Mastodawn

Aspartame's long-term health risks revealed in new study

When the researchers conducted spatial learning and memory tests using the Barnes maze, the aspartame mice at four months consistently moved more slowly and covered less distance during training than animals in the control group. They also took nearly twice as long on average to locate the target escape hole, showing impaired memory recall (however, this was inconsistent and not seen as statistically meaningful). By eight months, performance gaps widened even further, with two out of six aspartame-treated mice failing to complete the task at all.

It makes you dumb, unfit and fat (around the organs).

Long-term aspartame intake sabotages brain and heart function

In the first long-term and real-world reflective study of its kind, scientists have uncovered new detrimental health impacts of the artificial sweetener aspartame that echoes those found in shorter research.

New Atlas

TheTechnician27 Dec 22

Here’s the actual open-access study instead of clickbait tabloid trash. One of the study’s conclusions is pretty chilling:

Until the neurological sequelae of aspartame are better understood, children and adolescents should probably avoid aspartame as far as possible,

I always tend to avoid stuff with the “Diet” or “sugar free” labels, just for this reason.
And it didn’t require a study to convince me that random stuff that is not a part of nutrition, is better off being out of a regular diet.
But it definitely takes a study to validate my concerns.

Lumidaub Dec 22

Fiber also has no nutritional value.

Still a part of nutrition though, no?

Lumidaub Dec 22

How so?

SaveTheTuaHawk Dec 22

Natural fiber foods have other critical nutrients that benefit the host, as well as positive effects on the microbiome.

Lumidaub Dec 22

I wasn’t asking about what else might be in foods that contain fiber though. Artificial sweeteners can also be in foods that also contain nutrients.

Sterile_Technique Dec 22

Over the course of the year-long experiment, the most significant changes were seen in how the brain processed energy. Using FDG-PET imaging, the researchers tracked glucose uptake across the whole brain as well as specific regions, and found that after only two months of intermittent aspartame intake, the mice had sharp rises here – roughly double that seen in the control group. And this effect was across the entire brain, suggesting it was burning more fuel in the early stages of the experiment. However, at around six months, this spike actually reversed, and at the 10-month mark, the brains of the aspartame-dosed mice were burning around 50% less glucose than the control group. Because the brain runs almost entirely on glucose – to fuel processes like the firing of neurons and maintaining circuits linked to memory and learning – aspartame appeared to be robbing the organ of what it needs to function smoothly.

Were they getting enough glucose in addition to the aspartame? The article didn’t make it clear whether we’re seeing the effects of aspartame or just hypoglycemia.

Jollyllama Dec 22

Phew, thank God I’m not a mouse. I’ll keep drinking my diet sodas.

SaveTheTuaHawk Dec 22

Water is an option.

Jollyllama Dec 22

Yeah, water loaded with fluoride, estrogens and heavy metals. I’ll stick to my diet coke

ProdigalFrog Dec 22

Fluoride has no known negative effects on adults in the amounts found in most drinking water.

Heavy metals and estrogens (if your area is particularly polluted? You can usually find reports of exactly how clean your local water is) are easily filtered out with a cheap undersink carbon block filter (it will also remove chlorine, as a nice side-effect).

Jollyllama Dec 22

If fluoride has no negative effects then explain why I am so stupid?

ProdigalFrog Dec 22

Fluoride actually can potentially, maybe have a negative effect on cognition/IQ in infants or developing children, but the research claiming that is pretty sketch. Reactions did a solid video on it, if you’re interested.

What the Research Actually Says About Fluoride in Drinking Water

YouTube

pr0sp3kt Dec 22

Water tastes like shit

Ricky Rigatoni Dec 22

There is something genuinely wrong with your country’s water delivery system.

pr0sp3kt Dec 22

No, really, water tastes like shit after you eat your lunch. Can’t be comparable to take ANY soft drink after that. Facts.

🇰 🌀 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 🇮 Dec 22

Have you tried clean, distilled water? Water should be pretty much flavorless. You’re tasting what’s in the water.

rowinxavier Dec 22

Before you take this to mean anything about why you should do, you are not a mouse. This is a study in mice and the differences between what impacts it will have in mice and humans may be very large. Mice are not good human analogues, but they are very cheap and good model organisms.

The findings they report include weight loss and cardiac/neurological impacts. This appears to compound over time with worse impacts as the study continued. This would make sense if the impact of aspartame was a slow chronic toxin or inhibited some normal pathway. If it is the former then avoiding aspartame for mice is important at all times. If it is the latter then having a break every so often should ameliorate the damage, though how much and what time ratio is not tested here.

That said, this is in mice. In my experience human brains a fairly different from mouse brains and the metabolic context is also quite different. I doubt the applicability of this to humans will be replicated well any time soon. If they do find an issue it is likely to be different to what happened to the mice, and though it is possible this will carry over to humans it is unlikely.

Agent641 Dec 22

Also to point out, this doesn’t implicate any other artificial sweetemers. If you’re in Australia, the sweetenersight be listed by code rather than name:

rowinxavier Dec 23

Also you will usually find 950 (aspartame) along with 951 (acesulfame K) because the two have slightly different profiles and work very well together. If we do a study on humans I would want it to include the common and also some uncommon combinations. A lot of people are switching over to erythritol and stevia but I don’t know how safe they are. We make erythritol internally but the dose may be quite different, and coming in through the gut could be quite different to internal production, not to mention with the stevia as actually prepared not lab purified.

ProdigalFrog Dec 23

Erythritol in particular actually had a study recently that was also concerning

Erythritol and cardiovascular events

Higher blood levels of the artificial sweetener erythritol were associated with increased risk of heart attack and stroke.

National Institutes of Health (NIH)

We have an unfortunate monkey paw thing regarding this in the UK now then

We introduced a sugar tax a few years ago to try and reduce the amount of sugar in food, it has been quite successful in that regard. However in many, many places, aspartame is the substitute ingredient.

Most cases you can avoid given it’s generally unhealthier food, but I’m not a monk, so I’m going to consume junk on occasion.