Aspartame Dangers

In my weight loss hypnosis sessions I repeatedly implant the suggestion to “make healthy food choices”, but how are you supposed to know what’s healthy when deadly poisons are labeled as sugar-free “diet food”?

I’m specifically talking about the chemical food additive Aspartame, which is a sugar substitute found in over 6,000 food products.

Why Am I Writing An Article On A Sugar Substitute?

After all, I’m a hypnotist not a nutritionist. Well it’s because your mind and your body work together. Your behavior is a result of your thinking. Nutritional education alone won’t help you lose weight if you’re still emotionally addicted to foods. And while Hypnosis can easily break you of those food cravings, you also need to know what constitutes healthy eating habits.

As the tens of thousands of people who have attended my Hypnosis for Weight Loss Seminars or listened to my Weight Loss Hypnosis CDs know, all the motivation and good intentions in the world won’t help you lose weight if you then make poor eating choices.

Unfortunately, because of improper education and deceptive labeling practices on the part of the diet industry, people often think they’re making healthy eating choices by substituting sugar with those colorful little packets. The truth is that those artificial sugar substitutes are not healthy, they’re not safe, and they’re actually making you fatter.

The Truth About Aspartame

Aspartame is the artificial sweetener found in thousands of diet foods. It’s also marketed as a sugar substitute under the names “Equal” and “NutraSweet”. The next time you reach for a diet soda or sugar-free chewing gum, check the list of ingredients, you’ll probably find that it contains Aspartame.

It’s absolutely mind-blowing to me that this stuff is still legal, when you consider that the FDA itself has reported that Aspartame accounts for 75% of all complaints of adverse reactions to our food supply.

Just because the FDA approves the use of a chemical additive doesn’t mean it’s safe (Saccharine anyone? How about some Fen-phen?) As you digest Aspartame it breaks down into several other chemicals as it makes it’s way through your body. Guess what it breaks down into…

• Methanol (which is also known as wood alcohol and is a deadly poison)
• Formaldehyde (a deadly neurotoxin in the same class as cyanide and arsenic))
• Free Form Aspartic Acid (which has been linked to serious neurological disorders)
• Phenylalanine (decreases serotonin which can cause mood swings and depression)

Not surprisingly, the presence of this chemical poison in your body results in a number of side effects. I won’t list some of the more sensational (and therefore controversial) side effects. I’ll just stick with some of the garden variety side effects. I think they’ll more than make the point.

Some Of The MANY Reported Side Effects Of Aspartame Are:

• Headaches
• Dizziness
• Depression
• Fatigue
• Anxiety
• Irritability
• Hair Loss
• Hearing Loss
• Memory Loss
• Vision Problems
• Sleep Problems
• Abdominal Pain
• Weight Gain

Let’s just address that last side effect for now: Weight Gain.

How Does Aspartame Cause Weight Gain?

You probably think you’re doing something proactive to reduce your weight and increase your health when you drink a diet soda because it has less calories than a regular soda, right?

The reality though is that the Aspartame in that drink has dozens of very unhealthy side effects, not the least of which is that it increases your appetite.

So even though you’re taking in fewer calories by drinking that diet soda, you’re going to start feeling hungry and end up consuming even more calories from other foods than you would have in the first place. Does that make sense? I hope so.

The bottom line is: You’re not really reducing your caloric intake when you drink that Diet Coke because it’s going to make you hungry.

What About All Those Other Symptoms?

Most people just take a pill for these symptoms and remain unaware of the cause. The symptoms compound though and become worse over time. The next thing you know, you’re taking even more pills which cause even more side effects. American’s are now taking so much medication that they can’t even absorb it all and are peeing it back out into what becomes our drinking water (but that’s a subject for another article).

I’m not saying that if you suffer from some of these symptoms it’s necessarily because of Aspartame. I am saying that you can easily eliminate one of the causes of all of these symptoms at once. So why not do it?

Is There A Debate About Aspartame Side Effects?

Yes. Have you noticed that whenever a product that generates billions of dollars in profits is found to be unsafe, there’s a debate about it? Big corporations don’t just give those products up without a fight. They sponsor their own research and have their own objectives.

No one seems to be debating if Aspartame is bad for you. They’re just debating about the severity of the side effects and how much exposure to the stuff will produce them.

Why take the risk? What’s the upside? A few less calories? You know what, if you really want a Coke then just have a Coke. Don’t make yourself nuts about all this stuff.

Sure it’s better not to have ANY soft drinks at all, but the objective is better health, not food fascism. Drink water whenever possible. Limit the amount of soft drinks you consume. And when you do have soda don’t have a “diet soda”. Simple.

Make that one behavioral change on the outside while using self hypnosis to reduce your stress and your food cravings on the inside and you will create the conditions for better health and easy weight loss.

NOTE: Comments are now closed. Here is what was posted…

Dr. Deanna Freedman

Joshua,
I’ve been telling my patients this exact information on supposedly “healthy” sugar substitues for years. Patient after patient reports losing weight after elimitaing these artificial sweeteners from their diets and lifestyles. Not only are they happy with the weight loss, they are thrilled that their energy levels are better, the headaches are gone, the food cravings and “hunger” pains are much much reduced, and their mood swings have dissapated. Thank you for helping to expose the wide spread myth that diet foods are healthy.

Sherri

Hi Joshua Seth,
Thanks for taking the time to write this article. Can you shed some light on Splenda sometime? I know it isn’t Aspartame, but does it have similar side effects and problems? Or is Splenda ok? Thank you

Joshua Seth

Hi Sherri,
I’m glad you mentioned Splenda, which is actually the synthetic chemical Sucralose. It’s basically chlorinated sugar. It’s not a naturally occurring substance, It’s undergone very little human testing. And it’s being used as a sugar substitute in thousands of diet foods.

It’s yet another example of the diet industry telling people that they can have something for nothing. You can NEVER (and I use that word very rarely, as Socrates cautions against it) never have something for nothing in this life. You’ll always pay some sort of a price for it.

You want sugar, it comes with calories. You want chemical substitutes, they come with side effects. You want neither calories nor chemicals, you don’t get to eat sweet foods.

The choice is yours. Hopefully this information will at least empower your decision making process. Personally, I like local honey!

LA

First, thanks for the aspartame info. I think it also “tricks” the body into behaving as if it just consumed sugar. Even if you have eaten a large meal and feel very full, if you drank a diet soda w/aspartame, in it in an hour or so you would probably feel hungry again.

Second, I replaced my water heater a few weeks ago. Six years ago, before moving in, all new copper water pipe was installed in the house. When the fittings were removed to replace the w.h. the lumens of the pipes only had a pencil sized hole in the middle for water to get through. The rest was filled with sticky gooey black sludge. This was cold as well as hot and from a fairly major metropolitan area water supplier. I am telling you this so that you’ll realize the importance of using a filter of some sort for your water.

Joshua Seth

Hi LA,
that IS an important point about using a water filter. I will write an article about this soon. Certain filters are more effective than others. Thanks for brining it up

Janelle

wow…i just looked at my sugarless gum and it does have aspartame…thanks for writing this article I find it really helpful

Helene Zemel

Very informative blog post. If you want some sweetness, you are probably better off with a small amount of raw sugar or better yet, honey than these artificial produts. I understand that Stevia is a good, natural sugar substitute.
Helene

Rob Rasner

Thats a great article, i recently cut Diet Coke out of my diet, ONLY, and still tend to eat bad foods, BUT just cutting out DIET soda, and subsituting Straight Iced Tea, with no sweetner, or just water i lost 27 lbs in 3 weeks! crazy!

Sandy

Interesting that you mention Splenda. I’ve been trying for a couple of years and started drinking my water with those little packets to flavor your water with Splenda. I’ve been suffering all of the sudden with a lot of headaches and haven’t been able to figure out why, but my water/packets intake is substantial. I think I’ll try just water for a while and see if I see a difference. PS.. my doctor told me Splenda was safe, but to stay away from aspartame.

Carol Guilford

To the person who asked about Splenda, Dr. Janet Starr Hull is the expert… her web site is http://www.sweetpoison.com Her book “Sweet Poison” is the story of how she cured her “Graves Disease”, a thyroid condition when she stopped using aspartame.

For anyone who doesn’t believe aspartame is a deadly poison, here are some very graphic pictures from a study done by a private citizen. Thanks for reading.

Grace

You know, it’s amazing that you’re bringing this up. I just so happened to make a big mental note to myself that I need to lay off the diet cokes. I am trying my best to stay away from caffein and I’ve done really well since about February. I’ve had a diet coke, maybe twice? I’ve known for a while that aspartame is bad for you (there was a time when I’d drink nothing but diet coke all day and hardly eat a thing, and eventually I started getting a lot of those symptoms that you mentioned, AND my speech started to slur), but I’ve always just pushed it to the back of my mind and tried to use the excuse, “you only live once and you’re going to die eventually anyway.” Well, I’ve chosen to take care of my body as best I can this one chance I get

dan stone

thanks for your comments on weight lost and im mtrying my best to quit drinking sodas.

Sharon Hoover

I sat through the seminar on the cruise for weight loss on Sat afternoon. Was very intrigued as I knew I needed to “give up” the diet Coke. I had my last “drink” of the stuff on Sun a.m., actually throwing the entire can away, less the one drink and have not wanted one since and it has been 6 weeks now. In fact the thought of having a diet Coke is just repulsive.
Thanks,
Sharon

PS – I don’t know if it was the hypnosis or not, but I did not have any headaches from the lack of caffeine.

PAUL SMITH

I HAVE BEEN USING STEVIA FOR OVER 2 YEARS WITH NO SIDE EFFECTS, NOT SO WITH ASPARTAME OR SPLENDA.
PROBLEMS WITH GAS AND BLOTTING. I HAVE USED STEVIA FOR COLD DRINKS, HOT DRINKS AND EVEN BAKED WITH IT, NO PROBLEM AT ALL.I FLATLY REFUSE TO PURCHASE “ANY”PRODUCT WITH THE POISON ASPARTAME OR SPLENDA. WE NEED TO CONTACT ALL MANUFACTURES
AND DEMAND THEY STOP USING ASPARPOISON.

Joshua Seth

While I appreciate the passion everyone is expressing over this issue, I really don’t think aspartame or splenda are going to go away anytime soon.

Ultimately, we are all responsible for ourselves, so I suggest leading by example. The absolute best way to influence the behavior of others is to be a shining example of the kind of behavior we ourselves idealize.

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