“Pundrity and Palsies.”
The Aspartame methanol issue revisited for the non-scientist.
The knowingly false and highly contrived punditry position on methanol
poisoning from Aspartame is that any such poisoning cannot exist because
“Fruit and vegetable juice has as much or more methanol than even a
heavy consumer would ever get from Aspartame consumption” This is a
fraudulently lying position and, following herein, are several succinct
points that the average non scientist might like to review to rebut this
vacuous punditry.
First the high levels of methanol alluded as coming from juices, ie.
Tomato, orange and apple juice never existed! Methods were used to make
the measurements that could not even detect the minute traces actually
present in the juices, so the minimal readings inherent in the method
were used instead of the actual, undetectably low values of methanol in
the juices. Then punditry methods were used that produced methanol
rather than just measuring it: Flame photometry and strong nucleophilic
colorimetry. All of this is “science falsely so called”; A major
societal problem at present.
Flame photometry uses the heat of a flame to excite a substance to emit
photons that are then spectrotopically analyzed to measure what is
present. Problem is that the heat of a flame breaks down the healthy
nutrients of fruit and vegetable products into degradation products
commonly known as “smoke”. Yes, smoke has carbon monoxide, methanol,
formaldehyde and all sorts of organic toxins in it as the result of the
thermal breakdown and degradation of the organic matter of which fruits
and vegetables are composed. From a health standpoint all this points
out is that you should not smoke, nor use Aspartame which is
toxologically very similar to smoke.
The use of strong nucleophilic reagents to measure methanol, likewise
breaks down fruit and vegetable products to produce it rather than to
just measure methanol. Pectin is the source of the methanol in this
instance. Pectin is at the heart of most vegetal systems. Just as our
heart and blood vessels contain and maintain much of our circulating
body fluids in dynamic equilibrium so pectin keeps the plants’ fluids in
a suitable gel form. Pectin is a large chemical lattice of sugars and
alcohols, which serves as a “molecular sponge” for water, which is why
it is useful to make jams and jellies. (likewise, unlike Aspartame, they
are noted to be healthful and non-toxic upon thousands of years of
widespread human use.) Methanol is the weakest nucleophile, so when
much stronger nucleophiles are added to the reagent solution, they
readily displace the methanol from the pectin, taking its place in the
pectin molecule and pushing the methanol out as nascent, newly
manufactured, free methanol. This has no relationship whatsoever to the
human experience with fruits and vegetables or their nutritional
preparations such as juices, jams or jellies, but does mimic the
production of methanol when Aspartame breaks down in drinks.
In the human digestive tract quite the opposite occurs with pectin. The
juice, jam or jelly first enters the human digestion containing, for any
practical purposes, no measurable methanol. Upon entering the stomach
it is highly acidified by the stomach acid, which is just the opposite
of being in a nucleophilically reactive environment. This would be
called an electrophilic environment, which would seek then,by chemical
reactivity, to remove to remove nucleophilic substances such as alcohols
from the pectin. Methyl alcohol, being virtually as weak as water as a
nucleophile is not reactive with the stomach acid and is therefore, not
thereby removed from the pectin molecule but remains an intrinsic part
of it. Ethanol (regular old sipping alcohol) is, however, stripped out
of the pectin and absorbed directly through the stomach wall in amounts
that are immediately metabolized by the liver with no ill effect, but
along with the other ethanol present in juices, rather is protective of
methanol poisoning from other sources. This point is but little
appreciated by the medical profession in general, but is well known to
mechanics, who in the case of accidentally ingesting methanol, will
often successfully treat themselves by merely ingesting orange juice and
going on about their work with no further problems. I encountered a
hair raising account of this bleak medical ignorance written by a
medical doctor who was working in an isolated, remote refugee camp in
southeast Asia. The camp had run out of alcoholic beverages, which are
a medically recognized antidote for methanol poisoning. They had lots
of orange juice and vitamin nutritionals on hand though, and when one of
their medical colleagues was accidentally poisoned by unknowingly
ingesting methanol they had the horrible, soul wrenching experience of
watching their fellow doctor die the frightening, agonizing, suffering
death of methanol poisoning. They believed his fate to be irreparably
sealed and that he was doomed because they did not have ethanol nor any
other known alcohol dehydrogenase inhibitor available to them to “treat”
him with, while in fact, they had in their very hands the orange juice
and other vitamin protective factors that would have saved their
colleague’s life and well being. Such is the medical ignorance
engendered and ingrained in the profession by the punditry lies designed
to protect the indefensible Nutrasweet.
This depletion of the ethyl alcohol from pectin, ingested in nutritional
amounts, leaves its binding sites for alcohol highly unsaturated so the
methyl alcohol is held even more tightly as a part of the pectin
molecule and throughout the rest of the assimilative digestive processes
any other traces of methanol, from any other source, are chemically
“sponged up” by the alcohol depleted pectin and thus snatched from the
alimentary canal before it can even be absorbed.
Thus fruit juice is highly protective of methanol poisoning rather than
serving as a source of methanol as the Aspartame pundits would maintain.
Moreover the fruit and vegetable juices contain relatively high amounts
of folic acid, niacin, vitamin C, and B complex vitamins which serve to
directly detoxify the methanol toxic axis in the metabolic processes
and, are therefore also protective. On the other hand “Nutrasweet” is
non nutritional and affords none of the protective factors afforded by
fruit and vegetable juices but rather consumes them in it’s inherent
metabolism leaving the human organism depleted of them on a milligram
for milligram basis. This depletion therefore, is made all the more
overwhelming to the health by the immense volumes of Aspartame products
that some consume.
The methanol poisoning from Aspartame is so highly synergized by it’s
being estherized into the larger, biologically reactive entirety that it
ends up an alcohol poisoning about twenty thousand times as potent as
the intoxication from ethanol, on a per weight basis, making the drug
and toxic effects of even small amounts of Aspartame significant. “The
rest of the story”, as horrifying as it may be, is too long to be
related here but is available in its entirety in articles by myself and
other doctors and scientists on excellent net sites such as “dorway” and
“holisticmed” as well as in Dr. Hyman Robert’s excellent medical text.
Especially recommended, as reading for in depth knowledge of the
methanol-formaldehyde-formic acid-carbon monoxide toxic axis, is my
article on “Sperm warfare” (http://www.dorway.com/spermwar.txt) on
WWW.dorway.com.