From: Dr. Betty Martini, D.Hum., Bettym19@mindspring.com
To: WebEditors-newsweek.com
Date: Fri, Jul 04, 2008 5:33 pm
Subject: Attack of the Diet Cokes! Newsweek The Addiction and weight gain with Aspartame
It's not the caffeine, it's the aspartame. It has free methyl alcohol which is classified as a
narcotic. It causes chronic methanol poisoning which affects the dopamine system of the brain and causes the addiction. Here is Dr. H. J. Roberts report on the addiction published in Townsend Letter for Doctors: http://www.dorway.com/tldaddic.html
Aspartame (NutraSweet/Equal/Spoonful/Canderel/E951/Benevia) is an addictive excitoneurotoxic carcinogenic drug that interacts with virtually all drugs and vaccines. Here are the references:
Aspartame Disease: An Ignored Epidemic
http://www.sunsentpress.com by H. J. Roberts, M.D.
1000 page medical text on this plague.
Excitotoxins: The Taste That Kills
by Neurosurgeon Russell Blaylock, M.D., http://www.russellblaylockmd.com
Aspartame Documentary on how its poisoned the world: Sweet Misery: A Poisoned World
http://www.soundandfury.tv
Dying for a Diet Coke: http://www.rense.com/general78/dying.htm
Aspartame Toxicity Center: http://www.holisticmed.com/aspartame
Aspartame Detox Program: What To Do If You Have Used Aspartame: http://www.wnho.net/wtdaspartame.htm
Aspartame Information List, http://www.mpwhi.com scroll down to banners
These athletes using aspartame are an accident about to happen: (or anyone for that matter) http://www.mpwhi.com/george_carlin_and_diet_coke.htm
Here's how aspartame makes you gain weight:
ASPARTAME MAKES YOU FATTER!
Position Statement from Dr. Sandra Cabot
Mission Possible Australia
http://www.liverdoctor.com
Posted: 22 July 2006
I have been a medical doctor for over 25 years and have clinical and research interests in the liver and metabolism. I have authored several best selling health books including the "Liver Cleansing Diet", "The Body Shaping Diet", "Don't Let Your Hormones Ruin Your Life", "Women's Health", "Menopause and Natural Hormone Replacement Therapy" and I lecture internationally on these subjects. I have been consulted by thousands of patients with weight problems, hormonal imbalances, fatty liver, sluggish metabolism and chronic ill health. I have been an advocate and practitioner of nutritional methods of healing for 30 years. I regularly appear on national television and broadcast on many radio stations to educate people about the importance of a healthy liver in achieving good health and weight control!
In the interests of public health I am making a position statement concerning the use of the artificial sweetener called aspartame and sold most commonly under the names of NutraSweet and Equal. One must ask, "why do millions of people ingest a toxic chemical like aspartame everyday"? To me it appears ridiculous and I believe that it is because people have been brainwashed into thinking aspartame will keep their weight down and is good for health. It also shows me that we have lost touch with our own natural senses and instincts.
After having been consulted by thousands of overweight people suffering with problems concerning the liver and/or metabolism I can assure you that aspartame will not help you in any way, indeed it will help you to gain unwanted weight. This has been my experience, and there are logical reasons to explain the fattening and bloating effects of aspartame. When you ingest the toxic chemical aspartame it is absorbed from the intestines and passes immediately to the LIVER where it is taken inside the liver via the liver filter. The liver then breaks down or metabolizes aspartame to its toxic components - phenylalanine, aspartic acid and methanol. This process requires a lot of energy from the liver which means there will be less energy remaining in the liver cells. This means the liver cells will have less energy for fat burning and metabolism, which will result in fat storing. Excess fat may build up inside the liver cells causing "fatty liver" and when this starts to occur it is extremely difficult to lose weight. In my vast experience any time that you overload the liver you will increase the tendency to gain weight easily.
Aspartame also causes weight gain by other mechanisms ---Causes unstable blood sugar levels, which increases the appetite and causes cravings for sweets/sugar. Thus it is particularly toxic for those with diabetes or epilepsy. Causes fluid retention giving the body a puffy and bloated appearance. This makes people look fatter than they are and increases cellulite.
To discover more about the liver look up my web site - http://www.liverdoctor.com, and to learn more about natural sugars that are better for the liver and weight, read my books "The Liver Cleansing Diet" and "Boost Your Energy". To order see your book store, or call Ten Speed Press or call 1-888-75-Liver
COMMENTS BY DR. BETTY MARTINI:
Also with regard to obesity and aspartame, the Trocho Study in Barcelona in l998 showed that the formaldehyde converted from the free methyl alcohol accumulates in the cells and damages DNA with most toxicity in the liver but substantial toxicity in the adipose tissue or fat cells. Further a recent epidemiological study by Sharon Fowler at the University of Texas in 2005 linked diet drinks with obesity.
In the Congressional Record, Senate, S - 5511, May 7, l985, and part of the protest of the National Soft Drink Assn, now American Beverage, is this Statement:
"Aspartame has been demonstrated to inhibit the carbohydrate-induced synthesis of the neurotransmitter serotonin (Wurtman affidavit). Serotonin blunts the sensation of craving carbohydrates and this is part of the body's feedback system that helps limit consumption of carbohydrate to appropriate levels. Its inhibition by aspartame could lead to the anomalous result of a diet product causing increased consumption of carbohydrates."
So as far as product liability is concerned you have companies marketing an addictive excitoneurotoxic carcinogenic drug to the population as a sugarfree diet product knowing full well this is causing obesity. They also know that aspartame is addictive and that the methanol component is classified as a narcotic. Aspartame liberates free methyl alcohol causing chronic methanol poisoning. This affects the dopamine system of the brain causing the addiction.
Dr. Betty Martini, D.Hum.
Founder, Mission Possible World Health International
9270 River Club Parkway
Duluth, Georgia 30097
770-242-2599
E-Mail: BettyM19@mindspring.com
http://www.wpwhi.com
http://www.whno.net
http://www.dorway.com
Aspartame Toxicity Center: http://www.holisticmed.com/aspartame
Attack of the Diet Cokes
It's the one addiction people will admit to. But will Diet Cokenow 25 years oldbe the same if it comes with vitamins?
Jerry Adler
Newsweek Web Exclusive
For most of the last century vice was defined by critic Alexander Woollcott's remark that everything he liked was "illegal, immoral or fattening." That, though, was before the invention of Diet Coke. "It's my one vice," says Amy Stensrud, a 46-year-old Seattle mother of two, who buys a 32-ounce container of Diet Coke at a 7-Eleven every morning, right after the gym. She has in effect defined vice upward as something "inconsistent with my values," which was never Woollcott's problem with bathtub gin.
But now her only sin is in danger of being transformed into a virtue, as Coke rolls out a new version of Diet Coke with added vitamins and minerals. Blue-capped bottles of Diet Coke Plus will begin showing up in stores this week, empty of calories but containing 10 to 15 percent of the daily requirement of niacin, zinc, magnesium and vitamins B6 and B12. It isn't meant to replace Diet Coke, now the third best-selling soft drink in America, after Coke Classic and Pepsi; it's just a part of Coke's plan to conquer the world by making so many kinds of soda that stores won't have room for anything else. Competition is especially fierce now in the $70 billion soft-drink market. For the first time in recent history, the amount of soda sold in the United States more than 16 billion gallons fell in 2005, and again in 2006. Diet Coke Plus, says John Sicher, publisher of Beverage Digest, stands at the convergence of two powerful trends: the rise of diet drinks (30 percent of the soda market, up from 25 percent in 2000) and the move toward "functional" products such as sports drinks. According to Coke spokesman Scott Williamson, Diet Coke Plus will be advertised with slogans that merely imply it's good for you ("Your best friend just got friendlier!") without making any health claims. To do otherwise, he said, "would reinforce the false notion that soft drinks are unhealthy to begin with."
Diet Coke Plus grew out of what Williamson calls Coke's "ongoing dialogue" with its customers. The same process gave rise to the dozen or so permutations of Coke on the market, including Diet Coke in 1982, followed by Diet Cherry Coke and Diet Coke Cherry (the same thing), and Coca-Cola Zero, a no-cal drink for men who are put off by the feminine connotations of "diet." Diet Coke Plus tastes something like Diet Coke, but sweeter, because it contains both aspartame and a sweetener called acesulfame potassium. Its choice of added nutrients seems somewhat arbitrary and doesn't include the one substance that might arguably be useful, calcium. "What's the point of adding vitamins to a soft drink?" wonders nutritionist Marion Nestle of NYU. "You can take a multivitamin pill. You can even take it with a Diet Coke."
You might need to, if you're a Diet Coke fanatic like Victoria Beckham, the former Posh Spice, who drinks almost nothing else and claims to hate the taste of water. Diet Coke is the one addiction that public figures willingly own up to. It's the only beverage in the back of producer Harvey Weinstein's limo, and makes up one half the diet of Florida State football coach Bobby Bowden. The other half consists of peanuts. A 12-ounce can of Diet Coke, which may contain from a third to half the amount of caffeine in eight ounces of coffee, is the breakfast drink of choice for many college students. "I like that fake sugar taste," says Stanford sophomore Margot Markman, who usually has the first of four daily 16-ounce cups from her sorority's fountain at 8:15. It is one of the few things you can buy at a gas station that's also an object of connoisseurship. Kristen Scaletta, a senior at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., who recently cut back from about a gallon of Diet Coke a day to three quarts, drinks it only from cans, preferably at room temperature a taste she formed as a child when she had to sneak it past her parents to drink in her bedroom. Other people insist on the flavor of Diet Coke from liter bottles, or McDonald's.
Taste aside, what makes Diet Coke so addictive? Caffeine produces physical dependence, as anyone who has suffered through the headaches of coffee withdrawal can testify. But addiction specialists pooh-pooh the idea that people can be "addicted" to soda, in the sense that it interferes with normal life. The other obvious point about it is that it has no calories. Not everyone who drinks it is trying to lose weight, but presumably none of them cares to subject her body to the 1,120 calories in eight cans a day of regular Coke. The role of diet sodas in weight loss is a contentious area of research. "Studies suggest that diet drinks can bump calories out of the diet short term," says Dr. David Katz, a public-health specialist at Yale, "but that people compensate over time by eating more sugar." An unpublished seven-year study by Sharon Fowler of the University of Texas found that the more diet sodas people drank, the more likely they were to be overweight although that doesn't prove cause and effect. Fitness guru Richard Simmons estimates that 85 percent of the people who come to him to lose weight drink diet soda habitually.
People do worry about the health effects of diet soft drinks. There is some research to suggest that all colas, not diet ones in particular, may contribute to bone loss in women, but all the evidence isn't in yet. A new study found that the acid in sodas erodes tooth enamel (although full-sugar versions, and citrus flavors, are worse). As for artificial sweeteners, a study of the literature by Valerie Duffy of the University of Connecticut suggests they're safe. "They've all been through extensive testing," she says, "for acute toxicity, chronic toxicity, carcinogenic potential, effects on fertility, lactation, fetal development" and about six other things. To reach the FDA's "acceptable daily intake" of aspartamewhich itself has a wide margin of safety" you'd have to drink 18 cans of Diet Coke every day of your life," says Hud Englehart, a.spokesman for aspartame's manufacturer, NutraSweet. (The actual figure, Duffy points out, varies with the person's weight.) "It's pretty hard to drink that much."
Mr. Englehart, meet Rich Underkofler, a 47-year-old from Euclid, Ohio. "I drink this stuff like crazy," Underkofler says. "I don't even go to restaurants that don't serve Diet Coke." Checking his refrigerator one night last week, he found two 12-packs. That would last him, he figured, a little more than a day.
With Matthew Philips, Anne Underwood, Karen Springen and Joan Raymond
URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/34923