An idea that I've had for at least a couple years now is that NutraSweet, aspartame, is a cause of diabetes. I came up with that due to one of my managers who drank a lot of Diet Pepsi being diagnosed with diabetes. My grandma has diabetes too and has been drinking Diet Pepsi for a while too.
My grandma left a bottle of Diet Pepsi at the house tonight so I thought I would see what Google would turn up. Wikipedia had a good article about aspartame that pointed out that it isn't exactly the safest thing to ingest. That didn't say anything about my hypothesis though.
I did get a hit though googling for "aspartame cause diabetes". I found a page, Aspartame, cause of diseases? that contains:
According to researchers and physicians studying the adverse effects of aspartame, the following chronic illnesses can be triggered or worsened by ingesting of aspartame:(2) Brain tumors, multiple sclerosis, epilepsy, chronic fatigue syndrome, parkinson's disease, alzheimer's, mental retardation, lymphoma, birth defects, fibromyalgia, and diabetes.
Further down:
The American Diabetes Association (ADA) is actually recommending this chemical poison to persons with diabetes. According to research conducted by H.J. Roberts, a diabetes specialist, a member of the ADA, and an authority on artificial sweetners, aspartame:
- Leads to the precipitation of clinical diabetes.
- Causes poorer diabetic control in diebetics on insulin or oral drugs.
- Leads to the aggravation of diabetic complications such as retinopathy, cataracts, neuropathy and gastroparesis.
- Causes convulsions.
There's also material online saying the opposite, but that's one hit in the literature about a possible link. I may have to see what I can do to get a study going at some point to answer the question, "Is there a direct correlation between the ingestion of aspartame for a period of years and the eventual development of diabetes?" I suppose a yes to that question would be a greater number of diabetics who consumed aspartame for a long period of time before they were diagnosed than the number of non-consuming diabetics.
