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.
My thoughts are that Aspartam
My thoughts are that Aspartame is a sugar molecule that we "taste" as sweet but it does not "fit in" anywhere in our body so we don't absorb it like sugar. But what if it still made the tests for high blood sugar register higher? Maybe this "safe" chemical actually artificially inflates our test score thus validating everyone having Type II and going on high dollar/insurance paid medications? Is Type II diabetes on the rise because Nutrasweet consumption is on the rise?