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
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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."
