Getting in shape, and I've got some questions

**Neildo** · Posted On: 7/30/2008 11:09am

dude you quit smoking?!?! AWESOME.

**muddy** · Posted On: 7/30/2008 7:06pm

Originally Posted by TheRuss

I figured that would come up.

The problem with aspartame is twofold:

-There is so much unfettered hysteria about them that any actual health drawbacks are lost in the noise
-Because aspartame can be tasted (duh), it makes it more difficult to design studies that will be sensitive to potential harms but exclude placebo effects

That said, if you are aware of any good-quality research that indicates that aspartame 1) has a significant effect on health and/or 2) it affects blood glucose/insulin levels (say, through a connection between taste and the endocrine system), I would very much like to see it.

There is a lot of controversy regarding how aspartame keeps its approval and how it got approved in the first place. There are plenty of studies making the cancer link.

Here's a study that references several studies.
this is the conclusion section from the same.

Conclusions
Our study shows that APM is a multipotential
carcinogenic compound whose carcinogenic
effects are evident even at a daily
dose of 20 mg/kg bw, much less than the current
ADI for humans in Europe (40 mg/kg
bw) and in the United States (50 mg/kg bw).
The results of carcinogenicity bioassays in
rodents are consistent predictors of human
cancer risks (Huff 1999; Rall 1995; Tomatis
et al. 1989). The results of our study therefore
call for an urgent reexamination of the present
guidelines on the use and consumption
Aspartame carcinogenicity
Environmental Health Perspectives • VOLUME 114 | NUMBER 3 | March 2006 385
of APM. The decision to use experimental
data to protect public health is important
because the time span of widespread APM use
is still too brief to have produced solid epidemiologic
data. Moreover, it is unlikely that
sufficient epidemiologic data will be available
in the near future, given the difficulty of finding
a control group that has not been exposed
to this widely diffused compound.

**TheRuss** · Posted On: 7/30/2008 7:35pm

Two issues with that study:

1) The rats eating the aspartame ate more food - "a dose-related difference in feed consumption was observed between the various treated groups and the control group in both males and females"

I think they should be controlling for the amount eaten - not only because if they don't control for that, it adds a competing mechanism (aspartame -> different eating patterns -> different mortality patterns), but because I'm not sure how they can precisely control dosing of aspartame if they don't control how much of the feed the rats eat in a sitting. But this isn't the main problem:

2) They let the study run until natural death, and the rats eating the aspartame didn't die any sooner than the ones that didn't - "No substantial difference in survival was observed among the groups".

Think that one over for a while. If aspartame is inducing cancer in these rats, why are they surviving about as long as the ones who didn't get fed any aspartame?

"But Russ," you would ask, "why would they show more incidences of particular cancers?"
To which I would reply: "Because the study ran until natural death, and all the rats have to die of something."

For me to buy into this study, I'd be looking for at least one of:
1) Earlier mortality for the aspartame groups
2) Statement of other causes of mortality (for the dosed groups to die more often of cancer, they have to die less often of something else - remember, "natural death")
3) Trends increasing with dose in significant quantities (in either cancers or deaths)

**TheRuss** · Posted On: 7/30/2008 7:47pm

After I made this post, I found the European Food Safety Authority's response to this study - you can read it here. I got a kick out of seeing that a lot of their concerns were the same as mine.

**muddy** · Posted On: 7/30/2008 8:20pm

Originally Posted by TheRuss

After I made this post, I found the European Food Safety Authority's response to this study - you can read it here. I got a kick out of seeing that a lot of their concerns were the same as mine.

yes there has been a lot of "back and forth" ... Ramazzini actually responded to the EFSA statement with the results of a second longer term study that they contended supported their orginal conclusions .... others have suggested that EFSA was biased using scientists who had recieved funding from apartame industry.

the way the approval was suddenly given in the US when the new administration took over (after being considered potentially unsafe for the previous 25 years) makes me doubtful ...

**TheRuss** · Posted On: 7/30/2008 11:23pm

Originally Posted by muddy

others have suggested that EFSA was biased using scientists who had recieved funding from apartame industry.

That may be, but (and you'll have to take my word on this one) I haven't, and for that study to convince me, they need to demonstrate at least one of the three effects I highlighted. Anything less is just not convincing.

**Sun Wukong** · Posted On: 8/02/2008 7:21am

Originally Posted by Neildo

dude you quit smoking?!?! AWESOME.

yeah, i'm doing the patch and whenever I start freaking out for a cigarette i chew the gum on top of the patch.

i think my lungs are shedding since i don't have the constant pollution going in. I've been coughing up extremely horrible brown mucus to the tune of about half a cup a day.

jesus christ my lungs are fucked.

**Neildo** · Posted On: 8/02/2008 12:53pm

yummy. try a glass of whiskey or two, that loosened up some lung crud for me.

**TheRuss** · Posted On: 8/03/2008 6:13pm

Originally Posted by Bang!

Tremblay A, Simoneau JA, Bouchard C. Impact of exercise intensity on body fatness and skeletal muscle metabolism. Metabolism. 1994 Jul; 43(7):814-8.

I got to take a look at this today, and it seemed quite well done. It appears that when there was a methodology question, they chose the ones that would bias the experiment against HIIT, and it still came out fairly significantly ahead.