LowCarb Monthly Magazine

She gave me my choice of several dates within the next two weeks. First, I was excited that one of the biggest, most respected names in the field of medicine and diet, was going to address this topic seriously. Next, as a broadcaster [I was the First Lady Deejay in Dallas radio in 1965], I knew WOR had an awesome reputation in the broadcasting industry. Did I accept Dr.. Atkins kind invitation to join him on his popular show? You bet I did! And, it was a wonderful experience I will never forget.

The Interview

By Atkins and Stoddard

Dr. Atkins (DA): Greetings, friends. How many of you knew that there is an Aspartame Consumer Safety Network? Well, the founder of that network is on the line. Her name is Mary Nash Stoddard. But, before we talk to Mary, I have a true confession to make. In many ways, this is the most embarrassing confession I’ve ever had to make. I pride myself in never being wrong. I am wrong a lot of times, but that’s not what I am proud of. When I find that I’m wrong, I admit it. I think I made a terrible mistake. On the Yellow Diet, which my patients will recognize as the form on which I write the reducing diet, I wrote the following words, aspartame [NutraSweet/Equal] is the best sweetener. I then went on to say, you can use saccharin or cyclamate, which I am a big fan of, among the synthetic sweeteners. And then people began to say, “Are you absolutely sure?” You know, there are questions with aspartame. I began to look into it. And, lo and behold, I am now totally on the other side of the fence. Matter of fact, in Dr. Atkins Health Revelations, April 1st issue, there is a four page supplement all about aspartame and a little about the alternatives. Because of it, I wanted to kick off this concept of Dr. Atkins mea culpa, I was wrong to say aspartame was all right. I was taken in by the Dr. Mosers of the world, he’s the doctor in charge of public relations for the NutraSweet Company, who assured me and assured the FDA, but that’s not hard to do, I think you can take them in for about a dollar and a half, they assured me that all was well with aspartame. But is it? I think we’re going to get the answer from our guest, Mary Nash Stoddard. Welcome to WOR. And, my question? Is all well with aspartame?

Mary (MS): Thank you, Dr. Atkins. From the calls I receive every day on my hot-line, the answer is a resounding “No!” Three out of five people who use it every day are reacting in some way.
DA: Right. Three out of five people? In other words, how did you get the estimate of three out of five?
MS: When you ask five people who are drinking diet sodas, for example, if they use it every day. If they say, “Yes,” then you ask if they’ve had mood swings, PMS, if they’re women, any nausea, gastrointestinal problems this sort of thing. Three out of five say, yes. And, it ranges all the way from headaches to grand mal seizures. Death is also classified as a symptom by FDA. There are some autopsies on file with that agency and with us. So, yes, there is a problem.
DA: These autopsies. There must be a lot of other explanations. These people can’t go to court, and say, see my relative died from aspartame and now I want to own the NutraSweet Company.
MS: There are cases that have been settled out of court. Also, there are cases pending and there will be more cases, although that’s not what we’re all about.
DA: That’s the Aspartame Consumer Safety Network. What are you all about?
MS: We’re an educational entity. We’re a clearing house for information. Researchers and scientists go through us to the consumer, with their concerns. Then, consumers call and report adverse reactions. Also, pilots call in to our hotline and report reactions. We’ve had over 500 pilot related phone calls.
DA: Why pilots over doctors, lawyers, firemen or whatever?
MS: Because pilots lose their jobs when they have a seizure. Some have reported seizures in the cockpit in flight on commercial airlines. General Aviation pilots as well as commercial airline pilots.
DA: How did this happen?
MS: We’ve been published in about a dozen pilot’s publications around the world. Not in an ad. Editors chose to print this information as a service to their readers, just as you are doing tonight for your listeners. The U.S. Air Force came out officially warning their pilots in 1992, twice, in Flying Safety magazine, with a four page Aspartame Alert with photographs, saying don’t use this stuff.
DA: I wonder what Dr.. Moser, the NutraSweet spokesman, did when that came out?
MS: I imagine he went into a tailspin! He’s a pilot too, you know.
DA: Oh, yeah? I don’t want him to fly me around, though.
MS: I don’t think so. But, maybe he doesn’t use the stuff. You never know. The spokespeople for the Tobacco Institute, for example, are not smokers. I’ll bet their corporate pilots don’t drink diet drinks.
DA: It would be hard to drink it as a pilot, if that’s what you risk. What about the FDA receiving complaints?
MS: Yes, when people call to report a reaction, to the FDA, they are often shuffled around. When I called the Dallas office to report my reaction, I was told aspartame was safe, just like bananas and milk. It couldn’t be hurting anyone because it was all safe and natural. Later I learned aspartame is synthesized in a lab and contains: phenylalanine, aspartic acid and methanol. Methanol then breaks down into formaldehyde. Diketopiperazine, a brain tumor agent, is also a breakdown product of aspartame - breaking down at temperatures exceeding 86 degrees Fahrenheit. [Body temperature is 98.6 F.]
DA: Wood alcohol is known to cause death and blindness, but not in that order! I wonder how many people know that all three moieties [a moiety is a sub-division of the molecule itself] are a possible source. There’s aspartic acid, which is an excitatory amino acid, which is just like glutamic acid and shares a lot of the problems of MSG. There seems to be a cross-reactivity with glutamate and aspartate. If you can’t take MSG, you’ll have the same trouble with aspartame.
MS: Exactly. In fact, there is a bigger problem with aspartame than there is with MSG. Because aspartame not only has the excitatory amino acid, aspartic acid, but, it also has phenylalanine.
DA: Do you have any statistics showing how many people who may be carriers of the PKU gene and may react more strongly?
MS: Yes. There are twenty million carriers of the PKU gene who may be at risk and don’t know it. But, others can have trouble with phenylalanine as well, because it blocks production of serotonin, a neurotransmitter which regulates sleep patterns, mood swings, and PMS in females.
DA: We’re talking about aspartame, a sweetener that has some problems and it is very widely consumed. Mary Stoddard what percentage of people consume aspartame in this country this year.
MS: It’s between one and two hundred million people, according to the NutraSweet Company’s statics.
DA: Probably about forty or fifty percent.
MS: According to the calls that come in on our hotline, people are stopping their use of aspartame. We are recommending that people lobby the government to legalize the herbal sweetener, stevia.
DA: That’s what I use at home.
MS: Stevia is a very good alternative.
DA: You talked about methanol and phenylalanine. Then, there’s the formaldehyde, which is a derivative of the methanol.
MS: Yes. And then there is the formic acid and diketopiperazine, which is the brain tumor agent that caused brain tumors in lab animals.
DA: And, you actually think the increase in the population of brain tumors is due to aspartame?
MS: Absolutely.
DA: But, that is theoretical. All we know is there are more brain tumors since 1984, when aspartame was put into diet sodas. But, did you know that since aspartame has been put into diet drinks, there has been a thirty percent increase in obesity, just in the past eight or nine years!
MS: Yes, I do. Did you know Cher got off aspartame, which she did the ads for, and lost 30 pounds? She gained it on aspartame, then lost it when she got off it. Tipper Gore also lost 30 pounds when she got off diet sodas. Aspartame is even causing aerobics instructors to gain weight! Aspartame causes a paradoxical weight gain - and a craving for the simple carbohydrates.
DA: Headaches are bad, dying from it or getting a brain tumor is bad, having degeneration of neurons and seizures can be bad, but, the greatest irony of all is that people are using it so that they don’t gain weight. So, to see a weight gain as a possible consequence, is, to me, the worst irony of all. If there’s anything bad you can say about an artificial sweetener is that, yes, you can gain weight on it.
DA: Mary, your book, Deadly Deception Story of Aspartame is chock full of information and lots of reprints of important studies and articles and all sorts of information. You’re gonna want to get it. The breakdown products of aspartame and all the different chemicals that your body will put out when you do, and all sorts of things. All right, let’s start taking calls you’re on WOR, let’s talk to Herb on Long Island.
Herb: Hello, Dr. Bob, I’d just like to relay a story about my daughter who just happened to be the first female jet pilot in the USAF. About five years ago, she came home on Thanksgiving weekend leave and she drank a lot of diet sodas. She had a bad spell here. A weak spell. But, when she got back to base, she went through a medical, and they determined that she had heart palpitations and arrhythmia.
DA : Were they alert to the possibility at this point in history, five years ago of diet sodas being the cause? Did they themselves think of diet sodas as the possible problem?
Herb: Yes. And, they determined that it might be the diet sodas and the artificial sweeteners.
DA: Mary, you should, take credit for that, I think. For giving that index of suspicion to everybody connected with caring for pilots that that is a possibility.
MS : That’s wonderful. We have done a lot of work with the FAA. Off the record, they are with us. But, on the record they can’t say anything.
Herb: Also, in her group, in the Air Force, there were other pilots who were grounded because of heart problems. They discontinued using all their artificial sweeteners for one month and their flying status was restored to them. My daughter’s retired now.
DA: Herb, thank you for sharing that. That is good confirmation of what Mary is saying.
MS: The female pilot who was in charge of the Air Force One chase plane, had a reaction as well, several years ago and her doctors told her to get off aspartame. And her vision problems cleared up. Her peripheral vision was going, along with other problems.
DA: Yes, wood alcohol is one of the problems. It causes blindness. Visual problems are some of the most frightening things that can happen with this. I certainly see the headaches - all the time.
MS: You’ll see detached retinas and retinal hemorrhaging as well.
DA: Let’s talk to Joy in New Jersey, Joy, you’re on WOR.
Joy: Yes, good evening, Dr Atkins and Ms. Stoddard. I experienced a severe problem with aspartame about ten years ago. I put it in my coffee. Within three minutes, I had such a headache I couldn’t stand on my feet. I had palpitations and dizziness. I was deathly sick. I thought I was going to end up in the hospital.
DA: Mary, do you think the headaches are from the phenylalanine part, the aspartic acid part or methanol?
MS: It could be from any one of those components of aspartame. Most people don’t react immediately, but some people do. We have children who have seizures on one stick of chewing gum.
DA: Joy, did you have problems with MSG as well?
Joy: Yes, I did.
DA: Just as bad as with aspartame?
Joy: No, not as bad. Worse with aspartame.
DA: So, you knew you had Chinese Restaurant Syndrome?
Joy: Yes, I did.
DA: That’s what we hear all the time. If you take a careful history most of these people have reactions to both.
Joy: And, I was wanting to test it again, and I was stupid enough to try it again, to be sure this was the problem. So, I subjected myself to it once more and got the same reaction.
DA: That’s not stupid. That’s the way you learn. You never would have been certain, if you hadn’t done it a second time.
Joy: Well, how do you know? Now, I did it with the elimination process, and I’ll never touch the stuff again! But people around me don’t seem to have the problem and they don’t understand why I do.
MS: Maybe they don’t have the problem. But, maybe they do and they just don’t know it. Or, maybe they will have a few months from now or even a few years from now. You can’t even be sure you will never have a problem. First of all, we don’t know why the people who have problems have the problems they have. There just isn’t enough empirical data available to know for sure.
DA: One thing we know, Joy’s reaction is not dose related.
Joy: No, and this is just like one shot in coffee and I’m almost on the floor three minutes later.
DA: I wonder if you’re not a PKU carrier. Have a PKU trait, because this is an unusually quick reaction to less than ten milligrams.
MS: We would like you, Joy, to write this reaction in a letter and send it to us. We would appreciate having this for our files.
DA: Let’s get that address where they should send it.
MS: Send it to ACSN at P.O. Box 2001, Frisco, Texas 75034.
DA: That goes for all of you who are having reactions. All of you. Thanks for sharing that and thanks for your call. Okay, time for a call from Victoria in Rye, you’re on WOR.
Victoria: Hello, Dr. Atkins, I listen to your program every night.
DA: Good judgment. Thank you!
Victoria: I’m calling about NutraSweet and Sweet n Low. I’ve used them for years. Listening to your program tonight, I want to report that I have such problems. I’ve put a lot of weight on, I have tons of gas, when I use NutraSweet. Also, I have bad indigestion. Just terrible. And, I am a person who took very good care of my health. But, for years, I’ve been using NutraSweet and Sweet n Low, for a very long time about ten, twelve years.
The hardest thing to live with is the dizziness. I have headaches, my night vision is almost gone and so is my memory. I am a young well-educated person!
MS: It’s almost like Alzheimer’s.
Victoria: Yes, why am I having a hard time remembering?
MS: One of the things people report most is having symptoms like Alzheimer’s. They also report Chronic Fatigue Syndrome symptoms. Lyme Disease symptoms are exactly the same as aspartame symptoms. People also have Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, lots of PMS, anxiety and phobia disorders. Eosinophilia Myalgia Syndrome, which people are dying from is the illness I had. And, Grave’s Disease, which both President Bush and wife Barbara both had. They were both big users of NutraSweet products.
DA: What I’ve done since I got your report is this: I will take my patients off of it. I now ask all my patients to give me a history of their use and the quantities they are using.
Victoria: Just one more thing - do you think acne is caused by this? I have a lot of acne.
MS: Yes, Dermatologists are reporting lots of people with skin conditions and rashes from this.
DA: Yes!
MS: And, they go away and that includes inside the body as well. Lots of people report sores inside the mouth, for example.
DA: Thank you for your call. We’re on WOR.

Commercial Break:
End of part One

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Mary Nash Stoddard
P.O. Box 2001, Frisco, Texas
75034 U.S.