The Evil Sugars

Ever since I can remember I've been the victim of debilitating migraines. Now when I say migraine, I don't mean a headache, where your head is just kind of throbbing or sore all over, I mean it feels like someone is drilling a hole into the side of my head (and sometimes several holes in different spots). And when I say debilitating, I mean I can't think, I can't function, I can't even see straight. The worst part is, I was the victim of these kinds of monsters on a daily basis. I was eating the max dosage of ibuprofen almost every day. And I became scared that they were going to lead to stomach bleeding, so I went to the doctor. I hadn't really ever been seen professionally because I had tried my friend's migraine medicine and it just made me feel drugged and didn't take away the pain. I really didn't want to be a pill popper, but I had become one with the ibuprofen. So I went to see my regular physician. They took blood and did a physical and sent me to have a CAT scan and told me every thing looked normal. It was a relief to find that I don't have AIDS or cancer or something visible on the CAT. But they recommended I go to a neurologist and gave me a referal. I only hadn't gone yet because I was backed up on doctor bills thanks to sick kids. I figured I'd go after I paid them off first. In the mean time, I read Perfect Weight America by Jordan Rubin and decided to cut a slew of things from my diet. These included high-fructose corn syrup, bleached enriched flour, pork, shellfish, and hydrogenated everything. To my surprise, within the first week I noticed that I wasn't having my unbearable migraines, not even a headache. I had to contribute it to the HFCS. See, I once thought perhaps my migraines were caused from my addiction to caffeine. I used to drink 4-6 Cokes a day and nothing else. So, in an effort to try and get rid of my migraines, I didn't drink a single Coke for almost 2 weeks. I still got the migraines so I went back to my stress relieving drinks. Well, when I had cut out not only soda but every thing that had HFCS on the label, the migraines stopped. So how do I KNOW it's the HFCS? Well, about 3 or 4 weeks into my diet I made pancakes. I hadn't switched to non-HFCS syrup yet so I ate the first 2 plain. But I really wanted some syrup, at least on one. So I ate syrup on the last one and I got a migraine! It wasn't a really bad one, but it caused me to have to eat some ibuprofen for relief. I decided right then and there, the HFCS has to be the culprit. My mom unconvinced said, "Maybe you have a gluten intolerance." My sister commented, "But all those commercials say HFCS is just like sugar and is perfectly healthy." So I set out on a quest for truth, as usual. What I found was very interesting, so I thought I'd share. First, let me just say that my mother obviously didn't know what gluten intolerance is because I've never exhibited any of those symptoms. Gluten is a special type of protein that is commonly found in rye, wheat, and barley. Gluten sensitivity or celiac disease is an inflammatory condition of the small intestine precipitated by the ingestion of wheat in individuals with certain genetic make-up. Symptoms include diarrhea, weakness or an anemia related fatigue, and weight loss, but sometimes also a blistering, burning, itchy rash on the body, and in rare cases osteopenic bone disease or neurological disorders. Most individuals exhibit these symptoms by age 2 when wheat is introduced into the diet. So we can scratch that out.
Now let's look at HFCS. Let me just say that if you go to the corn people's site: sweetsurprise.com they will tell you that HFCS is the same as sugar because it is about 50% fructose and 50% glucose, just like sugar. They will tell you it has the same calories and sweetness. They will also tell you that the FDA has labeled it "natural." Well, of course they will. And the FDA also gets away with labelling foods with less than .5 grams of trans fat as "0g Trans Fat" and foods with less than 4 calories per serving as "0 calories." If you trace any product down far enough, it has to come from something natural, duh. (I personally believe that something should be labeled "All Natural" only if it can be found exactly as it is in nature (like an apple). And products made from combining "All Natural" products should be labeled "Made from All Natural Ingredients." And anything not in those two categories should not be labeled in any way insinuating that they are natural.) What they don't tell you is how HFCS is different from sugar or how it is produced. This took a little extra digging, but wasn't hard to find. At WestonAPrice.org, Linda Joyce Forristal of the Weston A. Price Foundation for Wise Traditions in Food, Farming, and the Healing Arts gives us a look at "The Murky World of High-Fructose Corn Syrup." HFCS is produced by processing corn starch to yield glucose, and then processing the glucose to a high percentage of fructose. It sounds simple when you say it like that. White corn starch is turned into crystal clear syrup. However, it is pretty complicated. First cornstarch is treated with alpha-amylase to produce shorter chains of sugars called polysaccarides. Alpha-amylase is industrially produced by a bacterium, usually Bacillus sp. It is purified then shipped to HFCS manufacturers. Next, an enzyme called glucoamylase breaks the sugar chains down even further to yield the simple sugar glucose. Unlike alpha-amylase, glucoamylase is produced by Aspergillus, a fungus, in a fermentation vat where one would likely see little balls of Aspergillus floating on the top. The third enzyme, glucose-isomerase, is very expensive. It converts the glucose to a mixture of about 42% fructose and 50-52% glucose with some other sugars mixed in. While alpha-amylase and glucoamylase are added directly, pricey glucose-isomerase is packed into columns and the sugar mixture is then passed over it. Inexpensive alpha-amylase and glucoamylase are used only once; glucose-isomerase is reused until it loses most of its activity. There are two more steps involved. First, a liquid chromotography step that takes the mixture to 90% fructose. Finally, this is back-blended with the original mixture to yield a final concentration of about 55% fructose- what the industry calls high-fructose corn syrup. HFCS has the exact same sweetness and taste as an equal amount of sucrose from cane or beet sugar, but it is obviously much more complicated to make, involving vats of murky fermenting liquid, fungus and chemical tweaking, all of which take place in one of 16 chemical plants located in the Corn Belt. Yet in spite of all the enzymes required, HFCS is actually cheaper than sugar. It is also very easy to transport- it's just piped into tanker trucks. There's also a couple things to know about the enzymes alpha-amylase and glucose-isomerase: they are genetically modified to make them more stable. Enzymes are actually very large proteins and through genetic modification specific amino acids are changed or replaced so the enzyme's "backbone" won't break down or unfold. This allows the industry to get the enzymes to higher temperatures before they become unstable. So not only is HFCS made from genetically modified corn, but genetically modified enzymes as well (it is estimated that about 80% of everything we eat has been genetically modified at some point). And here's the main thing wrong with HFCS. Because it has the word fructose in it, most people think of fruit and associate it with something natural or healthier than sugar. Table sugar, or sucrose, is a disaccharide composed of 50% fructose and 50% glucose. In sucrose these two bind together. In HFCS, the fructose is "free" or unbound. Research indicates that this interferes with the heart's use of minerals such as magnesium, copper, and chromium. Your body does not process HFCS like sugar, it processes it like fat. This can make you feel hungry instead of full and attribute to weight gain. And in another research experiment led by Dr. Meira Fields, when sugar was given to rats in high amounts, the rats developed multiple health problems. So in order to determine which moiety was the culprit, researchers repeated their studies with two groups of rats, giving one group high amounts of fructose and the other high amounts of glucose. The glucose group was unaffected, but the fructose group had disasterous results. The male rats did not reach adulthood. They had anemia, high cholesterol, and heart hypertrophy (meaning their hearts enlarged until they exploded). The females were not so affected, but they could not produce live young. "The medical profession thinks that fructose is better for diabetics than sugar," says Dr. Field, "but every cell in the body can metabolize glucose. However, all the fructose must be metabolized in the liver. The livers of the rats on the high fructose diet looked like those of alcoholics, plugged with fat and cirrhotic." There's much more about the dangers of fructose, but I think I've made my point. Now onto the other dangerous chemicals we are allowing ourselves to eat:
I personally have never been able to drink or eat anything made with artificial sugars. I wouldn't say I'm allergic, but my body reacts adversely to them. Everything from Diet Coke to Trident gum not only gives me a massive headache, but makes me literally sick to my stomach. Not to mention the aftertaste! So, while I'm not preaching to myself for once, I am preaching to all of you out there who feel it is necessary to use these sugars either to lose weight or because you are diabetic. These artificial sugars are just that: artificial. But what does that mean? It means they are made of or with CHEMICALS. These are very dangerous for your health- and I don't mean weight or looks, I mean your LIFE!
Aspartame is the technical name for products like NutriSweet, Equal, Spoonful, and Equal Measure. It was discovered by accident in 1965 when chemist James Schlatter was testing an anti-ulcer drug. It was approved for dry goods in 1981 and carbonated beverages in 1983 (after objections for not only the drug but the companies research practices were filed in 1974). Aspartame accounts for 75% of the adverse reactions to food additives reported to the FDA. Many of the reactions are serious including seizures and death. The other 90 different documented symptoms include: headaches/ migraines, dizzyness, nausea, numbness, muscle spasms, weight gain, rashes, depression, fatigue, irritability, insomnia, vision problems, hearing loss, heart palpitations, breathing difficulties, anxiety attacks, slurred speach, loss of taste, memory loss, and joint pain (among others). According to researchers and physicians studying these affects, the following chronic conditions can be triggered or worsened by using aspartame: brain tumors, multiple sclerosis, epilepsy, chronic fatigue syndrome, parkinson's disease, alzheimer's, mental retardation, lymphoma, birth defects, fibromyalgia, and diabetes (which is crazy because I know someone who just got diagnosed with MS and she drinks diet sodas!). Aspartame is composed of 3 different chemicals: aspartic acid, phenylalanine, and methanol. But what are these chemicals? Glad you asked! Aspartic acid make up 40% of aspartame. It is an amino acid. Taken in it free form (unbound to proteins) it significantly raises the blood plasma level of aspartate and glutamate (which act as neurotransmitters in the brain by facilitating the transmission of information from neuron to neuron). Too much aspartate or glutamate in the brain kills certain neurons by allowing an influx of too much calcium into the cells. This influx triggers excessive amounts of free radicals, which kill the cells. the neural cell damage that can be caused by excessive aspartate and glutamate is why they are referred to as "exitotoxins." They "excite" or stimulate the neural cells to death. One of the common complaints of persons suffering from the effects of aspartame is memory loss. Ironically, in 1987 G.D. Searle, the manufacturer of aspartame, undertook a search to find a drug to combat the memory loss caused by excitatory amino acid damage. Now onto phenylalanine, which makes up 50% of aspartame. It is an amino acid found in the brain. Persons with the genetic disorder phenylketonuria (PKU) cannot metabolyze phenylalanine. This leads to excessive levels of it in the brain (sometimes lethal). It has been shown that ingesting aspartame, especially along with carbohydrates, can lead to excessive levels of phenylalanine in persons without PKU. This can cause the levels of seratonin to decrease, leading to emotional disorders like depression. Dr. Louis Elsas testified before the U.S. Congress that high levels of phenylalanine can be concentrated in parts of the brain and can be epecially dangerous for infants and fetuses. He also showed that it can be more efficiently metabolised by rodents than humans.
That brings us to methanol which makes up the last 10% of aspartame. It is also known as wood alcohol and is a deadly poison. Methanol is gradually released in the small intestine when the methyl group of aspartame encounter the enzyme chymotrypsin. Methanol breaks down into formic acid and formaldehyde in the body. Formaldehyde is a deadly neurotoxin. The EPA recommends a limit of consumption to 7.8 mg per day. A one-liter (or 1 quart) aspartame sweetened beverage contains about 56 mg of methanol. Due to the lack of a couple of key enzymes, humans are much more sensitive to the toxic effects of methanol than animals. It has also been pointed out that some fruit juices and alcoholic beverages contain small amounts of methanol. It is important to remember that methanol never appears alone. In every case, ethanol is present, usually in much higher amounts. Ethanol is an antidote to the toxicity of methanol in humans. There is also a byproduct of aspartame metabolism called Diketopiperazine (DKP) which has been implicated in the occurance of brain tumors. But even with all the research against it, be sure that the manufacturer has obtained it's own research showing that it is perfectly safe and the FDA agrees.
Now onto saccharin. Saccharin is made of carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen, and sulfur. Saccharin was also discovered accidently. In 1879, some researchers at Johns Hopkins University were experimenting with toluene (coal tar derivatives) and discovered it's sweetness when they ate without washing their hands first (mmmm). In the 1970's a great controversy arose when rats given saccharin developed cancer. The FDA slapped warning labels on the product, but the warning labels have been removed. Saccharin does not metabolise, it simply passes through the human digestive system. It does not affect blood insulin levels and provides no food energy. There have been some studies linking saccharin to bladder cancer, but insufficient research has been done overall. This artificial sugar should be avoided because it is an unnecessary chemical compound and possible carcinogen. Plus, it just plain tastes bad!
Now onto the newest artificial sugar: Sucralose, or Splenda. It is made when sugar is treated with trityl chloride, acetic anhydride, hydrogen chlorine, thionyl chloride, and methanol in thr presence of dimethylformamide, 4-methylmorpholine, toluene, methyl isobutyl ketone, acetic acid, benzyltriethylammonium chloride, and sodium methoxide, making it unlike anything found in nature. It is not calorie free, but because it is 600 times sweeter than sugar, it is only needed in small amounts. The first two ingredients in Splenda are dextrose and maltodextrin which are carbohydrates that are not free of calories. One cup of Splenda contains 96 calories and 32 carbs, which is substantial for a person with diabetes. The presence of chlorine is thought to be the most dangerous component of sucralose. Chlorine is considered a carcinogen and has been used in poisonous gas, pesticides, disinfectants, and plastics. No long-term human studies have been done, only short-term animal studies. The alleged symptoms associated with sucralose are gastrointestinal problems, skin irritations, wheezing, cough, runny nose, chest pains, palpitations, anxiety, anger, mood swings, depression, and itchy eyes.

Source: http://tjosramblings.blogspot.com/2009/07/evil-sugars.html