll need a few trips to Starbucks a day (an americano has 0 kcal, it's like caffeinated air!) until you can reduce your caffiene dependence.
    - jleyank 11y ago
      Given the college or hacker environment, a six-pack or 2l over the course of 18 hours isn't a lot to drink. Healthy, no, but then neither is doing a 12" pizza solo and that was pretty commonplace as well. Coffee shops didn't exist, and even if they did, it's hard to beat a quarter a can. Hacking without caffeine? Gunna take a while...
MicroBerto 11y ago
You're definitely not alone. There's definitely a trend moving in this direction. We admittedly track the click data on our protein powder buyer's guide (https://blog.priceplow.com/guides/best-protein-powder https://blog.priceplow.com/guides/best-protein-powder) and far more people than you'd think have been choosing the natural sweetener path. But interestingly, the number of products is still incredibly small in comparison. Hmmm...
serf 11y ago
forgive me for asking perhaps an obvious question , but did you reduce overall caffeine intake by switching from diet coke, or did you stick to something with similar caffeine levels and still experience the reduction in seizures?
- darcyparker 11y ago
  I was 8 years old and my family rarely drank soda. I went from having a diet coke occasionally to occasionally having a regular coke, ginger ale, root beer, etc... So I don't recollect changing my periodic intake of caffeine. I didn't do a thorough study of it... and I recognize that the logic that aspartame was a trigger could be wrong. But when you find something that appears to work and later hear of others who identified the same potential trigger and fix, then you start to believe it may be true. Personally I don't think there have been sufficient studies to show a connection or not. But people who have seizures shouldn't rule it out.
  - maxerickson 11y ago
    But people who have seizures shouldn't rule it out. People that have any symptoms that correlate with consumption of foods shouldn't rule out anything a priori. Depending on the severity of the symptom and their desire to eat certain foods, they may want to experimentally narrow down the trigger. I guess I would not be inclined to eat artificial sweeteners in an attempt to see if they triggered a seizure.
  - throwwit 11y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenylketonuria https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenylketonuria
pgsandstrom 11y ago
Aspartame has been approved in many, many countries. It is unlikely that Rumsfeld influenced all of them.

ethanbond 11y ago

Interestingly enough, a low carbohydrate (often including a switch to artificial sweeteners) is a well-established treatment for childhood epilepsy.

vowelless 11y ago
The validity low carb diets is generally orthogonal to artificial sweeteners and probably should not be conflated.
- ethanbond 11y ago
  Thus the phrase "often including..." I wasn't attempting to disprove or contribute to his claims. Just to point out an interesting intersection of diet and seizures.
  - vowelless 11y ago
    Can you give a source for aspartame/artificial sweeteners being often included with low carb diet for treating childhood epilepsy? It doesn't seem intuitive to me that a diet to treat such a disease would often include something like aspartame.
    - ethanbond 11y ago
      Well a ketogenic diet is used to treat epilepsy, and artificial sweeteners don't generally conflict with ketosis. I didn't mean to imply artificial sweeteners are prescribed to epileptics. Maybe they're even specifically forbidden as well, I'm not sure.
    - darkarmani 11y ago
      > It doesn't seem intuitive to me that a diet to treat such a disease would often include something like aspartame. It's the avoiding carbs part that means they look to eat something sweet that isn't a carb. They don't prescribe aspartame; they just say don't leave ketosis.
darcyparker 11y ago
Really? Can you point to a source? Many people with epilepsy and migraines have discovered different food triggers. In my case Aspartame was the leading trigger. Anyone who has seizures should seek out and eliminate potential triggers to see if it helps. I suppose a high carb diet could be a trigger for someone... I didn't have a high carb diet... but I know eliminating aspartame helped me. I am still amazed how Donald Rumsfeld was able to influence its approval by the FDA.
- AnkhMorporkian 11y ago
  They're likely referring to a ketogenic diet. They were quite common in the past before anticonvulsant meds were created, and are still used in intractable cases today, particularly in pediatric care. There's lots of information out there about their use in epilepsy. Some to get you started: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2898565/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2898565/ http://www.epilepsy.com/learn/treating-seizures-and-epilepsy/dietary-therapies/ketogenic-diet http://www.epilepsy.com/learn/treating-seizures-and-epilepsy... http://www.mayoclinic.org/medical-professionals/clinical-updates/neurosciences/pediatric-epilepsy-mayo-clinic-managing-seizures-related-comorbidities http://www.mayoclinic.org/medical-professionals/clinical-upd...
  - darcyparker 11y ago
    Interesting - thanks. [Edit] - The ketogenic diet is interesting. And I can see how some would want to substitute sugar for an artificial sweetener to help achieve a low carb diet. But given Aspartame is a known trigger for many types of seizures, it should be introduced carefully.
    - AnkhMorporkian 11y ago
      Do you have a source re: aspartame and seizures? I did a cursory search and the only non-anecdotal thing I could find was a study[1] that showed there was no link in people who described themselves as sensitive. [1] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7614911 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7614911

canvia 11y ago

That article has a lot of fear mongering about artificial sweeteners and then at the bottom an ad for "certifiedorganicevaporatedcanejuice.com". Maybe it's not the most objective source of information?

jjoonathan 11y ago
certified organic evaporated cane juice.com For those who struggle to parse without spaces :)
darcyparker 11y ago
Rumsfeld was the CEO at Searle - the makers of Aspartame... And he used his political influence to replace the FDA commissioner so Aspartame could be legalized. That's a conflict of interest.
- sosborn 11y ago
  While scummy, that doesn't necessarily mean that Aspartame is dangerous.
  - b08aa8b0dcfce 11y ago
    It doesn't mean it's safe either. More importantly, it discredits completely the approval and its related studies.
- jheriko 11y ago
  its legal in plenty of other places and the bulk of research (some very recent) seems to show that it is very safe within the constraints of those studies, with the well documented and understood exception of people with phenylketonuria. this makes it very hard for me to believe in the corruption argument, no one individual has the power or money to do something on that scale. maybe its a coordinated effort, but such arguments strain credibility. even if we assume corruption, it is not relevant to the safety discussion if we have piles of evidence that something is only dangerous in well understood cases. on the other hand, we will never really know for sure, and we don't even have a complete picture until enough people have been consuming it for long enough 'in the wild'... but the same is true about anything discovered recently. and of course, the individual case you point out is shocking regardless as to the safety of aspartame.

nathanvanfleet 11y ago

I got a job at a company that had free soda. I was happy with that. I started drinking 1 diet coke in the afternoon every day. until after a few weeks I realized I was also getting a headache in the afternoon everyday. Fixed by switching to Perrier over the Diet Coke.

jleyank 11y ago
Granted, one person is an anecdote not data but switching from coke to diet coke lost me 20 lbs in a year. 500-1000 calories less each day.
- lucaspiller 11y ago
  You must have been drinking around 2 litres of Coke for that many calories. Have you tried switching from Diet Coke to water? You'll need a few trips to Starbucks a day (an americano has 0 kcal, it's like caffeinated air!) until you can reduce your caffiene dependence.
  - jleyank 11y ago
    Given the college or hacker environment, a six-pack or 2l over the course of 18 hours isn't a lot to drink. Healthy, no, but then neither is doing a 12" pizza solo and that was pretty commonplace as well. Coffee shops didn't exist, and even if they did, it's hard to beat a quarter a can. Hacking without caffeine? Gunna take a while...

MicroBerto 11y ago

You're definitely not alone. There's definitely a trend moving in this direction. We admittedly track the click data on our protein powder buyer's guide (https://blog.priceplow.com/guides/best-protein-powder https://blog.priceplow.com/guides/best-protein-powder) and far more people than you'd think have been choosing the natural sweetener path. But interestingly, the number of products is still incredibly small in comparison. Hmmm...

serf 11y ago

forgive me for asking perhaps an obvious question , but did you reduce overall caffeine intake by switching from diet coke, or did you stick to something with similar caffeine levels and still experience the reduction in seizures?

darcyparker 11y ago
I was 8 years old and my family rarely drank soda. I went from having a diet coke occasionally to occasionally having a regular coke, ginger ale, root beer, etc... So I don't recollect changing my periodic intake of caffeine. I didn't do a thorough study of it... and I recognize that the logic that aspartame was a trigger could be wrong. But when you find something that appears to work and later hear of others who identified the same potential trigger and fix, then you start to believe it may be true. Personally I don't think there have been sufficient studies to show a connection or not. But people who have seizures shouldn't rule it out.
- maxerickson 11y ago
  But people who have seizures shouldn't rule it out. People that have any symptoms that correlate with consumption of foods shouldn't rule out anything a priori. Depending on the severity of the symptom and their desire to eat certain foods, they may want to experimentally narrow down the trigger. I guess I would not be inclined to eat artificial sweeteners in an attempt to see if they triggered a seizure.
- throwwit 11y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenylketonuria https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenylketonuria

pgsandstrom 11y ago

Aspartame has been approved in many, many countries. It is unlikely that Rumsfeld influenced all of them.