I have posted frequently about the harmful side effects of Artificial Sweeteners on my blog.

So many people use Diet Coke and Diet Pepsi and other Diet products, thinking they are doing well because they are eliminating sugar from their diets.

However, these artificial sweeteners are addictive, and often you crave more.  The artificial sweeteners used include Aspartame and Splenda.  Many people already know that they should avoid aspartame.

However, even Doctors and Nutritionists recommend Splenda.
The advertising for Splenda is very enticing and hypnotic, making you want to use this substitute for sugar.

See this site for The Truth About Splenda

More research is being done, and proving that Splenda can be harmful for you.

Splenda is not a natural food.  It is a chlorinated artificial sweetener which has been marketed as being a healthy substitute for sugar.

A recent Duke University study states:

“Splenda suppresses beneficial bacteria …. and interfere with the bioavailability of ….nutrients.  Furthermore, these effects occur at Splenda doses that contain sucralose levels that are approved by the FDA for use in the food supply.”

Click here for the Duke University Study on Splenda Duke University Study

Want to experience nutrition that will be healthy and natural, instead of artificial sweeteners?

Then be sure to check out Diana Walker Stevia Health Benefits

Listen to my podcast here: Is Diet Coke Making You Fat?

Does Diet Coke Make You Gain Weight?

Diana Walker, Cravings Coach

My guest this week is an expert in this field of study and she has made it her life’s mission to lecture and teach people about these dangers. Dr. Betty Martini was very generous with her time this week and shared that these sweeteners are actually precursers for some dangerous diseases, such as Parkinson’s, multiple sclerosis, hypo- and hyperthyroidism, and seizures.

Dr. Betty also shares hope by telling us it’s possible to eliminate sweeteners from our diets and detox our bodies to avoid the cumulative damage and also what steps you can do to raise awareness of this danger in your own communities during Aspartame Awareness Weekend on September 5-7th.

Resources Mentioned on the Show:

World Natural Health Organization www.wnho.net

Mission Possible World Health International

Aspartame & Aspartame Poisoning Information www.dorway.com

Report on Aspartame & Children prepared by Dr. Betty Martini

Diana Walker, Cravings Coach

Many of you have heard me talk about the many hidden side effects and dangers of using artificial sweeteners like Aspartame, also known as Nutrasweet, and Splenda, which is also known as Sucralose.

I am providing the links for you here, of my 3 Podcasts which I recently did, with a full hour interview with my friend Laury Orndorff.

POISONED FOR PROFIT – THE DANGERS OF ARTIFICIAL SWEETENERS
INTERVIEWS WITH LAURY ORNDORFF, IN 3 PARTS, 3 PODCASTS:

PART 1, Podcast 19, Artificial Sweeteners

PART 2, Podcast 20, Pregnancy and Artificial Sweeteners

PART 3, Podcast 21, Dangers of Aspartame Splenda Sucralose

It is important to read your labels when you are shopping, and also avoid many items, like diet yogurt, lite yogurt, anything that has the word diet or lite in it. Also avoid products that say – no sugar, because no sugar chewing gum and no sugar and diet candies are also harmful and bad for you.

Diana Walker, Cravings Coach

Diana Walker: Now Laury tell me why do doctors let their people or even recommend that they use Splenda?

Laury: I just believe that doctors aren’t really primarily educated in nutrition. If you want to see, not that all doctors are this way but if you want to see the basic mentality and makeup of what doctors think of nutrition I recommend for people to watch Super Size Me. Because when I watch Super Size Me, you know that documentary of the guy who decided to see what would happen if he ate only McDonalds for 30 days. I just had to sit there and crack up laughing towards the end of it or half way through it, I think it was half way through it when he was submitting himself to the blood tests and the doctors were taking his blood. The medical doctors were so shocked they were just like I don’t believe it. I can’t believe that eating has affected your liver this way. If you finish this study you are going to die.

Diana Walker: I know. I know. It is like a comedy.

Laury: It just kind of, I had to sit there and laugh because seeing was believing. He was in perfect health, dating this Vegan raw food chef woman who was fixing him all this healthy food all the time and he decides to eat McDonald’s for 30 days and of course you are going to say who’s going to do that? Well nobody.

But because he used himself as a guinea pig if you will just to prove the food was toxic (and it did prove that) even to the doctors who he was submitting to for the blood tests and blood work and getting his blood pressure taken and all that. They saw first hand in a dramatic kind of setting that what you eat and drink every day really matters.

That’s my message if I’m sharing Sunrider with people is that Sunrider is such a wonderful tool because as I’ve started to eat and drink the foods; and you hear about that philosophy of regeneration that if your body is given the right combination of whole foods and you are able to cleanse the toxins out your body can come into balance. What you eat and drink every day absolutely determines the course of your health.

You don’t just wake up one day with Crones disease. You don’t just wake up one day with a brain tumor. You are not just a victim; I mean you are because the agencies out there aren’t protecting us the way they should be but when you wake up one day and you’re given this information like we are giving you right now you have to take responsibility for your own health because nobody is going to do it for you.

Diana Walker: Well said.

Laury: That’s why I’m passionate to tell people. And sometimes its comical because we’ll be in the store and I’ll have my two little kids with me and they’ll see that I’m behind a lady that has a big huge thing of Diet Coke in her cart and they’ll just be looking at me like, “Oh mom, don’t say anything, are you going to talk to her?”

Because most of the time I will say something or give them my card or whatever and people are a little taken aback but you know what I think if you have a sincere heart and you are just really showing them you care then a lot of people, most people are very gracious and oh thank you for telling me. You just wonder what they are thinking as they are checking out with that Diet Coke and you just told them.

Diana Walker: Have you in fact had some people that have in fact switched over to like the Sunrider Stevia and using that?

Laury: Oh absolutely. I just had lunch with a friend last week and she used to be a diet pop drinker and I had lunch with two girlfriends and we were sweetening our tea and she got out a bottle of Stevia and she goes look this is what I’m using. So yeah. I mean it feels good to help people.

The number one symptom on the list of 92 symptoms that the FDA has come up with because they get more complaints about Aspartame than any other food additive they’ve ever had. The number one symptom is headaches. I’ll have to email you that list too because I have the list of 92 symptoms. It’s headaches, dizziness, nausea, stopping of menstruation cycles, hives, rashes and the list just goes on and on actually. It’s hard to believe that they could come up with a list of 92 symptoms but the FDA compiled the list from the complaints they get. So there you go.

Diana Walker: What would you recommend – should people stop cold turkey? Of course I know that everyone I know uses the Sunrider Stevia but are there other options even from the health food store and is it dangerous to stop all of a sudden?

Laury: I don’t think it’s dangerous to stop all of a sudden.

If you are drinking crystal light or eating light yogurt or eating your light ice cream, let’s talk about that for a minute. Anything with the word light on it is diet.

We had a good friend who has had three brain surgeries and they can not figure out why her brain tumors keep coming back. I was on the phone with her husband one day and I just said you’ve got to think about what you are buying that has Aspartame in it because she keeps getting brain tumors. I just really have to believe that she is consuming that in her diet somewhere. No no she’s not a Diet Coke drinker. How about crystal light? I’m just kind of going down the list. How about those popsicles that only have 35 calories that have aspartame, now I’m just thinking of everything I can and I said what about light yogurt? He goes oh my goodness hold on a second, ran to the refrigerator, and came back on the phone yep she buys the light big packs of yogurt at Costco.

Diana Walker: Oh my gosh.

Laury: So a lot of times people are just innocently buying yogurts in bulk and they are not even necessarily trying to buy the diet yogurt they just accidentally are.

Diana Walker: So the words on the container will be sucralose, usually is that right?

Laury: Sucralose is what it is going to say most of the time. A lot of times it doesn’t even say Splenda. They are putting sucralose in a lot of breads now. I know that here in the states almost all of the good Thomas English muffins that have been around forever they’ve got sucralose in their dough. So yeah you have to look for that sucralose.

Diana Walker: You have to read it. Where I’ve really noticed it because I’m very big on trying to get people off all the high protein drinks that are in the sports shops and everywhere and I’ve read a lot of those labels and they’ve got sucralose in it.

Laury: Yeah sucralose is a biggie. It’s huge. All the people that are into working out and buying the protein powders and everything at GNC here in the states and the vitamin shops they are buying those protein powders and they all have sucralose. Most of them have steered away from the Aspartame because people aren’t buying the Aspartame products like they were.

Diana Walker: Right but they are not aware of the sucralose. People are not aware of that.

Laury: No because there is massive advertising that Splenda is natural because it’s derived from sugar. But sucralose delivers chlorine directly into yourself just through the natural metabolization of you drinking it.

Diana Walker: Unbelievable.

Laury: It’s just very scary for people to be using that heavily in their diets because they think well it’s derived from sugar so it’s natural. It’s not natural. It’s very dangerous to your immune system.

I would love to read a letter, a short letter from my friend Betty Martini. She gets thousands of letters every day. Hundreds of thousands of letters and she tries to answer all of them and so I would like to read this letter because I just think that a lot of people will be able to relate with Lisette’s symptoms.

So this woman writes into Betty Martini.

I live in the UK and although we have a government body food standards authority they seem to have the food manufacturer’s interest at heart rather than the general public. My friend gave me details of your link and problems with Aspartame. I was shocked. The more people who are aware of this the better. My own circumstances are as follows: I have always been in good health until four or five years ago when I started having terrible headaches which I had never suffered from before, numbness and tingling all over my body but mainly my face, on rare occasions dizziness and a couple of incidents while I was at work. I get bouts of extreme tiredness where I have to sit or lie down but worst of all since this started I have had terrible sudden palpitations like an irregular heart beat.

I’ve seen both a cardiologist who was unable to find a cause and have also had to endure an MRI and lumbar puncture. The neurologist originally thought I had MS but then concurred it may be migraines that don’t often appear as headaches.

After seeing your list of 92 symptoms for sweetener poisoning I’m beginning to decide whether this is the reason. Why aren’t consultants worldwide made aware of these facts that we can be poisoned for profit? I have always drank diet drinks as a woman to help keep the weight down and I always sweeten my tea with artificial sweeteners but I didn’t realize to which extent this product is in food stuff.

Thank you for taking the time to read this letter. I hope that you successful in bringing those responsible in introducing these chemicals to everyday life to court.

I think that a lot of people may be able to relate with her symptoms.

Diana Walker: Absolutely. Oh my gosh when people hear other stories it helps a lot. Wow so you’ve got several websites that will help people do more research.

Laury: Yes I do. I have wonderful websites and I’d like to read those to everyone right now. I also want to address something very important that you and I haven’t talked about Diana and that is the fact that people go to www.snopes.com to look up whether things are a hoax that go around on email or not.

Betty Martini, for years has been telling Snopes and giving them the facts about that Aspartame timeline and the battle that raged, everything that we’ve discussed today, the brain tumors, all of that. She is absolutely convinced that the owners of Snopes must be tied to the drug industry somehow because they have it on there that it is a hoax. That Aspartame poisoning is a hoax. So there is another website called www.truthorfiction.com that people can use instead of Snopes and at least on their website it says unproven or unknown or something like that.

I have emailed Snopes as well and kind of blasted them and let them have it and they never respond to my emails. They don’t care but I have said why can’t you just put unproven because people are going to you to look for the truth that you’ve done the research that they don’t have time to do themselves because we all lead busy lives and they’re looking to you for truth, oh am I really drinking a poison and you are telling them that they are not and that this whole Aspartame disease thing is a hoax and it’s wrong. They absolutely will not write me back but they’ve written Betty back and they absolutely refuse to change their stance on it. She can’t figure out really why unless they have a tie to the drug industry.

So there you have it. I knew that people would go to Snopes and I just wanted to address that because it’s to the point where people will email me back stuff from Snopes on Aspartame because they know I’m an advocate against it and I’ll be like well who is Snopes? Who died and made them God? I don’t care if they say it’s a hoax or not I have people that I know that were having seizures and were having fainting spells and had been diagnosed with MS and they quit ingesting Aspartame and they don’t have any of those symptoms anymore. So you do the homework.

Diana Walker: I do really love that. I really think we all need to take responsibility for ourselves. I remember when I studied with Dr. Paul Bragg how he was even then about coffee. He would lecture about coffee for an hour and he would say everybody gets up in the morning and that’s what they are having, they gotta have my coffee and even now you’ll see tests and studies done oh coffee is good for you.

Laury: Yeah. There is such a war and debate about things that are obviously not good.

Diana Walker: We really have to experiment with our own bodies and we have to use our own common sense. We have to listen to people like you and I right?

Laury: Absolutely. Absolutely. Let’s go over these websites.

The first one is www.dorway.com.

The next one, and this is an excellent website to do research of all kinds not just aspartame. If you want to know the truth about fluoride you are going to find it on World National Health Organizations website and that is www.wnho.org.

Then of course Dr. Blaylock, I have so much respect for him. He’s the neurosurgeon we were discussing. His website is www.russellblaylockmd.com.

I guess Dr. Joseph Mercola has written a whole book on aspartame. I’ve never bought it because I’ve got Russell Blaylock’s but his is www.mercola.com.

Dr. H. J. Roberts, I gave that one before but again that’s www.sunsentpress.com.

And then the Aspartame Toxicity Center, www.holisticmed.com; that’s the title of their website, the Aspartame Toxicity Center

Diana Walker: Great.

Laury: I really recommend for people to get onto Cori Brackett’s website and buy the movie Sweet Misery A Poisoned World and learn about the people and spread it around.

Diana Walker: Spread the word.

Laury: Spread the word.

Diana Walker: You are doing a great job of it. It’s been wonderful for me to hear it right from beginning to end because I haven’t had a Diet Coke in 12 years. I used to have one every evening. I was actually addicted but in total denial because I knew everything right. Because I studied with a naturopath and I had all this training so it was like I just have one a day. It was usually at night time, I would go down about 10 o’clock and I’d have my chocolate bar and my diet coke. That was something I got off along with my 8 cups of coffee. I’ve been there done that. I know that it’s addictive.

Laury: It is. I have a friend that is trying to get off it right now but he was drinking them all day long like water and so he told me I just tried to go cold turkey and I felt horrible so I am weaning off and my goal is I will be off of them. But he just had to do it in moderation because he was drinking 8, 9 cans a day of soda, diet soda, it was his water.

Diana Walker: That’s the other thing; it leaches the calcium out of your bones so having all of that as well as not even diluting it with some water. It’s so acidic. It makes your body so acidic.

Laury: It’s just full of chemicals. It’s a no brainer that if your body is made up of 70% water roughly 70% water, that’s a percentage of what we are made up of we need to be drinking water or of course the wonderful Sunrider teas. Those can count as your water.

Diana Walker: Fortune Delight and Calli . Love them. Drinking some right now.

Laury: It’s just wonderful to have alternatives that you can drink that has; Calli tea has zero calories and the Fortune Delight has very little I think like 15 calories.

Diana Walker: Oh I didn’t even know it had 15. I always just say zero. But it’s so little.

Laury: When I did Weight Watchers the calories were so minuscule that you would still count it as zero points because it didn’t have enough calories in it to even count it.

Diana Walker: Yeah exactly. That’s great.

Laury: I’ve enjoyed speaking with you. I hope there is some people that heard the information today that will really take it to heart and just really do their research and if they don’t have the time to do the research then they will take our little class today on the phone seriously and just give it up.

You know your health is everything. If you don’t have your health what do you have? I mean do you know what I’m saying?

Diana Walker: Exactly. It is everything.

Laury: It’s so sad that some people aren’t willing to take their health seriously until they get a diagnosis. I mean I’ve seen it so many times and then all of a sudden their willing to spend thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars to go to Mexico to get treatments and all of that and they didn’t want to spend the money to invest in some Sunrider or some alternative method to keep themselves health. I think that preventive medicine is the best approach you can take.

Diana Walker: Incredible. And it’s wonderful to just feel vibrantly healthy.

Laury: Exactly. Wake up feeling good, have energy for your day.

Diana Walker: It really is Laury. You are such a good example of it. I can’t wait to see you again.

Laury: That will be wonderful.

Diana Walker: It was so fun seeing you in Hawaii and have a great time in California. You live in California so what am I talking about but have a great time next week.

Laury: I’ll be going to the Sunrider convention. It will be fun. I wish you were going but next time.

Diana Walker: I will next time. Ok sweetie thank you so much. You are just a bright light and I know this will make a difference for everybody.

Laury: Thank you. You too Diana. I enjoy your podcast and your newsletter. You are doing such a wonderful job to educate people on their health and I just appreciate all your work.

Diana Walker: Thank you. Awesome. Ok bye.

Laury: We’ll talk soon. Bye bye.

Here are some additional resources mentioned in these interviews so you can do your own research about the dangers of artificial sweeteners:

http://www.dorway.com
http://www.wnho.org
http://www.russellblaylockmd.com
http://www.mercola.com
http://www.sunsentpress.com
http://www.holisticmed.com
www.MPWHI.com

If you have any questions or concerns, please leave a comment below.

Diana Walker, The Cravings Coach

photo credit: TheTruthAboutMortgage.com

Diana Walker: You told me about somebody who got off everything and then had one mint or one stick of gum…

Laury: Yes let’s talk about Cori Brackett. I have her DVD in my hand right now. Yes she is amazing. She is co-founder of Sound and Fury Productions. She used to drink like six diet drinks a day and she was diagnosed with MS and had a very large lesion. She was in a wheelchair, she could hardly walk and she was just literally crippled with MS in a wheelchair. I think she could hardly speak as well. She had done some research on the internet; she could still read so she got on and probably came across a lot of the websites I’m going to give out today. She became very suspicious that she had Aspartame disease because she was such a heavy Diet Coke drinker.

One website I’d like to give right now since I’m going to mention his name is Dr. H. J. Roberts and his website is www.sunsentpress.com He is a medical doctor and he has written a 1,038 page medical journal called Aspartame Disease, an Ignored Epidemic and so Cori became convinced she didn’t have MS she had Aspartame poisoning. She did a 90 day no Aspartame test and walked out of her wheelchair completely symptom free. She did not relapse until somebody gave her a stick of gum and she chewed it and symptoms came back. She thought wow this is dramatic I’m going to do my research on this whole Aspartame thing.

So she produced a movie, a documentary called Sweet Misery a Poisoned World an Industry Case Study of a Food Supply in Crisis. The back of her DVD is great it just says a close examination into what many consider to be a hoax, Aspartame toxicity. This documentary tends to look at what is definitively known about Aspartame that the label hoax in this case is a dangerous misconception.

In a journey through interviews and various lawyers, activists and victims narrator Cori Brackett discovers symptoms to a much larger problem our institution designed to protect the public from harmful substances have failed us.

In a poisoned world victims are found throughout the country and they are finally given a voice. A close examination of the process for approving Aspartame by the FDA leads to earlier examples of revolving door activity and how powerful corporations are influencing once trusted institutions. Today resistance to Aspartame continues as a portrait of this poisoned world offers hope and a remedy.

It is very well done. It is two hours long.

Diana Walker: Really? Oh my gosh.

Laury: Yes because they have many victims on there sharing their stories and they are very dramatic.

Diana Walker: Very very powerful. The website you can order that from is where?

Laury: The website to order this movie is www.soundandfury.tv unless you live in the UK then it would be www.namastepublishing.com.

Diana Walker: Namaste Publishing.com. Ok good. Does she live in the UK?

Laury: No I’ve actually met her. She lives in Tucson Arizona and I’ve bought about three cases of her movies, sold a lot of them but I’ve honestly given a lot of them away too. I just have a passion for it and that’s how I met Betty Martini and let’s talk about Betty Martini for a minute.

She is a wonderful lady. Her and her husband, their website is called Mission Possible World Health International so the abbreviation for her website is www.MPWHI.com Her and her husband Don are just wonderful people spreading the word about Aspartame. She knows more about its interference with prescription drugs and the way it affects the body more than anybody I know.

She has an organization called Mission Possible and it’s a group of global volunteers spreading the word about Aspartame poisoning.

Diana Walker: And you’re one of them? You are actually a part of her group?

Laury: Yes I’m Mission Possible Vista and she has Mission Possible volunteers all over the world. I believe in it so much that I have do you know the truth about Aspartame and Splenda on the back of my Sunrider card and I have all the websites listed and I just pass them out all the time because I want people to know the truth.

Diana Walker: You are an angel. Really it’s so needed this information.

Laury: Another thing I want to focus on before we move to Splenda or sucralose and that’s what people don’t realize is that sucralose is the chemical name for Splenda just like Aspartame is the chemical name for NutraSweet.

Diana Walker: That’s so so deceiving because it sounds like sucrose, it sounds like sugar.

Laury: Absolutely. I think they kind of did that on purpose don’t you?

PREGNANCY AND ASPARTAME, DIET COKES

Diana Walker: I think so.

Laury: I mean you know it just sounds the same. Yeah definitely. I want to talk real quick before we move onto the Splenda about pregnancy and using Aspartame while you are pregnant because Dr. Russell Blaylock has done a lot of research on that and he really warrants against using Aspartame while you are pregnant.

There were some interesting studies that were done to show what would happen if you fed a high dose and that just means what people consume now-a-days. I mean most people consume like one Diet Coke a day or a lot more than that but it doesn’t take very much. That dosage is 50mg or kg a day. So that’s not much. What would happen if we took non pregnant women and pregnant women and fed them aspartame?

Well when you consume Aspartame your blood phenylalanine levels go up, that’s just in amino acid. But if it goes up high enough it starts damaging the brain particularly a forming brain like a baby or a fetus.

There’s this condition we talked about before called Phenylketonuria (PKU) and if you have 6mg of phenylalanine that’s considered toxicity levels in your blood. If you have 10mg that’s considered that you can have brain damage. Now pregnant women do not metabolize the phenylalanine like a non pregnant woman.

Babies actually concentrate the phenylalanine so in the pregnant woman her blood is concentrated by the placenta and the baby’s phenylalanine content is twice as high as the mothers. So this is absolutely known to cause brain damage and lower the IQ of babies and people are not being told.

Diana Walker: Oh my gosh. Please repeat that. That needs to be repeated. I see so many pregnant moms drinking diet sodas and you know I’m very aware and I think inside oh that’s too bad but I’ve never felt this strongly. Say that all again. That last little bit.

Laury: Well basically what people need to understand is that when you are pregnant and ingesting the Aspartame because it causes your phenylalanine content to rise in your blood what will happen is the placenta is feeding the baby right?

Diana Walker: Right

Laury: So the baby is getting concentrated phenylalanine and if you test that the baby’s phenylalanine content is twice as high as the mother who is ingesting it.

Diana Walker: Wow the baby doesn’t have a chance.

Laury: Not even your liver can; you know your liver is your detoxification organ right? Not even your liver can protect the baby from the damage that you are doing if you are dirking diet drinks.

I’m sorry if you are listening to this right now and you are concerned or shocked or infuriated you should be because we are not getting this information from our doctor but it is never too late to stop. If you are in the middle of a pregnancy and drinking diet drinks just stop. Just stop and pray and ask God to protect your baby. I believe in the power of prayer and ignorance is bliss but when you are given the proper information and you know the truth you can’t ignore the truth any longer.

Diana Walker: Exactly.

Laury: I just want to encourage people. There is a diagram on one of these websites and I can’t remember which one it is but it’s a diagram of a brain on fire and that’s literally what’s happening to you because Aspartame is such an excitotoxin like MSG. It’s proven that MSG can make you fat.

Betty Martini has a saying “if you want to be fat aspartame is where it’s at”. If you notice the people who are drinking, pushing that Diet Coke button in the restaurant that you see and ordering the diet cokes are terribly obese.

Diana Walker: Oh my gosh. It’s not funny.

SPLENDA, SUCRALOSE HEALTH RISKS

Laury: They aren’t doing themselves any favors. Let’s move onto Splenda because honestly the public awareness is up on aspartame. There is no doubt that sales are down and that people are avoiding it. I believe they are because why are these big huge 12 packs of Diet Coke going on sale for $2.00 at the store? That happens all the time, sometimes they are on sale for $1.00.

Diana Walker: Yeah so people are starting to shy away from that.

Laury: I’ve got a thing I can email you, a document that I can email you produced by Dr. James Bowen. He’s a medical Dr., a physician and a Biochemist and he is on this Sweet Misery DVD so is Russell Blaylock and so is Betty Martini. I mean she has just done her homework on that DVD. It’s so excellent. He produced a piece of information that he is hoping that will circulate around the internet so I’ll be emailing you that so you can get it out to your list. It’s called The Lethal Science of Splenda, A Poisonous Polycarbon. I want to read a couple excerpts from here.

James Bowen MD, a physician, biochemist and a survivor of Aspartame poisoning warns about yet another synthetic sweetener called Splenda. This chemical sucralose which is marketed as Splenda has replaced Aspartame as the number one artificial sweetener in foods and beverages today. Aspartame is slowly being forced out somewhat by increasing public awareness that it is both a neurotoxin and an underlying cause of chronic illness world wide.

And he says Splenda; a sucralose is simply chlorinated sugar. It’s a Chlorocarbon. There are many common Chlorocarbons which include like carbon tetrachloride for instance. They are all deadly. It doesn’t matter what Chlorocarbon you are referring to. It’s basically chlorinated sugar and chlorine is natures Doberman attack dog.

Sucralose is a molecule of sugar chemically manipulated to surrender three hydroxyl groups. (You can tell he’s a biochemist). Hydrogen + Oxygen and it replaces them with three chlorine atoms. Natural sugar is a hydrocarbon built around 12 carbon atoms. When turned into Splenda it becomes a Chlorocarbon in the family of chlordane, lindane and DDT.

It is logical for people to ask why table salt which also contains chlorine is safe while Splenda or Sucralose is toxic. Because salt isn’t a Chlorocarbon. When molecular chemistry binds sodium to chlorine to make salt carbon isn’t used in the process. Sucralose and salt are as different as oil and water.

So he goes on and on for the scientific mind who really wants a lot of background information. It’s about 2 1/2 pages typed but I can just say I’ve read on lot on all the different websites and from what I have gathered it’s damaging to your thymus gland. The animals they had, because they do lots of animal studies with these artificial sweeteners, if we knew how many animals were suffering every day with the testing that goes on we probably wouldn’t be able to sleep at night. It’s really sad. But anyway in animal tests Splenda produced swollen livers and thymus gland, cancerous tumors on the thymus gland. Your thymus gland is the key to your immune system.

Diana Walker: Exactly.

Laury: For people who go I don’t really know what a thymus is what is it? I don’t really know what it is either but I know that it is passionately connected to your immune system. It’s the key to your whole immune system and if you are ingesting a poison that is damaging your liver and your thymus gland you aren’t going to be very healthy.

Diana Walker: Exactly. Oh my goodness. This is unbelievable. It’s way more information than I had studied myself. I know a lot of people are going to be shocked with this but it’s better to learn now and get off all of that.

Join us next week for Part 3 of Laury’s interview.

If you need help fighting your food cravings, visit http://www.diana2.com for tips and supplements that will help you get on track to living a healthy life!

Diana Walker, The Cravings Coach

photo credit: AComment

LAURY’S STORY – GETTING OFF DIET COKE

Laury: Ok that sounds good Diana. Thank you so much for having me on the call. It’s great to speak with you about this subject because I was a big time Diet Coke drinker in high school. I was weight conscious like most teenage girls are and drank a lot of Diet Cokes. The funny thing about drinking diet drinks is most of the time when you do that you don’t do it in moderation. It seems it can kind of become your water and that’s very dangerous.

Diana Walker: You think that you are doing something good because you are on a diet or you’re watching your weight, it has zero calories.

Laury: Also back then I absolutely knew nothing about health and nutrition. My parents didn’t either. They started to get into nutrition and health later also after I graduated. Anyway, so we just kind of learned as we lost our health. You become your researcher and you just start to learn about what is going on with your health.

I got off the diet drinks and I felt tremendously better. I was sick a lot in high school, had constant tonsillitis to the point where I almost got my tonsils removed. It’s interesting how life is a journey and looking back when I was so sickly in high school not one doctor asked me what are you eating and drinking everyday. That was my biggest problem.

Diana Walker: They have no training in that. They aren’t nutritionists but most think they are.

Laury: If I look back at my diet and go I had a bowl of cheerios for breakfast, three diet cokes with a bagel at lunch and nothing for dinner or more Diet Coke and fast food for dinner or something. I just did not eat well so I was sick all the time.

FACTS ON ASPARTAME AND FDA

I think that most people really would like to hear some of the facts on Aspartame and that’s what I want to bring to the table today is the facts. There is really an Aspartame timeline I have, if you will, to go into the background into the past of the battle that raged within the FDA to even approve Aspartame as a sweetener anyway.

Diana Walker: You know I didn’t know this and you and I were talking earlier and I am fascinated with this because I always have in the back of my mind oh that FDA why did they approve Aspartame. I did not know this timeline so please tell us.

Laury: Well yeah. The FDA today as we know it is broken and in American Public we see that because there are situations like Vioxx and we knew there were problems with Vioxx before it was marketed. Hundreds of people died so of course the media couldn’t ignore that so it hit the news.

Way back when the FDA commissioner had some power then things were very well investigated before they went to the market and I will get to that but first lets talk about how Aspartame was even discovered.

Back in 1965 G.D. Searle, a company that made chemicals had researchers and one of their researchers was working on an ulcer drug and got some on his finger and instinctively he licked his finger and noticed it was sweet. It had a very sweet taste and that was literally the first of Aspartame. So G.D. Searle started a 52 week study on monkeys, so these were the first tests that were ever run on Aspartame.

Diana Walker: What year was that?

Laury: This was back in I believe 1970, around 1970 or so, or maybe 1968. It was years after the researcher discovered it, a few years after and maybe not quite as far as 1970, so somewhere around late 60’s.

Over the 52 week study seven monkeys or primates were fed Aspartame and milk because milk can kind of slow down the phenology content that is in the Aspartame if it’s fed in milk but still five of those monkeys had grand mal seizures and one died from cardiac arrest from an over stimulated nervous system. So G.D. Searle went back and got another doctor, Dr. Wellington and they just redesigned the monkey study. It was just kind of a whole cover up that happened.

In 1970 a famous Dr. by the name of Dr. Olney discovered that oral intake of aspartic acid caused brain tumors in the mice that he was testing. Why this is significant is because Aspartame breaks down into three things into the body: aspartic acid, phenylalanine and formaldehyde. That’s what it literally breaks down and methanol. These poisons are what is going to happen to you if you are ingesting this poison.

Diana Walker: That’s four poisons.

Laury: It’s aspartic acid and basically what it does is it raises the phenylalanine content in your blood if you are drinking aspartame and so that’s why there’s all those warnings on Aspartame products warning this product contains phenylene. Because if somebody has that Phenylketonuria or PKU they can’t have more of this amino acid in their blood because it will make them very sick and they will die.

There was an attorney and he’s a real good guy, James Turner and in mid 1973 Searle applied to the FDA to use NutraSweet as a sweetener but James Turner talked to Searle and he also talked to Donald Rumsfeld and he was just like look this battle about NutraSweet, NutraSweet is the brand name for Aspartame, is a scientific struggle. It’s just absolutely a scientific struggle. He was telling them it shouldn’t be approved because of the brain damage that Dr Olney discovered.

There were all these major concerns happening so Dr. Olney and James Turner filed a formal objection saying that they believed Aspartame caused brain damage and they were fighting against it, they just did not want this to happen.

In 1977 there was a huge investigation on G.D. Searle and it was not good. The company was going down the tubes because there were the good guys like DR Olney and James Turner who were raising the awareness of the brain studies. Nobody could deny the fact that when animals were fed Aspartame they were producing brain tumors.

I have to say in 1974 the FDA gave approval to the limited use of Aspartame but the sad thing is that G.D. Searle never gave the brain studies to the FDA. In this timeline, in 1973 there were no requirements on the FDA to study effects on the brain from food additives on the brain.

There were cancer studies but there were not actual brain studies. So you can see that here all these years flowing by and there’s all this to date and all of these things happening. In 1980 the public board of inquiry voted unanimously to reject the use of aspartame. They voted all together that they wanted more studies to be done and they wanted those to be brain tumor studies.

Diana Walker: Ok so they rejected it unanimously and this public board of inquiry — is that associated with the FDA?

Laury: It seems like it from all my research. I don’t know if it’s associated with the FDA exactly but I do know that it’s something that kept the FDA in check and they were just like you know what; so basically it was ruled by law in the public board of inquiry that you can not produce this market now because we are too concerned that all these FDA scientists, there were 3 out of 5 FDA scientists that were just adamant that this was toxic to the brain that it would cause brain cancer and brain tumors and they didn’t want it on the market.

You just go ok so it was ruled by law that you can’t market it and they are slowing it down again. You see this had gone on from the time it was found in 1965 and 1968 or so those primate studies were done and the monkeys had the Grand mal seizures and here we are at 1980.

Well Donald Rumsfeld came on the scene and he took on G.D. Searle as a political issue. He wanted to save this company. It was going down the tubes, there were grand jury investigations, there was a whole fire burning about NutraSweet and they wanted a new artificial sweetener pack.

All I can tell you is it was like this political triage happening and in 1981 Ronald Reagan signed an executive order, it’s one of the first things he did as President to suspend or basically eliminate the authority of the FDA commissioner to take any action to protect the public.

Back when the FDA wasn’t broken like it is now the FDA commissioner had a lot of power. They could take action but now because of what happened in 1981 they can’t. In 1981 Aspartame became approved to be used in dry goods. The night before they were having the hearing those three FDA senior scientists that I mentioned a few minutes ago, they met with Arthur Hull Hayes who was with the new FDA commissioner that was appointed by Donald Rumsfeld and they begged him not to approve it and he did.

So in 1983 it was approved, Aspartame was approved for use in carbonated beverages and it’s just been downhill ever since. There is a very well known neurosurgeon by the name of Dr. Russell Blaylock. He wrote wonderful books Excitotoxins: The Taste That Kills and Health and Nutrition Secrets that can Save Your Life, he’s just brilliant. He says that when Aspartame came onto the market in 1983 he knew that something was very wrong because by 1984 brain cancer alone, it tripled in the United States of America when all other forms of cancer stayed the same.

Diana Walker: Oh that’s shocking.

Laury: It is very shocking and very disturbing because it literally is a poison. It’s not something we should be drinking, it’s not something we should be eating and it’s something that’s so saturated in our food supply today that unless you are going the extra mile to read every single label of what you are buying you are getting it in your diet somewhere even if you don’t’ realize it. The biggest place is gum and mints.

People think oh it’s just a little gum, it’s just a mint how much Aspartame could be in it to hurt me? But honestly it only takes a single stick of chewing gum and Dr. Blaylock says it lowers the dopamine level in your brain, that there’s enough from one stick of chewing gum and it’s literally a neurotoxin.

So that’s what got my attention. I started to read his books and get on Dr. Blaylock’s website and read and research some wonderful websites I’m going to give everyone at the end of this call so they can do their own research if they want to.

If you have a brain surgeon who operates on brain tumors telling you that he believes that Aspartame causes brain cancer and that doesn’t get your attention, nothing will. Don’t you agree Diana?

Diana Walker: Oh totally. That is just totally unbelievable. Unbelievable. I’m still gasping about the gum and mints. You told me that the other day and I really didn’t know it was that bad.

A note from Diana: Join me next week for part 2 of my interview with Laurie to hear some amazing true stories of people who were poisoned by artificial sweeteners. It’s truly amazing!

As always, I invite you to visit http://www.diana2.com for nutritional information and products that will help you kick your food cravings.

What I enjoy as replacement products: Sunrider Stevia ; Sunrider Fortune Delight

Diana Walker, The Cravings Coach

photo credit: greefus groinks

You’d think that losing weight would be easy to do with all the “diet” products on the supermarket shelves. All of us would love to lose weight while still eating and drinking our favorite sweet snacks, right?

I’ve spoken previously about how acidic sodas are for the body and this week I discuss the harmful – or even deadly – effects of drinking diet sodas, like Diet Coke and Diet Pepsi.

I’ll share with you the various names that artificial sweeteners are marketed under, including Aspartame and Splenda.  You can learn how to read your food labels correctly.  Sucralose sounds like sucrose, but it isn’t the same thing at all.  I also discuss the serious side effects you may suffer from if you continue to drink these sodas.

Please join me for some eye-opening discussion about diet sodas.

Links Mentioned In This Week’s Show:

Diana’s Healthy Lifestyles – my newsletter dedicated to giving you healthy substitutions which can help curb your cravings.

Does Diet Coke Make You Gain Weight?

Diana Walker, The Cravings Coach

photo credit: AComment

(Oh, and this answers my question from my previous post earlier today on What Causes Carb Cravings and Weight Gain?

Question:

“Does drinking Diet Coke make me eat more sugar?  Does Diet Coke make you fat?
Does Diet Coke make you gain weight?” 

Answer:

Yes and Yes !

Listen Here
Cravings Coach Podcast #16 Is Diet Soda Making You Fat?

You are definitely not alone in experiencing this.  The huge companies purposely know that Aspartame and Splenda and other artificial sweeteners are actually addictive, and also make the body want more.  Also, your body is trying so hard to get rid of the chemicals, it can retain water, it can be so unbalanced nutritionally, and you can gain weight.

Further Question:

I am haunted by Diet Coke every day!  I keep feeling like I shouldn’t drink it, read all of the articles but continue to drink it.

When I asked my family physician, she said it is not proven to make you gain weight.  But in the back of my mind, I know I don’t eat that much, but always crave sugar and drink about 4-5 Diet Cokes a day.  Every time I get off the Diet Coke a few days I last about 3 days and convince myself that it is not contributing to my weight gain.  Am I just kidding myself?

Here’s my answer:

Yes, you are addicted to Diet Coke…but you aren’t the only one.  And it is not your imagination!  The large companies definitely do their best to make sure we get addicted to many things!

Family Physicians (unfortunately) take maybe 4 hours of nutrition education in their 7 years or more of training — so it is better to go to a nutritionist or a naturopath for advice (although even some of them are okay with diet products!).

Diet products and artificial sweeteners of all kinds are deadly — that includes:

Diet Soda, Sugarless gum, Diet yogurt, Diet cookies, and even some bottled waters!

Read your labels and look out for Aspartame and Splenda.  These artificial sweeteners are insidious and should be avoided at all costs.

Important Resources:

Cravings Coach Podcast #16 Is Diet Soda Making You Fat?

I have more information in my ebook Craving Secrets.

Diana Walker, Cravings Coach

Cravings Coach Podcast #16 Is Diet Soda Making You Fat?