Are Artificial Sweeteners Safe?

As a Type 2 diabetic, I can't use most products which include sugar but must still have a certain amount of sugar because my sugar levels go up and down. This means artificial sweeteners have been something I use instead.

There's been a lot of talk about both Splenda and Aspartame where, if you believe the hype, it seems they cause almost every ailment known to mankind.

It's been said Aspartame causes everything from alzheimers and lupus to multiple sclerosis, seizures, leukemia and that it is especially dangerous for black people because it kills them. It has even been asserted that Aspartame caused what is now known as Desert Storm Syndrome as it was added to the food and drink shipped over to our soldiers. The list of the things it causes is growing but most of the alleged side effects or diseases created by it have no real research behind them anymore than the research that says it is safe. In most of the studies where a higher number of test subjects are studied, the actual number of cases where something goes wrong is small such as 12 out of 320 people had brain tumors after a period of time while another group of 320 had none. A study done of 3 rhesus monkeys revealed that if you gradually increase the amount of aspartame in their drinking water, the more they became addicted to that water... they tested three monkeys and that revealed this when it's also been proven in past research you get the same result by adding sugar to water.

There have been numerous accusations which haven't been proven such as embalmers warning that people who drink heavy amounts of Aspartame are "pre embalmed" and that in some cases they request the caskets be closed because formaldehyde was literally seeping out of their skin. So how did the embalmers know these people drank aspartame heavily? Answer... they don't as the only way to know is to ask family members or people who knew the deceased and asking them if they heavily drank cold drinks with aspartame in it is a very unlikely thing to happen. It was only a rumor created to sell books making this claim.

Likewise, Splenda is supposed to be the same chemical composition as DDT? Ok, so DDT is illegal but the government approves something with the exact same chemical composition as an artificial sweetener? Would it not then be possible to prove this and have it removed because DDT itself is still illegal? But make note of studies which proved Splends / Sucralose causes massive problems with test results like this...

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In another experiment conducted at Eye, rabbits were given doses of Sucralose 1,200 times the expected human daily intake. Many died of trauma and others suffered from extreme weight loss, convulsions and intestinal disorders.
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Splenda:_Sadistica...
End Quote

Note, they gave the rabbits doses 1,200 times the expected human intake? First, there are many things we eat or drink daily which, if taken in massive doses, can kill you or do great harm to your body. Also note, many things that are perfectly safe for humans will kill dogs or cats... you don't give a cat aspirin for instance. Now, do rabbits eat processed sugar? Give them 1,200 times the normal amount of sugar that a human uses every day and you're going to kill that rabbit because processed sugar is not a natural part of it's diet for one... and because we gave it 1,200 times what a human would take in over a day with one dose for the rabbit, try that with a human and see what happens.

Also, have you noticed that if you feed your pets table scraps that they'll stop eating cat or dog foods... and they will even stop eating their normal foods like how cats won't eat rats even if they might kill them? It's because they become addicted to food we eat even though it is not part of their natural diet under any circumstances.

In other words, they are giving animals massive doses of these artificial sweeteners at one time which humans may not even take in over an entire year as 1,200 times what a human takes in over a day is around four years.

Remember Saccharin? It was proven to cause cancer and removed from the market. However, it was also said that Saccharin caused all kinds of health problems with the same type of flawed research being conducted which anyone with a bit of common sense can say... wait a minute! So Saccharin was eventually put back on the market. In 1969, the discovery of files from the FDA's investigations of 1948 and 1949, which had originally argued against saccharin use, were shown to prove almost no harmful effects at all. In 1972, the USDA made an attempt to completely ban the substance but failed largely because the research claims that it caused numerous health problems was extremely flawed and often completely false.

In fact, studies done on rats resulting in Saccharin having a label warning of cancer in the 1970's were proven false and the label removed in 2000 because it was discovered that rats have an additional protein which bonded with the Saccharin causing them to develop bladder cancer... humans don't have this protein and no proven cases of bladder cancer were actually discovered for this reason.

Much of the research being pandered about Aspartame and Splenda is the same with numerous claims using animal research, small research results over a brief period of time (the exact same claim made against the companies producing these products). Take, for instance, the claim that Apartame and Splenda kill fireants... the same claim is made about normal orange juice which ironically, many who claim the artificial sweeteners kill ants also add that orange juice does as well in it's natural form. I actually dumped an entire bag of Splenda on a fireant mound (it tastes horrible anyway lol) and the damn mound doubled in size. Even many people claiming it kills fireants admit it doesn't always work and the same is true of people who claim Aspartame kills fireants. In fact, you can toss common salt and many other substances on fireant mounds and discover them gone the next day... because they have massive underground tunnels where they can literally move the entire colony in less than one night. So if you make them uncomfortable enough, they can just pack up and leave. The way to tell if you killed them is to dig up the mound as you will find their dead bodies if they died... don't be surprised you if you find only a small number.

Guaranteed ways to kill fireants are gasoline, kerosene or high pressure hot water if you are more environmentally concerned. Even rice doesn't always kill them out as we are told... that doesn't mean that people are lying when they say it does, it simply means it doesn't always work because fireants who survive can become immune and move away through their underground tunnels.

For diabetics, artificial sweeteners are actually all they can use most of the time as sugar will cause countless proven health problems. Sugar doesn't always cause diabetes, however, as this is a myth. Sugar is a substance human bodies have become adjusted to and when other parts of the body that regulate sugar become damaged, then sugar becomes a problem because your body can no longer properly manage sugar and it's as if you are ingesting much larger doses of sugar... remember what I said about the rabbit study above? How they were being given 1,200 times what a human ingested in one day? No matter who you are, if you ingest too much sugar then more of it will pass through your body damaging organs... it's not that sugar causes diabetes, it's that we eat too much of it and anything you eat or drink too much of can be dangerous that is perfectly healthy in normal doses our bodies have adjusted to.

I became a diabetic when I was stung by a large Mexican (or European) hornet which hit me like a gunshot right in the middle of my spine injecting it's poison directly into the nerves in my spine causing a massive allergic reaction as my antihistamines to go into overdrive attacking my body from within. I had never been allergic to any type of bee or wasp until that moment and had just taken a physical for a job before this where a test for diabetes was run for the company health insurance... completely normal before, Type 2 diabetic afterwards.

There is now a natural sweetener on the market called Stevia which has a different taste but it's been used in Japan for centuries apparently with no known side effects at all. I now use it where I can and it comes in two forms... one pure Stevia and the other with just a bit of real sugar to spike the taste a little for US consumers.

But the problem here with artificial sweeteners is it turns out that many who are making the accusations either have personal issues with the corporations, their own research is as flawed as they claim the corporations is and most just copy paste the information inundating the internet so that we see the claims repeated so often we think they are factual... that's not necessarily true. In fact, all these dangerous effects of artificial sweeteners corresponds directly to Americans changing diets where we eat so unhealthy that even food with no artificial sugar in it is being blamed for many of the same health issues. There are also far more of us and technology to detect disease has advanced over this same period of time so that the numbers and percentages of these problems will naturally be seen as increasing.

But what if they are dangerous?

If they are dangerous then the people providing the research need to be conducting extensive research over a period of time and considering factors like animals are biologically different than us and that they should be using the exact same amount of the sweetener as a human would take every day based on body size and weight... that is simple common sense and if they are injecting animals with massive doses of anything, it will cause the animals to suffer and die from completely flawed research that anyone can figure out if they just focus on what they are being told instead of blindly believing it.

If these sweeteners are dangerous... the flawed research claiming it proves it will do more damage than good for people trying to reduce their sugar intake or whose bodies have become compromised in some way that they cannot properly regulate sugar or consume anything with it.

For many diabetics, the option is clear... if the artificial sweeteners may kill you, we still have to deal with the fact that sugar itself will cause even worse "guaranteed" problems, disabilities and death.

If you are dieting, maybe you should just try a different diet where you drink less and less soft drinks while eating less sweets... find natural alternatives where you can still enjoy something sweet that diabetics can't consume. you have more options.

If Stevia is as great as everyone claims, then maybe we should demand the soft drink companies switch to it as if it tastes just like sugar with just a small amount of real sugar added to spike it... then even most diabetics might be able to consume it. I use it when I can in it's pure form, but if you are worried about aspartame, saccharin and splenda... then why not start petitions to let the soft drink companies know you want it.

Sorry for the length as most know I am long winded... but this one is a topic you really can't just say a few words about, you actually do need to put more into it to show people both sides or at least try.