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aspartame for dopamine?

dankhead88

dankhead88

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Oct 19, 2005
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How effective is it? Aspartame is analogous to phenylalanine correct? Being that it is a methyl ester of aspartic acid and phenylalanine, does excitotoxicity and methanol/formaldehyde/formic acid really play a big danger to our well-being or are the amounts of aspartic acid and methanol so miniscule to the point where it doesn't have much harm?

Can it replace tyrosine supplements if one were to increase their intake on aspartame containing food and drinks or is tyrosine much more effective being that it's closer to DA biosynthesis?

Tyrosine is besides the point. I guess what I'm trying to say is: Can aspartame in everyday consumables replace tyrosine supplementation?
 
Being that it is a methyl ester of aspartic acid and phenylalanine, does excitotoxicity and methanol/formaldehyde/formic acid really play a big danger to our well-being or are the amounts of aspartic acid and methanol so miniscule to the point where it doesn't have much harm?
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When's the last time you observed excitotoxicity after ingesting protiens - which break down into aspartic acid, etc? Even though gutamate/aspartate are neurotoxic when applied directly to cell culture... well, people use MSG as a food additive all the damn time and it doesn't cook your brain alive, because amino acids are rather too polar to diffuse into the brain like drugs. Also, consider this: the amount of methanol your body can produce from aspartame is on the order of magnitude of what you'd find in a glass of apple juice from natural fermentation.

Tyrosine is besides the point. I guess what I'm trying to say is: Can aspartame in everyday consumables replace tyrosine supplementation?
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In theory, yes. In practice, no - the amount of aspartame used as a sweetener will only work out to a few milligrams of phenylalanine. You would need to choke down multiple grams of aspartame a day. Imagine the aftertaste that would leave you with.

Realistically, neither phenylalanine nor tyrosine supplementation are going to raise dopamine levels unless you're deficient in them already. The rate limiting step in dopamine biosynthesis is the conversion of tyrosine to L-DOPA - taking extra phenylalanine or tyrosine beyond a point will simply make your body destroy/excrete the excess.
 
Ah, thanks for clearing that up. Gotta admit though, MSG seasonings do add a bit of wonders in bland soup. :D
One more question though, does polarity in drugs play a big role when it comes to the BBB?
Must say, you have quite the knowledge!
 
Hmm....

Some aminoacids do undergo active transport past the BBB don't they? ibotenic acid for instance does. (and just like MSG, fly agaric makes for a wonderful seasoning once its heat-cured to rid it of (most, at least) this.

I have actually read an account somewhere of a woman who took MSG for a stimulant effect. Don't ask me where though it was quite a while ago.
 
dankhead88 said:
How effective is it? Aspartame is analogous to phenylalanine correct? Being that it is a methyl ester of aspartic acid and phenylalanine, does excitotoxicity and methanol/formaldehyde/formic acid really play a big danger to our well-being or are the amounts of aspartic acid and methanol so miniscule to the point where it doesn't have much harm?
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As for myself, aspartame "diet" drinks give me headaches. The main problem I've read that is scientifically sound is that the methanol increases in quantity when diet softdrinks are stored in warm environments. The longer they are not in a fridge let's say, the more dangerous it becomes due to the methanol increase. I have the flu right now, I'll try to find the pubmed research I found a long while ago about this subject.
 
Another fun anecdote - a couple of months ago I somehow got into the habit of consuming diet drinks with aspartame - perhaps 1.5l of Diet Coke per day, on average.

I stopped drinking them when I noticed a marked increase in the frequency of ocular migraines - I normally get these maybe once or twice a year, but towards the end of my aspartame regimen, I would get them as often as twice a week, and they definitely coincided with the intake of aspartame.

It turns out that aspartame-induced ocular migraines are actually a known phenomenon. Yuck.
 
And the caffeine in diet Coke doesn't play a role? I find it unlikely a dipeptide, which would be present from natural digestion of protiens anyway, would cause a migraines.
 
I never understood the whole fuss over aspartame. People should realize that there's plenty of phenylalanine and aspartic acid in food already.
 
The problem I've presented here is about increased amounts of methanol when aspartame containing liquids are stored in warm temperatures for extended amounts of time. I promise to get back to this thread with the pubmed studies when I got time, or just research it yourselves.

I think the guy talking about ocular migraines is probably not talking out of his ass. He didn't mention if he usually just had regular caffeinated softdrinks then switched to diet for a while, got ocular migraines (the horror, I know these too well) and went back to regular softdrinks and then the problem stopped. This is the most likely situation.
 
Considering that there are studies EVERYWHERE re how poisonous aspartame is, who would even want to attempt this? Although I'm now considering tyrosine and L-DOPA supplementation again, thanks.
 
Considering that there are studies EVERYWHERE re how poisonous aspartame is,
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Except it's not, or it wouldn't be GRAS by the FDA. Get your head together people. Aspartame is two amino acids linked together. That's it. The only people who claim it's "highly poisonous" are mouth breathing hippies who probably also are afraid of dihydrogen monoxide.
 
OK the methanol thing is at least sensible in that methanol is toxic in all kinds of ways, but how much aspartame do you have to consume to reach toxic levels of methanol?

The studies on aspartame I've seen involve tissue or lab animals being bombarded with titanic doses of aspartame.

Perhaps, though, the dipeptide is biologically active--is a drug. Do any of the studies hint at this?

sekio said:
Except it's not, or it wouldn't be GRAS by the FDA.
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Everyone knows the FDA is in the pocket of Big Soda.

/s
 
sekio said:
And the caffeine in diet Coke doesn't play a role? I find it unlikely a dipeptide, which would be present from natural digestion of protiens anyway, would cause a migraines.
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Well - for what it's worth, I am a MAJOR caffeine abuser, consuming, at the very least, upwards of 500mg per day (mostly in yerba mate tea and coffee), and since I quit the aspartamey drinks two months ago, I haven't had an ocular migraine once.
 
Some Dr.'s are saying humans can't eliminate methanol from the body the way other animals can and when it reaches the brain there's the complication that methanol, due to one or a series of chem reactions I can't rattle off, turns into formaldehyde. Sounds a little like crazy-talk, but is it completely out of the realm of possibility? IDK if aspartame is biologically active but am reasonably sure that methanol is, and also formaldehyde. I'm just your regular everyday dumbass but I thought just about everything is somehow biologically active, if you consume it. So are the Dr.s that are saying these things just a bunch of nuts who want to risk swapping their reputations with "mouth-breathing hippies"? I'd be the last one to say I understand why people do the shit they do and say the dumbass shit they like to say but it seems kind of counterproductive to go around saying aspartame is extremely dangerous when its not, esp. if you're a Doctor in present-day America, for fuck's sake. Seems like a big investment to gamble away on an uneducated guess.
 
Some Dr.'s are saying humans can't eliminate methanol from the body the way other animals can and when it reaches the brain there's the complication that methanol, due to one or a series of chem reactions I can't rattle off, turns into formaldehyde. Sounds a little like crazy-talk, but is it completely out of the realm of possibility? IDK if aspartame is biologically active but am reasonably sure that methanol is, and also formaldehyde.
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The amount of methanol generated from aspartame consumption is not only a trivial amount (methanol makes up a fraction of the weight of the aspartame molecule, and typically no more than 50-100mg per serving in total is ingested... so your body might have all of 5 milligrams of methanol to deal with), it's also rapidly detoxified by the liver. For instance, fruit juice, beer, wine, spirits, ciders, etc. all contain some level of methanol in them, from natural fermentation processes. You actually consume more of the "toxic methanol" in a glass of apple juice than in a can of diet soda. I see nobody telling me that apple juice will blind me though. Even hard cider...

Methanol is easily removed by the body. It does not bioaccumulate. Part of this is because it's entirely miscible with water - it is excreted in sweat, urine etc. Otherwise people who consumed beer and other fermented drinks would have formaldehyde build up in their brains until they went utterly blind from a single 6-pack.

As paracelsus said, the dose makes the posion. Methanol will surely blind you if you drink 250 mL of it. But the 1-10 mg of methanol that might be generated from a chronic diet soda habit is well within the "design specifications" of your body.



Appeal to authority does not hold water. Remember when 9 out of 10 doctors recommended you smoke Marlboros?
 
Just a hint : Donald Rumsfeld got really really rich in his stint out of government by pushing aspartame through the FDA without the regular process being involved. I won't entertain you with proof of this, cos hey we're all idiots. But just that is an incentive to ignore aspartame. In all cases it tastes horrible and my friend Alex (may he RIP)'s mother was a chemistry teacher who was drinking the shit while telling us that it's a neurotoxin... and poor Suzanne ended up with brain tumours along the way. She ain't dead but she isn't all here either whenever I meet her.

Also, when Walter White called Lydia to tell her he poisoned her by replacing that stevia crap (don't know if it's aspartame, but all fake sugars like that deserve the crap name) saying it would spare her the long-term damage by having her deal with the instant poison that is ricin =D
 
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I will just leave these links right here.

my friend Alex (may he RIP)'s mother was a chemistry teacher who was drinking the shit while telling us that it's a neurotoxin... and poor Suzanne ended up with brain tumours along the way. She ain't dead but she isn't all here either whenever I meet her.
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Correlation, causation, etc. My long-dead grandmother ate spinach, is that a sign that spinach is toxic?

Also, stevia and its active components (steviosides) are generally considered safe.
 
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