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Athlete Alert: Renowned Neurosurgeon Identifies Aspartame & MSG in Sudden Cardiac Death

Over 460,000 people anually die of a disorder called sudden cardiac death, according to CDC statistics. This condition strikes otherwise healthy people who have experienced no obvious symptoms of heart disease prior to their abrupt deaths.

An alarming number young athletes are included in these deaths, in high schools and colleges as well as among professional athletes. While in some of these individuals cardiologists found evidence of coronary disease and scars from earlier silent heart attacks, there is one mechanism that's getting no attention at all: the excitotoxin damage caused by food additives and the artificial sweetener aspartame. This is despite growing evidence that the excitotoxic mechanism plays a major role in cardiac disease.

Previously, it was thought that excitotoxic food additives, such as monosodium glutamate and aspartic acid in aspartame, cause their damage in the cardiovascular centers in the brain stem and/or by over-stimulating sympathetic centers in the hypothalamus of the brain. Both mechanisms have resulted in sudden cardiac death in experimental animals.

A particularly deadly combination occurs in young athletes: Low magnesium intake, high calcium intake, low intake of omgea-3 fatty acids and excitotoxins in food additives. Strenuous exercise, especially in extreme heat, depletes the body's magnesium stores, as does consumption of carbonated drinks and taking calcium supplements. Also adrenalin secretion, increased during exercise, intensifies heart muscle irritability and further loss of magnesium as well. When calcium supplements are taken in the face of an existing magnesium deficiency, both magnesium and calcium are driven into the bones, producing a sudden magnesium-depletion crisis.

Low magnesium produces seizures and causes sudden cardiac arrest. In a classic experiment it was found that stressing magnesium-deficient animals resulted in an almost 100% mortality from sudden cardiac arrest. Adding magnesium reduced mortality dramatically. A considerable body of evidence has shown that low omega-3 fat intake significantly increases the risk and severity of cardiac arrhythmias, the main cause of sudden cardiac death.