As a parent, you’ll be the first one to notice health and behavioral changes in your children. Children are reacting to artificial sweeteners in harmful ways, but this side-effect of diet sweeteners has gone unnoticed in the mainstream, until now.
The sweetener corporations market to children by placing soft drink machines in public schools, and by influencing doctors that diet sweeteners don’t cause abnormal behavior and emotional stress in children.
When you have exhausted all the other reasons for your child’s poor health or worsening mental/emotional problems, then diet chemicals could be the culprit.
Rising Number Of Food Chemicals
There are over 14,000 chemicals in the American food supply. These chemical food additives keep breads from molding, salad dressings from separating, and improve the flavor of baked goods and candies. These chemicals saturate human tissues, and can make people like you and me sick.
In its broadest definition, a chemical food additive is any man-made substance added to food. Some additives may be necessary for our health and safety — most are not.
Your Child’s Behavior
According to the research, as early as 1970 scientists were already showing the negative effects of aspartame on mental behavior — specifically aggression and depression.
Dr. Louis Elsas, MD, Emory University, explained in his testimony before the U.S. Senate on November 3, 1987 how high levels of phenylalanine (from aspartame) found in the blood become concentrated in the brain.
This affects normal serotonin levels, which in turn, affects behavior and mood.
Scientists have repeatedly proven that excess phenylalanine in the brain blocks the normal production of serotonin, which leads to emotional disorders such as depression, PMS, insomnia and sexual dysfunction — all modern epidemics.
“This proves especially dangerous for fetuses and infants,” Elsas testified.
It’s bad enough for adults to endure these maladies, but inflicting these difficulties on our children who are trying to grow and develop is tragic beyond words.
Some of the most prevalent disorders caused by diet sweeteners are:
- Depression;
- Violence and aggression;
- ADD/ADHD;
- Physical risks to the brain.
Before NutraSweet®
Before NutraSweet came on the market in 1981, mental health costs remained relatively constant according to studies between 1971 and 1985.
After twenty years of aspartame use, mental health costs have risen today, and the use of psychotropic drugs had already increased nearly forty percent from 1985 to 1994.
Today, suicide is the eighth leading cause of death in the United States, and the third leading cause of death among people fifteen to twenty-four years of age. By 1990, the total economic cost of mental illness had risen to $147.8 billion, annually. More than thirty-one percent of those costs — $46.6 billion — were for anxiety disorders.
Today, one out of four patients seen in primary care units has a diagnosable mental condition — most commonly depression and anxiety — leaving the majority of the mental health disorders in America undetected and untreated.
Have your kids had a diet cola lately?
The treatment of depression and anxiety, alcohol and substance abuse, post-traumatic stress disorders (PTSD), schizophrenia, and over 300 other mental diagnoses are treated in general medical practices. Mental disorders constitute up to eighty percent of the patient load in primary care today.
According to the National Mental Health Association, it’s predicted that approximately one in four Americans will suffer from a serious mental disorder in their lifetime, and studies indicate that one in five children/adolescents have a diagnosable mental disorder.
By 1993, eleven years after the introduction of aspartame, the Center for Mental Health Services estimated the number of children suffering from mental disorders would climb from 7.7 million to 12.8 million.
It has!
Many modern children have severe emotional or behavioral problems that significantly interfere with their daily functioning— at home, at school and at work.
Sadly, these numbers are rising faster than the system can keep up. As a result, less than one-third of children under eighteen years of age with a serious emotional disturbance will receive mental health services, and many times the services they do receive are inappropriate.
They are NOT addressing the cause(s).
If counselors do not connect aspartame and the other chemical sweeteners with the rise in mental disturbances, how can they offer these children the help they truly need to heal?
