There's a Dr. Blaylock (first name: James, the best I can remember), who is considered one of the world's leading toxicologists, and he is totally "Dr. Death" on aspartame, sucralose, etc. He refers to them as "excitotoxins" because his research has shown that these artificial sweeteners actually will agitate a person's neurons to the point where they literally self-destruct. It has also been reported that aspartame in a diet soda aluminum can will be converted into wood alcohol if left to sit out in the heat of sunlight too long. Is wood alcohol the same as formaldehyde? It's been a while since I read about this phenomenon.

Hello Anonymous,
That neurologists name is Russell L. Blaylock and the title of his book is "Excitotoxins: The Taste That Kills". When you read his book you realize that he must have researched every
study ever done on monososium glutamate and aspartame, and you are right that he gives both MSG and aspartame a
thumbs down and rightly so. Bottom line of his book is that when the study was run for l3 weeks, all the brains looked the same (Alzheimer's!) no matter whether it was a rat, mouse, chicken, cat or dog brain.

Another interesting book that you will find both MSG and aspartame listed on the "do not ingest" list is Richard & Rachel Heller and cardiologist Dr. Vagnini. Blaylock tells you that they are the 2 major excitotoxins which are so named because they excite the cells of the brain and central nervous system to death and mentions several conditions that no sane person wants to develop, all pertaining to the brain, ranging from headaches to cancer of the brain, epilepsy, Lou Gehrigs disease, and Alzheimer's disease. The same two are the major offenders in the Hellers/Vagnini book.

In an orthodox medical classroom lecture in l978, we were told that most obese people had 8 times the normal amount of insulin circulating in their blood stream, but when asked which came first, the excess insulin or the excess weight, admitted they didn't know. The Hellers and Vagnini do not mention Metabolic Syndrome X or Insulin Resistance in their "The Carbohydrate Addict's Healthy Heart Progam", but they list the intitial problem caused by ingesting MSG and aspartame as excess production of insulin, which not only answered the question that the excess insulin came first, but told us what caused the excess insulin production. They follow the syndrome until it ends up with diabetes mellitus type 2 with all the drastic complications of heart attacks, strokes, renal failure, etc. . Strangely enough, the progressions mentioned from ingesting MSG and aspartame exactly follows those of Metabolic Syndrome X (Thank you, Dr. Reaven, for having the courage to publish the proof of your theory on-line) which also exactly matches the phases of what orthodox medicine now calls Insulin Resistance (and with no mention of Dr. Reaven and his years of diligent research to prove his theory that diabetes mellitus-adult onset was not a disease in itself but just a later stage of a syndrome, but you will note that several years after Dr. Reaven put Metabolic Syndrome X on line, orthodox medicine renamed juvenile onset & adult onset diabetes mellitus to diabetes type 1 and 2, because what they were calling adult onset was now being diagnosed in toddlers as well as adults. Now that you have two excellent books to read on why you should strive to avoid MSG and aspartame to avoid brain, CNS problems, and diabetes, let's return to the question of the diet drinks.

First to answer your question: No, wood alcohol is not the same as formaldehyde, but if you are old enough to remember the prohibition days, when many earned their living by moonshining, some moonshiners caused a lot of people to go blind by using woodchips to make their mash instead of corn, not knowing that their end product was not the same as regular moonshine, but wood alcohol which caused blindness. But if the article you read stating that aspartame sweetened carbonated beverages in aluminum containers, left in the heat or sunlight too long caused the aspartame to change into wood alcohol is true, it probably isn't safe to drink when you buy it at the store, because most of these drinks are delivered to the store in enclosed metal truck beds that are not airconditioned. Which is also probably true of all beverages and water sold in plastic containers if the reports of heat causing components of the plastic bottle to leach into the drink which causes cancer of the breast? and who knows what other parts of our anatomies?

We've pretty much already covered why you should avoid aspartame (which most diet drinks are sweetened with), let's just take a look at the initial problem with carbonated beverages, both regular and diet. Therein lies a different problem altogether, once you get past looking at the smoke rings being blown to cover it up. Since I heard it in a class room in the early 70's, orthodox medicine has known for some
time that children often spilled protein in the urine, especially on Mondays, but had no explanation. Treating 4 children from
ages 3 to 10 with proteinuria (protein in the urine) from 2 to 4+ in 1978, for which I could find no explanation and having negative cultures on their urine. After talking with the mothers, I found that all 4 of them preferred carbonated beverages over water and remembering some blurbs about
2 employees in a bottling plant who developed gross hema-
turia for which their doctors found no explanation after an extensive workup, but one smart interested doctor started
visiting the two and trying to figure it out. One commonality he found was that they both worked in a hot warehouse situation, which means they sweated a lot, and would ususally
grab a bottle of soda pop off the bottling machine instead of
getting a drink of water. Both patients urine cleared up while
in the hospital. Taking a look at my 4 children with proteinuria,
it seemed logical to me that those 2 men probably spilled protein a long time before they developed gross hematuria
(blood in the urine). The parents were asked to let the kids eat as usual except to limit their drinks to water, milk and
fruit juice. No carbonated beverages allowed for l week and bring them in for a repeat urinalysis. One week off carbonated
beverages, 3 of the 4 children's urine checked negative for
protein. The 10 year old who had been 4+ was down to trace
reading on her urine. Mom said she had fudged and drank one
on the way to the clinic that morning. Only recently did I read
the probable explanation for how carbonated beverages destroy the kidneys. This was an article on-line but I can't remember whose newsletter it was. The gist of this article
was that when you read the ingredients listed on the containers you usually find a preservative called sodium benzoate, but stated that this was thought to be safe by itself,
but they said the problem arose when you found citric acid or any form or vitamin C also listed in those ingredients, because
a chemical reaction between the two, caused the sodium benzoate to revert back into benzene from which it was derived. I'll leave it to you to type benzene into a search window, but I will tell you that one of the first things at the top of the list is cancer of the kidneys.

Whenever you want to get more enlightened on how much of this combination of sodium benzoate and vitamin C you are getting, read ingredients of everything you eat or drink and don't be surprised if you find most have those two ingredients in them.