All About Fasting

Laura said:

I'm on day 16 of my fast. Nothing but distilled water goes into the alimentary tract.

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Laura said:

As for "what" we are using right now, it is the water sold for irons and other appliances that says "non-potable."

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I guess the assumption is that distilled water ought not to be drunk because the supermarkets have HUGE sections devoted to all the mineral waters

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It's sufficient to realize how difficult it is to purchase potable, distilled water bottled in 'safe' plastic to get an inkling of an idea.

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Isabel said:

I've been away from the forum for many months & picked up on the gluten etc., topic these past few days. Finding it of great interest, here is my own story.

I was given a provisional diagnosis of MS in 1982, having experienced symptoms for many years but not been acutely ill. Sensory nerve pathways were predominantly involved, motor pathways less, so I was 'fortunate' in a sense.

I refused to accept my neurologist's forecast of my being in a wheelchair by 1987 & after some months, intuitively began taking high doses of vitamins a?" especially C & some minerals. Within 3 weeks I experienced incredible measurable benefit.

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A year after diagnosis, I met doctors Archie Kalokerinos, William Philpott & Carl Pfeiffer, who together, 'fine tuned' my approach, recommending sodium ascorbate as the ascorbate of choice. [I had been taking it, not being able to tolerate ascorbic acid.] I have taken mega-amounts of vit. C for nearly 25 years & although having continued to live with the MS symptoms, am not wh/chair bound & live independently [but had to stop working as a RN within 3 years of diagnosis].

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Laura said:

I'm on day 16 of my fast. Nothing but distilled water goes into the alimentary tract. I am still smoking since that does not invade the digestive system. If my body wants to clean out any smoking toxins, it will do it and smoking will not interfere with the sleeping stomach and related organs.

Dunno how far I can go, but the goal is 40 days. We'll see.

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If fried snack chips had a warning printed right on the bag that said, "Warning: these chips will make you obese," would you still buy them? Would you still eat them? Well, in a sense, you do see that warning on chips; just read the ingredient list. Research suggests that monosodium glutamate causes obesity, making unhealthy snacks even unhealthier than you may have suspected.

I'm sure you already know that tortilla and potato chips aren't health foods, right? They're made with fried fats, they almost always harbor hidden toxic chemicals (acrylamides), and if they're flavored, they usually contain monosodium glutamate (MSG). This is basically a recipe for obesity.

But how does MSG cause obesity? Like aspartame, MSG is an excitotoxin, a substance that overexcites neurons to the point of cell damage and, eventually, cell death. Humans lack a blood-brain barrier in the hypothalamus, which allows excitotoxins to enter the brain and cause damage, according to Dr. Russell L. Blaylock in his book Excitotoxins. According to animal studies, MSG creates a lesion in the hypothalamus that correlates with abnormal development, including obesity, short stature and sexual reproduction problems.

Based on this evidence, Dr. Blaylock makes an interesting point about the American obesity epidemic, especially among young people: "One can only wonder if the large number of people having difficulty with obesity in the United States is related to early exposure to food additive excitotoxins, since this obesity is one of the most consistent features of the syndrome. One characteristic of the obesity induced by excitotoxins is that it doesn't appear to depend on food intake. This could explain why some people cannot diet away their obesity." As an increasing number of elementary school students bring snack-size bags of chips to school in their lunch boxes, the MSG-obesity link demands parental caution.

Instead of passively watching modern society become obese and then commenting on it, we need to change it at the start. That begins with you, the consumer. By avoiding foods with MSG, you are not only protecting your health and your family's health, you are also protecting society's health by not supporting companies that use MSG. Use your buying power to show that you don't accept manufactured foods that use MSG or any of the other hidden forms of MSG such as yeast extract, hydrolyzed vegetable proteins and autolyzed proteins.

The experts speak on MSG and obesity:
Olney, J.W. "Brain Lesions, Obesity, and Other Disturbances in Mice Treated with Monosodium glutamate." Sci. 165(1969): 719-271. Humans also lack a blood-brain barrier in the hypothalamus, even as adults. It is for this reason that Dr. Olney and other neuroscientists are so concerned about the widespread and heavy use of excitotoxins, such as MSG, hydrolyzed vegetable protein, and cysteine, as food additives. In his experiments Dr. Olney found that high-dose exposure to MSG caused hypoplasia of the adenohypophysis of the pituitary and of the gonads, in conjunction with low hypothalamic, pituitary, and plasma levels of LH, growth hormone, and prolactin. When doses below toxic levels for hypothalamic cells were used, he found a rapid elevation of LH and a depression of the pulsatile output of growth hormone. In essence, these excitotoxins can cause severe pathophysiological changes in the central endocrine control system. Many of these dysfunctional changes can occur with subtoxic doses of MSG. One can speculate that chronic exposure to these neurotoxins could cause significant alterations in the function of the hypothalamus, including its non-endocrine portions.
Excitotoxins by Russell L Blaylock MD, page 263

"Consuming MSG leads to obesity"

Early exposure in life to high doses of glutamate, or the other excitotoxins, could theoretically produce a whole array of disorders much later in life, such as obesity, impaired growth, endocrine problems, sleep difficulties, emotional problems including episodic anger, and sexual psycho-pathology.
Excitotoxins by Russell L Blaylock MD, page 89

The stress-induced abnormalities in blood-brain barrier permeability suggest differing MSG effects dependent on existing states of relaxation or stresses. The suggestive evidence for MSG-induced neuroendocrine effects is substantial, coupled with the observation of increased obesity in children.
In Bad Taste by George R Schwartz MD, page 39

With this enormous consumption of foods laced with MSG additives, it is no wonder that we have an obesity problem in this country, especially when you combine the hypothalamic lesion caused by MSG to the high-fat and -carbohydrate diets of young people. Of particular concern is the suggestion that MSG ingested by pregnant women may actually cause this lesion in children while they are still in the womb.
Health And Nutrition Secrets by Russell L Blaylock MD, page 180

This also means that, while pregnant, mothers of diabetic children also consumed very large amounts of these excitotoxin-containing foods. Also, many parents feed their babies table food from an early age—food often laced with large amounts of MSG. In addition, large numbers of babies are also fed formula, and many formulas are known to be high in excitotoxins such as caseinate. I have already cited studies showing that gross obesity is frequently linked to excessive MSG consumption in test animals.
Health And Nutrition Secrets by Russell L Blaylock MD, page 182

Particularly disturbing is the later obesity after MSG exposure during the neonatal and infant period even after only a short or limited exposure.
In Bad Taste by George R Schwartz MD, page 22

With all of these endocrine malfunctions you would expect these mice to develop abnormally, and they do. Consistently, the animals exposed to MSG were found to be short, grossly obese, and had difficulty with sexual reproduction. One can only wonder if the large number of people having difficulty with obesity in the United States is related to early exposure to food additive excitotoxins since this obesity is one of the most consistent features of the syndrome. One characteristic of the obesity induced by excitotoxins is that it doesn't appear to depend on food intake. This could explain why some people cannot diet away their obesity. It is ironic that so many people drink soft drinks sweetened with NutraSweet® when aspartate can produce the exact same lesions as glutamate, resulting in gross obesity. The actual extent of MSG induced obesity in the human population is unknown.
Excitotoxins by Russell L Blaylock MD, page 81

"Animal studies demonstrate link between MSG and obesity"

The obesity effect of MSG in animals requires evaluation since unexplained obesity is increasing in our population, along with hypertension and diabetes. MSG-induced obesity in animals may carry long-term significance for humans.
In Bad Taste by George R Schwartz MD, page 22

Since his early observation, other studies have confirmed that MSG causes gross obesity in animals. At an international neuroscience meeting, Dr. Olney was asked if he thought the reason Americans were so obese was, in fact, due to their high consumption of MSG additives. The question was never answered, but since that conference in the 1970s, America has undergone this virtual epidemic of gross obesity, especially among its youth.
Health And Nutrition Secrets by Russell L Blaylock MD, page 180

This MSG-induced obesity was characterized by a preference for carbohydrates and an aversion for more nutritious foods, just as we are now witnessing in our youth. Also, excess weight was extremely difficult to exercise off or diet off in these experimental animals.
Health And Nutrition Secrets by Russell L Blaylock MD, page 182

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Interview with Dr. Russell Blaylock on devastating health effects of MSG, aspartame and excitotoxins
by Mike Adams

Mike: I'm here with Dr. Russell Blaylock, and I'd like to explore some of the more advanced aspects of some of the things you are working on. Dr. Blaylock, I think readers know the basics of both MSG and aspartame, but can you review what you've already written about excitotoxins?

Dr. Russell Blaylock: I have three books. The first one is the excitotoxin book, "Excitotoxins: The Taste That Kills," and the latest one is "Health and Nutrition Secrets That Can Save Your Life." The third one is "Natural Strategies for Cancer Patients," which is directed at nutritional treatments for cancer. It contains some material about aspartame and MSG.

Excitotoxins have been found to dramatically promote cancer growth and metastasis. In fact, one aspartame researcher noticed that, when cancer cells were exposed to aspartame, they became more mobile, and you see the same effect with MSG. It also causes a cancer cell to become more mobile, and that enhances metastasis, or spread. These MSG-exposed cancer cells developed all of these pseudopodians and started moving through tissues, which is one of the earlier observations from cancer.

When you increase the glutamate level, cancer just grows like wildfire, and then when you block glutamate, it dramatically slows the growth of the cancer. Researchers have done some experiments in which they looked at using glutamate blockers in combination with conventional drugs, like chemotherapy, and it worked very well. It significantly enhanced the effectiveness of these cancer drugs.

Mike: Wasn't there some research that came out recently that supports all this by establishing a correlation between leukemia and aspartame?

Dr. Blaylock: Yes. This Italian study was very well done. It was a lifetime study, which is very important with these toxins. They fed animals aspartame throughout their lives and let them die a natural death. They found a dramatic and statistically significant increase in the related cancers of lymphoma and leukemia, along with several histological types of lymphomas, which is of interest because H.J. Roberts had written an article saying that there was a significant increase in the primary lymphoma of the brain.

When you look it up in the neurosurgical literature, there is a rather significant rise in the incidents of what used to be a rare tumor. We're seeing a lot more of the primary lymphoma of the brain, which is a little different than lymphomas you see elsewhere. When you look back at the original studies done by the G.D. Searle company, they found lymphomas as well as primary brain tumors and tumors of multiple organs. All of this correlation shows that we've got a powerful carcinogenic substance here. It is either acting as a co-carcinogen or a primary carcinogen. Most likely, it's the formaldehyde breakdown product.

What the Italian study found is that if you take these same animals and expose them to formaldehyde in the same doses, they developed the same leukemias and lymphomas. If you look back at the Troker Study conducted in Spain a couple of years ago, what they found was when they radiolabeled the aspartame, they could actually see formaldehyde binding to the DNA, and it produced both single and double strand DNA breakage.

We know that when formaldehyde binds to DNA, it's very difficult to remove it. It will stay there for long periods of time. What that means is if you just drink a single diet cola today, or sweeten something with NutraSweet, you're accumulating damage every day. Eventually, you're going to produce this necessary pattern of DNA damage to initiate the cancer, and once you develop the cancer, the aspartic acid component of aspartame will make the cancer grow very rapidly. You've got a double effect; it's causing the cancer, and it's making the cancer move very rapidly.

Mike: Given all this evidence, how has the industry managed to suppress this information and keep this chemical legal in the food supply?

Dr. Blaylock: Donald Rumsfeld was the one who pushed a lot of this through, when he was in the chairmanship of the G.D. Searle company, NutraSweet. He got it approved through the regulatory process, but once it was approved, the government didn't want to admit that they had made a mistake. They just continued to cover it up, like the fluoride thing and the milk industry.

You're not going to criticize milk in the media, because they are smart enough to advertise in newspapers, magazines, health magazines and journals. They have all the media outlets covered. The only place that they don't have covered is talk radio and the internet. The health blogs can tell the truth.

No matter how much a newspaper wants to tell the truth, they're not going to do it. This is the kind of pressure these people are under. Even if you have a good writer who wants to write the story, his editor is going to override him and prevent it or water it down considerably. You see this in journals like the Journal of Clinical Nutrition or College Nutrition. Look at who funds them: The Monsanto Company, and they used to be sponsored by G.D. Searle. They're not going to want to put articles in their journal that will infuriate their primary source of income. Even medical and nutrition journals are controlled by these people.

Mike: It's the unholy alliance between the scientific community and big business.

Dr. Blaylock: Right. Another big scandal concerning the research is something new we found. We discovered that outside of the brain, there are numerous glutamate receptors in all organs and tissues. The entire GI tract, from the esophagus to the colon, has numerous glutamate receptors. The entire electrical conducting system of a heart is replete with all sorts of glutamate receptors. The lungs, the ovaries, all the reproductive systems and sperm itself, adrenal glands, bones and even calcification are all controlled by glutamate receptors. They act and operate exactly like the glutamate receptors in the brain.

So, when you're consuming MSG, the level of glutamate in the blood can rise as high as 20-fold. You get very high glutamate levels in the blood after eating a meal containing MSG. You're stimulating all of the glutamate receptors. That's why some people get explosive diarrhea, because it stimulates the receptors in the esophagus and small bowel. Others may develop irritable bowel, or if they have irritable bowel, it makes it a lot worse. If they have reflux, it makes that a lot worse. The thing about the cardiac conduction system glutamate receptors is this may explain the rise in sudden cardiac death.

What you see in almost all these cases is low magnesium. When the magnesium level is low, the glutamate receptors become hypersensitive, and so people -- athletes in particular, if they are not supplementing with magnesium -- are prone to sudden cardiac death, because of the glutamate receptors. If they eat a meal or something that contains glutamate or drink a diet cola before practice, it will produce such intense cardiac irritability, they'll die of sudden cardiac death. We know the sudden cardiac death is due to two things: Most commonly arrhythmia and cardio artery spasm. Both of which can be produced by glutamate.

Mike: Of course, that death certificate doesn't say they died from MSG.

Dr. Blaylock: No, and it's not going to, because the admitting physician doesn't know the first thing about any of this research. They've never heard of it. In fact, most cardiologists I've spoken with have never heard of this. They didn't know there were glutamate receptors throughout the electrical conduction system and in the heart muscle itself. You have a million patients in this country with arrhythmias that are life-threatening, and no one's telling them to avoid MSG and aspartame, yet it's a major source of cardiac irritability.

Mike: It's absolutely astounding. Now, didn't baby food manufacturers voluntarily remove this ingredient in the '70s?

Dr. Blaylock: They said they would, but they didn't. What they did is take out pure MSG and substitute it with hydrolyzed protein and caseinate. If you look at most toddler foods, they all have caseinate hydrolyzed protein broth, a significant source of glutamate.

Mike: We're destroying the nervous systems of these babies.

Dr. Blaylock: Exactly. Now, one of the things we're hearing a lot about is childhood obesity. One early observation with exitotoxicity is it makes animals grossly obese.

Mike: If they banned MSG, the drug companies would lose billions. Think about how much money they make treating all of these symptoms.

Dr. Blaylock: Here the government has all these big plans for controlling carbohydrate intake and controlling cereals and sugar and all that. Those things add to the problem, because what we find in MSG-exposed animals is that they prefer carbohydrates and sugars over protein-rich foods. That was one of the characteristics of this type of obesity. It's very difficult to exercise the weight off and almost impossible to diet it off. The appetite is out of control, but the metabolism is also out of control. They have metabolic syndrome on top of obesity, and so then you have a leptin insensitivity. In terms of obesity, they have a leptin insensitivity. It has been shown that you can produce leptin insensitivity very easily with MSG.

Mike: Is there any hope, in your view, that the world may wake up to this, and some day these ingredients may be banned?

Dr. Blaylock: It's possible, but you know, it's only going to be by public exposure, through the blogs and sites like yours. Once the public gets wind of it and is convinced that this is real, then there'll be an uproar over it. There's just a deception. The average consumer looks at it and goes, "Well, it says that it contains no MSG, so it must be okay."

Mike: I find a lot of the vegetarian foods, or so-called health foods, use yeast extracts.

Dr. Blaylock: The worst of the things they're doing are the soy extracts. Soybeans, naturally, have one of the highest glutamate levels of any of the plant products. When you hydrolyze it, you release the glutamate, and the soy protein isolates. The glutamate levels are higher than a lot of what you'll find in MSG products, yet the vegetarians are just eating it like it's the healthiest thing in the world. There was a 25-year study done, which looked at people who consumed the most soy products, and they followed them for 25 years and did serial CT scans. They found out that the people who consumed the most soybean products had the greatest incidence of dementia and brain atrophy.

These people are destroying their nervous system, and I talked to a lot of them who complained of severe migraine headaches. I said, "Get off the soy," and they do, and that migraine headache goes away. In addition, you have very high manganese levels, which is toxic to the very same part of the brain that produces Parkinson's. You've got a mixture of toxins with soy products, and the people think they are eating a healthy, nutritious product. It's destroying their nervous system, as well as other organs.

Mike: In this whole debate of soy versus cow's milk, we find misinformation in both camps.

Dr. Blaylock: I wouldn't recommend either one. If you're obsessed with milk, use goat's milk. It's closer to human milk, but I wouldn't recommend cow's milk or soy milk. I think people ought to avoid soy products as if they were poison.

Mike: Have you taken a lot of heat from NutraSweet or any of these other companies? I mean, have you been threatened with lawsuits or anything for going public with this information?

Dr. Blaylock: No, they leave me alone. I know too much. They've never bothered me. When I wrote the book, George Schwartz warned me, "Are you sure you want to write this book? If you do, they're just going to hound you to death." I said, "Yes, I want to write the book." So, I wrote it with one thing in mind: that they would not be able to refute it.

I researched every kind of way you can research and proved the toxicity of glutamate. They know I know that, because I had exchanged this in writing letters to some of their biggest defenders. They all realized that they couldn't answer my arguments. So they leave me alone. They're afraid that if it comes to a big standoff between me and them, they're going to lose.

Mike: They don't want this information going on the public record.

Dr. Blaylock: No, they don't want that. What they're doing is the old ploy of just ignoring and hoping it will go away. Of course, they put pressure on magazines, journals and newspapers not to interview me. They are trying to keep me in the shadows where they hope most people don't hear anything I have to say. It only works for so long.

Since I first wrote the book in 1995, proof supporting my viewpoint has increased enormously. The new material on peripheral glutamate receptors absolutely killed these people. They have no defense against that. The new information on the dramatic increase in cancer aggressiveness is something that they are terrified of.

Mike: Now you find these receptors outside the brain.

Dr. Blaylock: Right. Now, see, I proved it can enter the brain and that all that was a lie. What they've shown is that there are glutamate receptors on both sides of the blood brain barrier and that when you expose these receptors to glutamate, it opens up the blood brain barrier. So, the glutamate itself can open the barrier, and I list all these conditions. For instance, as you get older, your barrier becomes less competent. Almost all Alzheimer's patients have incompetent barriers. Heat stroke, seizures, autoimmune disorder and multiple sclerosis all are related with this active blood brain barrier.

You're talking about tens of millions of people, and they are out there gobbling up aspartame, MSG and other excitotoxins, and no one is telling them they are making their neurological conditions infinitely worse. I don't know how many seizure patients I've gotten off their medicines by just getting them off MSG and giving them magnesium. They quit having seizures. They were on maximum dosages of medications and still having seizures. Most neurologists and neurosurgeons that treat seizures are not aware of this.

Mike: It's not profitable to teach people how to avoid these ingredients.

Dr. Blaylock: If you look at the neuroscience literature, you can't pick up an article that's not about excitotoxicity. The hottest topic in neurosciences is glutamate receptors and excitotoxins.

Mike: Are they talking about it in the food or just as a chemical?

Dr. Blaylock: They won't mention food, but they talk about the glutamate receptor and what happens when you activate it.

Mike: What about the argument from food companies? I actually got into a debate with a veggie burger manufacturer, because I wrote an article that said their product had yeast extract in it, and yet the front label said, "100 percent all-natural ingredients." They said, "Well, glutamate appears naturally in other foods, like tomatoes and seaweed." What's your answer to that kind of defense?

Dr. Blaylock: Sure, but you see, all of these types of glutamate are bound. They're in oligosaccharides, polysaccharides. They are bound in amino acids groupings. They're not free amino acids. If you have it as a complex protein, you absorb it in your GI tract. In the GI tract, there are almost no free amino acids if you eat foods such as tomatoes. The level of free amino acids is nil; it's almost all absorbed as combined amino acids, and then it's only broken down in the liver, where it's released in very low concentrations that the body can deal with. It was never meant to have free amino acids in such high concentrations.

Well, when you hydrolyze them -- or you use yeast extract or enzymes to break down these various proteins into their free, released amino acids -- they're not natural any longer. What you've done is artificially release the amino acids in an unnatural way, and when they enter your GI tract, they are absorbed as free amino acids, then your blood level of that glutamic acid goes up significantly. As I said, it can go up as high as 20-fold, in some cases 40-fold. Your blood brain barrier is not constructed to handle such high levels of glutamate, because it doesn't naturally occur that way. It can handle the lower levels, but it can't handle these very high levels. So this argument, "Oh, it's natural," is just a lot of nonsense.

Mike: I do find that many manufacturers claim to be natural health companies, or health food companies, as a cover. They don't really follow that philosophy, because they'll use these ingredients.

Dr. Blaylock: Sure, and they use all kinds of backhanded ways.

Mike: Here's a practical question that's actually been burning in my head for about eight years: Is there anything that a person can take to block the absorption of MSG or glutamate as a defensive supplement?

Dr. Blaylock: Well, not necessarily to block it. You have other amino acids that can't compete for glutamic acid absorption. So that may be one way to help reduce the rate at which it would be absorbed.

Mike: Which aminos would those be?

Dr. Blaylock: Those would include leucine, isoleucine and lysine. They would compete for the same carrier system, so that would slow down absorption. There are a lot of things that act as glutamate blockers. You know, like silimarin, curcumin and ginkgo biloba. These things are known to directly block glutamate receptors and reduce excitotoxicity. Curcumin is very potent. Most of your flavonoids.

Magnesium is particularly important, because magnesium can block the MNDA glutamate type receptor. That's its natural function, so it significantly reduces toxicity. Vitamin E succinate is powerful at inhibiting excitotoxicity, as are all of your antioxidants. They found combinations of B vitamins also block excitotoxicity.

Mike: Let's talk about restaurants. I can't even eat at restaurants anymore at all, even those natural restaurants. They don't know they have MSG, because it's in one of the sauces or something.

Dr. Blaylock: I talked to them, and they said, "We get our food in these big crates, so there's no ingredients listed." It's the same thing for hospitals. I talked to a hospital dietitian and she said, "We can't tell because it comes in a crate, and they won't put the ingredients on it. It just says Salisbury steak or whatever."

They don't know, so it's hard for them to come out and tell their customers, "It's free of MSG." What they mean when they do say that is, "We didn't put any in there." Their white sauces are particularly high, as are their salad dressings, especially the ones that are pure oil. They all contain MSG.

Mike: Gravy mixes almost always have it, right?

Dr. Blaylock: Yes, they'll put hydrolyzed protein in it. They're selling taste. I mean, that's why a person prefers one restaurant to another. The food tastes better. Then they go home and feel sick and don't understand why.

One of the things that has been noticed about sudden cardiac death is that most that have it, other than athletes, die after eating a meal in a restaurant. I suspect it's because these people have low magnesium. They eat the meal, the glutamate stimulates the glutamate receptor in the cardiac conduction system as well as the hypothalamus, and they have a sudden cardiac death.

I was in a bookstore in Oxford, Miss. This young guy was there, and he just dropped and died. We took him to the hospital and tried to resuscitate him, and we couldn't. He was only 26 years old, and he had just eaten a big bowl of soup at one of the restaurants. Well, I talked to the person that was there, and he said they use a lot of hydrolyzed protein and MSG. People will eat a meal, have a soup before the meal, get this huge dose of MSG, and drop dead from the arrhythmia.

Mike: Could this explain some sudden infant deaths as well, you think?

Dr. Blaylock: Oh yeah. I mean, look at the popularity of these soy infant formulas. Mothers are crazy to give their kids soy formula. There is a lot of concern about it. There's concern about the fluoride level, the manganese level, and the glutamate levels in these soy infant formulas.

Mike: At Wal-Mart, I saw bottled water with added sodium fluoride. It's fluoride water.

Dr. Blaylock: Oh yes, it's for babies. They have a picture of a baby on it.

Mike: So, is there a website or a newsletter that people can visit or sign-up for?

Dr. Blaylock: I have a newsletter. It's www.BlaylockReport.com. It's by subscription, but you can buy individual newsletters. You don't have to get the whole year. It's issued monthly, for $3.98 a piece. It covers everything.

I try to cover a lot of common subjects and bring people up to date on the new thinking and research. I go through all the medical research. Usually I'll go through everything that conventional medicine has to offer. A lot of times they have good physiology, a good pathophysiology, but then, they switch over and start talking about drugs. I'll go through all the good pathophysiology material they have, and then I'll look up all the nutritional research that's been done that can correct those problems.

Mike: I see. Here's an off-the-wall question: If MSG and all its different versions, as well as aspartame, were outlawed tomorrow, what changes would we see in the next five years in terms of public health?

Dr. Blaylock: I think you'd see a significant drop in obesity and metabolic syndrome. You'd see a tremendous drop in certain cancers. You would certainly see a tremendous drop in the neurodegenerative diseases, and all of these diseases that are increasing expeditiously.

The neurodegenerative diseases are just exploding. Things that used to be rare, we're seeing all the time now. It's just frightening. And when you look through the neurosciences literature, they have no explanation. They don't know why it's increasing so rapidly, but it's because we have such a large combination of toxins. For instance, we know that cellular neurodegenerative diseases are connected to mercury, aluminum, pesticides and herbicides, and the way they produce brain damage is through an excitotoxic mechanism.

So, we are all exposed to those toxins, and then when you add MSG and excitotoxins to the food, you tremendously accelerate this toxicity. That's why we're seeing this explosion in neurodegenerative diseases; Alzheimer's and autism and ADD and Parkinson's -- all these things are increasing so enormously because we are exposed to carcinogenic toxicity from all these different things and this huge exposure to excitotoxins, which is the central mechanism.

This is what no one's been able to claim. You look at one person's report and they'll say, "Alzheimer's is related to mercury exposure," and then another one says, "No, it's related to pesticides," and yet another one says it something else, but they're all operating through the same mechanism. All of these things operate by increasing brain immune activity, and that activates excitotoxicity. So that's why all of them seem to be related, because they're all doing the same thing to the brain.

Mike: What about the American Diabetes Association? Given that aspartame actually promotes obesity, based a lot of the work you've uncovered, I find it curious that the ADA so strongly supports aspartame.

Dr. Blaylock: I don't, considering they receive huge amounts of money from the makers of aspartame. They fund their walk-a-thon and all that kind of stuff, so they get tremendous amounts of money from the makers of aspartame, and money talks.

Whether they're just deluding themselves and choosing not to believe it's toxic, refusing to look at the evidence, or they're just concerned about the money and could care less, I don't know, but when you look at the pathophysiology of diabetes and the effect of aspartame, it's absolute nonsense for anybody who has diabetes to be on aspartame. Particularly in a neurological aspect, it's going to make it a lot worse.

Mike: What about other popular chemical sweeteners like sucralose in Splenda?

Dr. Blaylock: There's really not a lot of research in those areas. They have some basic research, like with Splenda, showing thalamus suppression. If that holds up in other research, it's a major concern. If you're suppressing the thalamus gland in a child, that's the future of their immune function. You can increase everything from autoimmunity to producing immune-related diseases, to infections and cancers. The implications of thalamus gland suppression are enormous.

There have been reports of miscarriages associated with Splenda in experimental animals. The problem is, we don't have a lot of well-conducted studies on Splenda to ferret these things out, and they're not going to do them. The best way to protect your product is to never test it, or just to set up some phony test and report it in a journal that's friendly to your point of view.

That's what they did with certain vaccines. They did thousands of phony studies and waved them around, claiming nothing was found. You can design any study to find whatever you want. Particularly, you can design it to have negative results. That's the easiest thing to do.

Mike: We've got government health officials telling us mercury is safe and we've got big business telling us both aspartame and MSG are safe. It sounds like every poison in the food supply or in organized medicine is perfectly safe.

Dr. Blaylock: We did that with lead. When they first started questioning the safety of lead, the levels they said were safe were just enormously high, and then a mere 10 years later, suddenly we're finding out that lead is toxic at 10 micrograms. In the '60s, they were fighting over the same thing. The defenders of gasoline-added lead were saying lead wasn't toxic, except in extremely high doses. Then neuroscience literature was contradicting them, but nobody would listen. Finally, the weight of the evidence was so overwhelming that they found out extremely low concentrations of lead were toxic and accumulate in the brain.

It's the same thing with mercury. Mercury is even more poisonous than lead. An infant is getting 150 times the dose of mercury than the EPA safety limits. A hundred times higher than the FDA safety limits. Here's a little baby that's getting 150 times higher a dose than the FDA says is safe for an adult.

Mike: What are the big points readers to take away? What do you think they need to remember in order to protect themselves?

Dr. Blaylock: You need to abstain from all of these things. Aspartame is not a necessary nutrient, and neither is MSG. The weight of the evidence is overwhelming. If you want to avoid obesity, metabolic syndrome and cancer, and if you don't want to make your cancer more aggressive, then you need to stay away from these products.

The damage affects pregnant women, unborn babies and newborns. It produces changes in the brain that are irreversible. What we've found is that it reprograms the wiring of the brain, particularly the hypothalamus, so it doesn't function normally. These children are abnormal for the rest of their lives in terms of their physiological function.

Mike: Well, hopefully the weight of this evidence will someday become overwhelming, and government regulators will listen to you.

Dr. Blaylock: The pressure on researchers is so enormous. Larry Troker came out with his research about the DNA damage by aspartame. Then his career was damaged by the makers of aspartame. He said he would never do another research project concerning aspartame. Well, a number of researchers have said the same thing. Once they published their results, the full weight of these companies come down on their head. NutraSweet will contribute millions to a university and threaten to pull their donations if someone isn't quieted.

Mike: So there's blatant scientific censorship at work here.

Dr. Blaylock: There's blatant, and then there's just understood. You have NutraSweet manufacturers donating several million dollars to your university. The director of that laboratory, or the president of the university, will just quietly let them know that they'd really like to see research come to a stop.

The editor-in-chief of The Chemical News went through that with fluoride. They fired him because he refused to be quiet about fluoride toxicity, and they had just received this huge grant from Colgate-Palmolive. They said, "We'll lose our grant if you don't get quiet about fluoride." He wouldn't, and they fired him. Researchers know this.

Mike: I want to commend you for being willing to stand up and tell the truth about all of this. I think you're doing a great, positive service to public-health.

Dr. Blaylock: You're the one doing the service, because you're putting the word out there. Without you, I would just be sitting in a room fussing. It's people like you that get this word out and let people know what's going on in the world.

Mike: I wouldn't be surprised if they tried to pass a bill to outlaw health talk on the internet.

Dr. Blaylock: They're trying to do it. You know, they passed a law at one time in several states that no one but dietitians could speak on the subject of nutrition. Several states had that law passed. This meant Ph.D. biochemists couldn't talk about health. It was ridiculous. I'm sure that one day they're going to have an internet bill saying there's just too much dangerous material coming over the internet on health issues, and we need to regulate it.

Mike: Well, I want to thank you very much for all your time.

Dr. Blaylock: Thank you. I appreciate you giving me this opportunity.

Note: This full interview is also available as a free download (PDF) at TruthPublishing.com.

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MSG: A Silent Enemy
by Donna Russell, July, 2004

I wondered if there could be an actual chemical causing the massive obesity epidemic, so did John Erb, a friend of mine. He was a research assistant at the University of Waterloo, and spent years working for the government. He made an amazing discovery while going through scientific journals for a book he was writing called The Slow Poisoning of America. In hundreds of studies around the world, scientists were creating obese mice and rats to use in diet or diabetes test studies. No strain of rat or mice is naturally obese, so the scientists have to create them. They make these morbidly obese creatures by injecting them with MSG when they are first born. The MSG triples the amount of insulin the pancreas creates, causing rats (and humans?) to become obese. They even have a title for the race of fat rodents they create: "MSG-Treated Rats"

MSG? I was shocked too. For a long time now, many Chinese restaurants have stopped using MSG because of the negative health effects reported. But out of curiosity, I went to my kitchen, checking the cupboards and the fridge. MSG was in everything! The Campbell's soups, the Hostess Doritos, the Lays flavored potato chips, Top Ramen, Betty Crocker Hamburger Helper, Heinz canned gravy, Swanson frozen prepared meals, Kraft salad dressings, especially the 'healthy low fat' ones. The items that didn't have MSG had something called Hydrolyzed Vegetable Protein, which is just another name for Monosodium Glutamate. It was shocking to see just how many of the foods we feed our children everyday are filled with this stuff. They hide MSG under many different names in order to fool those who catch on.

But it didn't stop there. When our family went out to eat, we started asking at the restaurants what menu items had MSG. Many employees, even the managers, swore they didn't use MSG. But when we ask for the ingredient list, which they grudgingly provided, sure enough MSG and Hydrolyzed Vegetable Protein were everywhere. Burger King, McDonalds, Wendy's, Taco Bell, every restaurant, even the sit down ones like TGIF, Chili's', Applebee's and Denny's use MSG in abundance. Kentucky Fried Chicken seemed to be the WORST offender: MSG was in every chicken dish, salad dressing and gravy. No wonder I loved to eat that coating on the skin, their secret spice is MSG!

Why is MSG in so many of the foods we eat? Is it a preservative or maybe a vitamin? Not according to my friend John. In the book he wrote, an expose of the food additive industry called The Slow Poisoning of America, he said that MSG is added to food for the addictive effect it has on the human body.

Even the propaganda website sponsored by the food manufacturers lobby group supporting MSG explains that the reason they add it to food is to make people eat more. A study of elderly people showed that people eat more of the foods that it is added to. The Glutamate Association lobby group says eating more benefits the elderly, but what does it do to the rest of us? "Betcha can't eat just one", takes on a whole new meaning where MSG is concerned! And we wonder why the nation is overweight? The MSG manufacturers themselves admit that it addicts people to their products. It makes people choose their product over others, and makes people eat more of it than they would if MSG wasn't added. Not only is MSG scientifically proven to cause obesity, it is an addictive substance!

Since its introduction into the American food supply fifty years ago, MSG has been added in larger and larger doses to the prepackaged meals, soups, snacks and fast foods we are tempted to eat every day. The FDA has set no limits on how much of it can be added to food. They claim it's safe to eat in any amount. How can they claim it is safe when there are hundreds of scientific studies that suggest otherwise? Both the medical research community and food manufacturers have known MSG's side effects for decades!

If you believe that MSG is okay for us to consume, and you don't believe what John Erb has to say, see for yourself. Go to the National Library of Medicine, at www.pubmed.com Type in the words "MSG Obese", and read a few of the 115 medical studies that appear. Many studies mentioned in John Erb's book link MSG to diabetes, migraines and other headaches, autism, ADD-HD and even Alzheimer's.

But what can we do to stop the food manufactures from dumping fattening, addictive and brain damaging MSG into our food supply and causing the obesity epidemic we now see? And, perhaps causing or contributing to the coinciding epidemic of depression... remember the studies above that mentions serotonin and hypothalamic lesions.

Even as you read this, George W. Bush and his corporate supporters are pushing a Bill through Congress. Called the "Personal Responsibility in Food Consumption Act", also known as the "Cheeseburger Bill". This sweeping law bans anyone from suing food manufacturers, sellers, and distributors, even if it comes out that they purposely added an addictive chemical to their foods. The Bill has already been rushed through the House of Representatives, and is due for the same rubber stamp at Senate level. It is important that Bush and his corporate supporters get it through before people get wind of this, and find out about MSG, the intentional nicotine for food.

Several months ago, John Erb took his book and his concerns to one of the highest government health officials in Canada. While sitting in the Government office, the official told him, "Sure I know how bad MSG is, I wouldn't touch the stuff!" But this top level government official refused to tell the public what he knew.

The big media doesn't want to tell the public either, fearing legal issues with their advertisers and loss of revenue. It seems that the fallout on the fast food industry may hurt their profit margin. So what do we do? The food producers and restaurants have been adding addicting MSG to their products for years, and now we are paying the price for it. Our children should not be cursed with obesity, and maybe brain damage causing depression, caused by an addictive food additive.

But what can you do about it? How can you stop the poisoning of the people of this country, when someone like the President of the United States of America is helping to ensure financial protection for an industry that is poisoning us? Blow the whistle on MSG. Tell everyone you can about this. Show them the truth that the corporate-owned politicians and media won't tell you, and hope that enough people are successful in forwarding it to those who can expose this insidious evil before this Bill becomes law, and protects those who are knowingly poisoning us. The food industry learned a lot from the tobacco industry. Imagine if big tobacco had a bill like this in place before someone blew the whistle on them?

We do not want to be rats in one giant experiment, and we do not approve of food that makes us into a nation of obese, lethargic, depressed, addicted sheep, waiting for the slaughter. With your help we can put an end to this, and stop the Slow Poisoning of America. Let's save our children.


Donna Russell, Legislative Advocate donna@citizenshealth.org California Citizens for Health Freedom 8048 Mamie Avenue, Oroville CA 95966-8412 Phone: 1.530.534.9758 www.citizenshealth.org

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The Obesity Epidemic: Should We Believe What We Read and Hear?

By Jack L. Samuels

Note: The following has been revised to correct editing errors that appeared in the Summer, 2004 issue of Wise Traditions.

There is no question that there is an obesity epidemic in our country, as well as in some other countries. One cannot avoid awareness of this problem. The subject of obesity is regularly covered in newspapers and on radio and television. It is reported in the United States alone that obesity is responsible for $90 billion in medical costs and 300,000 premature deaths every year. According to some sources, one third of the adults in our country are obese, and another one third of our population is overweight.1

If you stand on a street corner used by many pedestrians or at the entrance of a high school at the beginning or end of the day, you will observe not only what would be considered to be obese people, but a number of people, including the young, who would be considered grotesquely obese.

If one is to believe the reports of the media,2-3 often based on the findings of researchers,4 obesity is mainly the result of poor nutrition and lack of adequate exercise. Psychological problems, poor parenting, and genetics are also reported as contributing factors.

Although what we read and hear through the media seems logical, one must ask whether the perceived reasons for obesity are, in fact, the actual causes, and whether researchers are looking in the right places for the causes of obesity and a possible resolution of the problem.

The purpose of this paper is to raise awareness of a more likely cause of the obesity epidemic than you have read and heard of, and to encourage researchers, including those at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the National Institutes of Health, to consider the points raised in this paper. Also, if the reader feels that the material in this paper makes sense, it is hoped that the reader will take time to write to his or her representatives in Washington to request that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) be forced to be responsive to the facts they already know about obesity, and take appropriate action. (See conclusion of this article.)
A New Phenomenon

The fact is that the obesity epidemic is a relatively new phenomenon. Prior to the 1950s, there were overweight people, but it was relatively rare to find an individual who was grotesquely obese. I graduated from college in the 1950s, and do not recall one person in high school or college who approached 300 pounds, not even members of the football team. I can also relate that as recently as 2003, when I visited Spain, a country that does not heavily rely on processed foods, or that has just recently begun to use processed foods, I never saw a grotesquely obese person.
What has changed through the years?

Simply stated, our food supply has changed along with the changes in our lives brought about by the demands of our fast-paced society. We are depending more and more on processed foods, and with each year, the FDA approves more and more chemicals for use in foods. With each year, the food industry is using more and more chemicals in their products. These chemicals increase shelf life, kill bacteria, improve taste, replace fats, replace carbohydrates, even replace meat in some vegetarian preparations, and more. Most important to food producers, chemical use can increase profits. Most important to the consumer is the fact that some of the chemicals are neurotoxic and/or carcinogenic.

For purposes of this paper, we will report on the neurotoxins MSG (glutamic acid that has been freed from protein through a manufacturing process - what many MSG-sensitive people refer to as processed free glutamic acid) and aspartic acid (about 40% of the sugar substitute aspartame).

In 1968, John W. Olney, M.D., a respected researcher at Washington University Medical School, St. Louis, Missouri, and member of the National Academy of Science, found that mice in his laboratory that were being used to replicate a 1957 study by Lucas and Newhouse, in which the administration of MSG had resulted in retinal damage,5 had become grotesquely obese. Dr. Olney decided to sacrifice some of the mice and found lesions in the hypothalamus portion of the brain, the portion of the brain, as defined in Stedman's Online Medical Dictionary, that is "...prominently involved in the functions of the autonomic (visceral motor) nervous system and, through its vascular link with the anterior lobe of the hypophysis, in endocrine mechanisms; it also appears to play a role in neural mechanisms underlying moods and motivational states."6

Dr. Olney published a paper on his findings in 1969, in which he described the hypothalamic lesions, stunted skeletal development, and obesity in maturing mice which had been given the food ingredient "monosodium glutamate" as neonates. Olney also commented on observed pathological changes found in several brain regions associated with endocrine function in maturing mice.7
Confirmation

Since 1969, many scientists have confirmed Dr. Olney's findings of damage to the hypothalamus from MSG with resulting obesity. Go to the National Library of Medicine website, www.pubmed.gov, and type in "monosodium glutamate, obesity" (without the quotation marks). As of May 13, 2004, you’ll find 151 studies listed in addition to Dr. Olney's study. Fewer studies come up with "aspartic acid, obesity" (without the quotation marks).8-9 More research has been done on the effects of MSG on the hypothalamus leading to obesity than on the effects of aspartic acid.

Neuroscientists have found in animal studies that glutamic acid and aspartic acid load on the same receptors in the brain, cause identical brain lesions and neuroendocrine disorders, and act in an additive fashion.10

Research indicating that MSG causes damage to the hypothalamus has been carried out mostly on small laboratory animals, primarily the mouse and the rat. In the 1960s, a few studies looked at the effects of MSG on primates, using rhesus monkeys. The findings were the same for rhesus monkeys as they were for rodents.11-12 Although research designed to produce brain lesions cannot be carried out on humans, neuroscientists have determined that humans are 5 times more sensitive to MSG than the mouse and 20 times more sensitive to MSG than the monkey, based on blood plasma levels of glutamate following an oral dose of 150 mg/kg of glutamic acid.13 Furthermore, individual variability in plasma response to glutamate loading is more extreme in humans than in the mouse or monkey.14

Neuroscientists have known that MSG and aspartic acid cause lesions in the hypothalamus since 1969, but only recently has a possible explanation for the mechanism by which this occurs come to light. In 1994, researchers discovered the appetite-suppressing hormone, leptin. As described in many articles, leptin regulates, among other things, energy, control of appetite, and body weight. Leptin acts by altering neuropeptide circuits in the hypothalamus.15-20

While there is abundant literature demonstrating that MSG and aspartic acid cause hypothalmic lesions which, in turn, can cause gross obesity, I know of no research that has examined a possible relationship between the hypothalamic damage caused by MSG and/or aspartame, and the leptin abnormalities found in obese individuals. Research is needed in this area.
Blood-Brain Barrier

The glutamate industry would like us to believe that MSG is not a problem for humans because the human brain is protected from MSG by the blood-brain barrier. However, that is not true. The blood-brain barrier is not fully developed in newborns, and although there is some evidence that it is not fully developed in some children until puberty, when it reaches full maturity is unknown.21 It is definitely not fully developed in any fetus. Furthermore, throughout life, certain regions of the brain, known as the circumventricular organs, lack a blood brain barrier,22-24 and the blood brain barrier can be damaged from, among other things, high fever, stroke, trauma to the head, seizures, repeated ingestion of MSG, and the normal process of aging.21,25-26 The developing fetus is at particular risk since the placental barrier is not impervious to MSG;27-29 and we can assume the same is true for the aspartic acid contained in aspartame. Since most of the processed foods we eat contain MSG, as do many personal care items, supplements, and pharmaceuticals, it is almost impossible for an expectant mother to avoid it. (See list of common food ingredients that contain MSG at www.truthinlabeling.org/hiddensources.html.) She may also be using aspartame in diet soda or as a sweetener in coffee and/or ingesting free glutamic acid or free aspartic acid as a chelating agent in the minerals included in her multi-vitamin preparation.
Infant Exposure

Following birth, an infant is exposed to MSG in most, if not all of the vaccines it is given, and in most cases, is also exposed to free aspartic acid in vaccines.30 The effect of the glutamic acid in vaccines is intensified by any mercury that is also present.31 All infant formulas contain some free glutamic acid and free aspartic acid. An infant on a hypoallergenic soy-based formula will ingest more excitotoxic amino acids (glutamic acid, aspartic acid, and L-cysteine) per day than is contained in any serving of food that this writer has seen on grocery store shelves.32 (We understand hypoallergenic soy formulas are now being used by 25% of mothers because they have been led to believe that soy formulas are better for their babies than are milk based formulas, even if their children are not lactose intolerant.) If an infant is breast fed, it appears likely that the MSG and/or aspartame ingested by the mother will pass into her milk. If the infant becomes ill, he/she may receive a medication sweetened with aspartame. As soon as the infant begins to eat table foods, the infant will be ingesting free glutamic acid, and, in many cases, free aspartic acid.
Industry Response

The glutamate industry claims that glutamic acid and aspartic acid are natural components of protein and, therefore, cannot be harmful. What they fail to mention is that when glutamic acid and aspartic acid are freed from protein through a manufacturing process, they will invariably be accompanied by contaminants. If the manufacturing process used to free amino acids from protein is acid hydrolysis, carcinogenic propanols will be included as contaminants. In a speech before The Celiac Sprue Association in 2000, an FDA researcher reported that in freeing L-tryptophan from protein, certain contaminants are produced, and it is now believed that those who died or became ill from L-tryptophan in the late 1980s, were people who were intolerant to those contaminants. (The FDA has suppressed that finding.)

In July, 1992, the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB) issued its findings on an FDA-funded study entitled "Safety of Amino Acids Used as Dietary Supplements." In the section on glutamic acid (the reactive component of the food ingredient "monosodium glutamate"), the report concluded, in part, that "The continuing controversy over the potential effects of glutamate on growth and development of neonatal animal models suggests that it is prudent to avoid the use of dietary supplements of L-glutamic acid by pregnant women, infants and children. The existence of evidence of potential endocrine responses, i.e. elevated cortisol and prolactin, ... would also suggest a neuroendocrine link and that supplemental L-glutamic acid should be avoided by women of child bearing age and individuals with affective disorders."

The FDA appears to have suppressed this FASEB finding. When asked how the FDA can allow MSG to be used in food, FDA officials stated that one cannot compare the free glutamic acid in supplements to the free glutamic acid in food. Of course, this position is completely untenable since food products contain far more free glutamic acid than supplements.

Following issuance of the FASEB report on supplements, the FDA contracted with FASEB for over $500,000 to conduct a study on the safety of MSG in food. In July, 1995, FASEB published its report entitled "Analysis of Adverse Reactions to Monosodium Glutamate (MSG)." Most people who inquired, and the media, received a 20 page "Executive Summary," primarily made up of questions developed by the FDA and the answers to those questions. The carefully crafted summary left readers with the impression that MSG was essentially safe.

What is not generally known about the FASEB report on the safety of MSG in food is that the original draft final report was issued to the FDA in September, 1994, and leaked to the glutamate industry. The glutamate industry was not happy with FASEB's report and the FDA rejected it. The FDA paid FASEB over $100,000 in additional money to "clarify" the report, leading to the final report, dated July, 1995. A reading of the entire July, 1995, FASEB report (over 350 pages long rather than the 20 pages making up the Executive Summary), will not give the reader the impression that MSG is safe.
Conclusion

Although there are a number of causes for obesity, there is no question in this writer's mind that the main cause for the obesity epidemic is the ever increasing use of MSG and aspartame - free glutamic acid and free aspartic acid - in our food supply. MSG, is most often found in food as a component of food ingredients with names that give consumers no clue to its presence. It was not used in our country to any extent until the late 1940s, and not used widely until the 1960s, when the Ajinomoto Company introduced MSG made by bacterial fermentation. (Ajinomoto Company is the world's largest producer of the food ingredient monosodium glutamate.) Aspartame was approved by the FDA in 1981. Today, most processed foods contain MSG, and it is even found in personal care items and pharmaceuticals. According to The NutraSweet Company, aspartame is used in over 5,000 products. As the use of MSG and aspartame grows, the incidence of obesity appears to be growing.

Since there is no question that MSG and aspartame cause lesions in the hypothalamus, the portion of the brain that is recognized to affect weight, I call upon scientists to consider the destructive qualities of glutamic acid and aspartic acid as they expand their search into the reasons for obesity. In particular, I urge those who are exploring the role of leptin in obesity to consider that it may be the relationship of leptin to a hypothalamus damaged by MSG and aspartame that results in the inability of some people to control food intake, and resulting obesity.

What can be done to stem the obesity epidemic? I would start by identifying the sources of MSG in processed food. MSG should be fully disclosed on processed food labels. I ask that all processed food be measured for "free glutamic acid," post production, and when free glutamic acid is found to be present, it be disclosed on the product label as "MSG," with the amount present stated in milligrams. Such an action would stop the accelerating use of MSG, and likely cause its current use to drop because some people would recognize their intolerance for MSG. Others, realizing its toxicity, will choose to avoid it.

Aspartame should be withdrawn from the market. There is no need for aspartame or the recently approved sweetener, neotame, described by some as a super aspartame.

Your thoughts on this matter should be submitted to your representatives in Washington, to the FDA, and to the CDC. Your submission might include the suggestion that all MSG should be disclosed on processed food labels and that all aspartame products be withdrawn from the market.
Suggested Reading

1. A book by Russell L. Blaylock, M.D., a neurosurgeon, entitled Excitotxins: the Taste that Kills. Health Press, 1995
2. A published paper by John W. Olney, M.D. It is entitled Excitatory Neurotoxins as Food Additives: An Evaluation of Risk. The paper was published in Neurotoxicity in 1980. It will be found in volume 2 on pages 163 to 192
3. Website of the Truth in Labeling Campaign regarding MSG (www.truthinlabeling.org)
4. Website regarding aspartame (www.dorway.com)

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Fasting can save your life, Herbert M. Shelton
1978 by Natural Hygiene Press.

The purpose of this book, based upon experiences, studies and observations over a period of forty-five years of conducting fasts as a Hygienisty, is to put into focus the true role fasting can play in promoting and maintaining good health, in eliminating pain, in weight reduction and control, and in prolonguing human life.

The average for protracted fast runs around two and one-half pounds a day.

The faster may experience some desire for food during the first or second day of the fast or may not desire food at all. Hunger subsides usually by the end of the third day.

Woman fasters lose an average of 2.7 pounds a day.

Fasting is well tolerated by the human system provided there is free access to water.

In the healthy individual, fasting only to lose weight, I do not insist on rest in bed, but permit considerable exercise – even at times giving a prescribed course of physical workouts. But exercise always has the added hazard of increasing the appetite. I have seen losses ranging from four to six pounds a day in fasting. The loss of twenty pounds in a week is not at all difficult in a great many cases.

By a process known technically as autolysis, achieved by enzymes in the tissues, these stored reserves are made available for use by the vital tissues to which they are carried by the blood and lymph as required. Glycogen or animal starch, stored in the liver, is converted to sugar and distributed, as need, to the tissues.

Fasting has been shown to improve rickets and calcium metabolism. In anemia, the number of red blood cells are increased during a fast. The bio-chemical balance may be maintained and even restored while fasting.

The efficency of the living organism in regulating the expenditure of its resources during a fast is one of the marvels of life. In periods of abstinence, the less important organs of the human being although they waste consequent upon the withdrawal of substance from them with which to nourish th emore vital tissues, do not undergo degeneration until the starvation phase of the period of abstinence is reached. The atrophy of muscles maybe no greater than that seen to occur from a lenghty period of physical inactivity, while there is no loss of muscle cells.

Loss of weight varies according to the character and quality of the tissues of the individual, the amount of physical and emotional activity engaged in, and the temperature surrounding the faster. Physical activity, emotional stress, cold and poor tissues all provide for more rapid loss. Fat is lost faster than any of the other tissues of the body.

Normal hunger is indicated by a general bodily condition – a universal call for food- which is localized, so far as localization takes place, in the mouth, nose and throat, just as is the sense of thirst. There are no “hunger pangs” associated with genuine hunger; there is only a pleasant sensation in the nose, mouth and throat and a watering of the mouth. The hungry person is conscious of a desire for food, not of pair or irritation.

The most important rule in our eating habits, and indeed in our daily lives, is this: Never force food into the stomach either in health or in sickness, unless there is a definite demand for it as manifested by genuine hunger.

Reasons for fasting – Waste and toxins are stored in the tissues, especially in the fatty and connective tissues, and, as these tissues are liquidated, the stored toxins are realeased.

To fast is not to starve, hence fasting does not cause death and the logical rule should be: Fast when there is a need for it.

It is best, when uncomfortable in any way, to stop eating until feeling well, without respect to the time of the year. And the fast should continue until the return of hunger.

When one starts a fast, certain physical developments occur almost invariably and should not cause alarm. Chief among them are: the tongue coats heavily, a bad taste develops in the mouth and breath acquires a bad odor. Teeth may become pasty. The whole complex resembles the tongue, mouth and breath in fever, by the time hunger returns, the tongue and mouth are clean the breath sweet.

However light the urine may be at the beginning of the fast, it will become very dark and fould withing a few hours to a day after the fast is started. It may become almost black in many cases and the odor will be very strong. After a week to two weeks, depending on the condition of the faster – the urine begins to clear, becomes lighter, loses its strong odor until by the time hunger returns it is normal in color and odor.

Weight loss is greatest in the early days of the fast, fat people losing at a faster rate than thin persons.

Weakness during the first few days of the fast may be nothing more significant than an abscence of the accustomed stimulation.

Basic steps

When we fast we do not also cease to breathe or to take water. There is never an absence of need for oxygen; we continue to become thirsty at intervals and we drink.

The most important technique of the fast is that of reducing activity, mental, sensory, and physical, to a bare minimum, so that the energy of the faster may be conserved and his healing and excretory processes may be accelerated. The faster should bear in mind the simple rule of compensation. In order to expend on one side, nature must conserve on the other. What he does not expend in unneeded activity is available for use in elimination and repair.

Physical rest is secured by ceasing physical activities, by resting in bed, by relaxing. Physical activities expend considerable energy and prevent the recuperation of energy that is essential to restoration of normal nerve energy.

Mental rest is secured by curtailing mental activities and emotional unrest.

Sensoring rest is secured by retiring to a quiet place and avoiding use of the eyes in reading, viewing television, going to the movies or similar eye-straining activities. Noise is especially destructive of poise and wasteful of energy. Quiet, peace, and sensory inactivity provide for conservation of energy.

When no food is taken, activities should be reduced to a minimum. Rest is the need, not expenditure.

A faster's resistance to cold is likely to be lower than that of the person who is eating regularly. Chilling inhibits elimination, increases the discomforts of the faster and causes a more rapid utilization of reserves. It is important, therefore, that the faster keep warm. The feet, in particular, should be kept warm.

The normal demand for water should be met with the purest water available. Mineral waters are not advisable. A soft spring water, distilled water, filtered water or any water that is free of impurities is acceptable. It should be taken only as thirst demands. There is nothing to be gained by drinking large quantities of water, despite a lack of demand for this, on the theory that this flushes the system, this does not represent an increase of elimination of waste. Cool water is excellent, but very cold or ice water may slow down and retard recovery. Hot water may be relished under certain conditions more than cold water or water at room temperatures.

Bathing should be of short duration. The faster should not remain long under the shower or in the tub and it should be lukewarm, neither hot nor cold. The closer the temperature of the bath water is to the temperature of the body, the less energy expenditure will be occasioned.

Sunshine is an essential nutrient factor in both plant and animal nutrition and is helpful while fasting. Unless overdone, sunbathing results in relaxation and no measurable expenditure of energy. Take the sunbath in the early morning while it is still cool, or in the late afternoon during the summer. Start with 5 minutes of exposure for the front of the body and five minutes for the back. Increase the exposure one minute a day for each side, to a maximum of thirty minutes for each surface.

Daily enemas or saline purges to clean the bowels, much water drinking plus diuretics to keep the kidneys active and sweat baths to keep the skin active are not only unnecessary, they are actually hurtful. The bowels empty themselves during a fast as often as there is a need for them to do so.

The ideal moment to break the fast, of course, is at the time when hunger returns. As hunger returns, the tongue clears, the indications are that the body has completed the work of cleansing itself and is ready to resume eating. There is usually a watering of the mouth and a strong desire for food.

After a fast of considerable length there is a period of several days, lasting up to two weeks, during which the individual feels hungry most of the time. If he will control his eating until this initial period of hunger has passed, he will settle-down to a more normal appetite and the danger of overeating will pass. Uncontrolled, he may eat so much during this period that he loses much that he gained in the fast.

It is better to break fasts naturally on whole foods. The bulk of food touching the stomach and intestinal walls is the stimulus for muscular contractions as well as for proper digestive secretions. Solid food is digested and handled more efficiently than juices. When solid foods are used to break the fast, bowel movements are reestablished much earlier. Chewing of food is necessary both psychologically and physiologically. Another advantage of breaking the fast with solids is that the faster does not become bloated and over-filled with fluids. The main need is wholesome food; but no too much of it.

Four ounces of whole orange (weighed without the peeling) every two hours during the fist day feeding is resumed. On the second day, eight ounces of orange or any other fresh fruit in season (weighed without rind or peeling) every two hours. A different fruit maybe used for each feeding. On the third day twelve ounces of whole orange or melon for breakfast, two or three oranges, or two or three tomatoes, depending on their size for lunch, and three or foud oranges for the evening meal. On the fourth day the faster gets a small breakfast composed of citrus fruits or one or two other fresh fruits, or melon in season; at noon, a vegetable salad without salt, oil, vinegar, lemon juice or dressing of many kind, and one cooked nonstarchy vegetable. For the evening meal I feed fruit again. This meal should be light, but may be slightly larger than the breakfast. On the fifth day, another fruit breakfast; a salad, two cooked green vegetables and a baked potato or a protein (small quantity) at noon, and a fruit meal again in the evening. I permit a glass of sour milk (made from unpasteurized milk) at this fruit meal for those who are not vegetarians.
On the sixth day the feeding is about the same as on the fifth day, except that the amounts are increased. By the end of the first week the faster should be able to take nomral amounts of food. No between meal eating is permitted and no eating in the evening before retiring is allowed. Three meals a day, simple and composed of fresh foods, constitute the best plan of feeding following a fast.

Bed rest should be continued through the first week of eating and activity begun very gradually. It is common for the faster to want to become active as soon as he resumes eating. This is unwise. He is not so strong and he does not have the endurance he things he has. Also activity retards his gain in weight if he has fasted to add weight.

One must take it easy for a few days before resuming normal activities. The most important advice, for all fasters at the breakfast point, is to go slowly.

Fasting cannot keep you well. Only sound habits will do so.

Aging is the result of chronic toxic saturation.

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