Posted by bob on May 7, 2000, at 13:16:02
In reply to Re: Aspartame and Depression, posted by M on May 5, 2000, at 0:16:26
There's a lot of scuttlebutt in the alternative med press about the evils of aspartame. I'm not a neurologist, and I don't play one on TV, so my recall of it all (it's been a few years since I've read it) is out of whack ... maybe someone with a few more neural nodes wired for this area of biology can make sense of my comments below:
Aspartame has been described as an excitotoxin. The basic idea is something along the lines of it interfering with some (here's where things get really foggy) postassion-sodium "pump" mechanism in neurons, causing them to "fire" repeatedly until the cell "burns itself out" and dies. I recall the article linking aspartame to degenerative neurological disorders like Parkinson's and MS, and the nutritionist who passed it along to me was also concerned about it's effect on depression.
Now, I've also heard brief news stories -- the sort of 30 second stories that get slipped in-between the big stories on the network news -- where doctors have come out and said this "excitotoxin" stuff is horsepoop and have defended aspartame.
All I know is that a very bright friend of mine who has done years of research on alternative approaches to slowing the progress of his MS, since none of the standard western medical approaches are doing him a damn bit of good, will not touch the stuff.
[that SHOULD be enough for me, but I gotta admit I've got a BIG bottle of diet Sprite sitting right next to me ...]
cheers,
bob
poster:bob
thread:32074
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20000429/msgs/32643.html