Diet Soda Warnings

BrendaLee

@Brendalee

I just spent my lunch break scrolling pubmed and basically the concentrations of aspartic acid needed to kill brain cells is much higher than you're going to get drinking aspartame or eating chicken or anything else. And that's assuming that it actually gets into the brain in the first place... I didn't find evidence that it gets in in large quantities. It doesn't cross the blood brain barrier. It IS transported into the CNS- but that's a controlled transport (think a gate that only lets a few molecules in at a time vs. and open field where hundreds can cross at once)... so unless you're eating kilograms of straight aspartame, the concentrations of aspartic acid in the brain are not going to rise significantly enough to do any damage.

Also... for what it's worth... I didn't find anything to suggest that aspartic acid itself is neurotoxic. It can make a specific type of glutamate receptor more active, which makes the neurons more sensitive to glutamate, which might make glutamate neurotoxic... but i"m not finding evidence that aspartic acid is toxic in the absence of glutamate.

Thanks for looking into it and offering your perspective. It makes me feel a little better about my diet soda addic...umm...enjoyment.