Nutrasweet
Lowers Sperm Counts
Artificial sweeteners
used in a variety of foods may lower sperm count, according to
Japanese researchers.
Male infertility is
often due to disabled sperm, including low sperm count syndrome,
which is likely caused by environmental changes or changes in
lifestyle and eating habits that have occurred over the past 30
years, according to one researcher.
In the study, 16 rats
were spilt into four groups. One group was fed water while the
other groups were fed varying levels of aspartame, an artificial
sweetener.
Aspartame, which was
created in the United States in 1965, is used in such brands as
Equal and Nutrasweet and is found in a number of low-calorie foods
and drinks.
Results showed that
water-fed mice had an average of 25 percent healthy sperm, while
the other groups averaged only 16 percent healthy sperm.
Even small doses of
less than one-thousandth of accepted safety levels had adverse
effects on sperm levels, according to researchers.
Some experts, as well
as food giant Ajinomoto, which has a patent to use aspartame in
food manufacturing, were skeptical of the study’s findings
because only a small sample of animals was used and the study
only lasted one week.
More studies are needed
to determine whether artificial sweeteners actually cause a drop
in sperm counts, according to researchers.
Tokyo Mainichi Daily
News April 14, 2003
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dr. Mercola's Comment
It makes absolutely
no sense to me why anyone would consume this junk. To me, there
is just no excuse to use these artificial sweeteners. If you are
still using them, eliminating them from your diet would go a long
way toward improving your health.
The components of aspartame
may lead to a wide variety of ailments including birth defects,
diabetes, emotional disorders, epilepsy/seizures and migraines.
Your body does not
do well with regular sugar, let alone synthetic sugar substitutes.
About 70 percent of the population suffers from an excess of insulin,
which is often marked by excess weight, high blood pressure, diabetes,
or high cholesterol. Nearly all of these people would benefit
from avoiding ANY sweeteners, and this includes sucralose, until
their signs of excess insulin are resolved.
Sweetners Sink Sperm
Counts to Sour Levels
By Ryan Connell
Staff Writer
April 14, 2003
A Japanese researcher
has sowed another seed of doubt in the minds of men who've known
for years that modern lifestyles cause an enormous drop in sperm
counts by claiming that artificial sweeteners used in bundles
of varieties of food are causing spunk to lose its chunk, according
to Shukan Post (4/25).
"One in seven
Japanese couples looking to have a child are plagued by infertility,"
Yasushi Hojo, the Kyoto Prefectural University professor who made
the claim, tells Shukan Post. "Disabled sperm, such as low
sperm count syndrome, is one of the reasons for male infertility
and can only be blamed on environmental changes and alterations
of lifestyles and eating habits over the past few decades. I wanted
to find out how much artificial sweeteners used in recent years
have affected sperm counts."
Aspartame, an artificial
sweetener created in the United States in 1965, is now used in
a variety of substances through such brands as Equal and Nutrasweet.
It is said to be 200 times sweeter than sugar. It was approved
for use in Japan in 1983 and since found its way into a number
of health drinks and low-calorie foods.
From November last
year, Hojo carried out tests on lab rats to find how aspartame
affected their sperm levels. He created four groups of four rats
each, feeding one group on water and the remaining three groups
with increasingly high levels of the artificial sweetener.
"Where the mice
on water had an average of 25 percent of healthy sperm, that is
correctly shaped sperm that moved directly forward, the other
groups had a clearly lower level of healthy sperm, averaging only
16 percent each," Hojo says. "Even with dosages less
than one-thousandth of accepted safety levels, artificial sweeteners
were found to have an adverse effect on sperm levels. Of course,
these experiments were carried out on lab rats, so you can't compare
them directly with humans, but simple math suggests you'd only
need consumption of 65 milligrams of artificial sweetener before
it started to play havoc with the sperm count of a man weighing
65 kilograms."
Food giant Ajinomoto
Co., which has a patent to use aspartame in manufacturing foodstuffs,
isn't particularly worried about the findings at this stage.
"It's hard to
judge on the data we've been presented with because the experiments
were conducted using such a small sample of animals," an
Ajinomoto spin doctor tells Shukan Post. "Aspartame has been
confirmed safe using methods recommended by the U.S. Food and
Drug Administration and the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare,
which showed that it does not have an effect on the reproductive
functions of sperm."
Other academics are
also a bit cynical of Hojo's findings.
"They were tests
carried out on mice for a week. It takes two or three months for
humans to produce sperm, so until we have basic data on that it's
impossible to judge the accuracy of the findings," Hyogo
College of Medicine's Koji Kayama tells Shukan Post. "We'll
have to wait to see a few more studies before we can know for
sure whether artificial sweeteners really do cause a drop in sperm
counts."
Return
to Information Library
|