Q.Do artificial sweeteners affect patients with type 1 diabetes and patients with type 2 diabetes differently? A. Approximately 10 to 15 percent of diabetic patients have type 1 (formerly called juvenile) diabetes, and the rest have so-called adult-onset or insulin-dependent (type 2) diabetes. In type 1 diabetes, which may be largely an autoimmune effect early in life, there is a marked decrease in the amount of insulin produced. In patients with type 2 diabetes, especially among those who are overweight, there is still considerable insulin. In many of my earlier studies in the 1960's, we showed an "exhaustion" effect with hyperinsulinism, leading into diabetes-which is why I call it diabetogenic hyperinsulinism. Thus, aspartame products can affect both types of diabetes, albeit through different mechanisms.
Q. How do you know if your pancreas is being damaged by aspartame? A. We can check the blood sugar (glucose) in various ways-either randomly or during the course of glucose tolerance testing. A person's blood glucose level may decrease, with a tendency toward hypoglycemia, or it may go up, as a tendency toward diabetes. Of course, this occurs in a cyclic manner because we change metabolically as the day goes along. Early in the evolution of the diabetogenic tendency, elevations may not show up in the morning but they do so later in the day.
In the early 1960's, I devised the afternoon glucose tolerance test; the glucose load is given at noon, and blood glucose and insulin levels are followed. The more dramatic rise in insulin later in the day than in the morning also has been shown in five or six different animal species. In people who are potentially diabetic, one can show these changes by a grossly diabetic glucose tolerance response with a marked increase or decrease in insulin.
In terms of pancreatic enzymes, more studies are required; considerable loss of pancreatic functioning occurs before these changes are evident. Of course, if someone has severe pancreatitis induced by aspartame, it could influence both the secretions and insulin production. A number of patients have shown this dual problem clinically.
Q. What can be done to protect the pancreas from aspartame? A. I think that aspartame products should be taken off the market because of my belief this artificial sweetener is an imminent public health hazard. I have stated this recommendation to Congress and have mentioned it in many articles and texts.
Q. Can sugar damage the pancreas? A. Sugar might be one of the contributing factors leading to the exhaustion of the insulin reserve, and, ultimately, to diabetes. Sugar can also cause changes in triglyceride and cholesterol levels and can lead to carbohydrate-induced hypertriglyceridemia (high serum triglyceride levels).
Q. How do sweeteners affect hypoglycemic patients? A. Sweeteners cause an increased elaboration of insulin, especially as the day goes on and during the night, when the brain is most vulnerable to decreased circulating glucose levels. Glucose is the central nervous system's chief source of energy. It is during the night when many of the complications of hypoglycemia occur.
Q. Why do you think pancreatitis is increasing? A. There are many causes of pancreatitis; it can be related to alcohol use and other factors. In this case, there has to be more thinking about the contributory role of dietary products containing aspartame. Then there is the matter of pancreatic cancer, the incidence of which has decidedly increased. Whether aspartame or other sweeteners are related to this increase has yet to be determined.
Q. Why do you think pancreatic cancer is on the rise? A. Cancer of the pancreas is definitely on the increase, but the reasons are not clear. Certainly,if you have a substance that can irritate the pancreas, as with aspartame products, corporate-neutral studies are in order.
Q. Why does type 1 diabetes seem to be on the rise? A. I think there is a spectrum. Today we use the terms "type 1" and "type 2" diabetes. In my earlier publications on diabetogenic hyperinsulinism, I pointed out that this is probably the same disorder seen in different age groups. The tendency to hyperinsulinism is a biological trait that we have inherited. Before the 20th century, it was a defense mechanism against famine. The extra insulin laid down more body fat, which gave people metabolic protection in times of famine. As we changed our diet radically with the consumption of a large amount of carbohydrates and more calories and a change in our lifestyle and eating habits-this protective mechanism became a pathogenic mechanism culminating in obesity, changes in lipid metabolism, heart disease, and other problems.
Q. How accurate is the glucose tolerance test, and how do sweeteners affect it? A. The glucose tolerance test must be done under proper circumstances. Patients should consume adequate calories for at least several days before the test. Under general circumstances, it is a helpful test to see whether people have a tendency to diabetes and hyperinsulinism. As noted, the patient's carbohydrate metabolism and insulin release may be more accurately shown later in the day and by conventional morning glucose tolerance testing.
Q. How effective are the hemoglobin A^sub 1C^ tests? A. An elevated glycosylated hemoglobin level (above 6 percent) can indicate the average increased glucose concentration over the previous several weeks. It is a useful parameter for diabetes control.
Q. How do sweeteners affect glucose levels after we fast and after we eat? A. Glucose levels can decline if the sweeteners produce a great deal of insulin, or they can go up if a tendency toward diabetes already exists.
Q. What is the ideal glucose level? A. We are interested not only in the fasting level but also in the ideal level during the greater part of the day when we are active. The ideal glucose level should less than 115 milligrams per deciliter (mg./d1.), but that is not an accurate reflection of what it is during the entire day. Certainly, at random measurements during the day, it should probably be less than 140 mg./d1. This value changes during the course of the day.
Inform, Yes, but Do Not Make Choice for Individuals
Dr Roberts was doing just fine in his informational article until he gave his answer to the question , "Q. What can be done to protect the pancreas from aspartame?" Instead of simply replying, "Don't use it or at least only occasionally and sparingly", he wrote: "I think that aspartame products should be taken off the market because of my belief this artificial sweetener is an imminent public health hazard. I have stated this recommendation to Congress and have mentioned it in many articles and texts."
Roberts shows his paternalism by wanting to make decisions for people, not simply providing them with information which they then use in deciding how to live their lives - including how to sweeten those foods/drinks they choose to have at some level of sweetness. Of course he won't himself remove the items from store shelves, but he lends his government-granted credentials to the government agencies and their enforcers to the prohibition of sales of particular sweeteners that he concludes are "an imminent public health hazard".
Now in this day and age of so many expecting that government plans will create mechanisms by which everyone will have their health protected (100% safe products) or corrected (state or national health insurance), it is not surprising to read statements like Robert's above in a supposedly purely technical article about a laboratory created sweetener (or anything else potentially affecting a person's body). Self-responsibility for one's own health is given little if any attention in both mainstream and "progressive" media. However, the more governments, like poor parents, do for the citizens of a locale, the less those individuals will do for themselves and their offspring. And self-responsibility as well as initiative are consequently literally bred out of much of the population - there is increasingly less stimulus to be self-responsible or have initiative and actually far more to be the opposite. But the resulting obedient and dependent population is increasingly manipulatable by government - politicians, bureaucrats and their enforcers. This easily allows for an ever bigger and ever more intrusive government, both within and outside its borders..........
BTW, I do not use any man-made sweeteners nor do I add glucose or fructose to anything I eat or drink, except that which is contained in the fruits themselves that are part of a recipe. For example the cranberry sauce I and husband Paul Wakfer eat with poultry (when we eat it, since we only consume meat twice weekly) is made only with cranberries and raisins.
**Kitty Antonik Wakfer
MoreLife for the rational - http://morelife.org Reality based tools for more life in quantity and quality Self-Sovereign Individual Project - http://selfsip.org Self-sovereignty, rational pursuit of optimal lifetime happiness, individual responsibility, social preferencing & social contracting
by
Kitty Antonik Wakfer (10 articles, 2 quicklinks, 3 diaries, 60 comments)
on Sunday, March 30, 2008 at 10:31:58 PM
Actually, this stuff is so toxic that it is not a matter of "personal preference."
If it were an arsenic lollipop in your child's mouth who was about to consume it, would you stop your intercession?
Dr. Roberts is one of the two top physicians in the world on this subject; the other is Neurosurgeon Russell Blaylock, M.D., author of the book, Excitotoxins: the Taste that Kills. Read a synopsis of it on line, to educate yourself and others.
Diabetics are the last people who should be ingesting aspartame/methanol/formaldehyde/diketopiperazine (the last is a proven cause of brain tumors and results when diet sodas are left out in the sun, or when Equal is put into hot coffee). Yet, diabetics are always recommended to take these products by stupid doctors who also have bought the corporate line that these poisons are somehow "safe," according to 200 industry paid for studies.
by
Stephen Fox (39 articles, 1 quicklinks, 6 diaries, 47 comments)
on Monday, March 31, 2008 at 10:23:41 AM
Properly, Individual Informed Choice NOT Govt Prohibition
Roberts supplied no references in his interview nor was any list provided by Stephen Fox supporting statements that "In my opinion, aspartame has many hazards." And also: "To me, it is quite clear that aspartame products can cause severe illness." Lack of such substantiation renders this interview merely opinion, though maybe his articles and/or books present actual facts with citations.
The article reprinted is about aspartame danger claims. Using aspartame (or even arsenic) for one's self and dependents is properly one's own choice, no one else's. In conjunction with this is that each individual is properly the responsible party for hir own health and that of hir dependents. If individual self-responsibility were actually upheld by governments, rather than the paternalism so rampant, there would soon be far better levels of individual health at far less average expenditure. Prevention of disorder would become the norm, rather than treatment after the fact, the current common practice.
There is a very true maxim, "the dose makes the poison". Those who are ingesting very large amounts of aspartame on a regular basis may be introducing additional risk factors into their lives for health damage (but this is not at all proven). They likely are reducing other health risks, if by eliminating large amounts of previously ingested glucose, sucrose and/or fructose they have reduced their body weight to a BMI in the low 20s. There is considerable evidence that the most common causes of disability and death - cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes and many cancers - are associated with being overweight. (Once again, I do not use artificial and contend that weight reduction can be done without them. In Jan 2000 I had a BMI of 23.4, by January 2002 it was 19.2 and has been not been above 19.0 since then. All that I do to maintain my excellent state of help is public.)
Most important and what appears to be totally lost here - and with all who want to make decisions for others who are not their own children or dependents - is that determination of risk vs benefit can only properly be a personal decision. Only the person hirself has the intimate knowledge of hirself and what will optimize hir lifetime happiness (the goal of each individual's life, whether or not fully recognized). Physicians and researchers can - and properly should - inform, and do so making all the known evidence clear. And with the abundance of information easily available, any person in the industrialized world can make an informed decision - if s/he wants and is allowed to. But the making of the decision to consume/use some item properly must always be that of the person hirself. It is those who want to control the lives of others who encourage the creation of government laws/regulations and their enforcement by those who would do harm - by not letting individuals make their own decisions and be responsible for the consequences.
Two fairly recent review papers regarding aspartame worth reading as part of being fully informed on the subject, listed in PubMed:
MoreLife for the rational - http://morelife.org Reality based tools for more life in quantity and quality Self-Sovereign Individual Project - http://selfsip.org Self-sovereignty, rational pursuit of optimal lifetime happiness, individual responsibility, social preferencing & social contracting
by
Kitty Antonik Wakfer (10 articles, 2 quicklinks, 3 diaries, 60 comments)
on Wednesday, April 2, 2008 at 1:20:13 AM
Oh noooo .....that would be bad for business. Keep Americans dumb, goes the Profit Motive!
Just like Americans STILL have no clue how bad the food you cook in your micro-wave is for you, even though studies back from the 80's indicate that microwaves not only ALTER your food at a molecular level, they create CARCINOGENS that actually change your blood chemistry! The first scientist discovering this, who worked for the Swiss appliance industry, was immediately FIRED and his research hidden, but a German scientist followed up on it and found it was not only true, but worse, as did a Russian group. The findings were so bad that the Russians actually BANNED micro-wave ovens in Russia! (say what you will about their system, but they obviously care more about the well-being of their citizens than our government does!)
,,,and they wonder why there are so many early-onset chronic diseases these days? There are kids who have grown up on nothing BUT micro-waved food!
But..God forbid that the Truth cut into any big corporations' profits!
That's Un-Amurkan!
Same stuff is now going on with the Toxic toys issue in states like my own Maine. ( I can introduce you a real Neanderthal from my home town; you'd probably get on famously!)
by
Bia Winter (1 articles, 2 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 170 comments)
on Tuesday, April 8, 2008 at 9:49:08 AM
As a general rule, I don't think it is safe to assume the accuracy of honesty of any government decision made since 1980.
They simply can't be trusted to put the interest of the people above those of their corporate bosses.
The sad thing is that Americans WANT to believe that they can have sweet or fattening things and not suffer the consequences. They believe they should be able to ingest as much of whatever they want, sit around for 6 hours at night after sitting around 8 hours at work each day, never walk, never do any workout, and take a pill that will keep them thin and healthy.
Eat a vegetable for a snack? Are you kidding, when there are cheetos and Diet Coke available? Hey, isn't it time for AMERICAN IDOL or DANCING WITH THE STARS? Bring that bowl of potato chips over here, and get me another beer.
by
Charlie L (2 articles, 2 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 591 comments)
on Monday, March 31, 2008 at 6:08:20 PM
You have a great sense of humor, and an even keener sense of the Reagan Years.
To me, the most horrifying thing is who they got to be FDA Commissioner: Dr. Arthur Hull Hayes, who had been out in Maryland as I recall at could it be Ft. Detrick, doing mind control experiments on US Military in brigs, against their wills, and since this is the only guy would Rumsfeld could find who would agree in advance, in my hypothesis, to approve aspartame.
[Horrifying that such a person would be put in charge of the United States Food and Drug Administration! This typifies the Reagan Years at their WORST! and this is why people should be writing to Obama, Clinton, and McCain, asking who THEY would appoint to the FDA Commissioner job, a real consumer protectionist, or another corporate-serving hack....]
This is what Rumsfeld meant by his often-quoted comment saying he would "call in his markers" to get it approved. There is a lot more information in the googleable article, "Rumsfeld's Bioweapon Legacy."
One of the best sources, btw, of articles corroborating all of this mayhem, was the Chicago Tribune, since Rummy had been a Congressman from the Chicago suburbs, and so was G.D. Searle, the pharmaceutical company, based in the Chicago area. Many of these article are posted at:
<MISSION POSSIBLE INTERNATIONAL>
by
Stephen Fox (39 articles, 1 quicklinks, 6 diaries, 47 comments)
on Tuesday, April 1, 2008 at 10:10:24 AM
One of the main reasons there are so many FAT people and diabetics these days..Unlike plain fructose, HGH is a totally UN-natural sweetener that the body cannot properly metabolize, and since it also does not satiate the sweet tooth, either, more and more is consumed.
Go read those labels, if you don't already: it's in just about EVERYTHING, from sodas and juices (even the ones claining to be healthy, like the V-8 juice mixes) to catsup and canned tomato soup!
Why? Only ONE reason: it's much CHEAPER than real sugar.
I rest my case.
by
Bia Winter (1 articles, 2 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 170 comments)
on Tuesday, April 8, 2008 at 9:58:05 AM
Logical Schools in British Columbia/Dr. Roberts on Diabetics
British Columbia now bans "any drinks with artificial sweeteners" in school vending machines, stores, or cafeterias
from Janet Steffenhagen, Vancouver Sun
Elementary schools say they're ready for new rules prohibiting junk-food sales to students. The campaign starts in elementary schools and moves into middle schools and high schools in September. Some foods will have to be dropped altogether while others will have to be modified, which could make them less appealing. The province has distributed rules indicating which foods are no longer allowed to be sold in schools through vending machines, stores, or cafeterias. The rules divide foods into two categories -- those that are considered healthy and may be sold in schools and those that are considered generally unhealthy and are off-limits. The latter category includes highly processed foods and those with large amounts of sweetener, salt, fat and calories relative to their nutritional value. In some cases, the ban is clear: schools are not to sell crackers, muffins, cakes, cookies, doughnuts, pastries, croissants, sugary cereals, popcorn, chips, cream cheese, fries, candy, chocolate, pop, coffee and any drinks with artificial sweeteners. In other cases, the ban depends on the ingredients. For example, it includes many -- but not all -- fruit juices, tomato and vegetable juices, pasta salads, stir-fries, sandwiches with deli or processed meats, sausage or vegetable rolls, tuna salads, wieners and sausages, meat pies and pizzas.
Geoff Burns, vice-principal at a Nelson school that was one of the first to experiment with B.C.'s new rules, said one of the biggest challenges was deciphering labels to determine which foods were in the "unhealthy" category but could still be okay given that they contained unusually low amounts of salt, sugar or fat. The discussion about ending junk-food sales in Canadian schools began almost 10 years ago, but there was little action until recently when Ontario and Quebec joined B.C. in legislating bans. Alberta is leaving decisions on junk-food sales to individual schools. The B.C. government first promised to stop junk-food sales in October 2004 but delayed implementation until 2009, saying it wanted to give schools a chance to adjust and fulfil contractual obligations with suppliers. Recently, however, Education Minister Shirley Bond moved the deadline forward by a year, noting that one of every four children in the province is overweight. She announced plans to require students to engage in 30 minutes of daily physical activity. Many schools worried a junk-food ban would result in a loss of revenue, especially in large high schools where vending machines dispensing pop, candy and chips can bring in $30,000 a year or more. Burns said the change won't necessarily mean less money. In his school, vending machine revenue rose after healthy products were introduced.
Asked about the students' reaction to the change, he said: "I have heard no complaints whatsoever. The kids get it. They understand that selling candy at lunch is probably not the best thing for them." jsteffenhagen@png.canwest.com
_________________________________________________ They are terribly quiet and stupid about all of this in almost all USA Schools, as if that speaking up would somehow violate that cardinal rule for obsequiousness, a trait desired in American Educators..... I am told that only Connecticut has banned aspartame in their schools entirely. We certainly failed to do so in New Mexico, but we may still yet prevail in Hawaii, where the strongest statement ever presented to any legislative body anywhere in the world is the SCR 191, described below, but sadly, it remains to be scheduled in the Senate Health Committee, who mused to the Senate Sponsor: "How do I know this isn't all fake?"(He drinks diet sodas himself, so he must be naturally really skeptical, right?)
