1. Nutrition and Lifestyle: Diet, Exercise, Sleep and Stress Management
The purpose of this section is to help bring about a better understanding of the interplay between a lifestyle that promotes health and the role of nutrition while leading your everyday lives. It is to help bring about an awareness of how diet, exercise, proper sleep and stress management can have a positive effect on your daily living and how it can have a beneficial impact on health, longevity and an overall better quality to your life. While the interplay between these may be subtle they tend to weave themselves into a rich tapestry that provides the basic mechanism for how we lead our daily lives and interact with our environment.
a) Diet:
Nutrition and diet as a basis for health is not a new concept, with ancient Chinese physicians emphasizing food selection and even proper cooking techniques as therapeutic modalities. During the Dhou dynasty, dating back from 1,000-400 BC, the classic "The Yellow Emperors Guide to Internal Medicine" described the use of nutrition and the use of foods as medicines which many traditional physicians in China use to this day. In the country of India, those practicing in the Ayurvedic tradition use what is known as "rasas", or the 6 basic tastes which make up a part of Ayurvedic medicine. Even Hippocrates wrote that we should let food be our medicine and medicine be our food.
So with all this being said, where do we start when discussing the role of nutrition in health and disease? In the 1990's less than 1/4 of the medical colleges in the United States had a course on nutrition in their core curriculum despite a general understanding that the use of food and eating habits to promote health and both treat and prevent disease has been well documented. There has been a vast amount of research that shows what people eat in their regular day can have an influence on their likelihood of developing chronic illnesses like heart disease and diabetes.
In 2 separate studies by DeLorgeril et al, the first in the prestigious British medical journal Lancet in 1994 and the second in the journal Circulation in 1999, he and his team described how a Mediterranean diet had a 70% reduction of dying from cardiac death or suffering a heart attack and if you had a heart attack and started this diet there was a reduction in the risk of both cardiac death and another heart attack. This was coupled with decreased incidence of having angina (chest pains), a stroke, congestive heart failure and a blood clot, as well as a 47% reduction in hospital admissions. The Harvard University School of Public Health discovered variations on the diet, depending on the region of the Mediterranean where the diet was derived, but many key components had a common basis. The diet contained an abundance of fruits and vegetables, usually locally grown and were consumed either raw or minimally processed. They noted that olive oil was the principal oil that was utilized and, given current research that appears to show that this oil will actually raise HDL (good cholesterol); this may be part of the cardiac protection noted in the research. There was low to moderate consumption of dairy products and little use of animal protein in the diet. A regular exercise program was part of the regimen and alcohol, usually wine, was consumed in moderation.
Another landmark study, authored by T. Colin Campbell PhD, in what may be the most comprehensive study every conducted in the field of nutrition called "The China Study", described the role of animal proteins in our diet and the devastating effects they have on nearly every aspect of our health. Dr. Campbell described the interplay between animal proteins and heart disease, cancer, obesity, autoimmune diseases and a variety of other disorders. Dr. Dean Ornish called Campbell’s' book one of the most important books on nutrition ever written. Nobel Laureate Robert C. Richardson, PhD stated it was a story which needs to be heard. Sushma Palmer, PhD, former Executive Director Food and Nutrition Board, U.S. National Academy of Sciences stated it described the fallacies of the modern diet and lifestyle and was a compelling rationale for a diet to promote health and reduce disease.
In the DASH (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension) Study reported in the New England Journal of Medicine in1997, which also had a diet with it, there was a marked reduction in high blood pressure and in the second DASH study reported in the journal Clinical Cardiology in 1999; there were even greater reductions in hypertension. In this diet there were recommendations that were similar in many ways to the Mediterranean Diet and if followed had many of the same risk reduction and disease prevention benefits. So what does all this mean? Nutrition in the United States is at a critical state with over 60% of Americans now overweight. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition stated in 2003 that the current trend in America of eating a diet high in saturated fats has a high correlation of leading to diabetes and obesity. According to a Yale study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2002, 25% of obese children are already glucose intolerant and at high risk for developing diabetes. In what was previously thought to be a disease of the elderly these children face a future of coronary heart disease and kidney failure just to name a few complications. In the past decade obesity in the United States has risen 30% and there are now over 20 million Americans with diabetes. These are staggering numbers that can be directly attributed to poor nutrition and lack of exercise. Many contributing factors can be isolated; amongst them is a greater caloric intake. We in the United States now consume on an average 500 calories more a day that we did just a decade ago. There has been an increase in the intake of calorie dense foods as evidenced by the proliferation of fast food establishments and higher soft drink consumption. Research continues to find more metabolic and digestive disorders from our consumption of trans-fatty acids, refined foods and low fiber intake. Currently our fast food industry is over 100 billion dollars in revenues a year and shows little likelihood in decreasing. Interestingly enough Harvard researchers found that in a 3 year period between 1996-1999 the number of children who ate meals outside the home doubled which corresponded with an increase in childhood obesity. An article in Lancet 2005 detailed how people who frequently eat in fast food restaurants gain more weight and are more likely to develop insulin resistance than those who don't. It is estimated that more than 10% of the food consumed by children is fast food, with a corresponding weight gain. The data is in and well known to researchers in this field, but there has been appalling lack of dissemination of this information to the public and the fast food industry has shown an equally appalling lack of desire to change their habits and dismantle what has become for them a cash cow business.
b) Exercise:
Exercise is slowly becoming one of the most underutilized modalities to help combat disease, despite being widely recognized as beneficial in the fight against obesity, diabetes, coronary artery disease and degenerative joint diseases. In addition, it improves the overall quality of life, controls both blood pressure and helps to maintain a more balanced cholesterol. In a study reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 1989 it was noted that regular exercise reduced both the risk of cardiac death and helped to lower cholesterol; despite this, billions of dollars are spent each year on cholesterol medicine alone. Paffenbarger et al reported in JAMA in 1999 that having poor cardiorespiratory fitness was a strong indicator for cardiovascular disease(CVD) and was equal to diabetes as a predictor of CVD. Regular exercise reduced the risk of cardiac death by 50%, more than many of the other drug therapies used to control blood pressure and cholesterol. In Social Science Medicine 2005 it was noted that if a a physician mentioned overweight or obesity to a patient, there was a reduction in the calories consumed and an increase in the probability of utilizing exercise as a means for weight control by the patient. The amount of exercise recommended is conservative and can be tailored to overall physical condition and stamina. At the Heart and Vascular Institute, located at the Cleveland Clinic in Cleveland, Ohio, there are basic recommendations for both aerobic exercise, like jogging or a treadmill and anaerobic exercise like weight lifting. The standard recommendations are to subtract your age from 220 and maintain this heart rate for at least 30 minutes with an adequate warm up and cool down period, but this can be adjusted if lack of conditioning is prevailing at the beginning of your training program. This can for as little as 3 times a week or even daily if desired. All of the requisite information can be found at the site for the Cleveland Clinic @ www.clevelandclinic.org
c) Sleep:
We live in a fast paced world, all of our own creation, and in the process manage to deny ourselves one of the most basic things our bodies need. Most people don't even recognize the necessity of sleep, yet without it we suffer in ways not easily recognizable. In an early article printed in Psychophysiology in 1981, the cumulative effects of sleep deprivation of only 1 hour a night stretched over 1 week showed the equivalent of a full night without sleep. If only 1.3 to 1.5 hours of sleep was missed in 1 night alone there was as much as a 32% decrease in daytime alertness, as noted in the journal Sleep in 1995 . Further research into sleep deprivation was noted in Sleep 2003 which showed that cumulative sleep deprivation revealed both cognitive disruption as well as behavioral changes that were largely unrecognized by the individuals who were suffering the sleep loss. Sleep loss has always felt to be benign yet this loss of sleep comes at a neurobiological cost that not only accumulates over time but causes overall performance lapses in our everyday life. Even our children are at risk for sleep deprivation which further research documented in Sleep as far back as 1981, which showed that they would require up to 36 hours after a single sleep deprivation incident to return to a baseline.
d) Stress and Stress Management:
The purpose of this section is to open a dialogue into what we are putting into our bodies, the effects that these compounds may play in not only increasing the stress on our bodies but also the deleterious effects that these same compounds may have on the developing brains and minds of our children. We are all familiar with the recognizable forms of stress, whether it be a deadline at work, a school project that is due or even the drive through traffic to get to work, but the real question is are we recognizing all the forms of stress and do we have a reasonable approach to managing these stressors. One of the early pioneers in the field of stress and stress management was Hans Selye MD. Dr Selye recognized that unmanaged stress, which frequently was just the process of poor adaptive processes would manifest in what he called General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS). Dr. Selye was an endocrinologist by training so his interest was in the area of hormonal response to stress and the effects that these hormones had on the body. Dr. Selye understood that stress played a significant role in the development of all types of disease. Dr Selye described 3 distinct phases of stress which he named; alarm, resistance and exhaustion. Dr. Selye further described stress as anything that puts a demand of the body and not just the "nervous stress" that we have all come to recognize. The alarm phase is what we call the "fight or flight" phase where the body is preparing it self for whatever the stimulus is that is coming in. No one can stay in this phase for long and we quickly go into the phase where resistance to the stress is built. The final stage is one of exhaustion or the aging process where we are worn down due to wear and tear.
Recognizing this and having a mechanism in place to deal with this is critical if ones health is to be maintained. In the Journal Psychiatry in 1974 and in a course currently offered as continuing education through Harvard Medical School, Dr. Herbert Benson described the physiological changes that can be elicited through simple practices like meditation, yoga, hypnosis and autogenic training. A body of evidence demonstrates a host of beneficial responses all designed to reduce the overall stress on the body. In this type of response, which is the opposite of the "fight of flight" process described by Dr. Selye, which is a sympathetic nervous system approach, the relaxation response, as it has been coined by Dr. Benson, has been shown to reduce anxiety and pain, decrease muscle tension has a positive effect on a host of other diseases with a more beneficial health outcome ensuing. Even in the medical literature, where much of the information is to assist medical students as they enter training, there has been shown to be a process of improvement in the immune system, decrease in the depression and anxiety states, an increase in both spirituality and empathy for patients, an improvement in their overall level of sensitivity, greater coping skills, enhanced ability to resolve conflicts and a much better understanding of stress itself. This article found in Academic Medicine 2000 should be a must read not only for every student entering medical training, but also the essence of the information should be dispensed to everyone looking to decrease their own stress of to establish better coping skills for handling stress.
But what about the stresses that are hidden, those that we don't think about or don't even know about? Are there stressors that are in our daily foods, those things we consume that we assume are safe for us yet may be causing irreparable harm to our children and even causing changes in how we deal with our everyday environment? In a landmark book "Excitotoxins: The Taste That Kills", the brilliant neurosurgeon Russell Blaylock MD describes an almost frightening process where NutraSweet (aspartame) has been linked to brain tumors, brain cell damage as well as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's Disease. He describes numerous scientific studies including one by Shephard et al in Food and Chemical Toxicity 1993, Sorg et al in Neuropsychopharmacology 1998, Trocho et al in Life Sciences 1998 and Hardcastle et al in Prostaglandins, Leukotrienes and Essential Fatty Acids in 1997 as concrete evidence that aspartame is a dangerous chemical that needs considerable more scientific investigation before it is allowed to used by the general unsuspecting public. For the download of a very revealing expose on aspartame which is free I would recommend going to aspartamekills.com, while the download is somewhat choppy the access to other material is well worth the acquisition if you or any loved one is suffering from any type of a neurological disorder. In what will probably be groundbreaking research in the correlation between aspartame and cancer researchers in Bologna Italy found a direct correlation between aspartame and cancer to be present. But what is more frightening is the rise in attention deficit disorder (ADD) and the attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). A basic understanding of the molecule aspartame is in order here; aspartate-methanol-phenylalanine is how it looks and it appears that the problem arises when this molecule is broken down. Many of the research articles illustrate how the individual components may cause problems since the body easily breaks down aspartame to its components, and as much of this starts as soon as the chemical is ingested in the mouth. If for example you are a diabetic, and these chemicals accumulate in areas that are already under assault from the effects of, say, diabetic neuropathy, then further progression of your nerve damage is almost a given. In an easy to read article that gives some good references, doctors at Birth Defects Research for Children Inc. give some interesting insight into how many of the components could elicit a problem. In a breathtaking review of literature from around the world John V Dommisse MD reveals the relationship between many substances and ADHD. MSG is another additive that has been permissively allowed to be used without an adequate disclosure of the potential health risks. In a host of research dating back to the 1950's and up to more recent research by researchers in Hirosaki Japan, evidence has been found linking MSG to damage to the retina. While many of the mechanisms may not be readily understood, the empirical data seems to be accumulating as accounted for by Meldrum as long ago as 1993.
If these compounds are indeed producing ADHD, as many researchers and authors claim, then it lends even more concern when recent findings in the field of radiology revealed that actual damage was found in the brains of children with ADHD and the area of damage was intimately involved with emotional processing and hyperactivity. As chilling as all these findings may be we believe that they are a call to action to not only protect ourselves but also the lives of our children
Conclusion:
An incredible amount of information was just presented with numerous things to be considered. So let’s try to distill all of this data down to a few caveats to be put into place in our everyday lives. We have just learned how important our food is in our daily lives, more than just fuel to keep our basic metabolism afloat, but rather a source of nutrients that can help to prevent heart disease, diabetes, obesity and hypertension amongst others. We have learned how food additives can have a profound deleterious effect on our brains and the brains of our children. We have also discovered that these same chemicals can effect the very formation of the developing brains of our children and produce aberrent behaviors, as well their being implicated in various degenerative disorders like Alzheimers and Parkinson’s Disease and recent links to cancer and retinal damage. We have further learned that something as simple as exercise for just 30-45 minutes a day 3 days a week not only has a profound effect on things like hypertension, obesity and diabetes, but also minimizes the risk of heart disease or heart attack. The role of sleep and the need for a good nights rest cannot be overlooked and the management of stress should play a central role in our daily lives.
For most of us, considering this information will necessitate a major change in how we eat and what chemicals we allow in our food. I suspect, despite the increased hassle of reading labels for what is in our food, all of us who take our health seriously will become more astute as to what we are putting in our bodies and the bodies of our children. The hope is that this information will lead to an active search by lay people and an active dialogue by people in the healing arts fields to pursue a more healthy lifestyle for themselves and their loved ones.
a) Diet:
Nutrition and diet as a basis for health is not a new concept, with ancient Chinese physicians emphasizing food selection and even proper cooking techniques as therapeutic modalities. During the Dhou dynasty, dating back from 1,000-400 BC, the classic "The Yellow Emperors Guide to Internal Medicine" described the use of nutrition and the use of foods as medicines which many traditional physicians in China use to this day. In the country of India, those practicing in the Ayurvedic tradition use what is known as "rasas", or the 6 basic tastes which make up a part of Ayurvedic medicine. Even Hippocrates wrote that we should let food be our medicine and medicine be our food.
So with all this being said, where do we start when discussing the role of nutrition in health and disease? In the 1990's less than 1/4 of the medical colleges in the United States had a course on nutrition in their core curriculum despite a general understanding that the use of food and eating habits to promote health and both treat and prevent disease has been well documented. There has been a vast amount of research that shows what people eat in their regular day can have an influence on their likelihood of developing chronic illnesses like heart disease and diabetes.
In 2 separate studies by DeLorgeril et al, the first in the prestigious British medical journal Lancet in 1994 and the second in the journal Circulation in 1999, he and his team described how a Mediterranean diet had a 70% reduction of dying from cardiac death or suffering a heart attack and if you had a heart attack and started this diet there was a reduction in the risk of both cardiac death and another heart attack. This was coupled with decreased incidence of having angina (chest pains), a stroke, congestive heart failure and a blood clot, as well as a 47% reduction in hospital admissions. The Harvard University School of Public Health discovered variations on the diet, depending on the region of the Mediterranean where the diet was derived, but many key components had a common basis. The diet contained an abundance of fruits and vegetables, usually locally grown and were consumed either raw or minimally processed. They noted that olive oil was the principal oil that was utilized and, given current research that appears to show that this oil will actually raise HDL (good cholesterol); this may be part of the cardiac protection noted in the research. There was low to moderate consumption of dairy products and little use of animal protein in the diet. A regular exercise program was part of the regimen and alcohol, usually wine, was consumed in moderation.
Another landmark study, authored by T. Colin Campbell PhD, in what may be the most comprehensive study every conducted in the field of nutrition called "The China Study", described the role of animal proteins in our diet and the devastating effects they have on nearly every aspect of our health. Dr. Campbell described the interplay between animal proteins and heart disease, cancer, obesity, autoimmune diseases and a variety of other disorders. Dr. Dean Ornish called Campbell’s' book one of the most important books on nutrition ever written. Nobel Laureate Robert C. Richardson, PhD stated it was a story which needs to be heard. Sushma Palmer, PhD, former Executive Director Food and Nutrition Board, U.S. National Academy of Sciences stated it described the fallacies of the modern diet and lifestyle and was a compelling rationale for a diet to promote health and reduce disease.
In the DASH (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension) Study reported in the New England Journal of Medicine in1997, which also had a diet with it, there was a marked reduction in high blood pressure and in the second DASH study reported in the journal Clinical Cardiology in 1999; there were even greater reductions in hypertension. In this diet there were recommendations that were similar in many ways to the Mediterranean Diet and if followed had many of the same risk reduction and disease prevention benefits. So what does all this mean? Nutrition in the United States is at a critical state with over 60% of Americans now overweight. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition stated in 2003 that the current trend in America of eating a diet high in saturated fats has a high correlation of leading to diabetes and obesity. According to a Yale study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2002, 25% of obese children are already glucose intolerant and at high risk for developing diabetes. In what was previously thought to be a disease of the elderly these children face a future of coronary heart disease and kidney failure just to name a few complications. In the past decade obesity in the United States has risen 30% and there are now over 20 million Americans with diabetes. These are staggering numbers that can be directly attributed to poor nutrition and lack of exercise. Many contributing factors can be isolated; amongst them is a greater caloric intake. We in the United States now consume on an average 500 calories more a day that we did just a decade ago. There has been an increase in the intake of calorie dense foods as evidenced by the proliferation of fast food establishments and higher soft drink consumption. Research continues to find more metabolic and digestive disorders from our consumption of trans-fatty acids, refined foods and low fiber intake. Currently our fast food industry is over 100 billion dollars in revenues a year and shows little likelihood in decreasing. Interestingly enough Harvard researchers found that in a 3 year period between 1996-1999 the number of children who ate meals outside the home doubled which corresponded with an increase in childhood obesity. An article in Lancet 2005 detailed how people who frequently eat in fast food restaurants gain more weight and are more likely to develop insulin resistance than those who don't. It is estimated that more than 10% of the food consumed by children is fast food, with a corresponding weight gain. The data is in and well known to researchers in this field, but there has been appalling lack of dissemination of this information to the public and the fast food industry has shown an equally appalling lack of desire to change their habits and dismantle what has become for them a cash cow business.
b) Exercise:
Exercise is slowly becoming one of the most underutilized modalities to help combat disease, despite being widely recognized as beneficial in the fight against obesity, diabetes, coronary artery disease and degenerative joint diseases. In addition, it improves the overall quality of life, controls both blood pressure and helps to maintain a more balanced cholesterol. In a study reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 1989 it was noted that regular exercise reduced both the risk of cardiac death and helped to lower cholesterol; despite this, billions of dollars are spent each year on cholesterol medicine alone. Paffenbarger et al reported in JAMA in 1999 that having poor cardiorespiratory fitness was a strong indicator for cardiovascular disease(CVD) and was equal to diabetes as a predictor of CVD. Regular exercise reduced the risk of cardiac death by 50%, more than many of the other drug therapies used to control blood pressure and cholesterol. In Social Science Medicine 2005 it was noted that if a a physician mentioned overweight or obesity to a patient, there was a reduction in the calories consumed and an increase in the probability of utilizing exercise as a means for weight control by the patient. The amount of exercise recommended is conservative and can be tailored to overall physical condition and stamina. At the Heart and Vascular Institute, located at the Cleveland Clinic in Cleveland, Ohio, there are basic recommendations for both aerobic exercise, like jogging or a treadmill and anaerobic exercise like weight lifting. The standard recommendations are to subtract your age from 220 and maintain this heart rate for at least 30 minutes with an adequate warm up and cool down period, but this can be adjusted if lack of conditioning is prevailing at the beginning of your training program. This can for as little as 3 times a week or even daily if desired. All of the requisite information can be found at the site for the Cleveland Clinic @ www.clevelandclinic.org
c) Sleep:
We live in a fast paced world, all of our own creation, and in the process manage to deny ourselves one of the most basic things our bodies need. Most people don't even recognize the necessity of sleep, yet without it we suffer in ways not easily recognizable. In an early article printed in Psychophysiology in 1981, the cumulative effects of sleep deprivation of only 1 hour a night stretched over 1 week showed the equivalent of a full night without sleep. If only 1.3 to 1.5 hours of sleep was missed in 1 night alone there was as much as a 32% decrease in daytime alertness, as noted in the journal Sleep in 1995 . Further research into sleep deprivation was noted in Sleep 2003 which showed that cumulative sleep deprivation revealed both cognitive disruption as well as behavioral changes that were largely unrecognized by the individuals who were suffering the sleep loss. Sleep loss has always felt to be benign yet this loss of sleep comes at a neurobiological cost that not only accumulates over time but causes overall performance lapses in our everyday life. Even our children are at risk for sleep deprivation which further research documented in Sleep as far back as 1981, which showed that they would require up to 36 hours after a single sleep deprivation incident to return to a baseline.
d) Stress and Stress Management:
The purpose of this section is to open a dialogue into what we are putting into our bodies, the effects that these compounds may play in not only increasing the stress on our bodies but also the deleterious effects that these same compounds may have on the developing brains and minds of our children. We are all familiar with the recognizable forms of stress, whether it be a deadline at work, a school project that is due or even the drive through traffic to get to work, but the real question is are we recognizing all the forms of stress and do we have a reasonable approach to managing these stressors. One of the early pioneers in the field of stress and stress management was Hans Selye MD. Dr Selye recognized that unmanaged stress, which frequently was just the process of poor adaptive processes would manifest in what he called General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS). Dr. Selye was an endocrinologist by training so his interest was in the area of hormonal response to stress and the effects that these hormones had on the body. Dr. Selye understood that stress played a significant role in the development of all types of disease. Dr Selye described 3 distinct phases of stress which he named; alarm, resistance and exhaustion. Dr. Selye further described stress as anything that puts a demand of the body and not just the "nervous stress" that we have all come to recognize. The alarm phase is what we call the "fight or flight" phase where the body is preparing it self for whatever the stimulus is that is coming in. No one can stay in this phase for long and we quickly go into the phase where resistance to the stress is built. The final stage is one of exhaustion or the aging process where we are worn down due to wear and tear.
Recognizing this and having a mechanism in place to deal with this is critical if ones health is to be maintained. In the Journal Psychiatry in 1974 and in a course currently offered as continuing education through Harvard Medical School, Dr. Herbert Benson described the physiological changes that can be elicited through simple practices like meditation, yoga, hypnosis and autogenic training. A body of evidence demonstrates a host of beneficial responses all designed to reduce the overall stress on the body. In this type of response, which is the opposite of the "fight of flight" process described by Dr. Selye, which is a sympathetic nervous system approach, the relaxation response, as it has been coined by Dr. Benson, has been shown to reduce anxiety and pain, decrease muscle tension has a positive effect on a host of other diseases with a more beneficial health outcome ensuing. Even in the medical literature, where much of the information is to assist medical students as they enter training, there has been shown to be a process of improvement in the immune system, decrease in the depression and anxiety states, an increase in both spirituality and empathy for patients, an improvement in their overall level of sensitivity, greater coping skills, enhanced ability to resolve conflicts and a much better understanding of stress itself. This article found in Academic Medicine 2000 should be a must read not only for every student entering medical training, but also the essence of the information should be dispensed to everyone looking to decrease their own stress of to establish better coping skills for handling stress.
But what about the stresses that are hidden, those that we don't think about or don't even know about? Are there stressors that are in our daily foods, those things we consume that we assume are safe for us yet may be causing irreparable harm to our children and even causing changes in how we deal with our everyday environment? In a landmark book "Excitotoxins: The Taste That Kills", the brilliant neurosurgeon Russell Blaylock MD describes an almost frightening process where NutraSweet (aspartame) has been linked to brain tumors, brain cell damage as well as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's Disease. He describes numerous scientific studies including one by Shephard et al in Food and Chemical Toxicity 1993, Sorg et al in Neuropsychopharmacology 1998, Trocho et al in Life Sciences 1998 and Hardcastle et al in Prostaglandins, Leukotrienes and Essential Fatty Acids in 1997 as concrete evidence that aspartame is a dangerous chemical that needs considerable more scientific investigation before it is allowed to used by the general unsuspecting public. For the download of a very revealing expose on aspartame which is free I would recommend going to aspartamekills.com, while the download is somewhat choppy the access to other material is well worth the acquisition if you or any loved one is suffering from any type of a neurological disorder. In what will probably be groundbreaking research in the correlation between aspartame and cancer researchers in Bologna Italy found a direct correlation between aspartame and cancer to be present. But what is more frightening is the rise in attention deficit disorder (ADD) and the attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). A basic understanding of the molecule aspartame is in order here; aspartate-methanol-phenylalanine is how it looks and it appears that the problem arises when this molecule is broken down. Many of the research articles illustrate how the individual components may cause problems since the body easily breaks down aspartame to its components, and as much of this starts as soon as the chemical is ingested in the mouth. If for example you are a diabetic, and these chemicals accumulate in areas that are already under assault from the effects of, say, diabetic neuropathy, then further progression of your nerve damage is almost a given. In an easy to read article that gives some good references, doctors at Birth Defects Research for Children Inc. give some interesting insight into how many of the components could elicit a problem. In a breathtaking review of literature from around the world John V Dommisse MD reveals the relationship between many substances and ADHD. MSG is another additive that has been permissively allowed to be used without an adequate disclosure of the potential health risks. In a host of research dating back to the 1950's and up to more recent research by researchers in Hirosaki Japan, evidence has been found linking MSG to damage to the retina. While many of the mechanisms may not be readily understood, the empirical data seems to be accumulating as accounted for by Meldrum as long ago as 1993.
If these compounds are indeed producing ADHD, as many researchers and authors claim, then it lends even more concern when recent findings in the field of radiology revealed that actual damage was found in the brains of children with ADHD and the area of damage was intimately involved with emotional processing and hyperactivity. As chilling as all these findings may be we believe that they are a call to action to not only protect ourselves but also the lives of our children
Conclusion:
An incredible amount of information was just presented with numerous things to be considered. So let’s try to distill all of this data down to a few caveats to be put into place in our everyday lives. We have just learned how important our food is in our daily lives, more than just fuel to keep our basic metabolism afloat, but rather a source of nutrients that can help to prevent heart disease, diabetes, obesity and hypertension amongst others. We have learned how food additives can have a profound deleterious effect on our brains and the brains of our children. We have also discovered that these same chemicals can effect the very formation of the developing brains of our children and produce aberrent behaviors, as well their being implicated in various degenerative disorders like Alzheimers and Parkinson’s Disease and recent links to cancer and retinal damage. We have further learned that something as simple as exercise for just 30-45 minutes a day 3 days a week not only has a profound effect on things like hypertension, obesity and diabetes, but also minimizes the risk of heart disease or heart attack. The role of sleep and the need for a good nights rest cannot be overlooked and the management of stress should play a central role in our daily lives.
For most of us, considering this information will necessitate a major change in how we eat and what chemicals we allow in our food. I suspect, despite the increased hassle of reading labels for what is in our food, all of us who take our health seriously will become more astute as to what we are putting in our bodies and the bodies of our children. The hope is that this information will lead to an active search by lay people and an active dialogue by people in the healing arts fields to pursue a more healthy lifestyle for themselves and their loved ones.
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