Originally Posted By: GandC
Originally Posted By: Darp
Airline pilots are not allowed to drink aspartame sweetened drinks...


Do you have a source for this? I was a corporate pilot for years, and have a father and plenty of friends that currently fly for airlines, both majors and regionals, and plenty of them drink Diet Coke and other aspartame laced beverages.

Last I had heard, the FAA had no official stance on aspartame other than "it's probably not good for you."



G&C, Found two, the 2nd is on FDA site:

I found the below at: http://www.mercola.com/article/aspartame/fraud.htm

Aspartame Affecting Airline Pilots

Some of the more interesting developments in 1989 surfaced in the Palm Beach Post on October 14th, where an article by Dr. H.J. Robert described several recent aircraft accidents involving confusion and aberrant pilot behavior caused by ingestion of products containing aspartame.[13] Soft drink makers were notified of this problem in 1991.


Now for the FDA one: http://www.fda.gov/ohrms/dockets/dailys/03/jan03/012203/02p-0317_emc-000199.txt

There are other clinical reports in the scientific literature of
aspartame-caused toxicity reactions including Blumenthal (1997),
Drake (1986), Johns (1986), Lipton (1989), McCauliffe (1991),
Novick (1985), Watts (1991), Walton (1986, 1988), and Wurtman
(1985).

Many pilots appear to be particularly susceptible to the effects of
aspartame ingestion. They have reported numerous serious toxicity
effects including grand mal seizures in the cockpit (Stoddard 1995).



Yea, I wasn't really disputing that aspartame might be part of the problem, I was more curious about your statement that airline pilots were not allowed to consume aspartame. There may be some airlines that have their own SOPs or mandates restricting it, but there's nothing from the FAA that I've been able to find. The FDA can not tell pilots what they may or may not do. The FAA can, and they do not have an official stance on the consumption of aspartame.

That's not to say that they shouldn't, just that they don't.

And while I also recognize that my question may have been slightly off topic, at the same time, if the FAA had taken a stance on the consumption of aspartame by pilots, it would have made the story much more powerful to me, seeing as how pilots spend a good portion of their time at cabin pressures of 7-8,000 ft.




Hi G&C, The FAA may not have put a ban on it. But indeed on cabin pressure. I wrote this initially 100% from my 4 year old memory if research on it. It ends up being very close to what I was able to find easily on this subject today. There is a new study in 2014 of 60,000 women that says it increases heart attack deaths 50% in women. This is a separate risk on top of the brain risk.

From the American College of Cardiology website March 29, 2014:

[A] study led by Ankur Vyas, MD, of the University of Iowa found that postmenopausal women who consumed two or more diet drinks a day were 30 percent more likely to experience a cardiovascular event and 50 percent more likely to die from related cardiovascular disease than women who never, or only rarely, consumed diet drinks. The analysis of 59,614 participants in the Women's Health Initiative Observational Study, who had an average age of 62.8 and no history of cardiovascular disease, saw that after an average follow-up of 8.7 years, the primary cardiovascular outcome occurred in 8.5 percent of the women consuming two or more diet drinks per day compared to 6.9 percent in the five-to-seven drinks per week group; 6.8 percent in the one-to-four drinks per week group; and 7.2 percent in the zero-to-three per month group. The difference persisted when researchers adjusted for other cardiovascular risk factors and co-morbidities. The association between diet drinks and cardiovascular disease warrants further study to define the relationship, Vyas said.

http://www.cardiosource.org/en/News-Medi...CV-Disease.aspx

Note the big jump in heart attack deaths is having more than one a day. It seems the heart can handle 1 a day. This is on top of the brain risk.



Last edited by Darp; 07/04/14 07:28 PM.