Interview With Dr. Blayloc On Aspartame (3 June, 1998)

ANNOUNCER:� You are listening to Personal Achievement Radio, AM 1390
WZHF, and it’s time now to turn the air waves over to Mission Possible
Radio, dedicated to the eradication of aspartame as an additive in food
preparation.� Here are your hosts Jon Baum and Mark Baron.

JON BAUM:� Welcome to Mission Possible Radio.� My name is Jon Baum.�
Mark Baron is off today.� Betty Martini is taking his place from
Atlanta.� Mark Baron, Betty Martini and myself are volunteers.� In this
hour show, you will learn about a sinister plot by Searle
Pharmaceuticals, Monsanto Corporation and the United States government
to unleash a very dangerous addictive drug on the world’s population
which causes symptoms as mild as migraine headaches to symptoms as
serious as seizures, cancer, blindness, Alzheimer’s and death. Today we
have a very special guest and I don’t want to keep him waiting. Betty
will you please introduce our guest Dr. Russell Blaylock.

BETTY MARTINI:� Yes Jon.� I’m delighted to introduce Dr. Blaylock. He
has been in private neurosurgical practice for the past twenty one (21)
years and at present, he is in neurosurgical practice in Jackson
Mississippi with a Clinical Professor’s Appointment at the Medical
University of Mississippi. He’s appeared on the 700 Club seven (7)
times. He’s appeared on Lifestyle Magazine Television Show and
syndicated radio programs thirty (30) times discussing the effects of
Excitotoxins in food additives on the nervous system. He has written to
over a dozen scientific papers on various subjects, chapters in three
medical textbooks on brain trauma, a patient booklet on multiple
sclerosis, and is in the process of writing another book on brain
diseases and how to prevent them through nutritional methods. He is the
author of “Excitotoxins: The Taste that Kills,” and if you’re on the
Internet system, you can get this at http://www.amazon.com otherwise you
could call 1-800-643-2665.� Welcome Dr. Blaylock.

DR. BLAYLOCK:� Thank you Betty, I appreciate it.

BETTY MARTINI:� Dr. Blaylock, tell us, what is an excitotoxin and where
are they found?

DR BLAYLOCK:� Well, an excitotoxin is a rather unusual group of
compounds most of which are proteins that we’re particularly concerned
with.� But, these are substances that when you expose brain cells to it
which we call neurons, these brain cells become very hyperexcited so
that they’re firing their impulses very rapidly.� They keep doing that
until the cell becomes so exhausted it’ll die and that’s the reason we
call that an excitotoxin.� Normally these substances in the brain for
example, glutamate and aspartate are used as transmitter substances,
that is a substance that allows these cells to communicate with each
other.� But these compounds are so toxic that the brain keeps them in
minutely low concentrations.� It is very carefully regulated. So
anything that alters that so that these compounds increase, it can
destroy brain cells and produce what we call neurodegeneration or
degeneration of the brain and spinal cord.� Now, where they’re found,
they’re found in various plant substances.� As far as most people are
concerned, you’re most likely to be exposed to excitotoxins as food
additives.� One of them that most people are familiar with would be
monosodium glutamate or MSG.� It occurs in various disguised forms,
hydrolyzed vegetable protein, vegetable protein, soy isolate, etc.�
Another form it is found in is one of the components of aspartame or
NutraSweet, which is made of two amino acids, and methanol,
phenylalanine and aspartic acid.� Aspartic acid is an excitotoxin that
is approximately as powerful as glutamate as an excitotoxin and the
phenylalanine is an amino acid that is known to produce seizures and act
as a neurotoxin at high levels in the brain as well.

JON BAUM:� Dr. Blaylock, can naturally occurring proteins be harmful to
the brain?

DR. BLAYLOCK:� Well generally, the way things are arranged in nature,
almost all of the amino acids occur as whole proteins, so that the body
slowly assimilates it and breaks it down and converts it in the liver so
that the level or concentration of their amino acids is always kept at
moderately low levels, so that the brain is not assaulted by these
dangerous proteins.� And what happens is when we start manipulating
foods and drinks and creating sweeteners that contain high levels of
these amino acids in isolation is the blood levels can get quite high in
fact, tremendously high, and this results in a significant elevation of
these amino acids in the brain and that’s what has most of us worried is
that it’s at a level high enough to produce destruction of certain
groups of brain cells and produce disease, seizures or even death.

BETTY MARTINI:� Why are isolated amino acids so dangerous Dr. Blaylock?

DR. BLAYLOCK:� Well, as I said the isolated amino acid is an unnatural
situation in high concentrations.� Normally the body keeps it low by
assimilating or breaking down proteins very slowly so that the body can
incorporate them in areas where they will not reach toxic levels, but
it’s a completely abnormal and artificial situation to have amino acids
in high concentrations and I think this is one of the things that the
general public needs to realize because a lot of the defenders of these
food additives say well, “These are natural products, these are amino
acids that are found in nature.”� They are not found in isolation and it
is not normal for the human body to have plasma or blood levels that are
extremely high as we see after one consumes NutraSweet or a meal with
MSG in it.� We are seeing blood levels that are not found in nature, if
you consume normal foods you will never develop these high blood levels.

BETTY MARTINI:� Jon?

JON BAUM:� Why do you think aspartame is so dangerous?

DR. BLAYLOCK:� Well, a lot of the book that I wrote about excitotoxins
concerns glutamate, MSG and that sort of thing or the glutamate that
accumulates naturally in the brain in pathological conditions, but the
story of aspartame is that aspartame contains aspartic acid which is
also an isolated amino acid that is just as toxic as glutamate. What
makes aspartame particularly dangerous is that it contains three
neurotoxins. Methanol is a very powerful neurotoxin, in fact the EPA
controls methanol exposure very carefully allowing only very minute
levels to be found in foods or in environmental exposures. But, it’s
interesting that the level allowed in NutraSweet is seven (7) times the
amount that the EPA will allow anyone else to use. So methanol is an
extremely powerful neurotoxin.� It can produce blindness, it can produce
cellular destruction in the brain and spinal cord in particular the
optic nerves that has to do with our vision.� The second amino acid,
aspartic acid of course is an excitotoxin that can product cellular
excitation, cell death in the brain, it can alter the way the brain is
formed in newborn babies that permanently changes the brain formation,
results in behavioral changes in children, hyperactivity.� The
phenylalanine can also alter how the brain is formed during the fetal
formation of the brain and thereafter, it can produce lowering of the
seizure threshold so you’re more likely to have a seizure. Phenylalanine
and aspartic acid are both well recognized neurotoxins.� So this
combination by putting three relatively powerful neurotoxins into one
combination is just to me unbelievable.

BETTY MARTINI:� Well, we’ve heard a lot about the blood brain barrier.
Doesn’t it prevent these amino acids from entering the brain?

DR. BLAYLOCK:� Well, this is one of the other things that the defenders
of these compounds, food additives, usually bring up is that the brain
has a barrier system that would keep these toxic substances from
entering the brain, and they are well aware that it’s not true.� There’s
an enormous amount of research, particularly recently in which the
levels of this glutamic acid, aspartic acid and phenylalanine have been
measured inside the brain after ingestion of NutraSweet or MSG.� It has
clearly shown that these substances accumulate in very high
concentrations within the brain.� One study which was recently done
indicated that the previous studies that said phenylalanine does not
increase in the brain, what it showed is that this really was kind of a
deceptive study in that they homogenated or ground up the entire brain
of these animals and measured phenylalanine levels.� But, when they
repeated this study and measured the amount of� phenylalanine in
particular areas of the brain they found the phenylalanine tends to
accumulate in the critical areas of the brain so that while the whole
brain has normal phenylalanine levels, these critical parts of the brain
have very high phenylalanine levels. For example, the hypothalamus which
controls so many aspects of our functions, not just the endocrine system
but it controls our heart rate, it controls the autonomic nervous
system, the sleep/wake cycles, your appetite, it controls the emotional
system — this area of the brain has been shown to have very high
accumulations of phenylalanine.� The medula oblongota at the brain stem
accumulates it, the corpus striadem which is related to Parkinson’s
Disease, all of these areas are known to accumulate phenylalanine. So
this shows that how these studies can be somewhat deceptive until we
look closer at them.

JON BAUM:� Dr. Blaylock, can we hold that thought and we’ll be back in a
few minutes.

DR. BLAYLOCK:� Sure

(BREAK)

JON BAUM:� Welcome back. We’re here with Betty Martini, myself Jon Baum
and Dr. Russell Blaylock.� We were talking about the hypothalamus gland
and how it’s affected by aspartame.� Dr. Blaylock?

DR. BLAYLOCK: Yes, basically what we’re talking about is the blood brain
barrier protecting the brain against these things that are in our diet
and what I was showing is that when we measure the actual brain level of
these chemicals, they’re passing right through the barrier.� We know
that there is areas of the brain which have no barrier and that these
substances can enter through there and concentrate at very high
concentrations and this is not just theoretical but we measure the
actual levels in these parts in the brain. The hypothalamus is so
important in controlling our endocrine system that has to do with
thyroid function, adrenal gland function, reproductive function, growth,
so this is a very important area of the brain and we know that
phenylalanine can severely alter that and that’s one of the components
of NutraSweet.� We know that the excitatory type transmitter is critical
in that area of the brain so any alteration in its concentration, for
example aspartic acid in NutraSweet can alter that function in the
hypothalamus and as I said it affects the autonomic system as well and
there may be some important connection between the accumulation of these
chemicals in the hypothalamus and sudden cardiac death and that’s
something that I’m researching for this new book that I’m working on at
the present time.�

JON BAUM:� What is the connection between aspartame and MS?

DR. BLAYLOCK:� Well, what we know about MS is during the periods of
exacerbation, that is when the symptoms get worse, the barrier system
around the parts of the brain that contains the nerve fibers, that is
the myelin, this tends to break down.� When that breaks down any
substance in the blood can enter that part of the brain so that if your
blood has high concentrations of phenylalanine, or aspartic acid and
methanol, it’s going to seep through these holes or openings in this
barrier system and go directly into the damaged areas of the brain and
greatly aggravate it.� A person may have what we call subclinical MS.
That is they’re not even aware they have it.� When they drink NutraSweet
they’ll develop all of the symptoms of full blown MS and become deathly
ill. There’s some evidence that NutraSweet in a person that consumes a
large concentration can develop an MS-like syndrome, that is they
develop a lot of the symptoms of MS that is purely due to the toxic
affects of the components of NutraSweet.

BETTY MARTINI:� Dr. Blaylock, we have just been flooded with complaints
from pilots. Three American Airline pilots that were heavy users of
aspartame have died.� One just recently had a stroke and some have said
that pilots affected by disorientation, blindness, vertigo and other
neurological symptoms are in fact suffering from hypoglycemia. Is that
true?

DR. BLAYLOCK:� Well, this is something that I had explored early on that
really was not being paid any attention to was the connection between
hypoglycemia and aspartame toxicity, and what we find is that all
excitotoxins, their toxic effect is greatly magnified in the presence of
hypoglycemia. For instance let’s say a pilot is trying to make a
schedule, he skips breakfast instead he has a diet cola with NutraSweet.
His blood sugar is going to be low but he would be essentially
asymptomatic or just maybe feel a little hungry or slightly weak from it
but with that hypoglycemia in the presence of NutraSweet he would
develop a full blown syndrome of exposure to NutraSweet with
disorientation, blurred vision, confusion, may have vertigo, that is the
sensation of dizziness. All of these things may become full blown in the
presence of hypoglycemia that may be the connection between the two.�
There’s also evidence that NutraSweet itself may trigger a hypoglycemic
reaction so that at that point if the pilot was to drink NutraSweet, it
could induce hypoglycemia and again that would compound the toxic effect
the of NutraSweet. So that could be the connection there.

BETTY MARTINI:� Is it depleting glucose in the brain?� Is that how it
works?

DR. BLAYLOCK:� Yes, it’s denying glucose to brain cells and of course
glucose is the primary fuel for the brain and without glucose most
people would quickly lapse into a coma. So its very important that the
blood sugar falls in low or even moderately low levels in the presence
of a neurotoxin like one of these excitotoxins.� It can produce rather
profound confusion, disorientation and visual difficulties and of course
they’re at a very high susceptibility to seizure at that point, so if
the blood sugar is low and they’re taking in something that we know
lowers the seizure threshold, they are at a very high risk of developing
seizures.� So I think that to allow pilots to continue this practice is
extremely hazardous considering that they are responsible for hundreds
of people on the plane, you know that’s just irresponsible.

BETTY MARTINI:� How about the wood alcohol and the altitude.� Does the
altitude play a part in this?

DR. BLAYLOCK:� Well, the wood alcohol of course is a very powerful
neurotoxin and we know that it’s especially toxic to the optic nerves
and what happens in the case of NutraSweet is that it’s an esterified
methanol, that is its what binds the phenylalanine to the aspartic acid
but once in the body it quickly breaks down so that it accumulates
directly in the tissues and can produce significantly high levels within
the tissues.� So that would affect the pilots vision.� We don’t really
know the additive affect of phenylalanine with the neurotoxin methanol
and aspartic acid because we do know from other experiments that
neurotoxins tend to have additive effects when they’re combined so to
put three neurotoxins into one compound is going to greatly magnify its
toxic effect much more so than the individual compounds themselves.
So any altitude change, of course change in the oxygen content, anything
that’s going to change the ability of the neuron to produce energy is
going to magnify the toxic effect of these compounds.

BETTY MARTINI:� Jon?

JON BAUM:� Dr. Blaylock, while we’re on this subject we only have a
couple of seconds left in this segment, but how does the body know to
deplete its glucose supply?

DR. BLAYLOCK:� How does it know when it’s depleted?

JON BAUM:� No, how does it know to deplete it?

DR. BLAYLOCK:� Well, it’s just part of the natural metabolism but
recently what’s important that we found out is that caffeine greatly
magnifies the symptoms of hypoglycemia so that you can have even a
moderate lowering of your blood sugar in the presence of caffeine and
you’ll have severe hunger, severe disorientation and confusion and
jitteriness, nervousness. The way it does that is that it stimulates the
adrenal glands to secrete ephedrine and norephedrine, two compounds that
are produced by phenylalanine that’s found in NutraSweet.� So that the
NutraSweet may be doing the same thing in that it makes even moderately
low hypoglycemia quite severe in terms of the symptoms.

JON BAUM:� So you’re going to have the effects of the ephedrine and
norephedrine as well?

DR. BLAYLOCK:� Right, and that’s what produces most of the symptoms that
we associate with hypoglycemia is that secretion, so you’re artificially
doing that by raising the phenylalanine levels in your blood.

JON BAUM:� OK. Betty do you have a quick question for Dr. Blaylock?�
We’re going to go on a break in about a minute.

BETTY MARTINI:� Well, we’d like to know, are there other conditions that

would make one more susceptible to the adverse effects of aspartame? DR.
BLAYLOCK:� Well, we know that there are a lot of different conditions
that occur every day, for instance, let’s say a person is having some
problem with the different electrolytes in their blood and their sodium
content for whatever cause.� Maybe they’ve had a fever or haven’t been
drinking enough water, that makes them more susceptible to seizures. If
they’ve skipped meals and have hypoglycemia they’re more susceptible to
seizure. They could have a silent lesion in their brain for instance, a
scar from an old injury when they were a child or at birth, they could
have cavernous a.v. malformations which is generally a lesion you
wouldn’t even know you had but if you’re exposed to NutraSweet it could
precipitate a seizure in all of those conditions.

JON BAUM:� Dr. Blaylock, we’re going to take a break right now. Thank
you very much.

DR. BLAYLOCK: Your welcome.

(BREAK)

JON BAUM:� We’re back, with Mission Possible Radio.� Our guest is Dr.
Russell Blaylock. I’m Jon Baum. We have Betty Martini on the line with
us.

BETTY MARTINI:� Jon, you know I think our listeners at this point
realize how serious this problem is, so I’d like to again give this
number where they can get Dr. Blaylock’s book. It’s a wonderful book,
“Excitotoxins:� The Taste that Kills,” and if you’re on the Internet
system…

JON BAUM:� Let me give the website real quick.

BETTY MARTINI:� Alright.

JON BAUM:� We have a web site www.aspartamekills.com and if you go to
that web site you’ll see Dr. Blaylock’s book right on the top.� All you
have to do is click on that book and you’ll be taken to amazon.com.�
Mission Possible will get a small donation from them.� We’d appreciate
it and you can also call an 800 number.� Betty?

BETTY MARTINI:� OK, and that is 1-800-643-2665 and now we want to get
into an issue that is really serious, it is the one about seizures and
aspartame. We know that on the FDA report there are four different types
of seizures triggered by aspartame that are documented by the FDA.� We
know that a pivotal study done on monkeys said five of them had grand
mal seizures and one died. However with industry experimental results
seems to indicate that aspartame doesn’t precipitate seizures.� So, what
about humans Dr. Blaylock?

DR. BLAYLOCK:� Well, the thing that’s interesting about a lot of these
studies is that most of them were done on rats or mice and rats and mice
metabolize phenylalanine and aspartame much different than humans do.
Humans mostly will have an elevated phenylalanine levels in the blood,
whereas the mice and rats will develop a different amino acid, tyrosine,
so that makes a lot of difference in experimental results. The other
thing is that rats require a two time higher dosage and mice a seven
times higher dose of aspartame than would humans to produce the same
increase in plasma phenylalanine.� So this means that humans are seven
times more sensitive than mice and two times more sensitive than rats to
aspartame seizure potential.� So that makes a lot of difference.� The
other things is that humans are consuming this aspartame chronically,
that is every day, several times a day, where most of these experiments
were done giving a single dose or maybe two doses of aspartame, so the
human situation is a lot different.� Also in humans they are consuming
excitotoxins in other forms, MSG, hydrolyzed vegetable protein. As I
stated the additive effect of these things is much worse than is single
exposure. The other thing that makes a lot of difference is the form in
which you consume the aspartame.� We know that liquid excitotoxins are
much more toxic and much more likely to produce seizures than are solid
forms, that is solid foods. Encapsulated aspartame is used in a lot of
the experiments and its poorly absorbed, only 50% of it is absorbed. So
a lot of these experiments either by design or by ignorance of the
various metabolic effects of aspartame are purposely or inadvertently
not applicable to humans.� The human cases, we have many, many clinical
cases of seizures that are precipitated by aspartame products that are
actually double blind studies not designed that way but, they end up
double blind studies. So we have good evidence that in humans aspartame
causes seizures.

JON BAUM:� Dr. Blaylock, I think you already answered this, is there a
way to doctor experimental results so that you get the results you want,
that is, fix the results to show that a dangerous compound is safe?

DR. BLAYLOCK;� Sure, in the book I go through this in some detail, show
some of the methods that’s been used by people either who were paid by
the companies to produce research that gave them the result they wanted,
or just poor design of the research project had that result. You can
throw away data, you can hide data, you can use special blocking
anesthetics on the animals that are known to block excitotoxin effects,
that’s been done. You can feed high carbohydrate meals at the same time
to help reduce the effects of it, as I said you can use an encapsulated
form of aspartame that is poorly absorbed. There’s just a lot of
different ways that you could do it. Now one of the things about
excitotoxins and seizures, recently it was found that the time of day
that you feed these animals the excitotoxin made a lot of difference.
For example when they fed them at 7:00 a.m. they had a significant
increase in the number and intensity of seizure and much reduction in
the seizures when given at 3:00 p.m. or 11:00 p.m.� Nearly 70% of the
animals died in status epilepticus, that is a seizure that won’t stop
and animals given these excitotoxins at 7:00 a.m. versus later in the
day so that all sorts of variables can make a lot of difference in the
sensitivity and how you can doctor things to get the results that you
want.

BETTY MARTINI:� Are there medical conditions that are completely without
symptoms that can be precipitated by substances such as aspartame and
MSG?

DR. BLAYLOCK:� Exactly, for example in my book I give the case of a man
who was drinking Crystal Light sweetened with NutraSweet which seems to
be cropping up a lot and I don’t know what it is about Crystal Light but
we have certainly a lot of seizures are being reported with the use of
that compound, I mean that particular substance.� But in this man he had
an abnormal condition of his brain which was a little abnormal vein deep
in his brain which in most people you wouldn’t even know you had it and
could go through life never having a single symptom, but he was
consuming, at that point, a large amount of Crystal Light sweetened with
NutraSweet and he developed a grand mal seizure.� When this lesion was
found it was not necessary to be surgically treated because it was a
benign condition.� All they did was take him off NutraSweet and the
seizures cleared up.� There is a lot of conditions like this.� You could
have scars in your brain and for instance during a difficult birth
sometimes it will produce a small scar in the brain that may be
completely without any symptoms and you’d never know you had it, but if
you were exposed to something like NutraSweet which lowers your seizure
threshold, out of the blue you’ll have a seizure. Now, these are the
types of things that we don’t know beforehand that makes certain groups
of people highly susceptible to seizures.� And this may be happening in
some of the pilots. They may have lesions in their brain that no one
would have any way of even knowing it was there, until they’re exposed
to NutraSweet under these conditions, and then they have full blown
seizures.

JON BAUM:� I believe an acquaintance of mine came by my office and told
me about a horrific experience he had with one bottle of Crystal Light,
and he was driving home on Route #66 and started having convulsions.� He
was lucky he pulled his truck over.

DR. BLAYLOCK:� I don’t know what it is about Crystal Light, whether they
use a higher dose or what but it certainly crops up a lot.� Another
interesting story I had, I did a radio program in another city and I was
talking to the station manager and he said while we were talking before
the program, he said you know I’ve been on a diet, and I’m using
NutraSweet, and he said I’ve had a lot of problems with my memory, I get
disoriented, confused, he said “Do you think it could be that?”� And of
course I took him off of it and his condition cleared up.� But you know,
this is just so common. These symptoms are the most common symptoms
reported to the FDA and we’re talking about thousands and thousands of
complaints around the nation every year and most of them have to do with
the nervous system. I cataloged them according to their system in the
body and in fact by far the majority of the symptoms are in the central
nervous system. complaints

JON BAUM:� I just got passed a note that says that both Nutra System and
Jenny Craig Diet Plans use Crystal Light as a water substitute, do you
know anything about that?

DR. BLAYLOCK:� I have heard that some of the diet systems are advocating
Crystal Light and I shudder when I see that.� I think anyone who is
going to go on a diet and take NutraSweet products, you are putting
yourself at the maximum risk.� If you are on a low calorie diet that
lowers your blood sugar then that greatly increases your chances of
having a seizure, cardiac problems or neurodegenerative changes in your
brain.� I think that’s very hazardous.

BETTY MARTINI:� Dr. Blaylock of course, we are flooded with complaints
day and night and you’re right they’re neurological, central nervous
system problems. You were mentioning Crystal Light and we get so many
complaints on it, it’s interesting that one of them came from an actress
who had to advertise Crystal Light and she said she could hardly get
through it, she had so many gastrointestinal complaints and we also seem
to get a lot of them on Diet Kool Aid.� These powders that are mixed
with aspartame as if it’s just chemicals and aspartame and they seem to
be the top complaints of products like this but, Crystal Light is right
up at the top.

DR. BLAYLOCK:� Well, it may be that in both cases Kool Aid and Crystal
Light is because people drink such large volumes.� Some of the people
I’ve talked to that’s had Crystal Light problems, it’s a drink that you
can drink a lot of. You know a Diet Cola, you may not drink the volume
that you would drink of Crystal Light or of Kool Aid.� Children are
particularly susceptible with Kool Aid and there’s special ADD patients
who have had just horrendous problems with NutraSweet that cleared up
once they got off of it so, the mothers need to really be careful about
those two drinks and I think it’s because the people drink a lot larger
volume and therefore are getting a higher concentration of the
NutraSweet than they would in diet colas or other forms.

JON BAUM:� Dr. Blaylock, we touched lightly on ADD and ADHD.� What are
learning disorders that aspartame can aggravate or even cause?

DR. BLAYLOCK:� Well, this is something that’s of a lot of concern to
people that particularly work with ADD children and ADHD which is the
hyperactive form of Attention Deficit Disorder. One of the persons
involved is Dr. Keith Connors who has written the book called “Feeding
the Brain: How Foods Affects Children.” In this book he talks about a
four year old child who was drinking some aspartame sweetened rootbeer
and just became berserk.� The child was hyperactive, violent,
complaining of headaches and the doctor suggested to stop the NutraSweet
sweetened rootbeer.� The mother took it away, the child just returned to
normal, pleasant, normal mentation, no headaches and she was kind of
skeptical so she decided just to let this child start drinking it again
.� She did and the same thing happened. He gives case after case like
this which if you examine what we’re talking about is actually doing
double blind studies in single individual cases which demonstrate quite
clearly that the only variable is the NutraSweet. So this is producing
some ADHD type problems that are very clear.� Now one of the studies
that was done, a two part study by Freider and Grimm is an Israeli study
at the University there, tried to determine what was causing some of
these problems with mentation. They fed pregnant mice an excitotoxin,
and they found that the offspring had a normal appearing learning for
simple things but for complex learning they were severely impaired.� And
when they studied the brains to see why, they found out that the
neurotransmitter called acetyl choline had been reduced 80% and remained
reduced throughout the entire childhood period of that animal.� So what
we’re seeing is a profound change in the chemistry of the brain of
children that are exposed to these excitotoxins while they’re still
inside their mother during the developmental period. Subsequent studies,
one in Neuroscience Behavioral Review in 1993, found that nutrition was
probably the single most important environmental influence on the
development of the brain in the fetus and another study in 1995 in
BioMedicine and Environmental Science found that these excitotoxins
severely effect the hypothalamus in newborn babies so that the wiring or
how all these different neurons connect to one another may be altered
and would be altered permanently so that the child’s hypothalamus would
not work properly throughout the rest of their life, and this can effect
immunity as well, so that the immune system is totally altered
throughout the rest of their life. Another interesting study in children
found that when pregnant mothers were fed glutamate and other
excitotoxins they had a dramatic increase in free radical formation in
the offspring and that continued all through adolescence.� It increased
free radical formation 56%. That’s damaging the brain cells, throughout
all that period. So we have a multitude of research papers that have
been done and studies that have been done that shows these excitotoxins
have a profound damaging effect on the development of the brains of
newborns. Even when these children are exposed to it after birth, they
have severe changes in their brain and many of these things are not
reversible so pregnant women drinking NutraSweet may be doing enormous
amounts of damage and we’ve known that ironically the phenylalanine from
NutraSweet in the mother’s blood concentrates inside the blood of the
baby two fold, that is the level inside the baby’s body is twice as high
as it is in the mother, and that pregnant women actually have higher
concentrations than non-pregnant women so this baby’s getting an even
higher concentration of this brain- toxic chemical. The same thing can
happen with glutamate and aspartate. They are also transferred into the
baby in high concentrations.� So we have good evidence that drinking
Nutrasweet and exposing the child’s brain to these excitotoxic
substances can produce significant alteration in the brain formation.

BETTY MARTINI:� I’m glad you went into that Dr. Blaylock.� I was about
to ask you some questions about it.� Dr. Louis Elsas is aProfessor of
Pediatrics at mory University (genetics). Dr. Elsas testified before
congress that aspartame is a neurotoxin and a teratogen that triggers
birth defects and even mental retardation, and there is no warning on
aspartame and that’s almost criminal because we’ve gotten many
complaints from mothers who said they didn’t know and they’d lost as
many as seven babies using diet drinks.� But, I’d like to ask you, are
the effects of excitotoxins reversible?

DR. BLAYLOCK:� Well, generally what we find is that there’s two types of
effects by excitotoxins, one is with massive doses it will kill the
cells, that is it will kill critical areas of brain cells particularly
in the hypothalamus.� Once they’re gone, they’re lost.� The second
effect is what we call the physiological effect, that means it alters
how the cell functions but if you stop the toxin, the cell can recover
and return back to normal and we’ve seen that clinically, particularly
in children in which they develop this severe violence and hyperactivity
and uncontrollable behavior, that if you stop the NutraSweet, they
return to normal. They’re nice, pleasant children without headaches who
can learn normally, so a lot of these things are reversible. and we also
know that if these children would continue to consume NutraSweet over
long periods of time it can become permanent. There have even been cases
of children that need to be institutionalized because of prolonged
exposure to high concentrations of aspartame.� So its critical that
mothers, if they’re pregnant and they’re drinking Nutrasweet to stop
now.� If they’re letting their children have it, to stop now.� It’s just
something so critical they can’t wait, they need to stop it now.� They
can’t wean off of it, they can’t procrastinate about it, they need to
stop it right now.

BETTY MARTINI:� I know that we don’t have too much time left and I
wondered if Dr. Blaylock, you could touch on one of the breakdown
products diketopiperazine, not too many people realize that aspartame is
a drug an that it breaks down into a witches brew of toxins and that it
did in lab animals trigger astrocytomas in rats.

DR. BLAYLOCK:� In fact that was the first red flag that came up and this
experiment was done by G. D. Searle Company. I discuss that in some
detail in my book, how all of this came about. But what was interesting
was that their own laboratories showed that there was a tremendous
increase in brain tumors in the experimental animals exposed to
NutraSweet and that it was dose related. The higher the dose, the more
brain tumors.� There was a forty-seven (47) fold increase of brain
tumors in their mice.� The longer the mouse was exposed to it, the
higher the incidence of tumors.� The older it became, the more likely
that a tumor would develop.� I have received numerous phone calls and
letters and e-mails from young women all over the country who have been
heavy NutraSweet users who have astrocytomas. There’s an unexplained
increase in astrocytomas in the United States and the American Board of
Neurological Surgery and the Tumor Registry have no idea why. Dr. Olney,
John Olney, gave a news conference in which he tried to explain it but
unfortunately I don’t think enough people understood that importance
attached to this news conference. And what they need to do is look at
the Jerome Bressler Report which is a government report of the research
that was done in this area. As Betty says, what happens in NutraSweet
the longer it sits in that can or baked goods, it is broken down into
diketopiperazine which is a cancer causing substance and it is thought
to be the cause of the brain tumors, it’s related to another substance
that we use to induce brain tumors in experimental animals. So, if you
read the book, I tell the whole story of the Bressler Report, the
incidence of brain tumors and how they manipulated the results. It’s an
interesting story but it’s also critical for that reason to avoid
NutraSweet.

JON BAUM:� Dr. Blaylock, we only have a few seconds left, exactly
thirty, and I want to thank you for being on our show. I know your time
is valuable.� I want to thank Betty Martini from Atlanta and can we
bring you on another time.

DR. BLAYLOCK:� I’d be glad to.

JON BAUM:� Thank you very much.

DR. BLAYLOCK:� And I appreciate the opportunity.

BETTY MARTINI: Thank you Dr. Blaylock.

DR. BLAYLOCK:� Thank you Betty.

JON BAUM:� This is Jon Baum from Mission Possible Radio, we’ll be back
here next week, not sure who the guest is going to be. We were also on
the Internet at www.aspartamekills.com, and all you have to do is hit
the live feed and we thank our Internet listeners. Good night.

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This file obtained from http://www.dorway.com, the 200+ page
Internet WEB site with the WHOLE story on aspartame/neotame
and much more! Dave Rietz, WEBmaster and Victim