Is Aspartame’s Reputation Well-Deserved?

In Tuesday’s newsletter, we asked you for your health-related opinions on aspartame, and got the above-depicted, below-described, set of responses:

• About 47% said “It is an evil carcinogenic neurotoxin”
• 20% said “It is safe-ish, but has health risks that are worse than sugar”
• About 19% said “It is not healthy, but better than sugar”
• About 15% said “It’s a perfectly healthy replacement for sugar”

But what does the science say?

Aspartame is carcinogenic: True or False?

False, assuming consuming it in moderation. In excess, almost anything can cause cancer (oxygen is a fine example). But for all meaningful purposes, aspartame does not appear to be carcinogenic. For example,

❝The results of these studies showed no evidence that these sweeteners cause cancer or other harms in people.❞

~ NIH | National Cancer Institute

Source: Artificial Sweeteners and Cancer

Plenty of studies and reviews have also confirmed this; here are some examples:

• Evaluation of aspartame cancer epidemiology studies based on quality appraisal criteria
• Aspartame, low-calorie sweeteners and disease: Regulatory safety and epidemiological issues
• Aspartame: A review of genotoxicity data

Why then do so many people believe it causes cancer, despite all the evidence against it?

Well, there was a small study involving giving megadoses to rats, which did increase their cancer risk. So of course, the popular press took that and ran with it.

But those results have not been achieved outside of rats, and human studies great and small have all been overwhelmingly conclusive that moderate consumption of aspartame has no effect on cancer risk.

Aspartame is a neurotoxin: True or False?

False, again assuming moderate consumption. If you’re a rat being injected with a megadose, your experience may vary. But a human enjoying a diet soda, the aspartame isn’t the part that’s doing you harm, so far as we know.

For example, the European Food Safety Agency’s scientific review panel concluded:

❝there is still no substantive evidence that aspartame can induce such effects❞

~ Dr. Atkin et al (it was a pan-European team of 21 experts in the field)

Source: Report on the Meeting on Aspartame with National Experts

See also,

❝The data from the extensive investigations into the possibility of neurotoxic effects of aspartame, in general, do not support the hypothesis that aspartame in the human diet will affect nervous system function, learning or behavior.

The weight of existing evidence is that aspartame is safe at current levels of consumption as a nonnutritive sweetener.❞

~ Dr. Magnuson et al.

Source: Aspartame: A Safety Evaluation Based on Current Use Levels, Regulations, and Toxicological and Epidemiological Studies

and

❝The safety testing of aspartame has gone well beyond that required to evaluate the safety of a food additive.

When all the research on aspartame, including evaluations in both the premarketing and postmarketing periods, is examined as a whole, it is clear that aspartame is safe, and there are no unresolved questions regarding its safety under conditions of intended use.❞

~ Dr. Stegink et al.

Source: Regulatory Toxicology & Pharmacology | Aspartame: Review of Safety

Why then do many people believe it is a neurotoxin? This one can be traced back to a chain letter hoax from about 26 years ago; you can read it here, but please be aware it is an entirely debunked hoax:

Urban Legends | Aspartame Hoax

Take care!

Sit Back, Relax, And…

In Tuesday’s newsletter, we asked you for your opinions of hypnotherapy, and got the above-depicted, below-described, set of responses:

• About 58% said “It is a good, evidenced-based practice that can help alleviate many conditions”
• Exactly 25% said “It is a scam and sham and/or wishful thinking at best, and should be avoided by all”
• About 13% said “It works only for those who are particularly suggestible—but it does work for them”
• One (1) person said “It is useful only for brain-centric conditions e.g. addictions, anxiety, phobias, etc”

So what does the science say?

Hypnotherapy is all in the patient’s head: True or False?

True! But guess which part of your body controls much of the rest of it.

So while hypnotherapy may be “all in the head”, its effects are not.

Since placebo effect, nocebo effect, and psychosomatic effect in general are well-documented, it’s quite safe to say at the very least that hypnotherapy thus “may be useful”.

Which prompts the question…

Hypnotherapy is just placebo: True or False?

False, probably. At the very least, if it’s placebo, it’s an unusually effective placebo.

And yes, even though testing against placebo is considered a good method of doing randomized controlled trials, some placebos are definitely better than others. If a placebo starts giving results much better than other placebos, is it still a placebo? Possibly a philosophical question whose answer may be rooted in semantics, but happily we do have a more useful answer…

Here’s an interesting paper which: a) begins its abstract with the strong, unequivocal statement “Hypnosis has proven clinical utility”, and b) goes on to examine the changes in neural activity during hypnosis:

Brain Activity and Functional Connectivity Associated with Hypnosis

It works only for the very suggestible: True or False?

False, broadly. As with any medical and/or therapeutic procedure, a patient’s expectations can affect the treatment outcome.

And, especially worthy of note, a patient’s level of engagement will vastly affect it treatment that has patient involvement. So for example, if a doctor prescribes a patient pills, which the patient does not think will work, so the patient takes them intermittently, because they’re slow to get the prescription refilled, etc, then surprise, the pills won’t get as good results (since they’re often not being taken).

How this plays out in hypnotherapy: because hypnotherapy is a guided process, part of its efficacy relies on the patient following instructions. If the hypnotherapist guides the patient’s mind, and internally the patient is just going “nope nope nope, what a lot of rubbish” then of course it will not work, just like if you ask for directions in the street and then ignore them, you won’t get to where you want to be.

For those who didn’t click on the above link by the way, you might want to go back and have a look at it, because it included groups of individuals with “high/low hypnotizability” per several ways of scoring such.

It works only for brain-centric things, e.g. addictions, anxieties, phobias, etc: True or False?

False—but it is better at those. Here for example is the UK’s Royal College of Psychiatrists’ information page, and if you go to “What conditions can hypnotherapy help to treat”, you’ll see two broad categories; the first is almost entirely brain-stuff; the second is more varied, and includes pain relief of various kinds, burn care, cancer treatment side effects, and even menopause symptoms. Finally, warts and other various skin conditions get their own (positive) mention, per “this is possible through the positive effects hypnosis has on the immune system”:

RCPsych | Hypnosis And Hypnotherapy

Wondering how much psychosomatic effect can do?

You might like this previous article; it’s not about hypnotherapy, but it is about the difference the mind can make on physical markers of aging:

Aging, Counterclockwise: When Age Is A Flexible Number

Take care!