Food, Chemicals and Your Brain

By Marie Steinmetz, MD, DABFM

Steinmetz Integrative & Functional Medicine Center

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Food, Chemicals and Your Brain

This month, I want to address chemicals found in processed foods and neurological health. Many of the studies about these additives were done on animals. Therefore, we are not sure if the results apply to humans. But why take the chance? These chemicals do not need to be in your food.

Aspartame

Aspartame is an artificial sweetener made up of phenylalanine, aspartic acid and methyl ester. Aspartame is broken down into these parts after you eat it but also while sitting on the store shelf. Let's look at some of these individual components.

Phenylalanine is an important and necessary amino acid in our brain to build neurotransmitters (the chemicals that help our brain cells to communicate with each other).

Our brain needs the correct balance of different amino acids to be healthy. With too much phenylalanine in the blood, the other amino acids cannot get in the brain and our brain is overloaded with phenylalanine.

Too much phenylalanine upsets the balance between the brain's excitatory and inhibitory neurotransmitters. This may account for the possible increased risk for seizures and migraines while on aspartame.

This imbalance may cause low serotonin in the brain. In patients with depression, we think serotonin levels are low. Does aspartame contribute to depression? We don't know yet.

Methyl ester is another component in aspartame. In our body it quickly becomes methanol, which is transformed into formaldehyde a known toxin. (It's what bodies are preserved with after death.)

Whether the amount is enough to cause harm is open to debate. But certainly in young children, pregnant women and those with neurological disorders it is best to avoid aspartame.

Aspartame is used in over 6000 products including prescription medication. There is much in the literature to support the link between migraine and aspartame and a possible link with seizures. Take it out of your diet today.

Monosodium Glutamate

MSG is used as a flavor enhancer and is a much harder additive to avoid in our diet. It can be called by many names natural flavoring, spices, yeast extract, textured protein, soy protein extract, etc. It is the glutamate portion of this chemical that affects our brain.

Glutamate is an “excitatory” neurotransmitter. When you continue to take glutamate, the level can build up in your brain and there can be cumulative damage in susceptible individuals.

There is some research in animals that glutamate may induce obesity, impair learning, decrease memory and cause behavior similar to attention deficit disorder. Some studies suggest it may impair our ability to make vitamin D.

There are many questions about the safety of both aspartame and monosodium glutamate. These chemicals do not need to be in our food.

Once consumers stop buying products with these additives, the manufacturers will stop adding them. So read your labels. Shop wisely. If you don't know exactly what is in a product, don't buy it.