Okay, I'm going to spill most of my can of beans. I get informed about medical conditions primarily through the use of Dr. Gabe Mirkin's email newsletter. If you are intrigued by any of the medical knowledge I share with you through this Blog, it's probably because Dr Mirkin told me first. Sign up at www.drmirkin.com and check out any articles about conditions you may have.

Commercial over, let me continue my vignette about aspartame. I've only been "on" aspartame for less than a year. Aspartame is an artificial combination of two amino acids. A splendid easy-to-follow article about aspartame metabolism at (http://tc.engr.wisc.edu/UER/uer98/author2/content.html) has convinced me aspartame is safe; at least as safe as any statin drug a doctor would put me on to control my blood sludge, LDL cholesterol. The anecdotal reports of aspartame causing headaches disturb me all the same and I would be better off if I could forego my petty desire to have pleasant beverages available.

I suspect I have something referred to as "metabolic syndrome" or "syndrome x" which is indicated by any three of the following: abdominal obesity, high triglycerides, low HDL cholesterol, high blood sugar or high blood pressure. I'm not obese, but when I have had an extra pound or two, it does seem to end up in my stomach area. I have chronic, unshakable low HDL (High Denisty Lipoprotein, the good cholesterol) and my triglycerides are always on the high end of the safe range.

To alleviate the excess triglycerides, I have removed substantial amounts of flour products from my life. This is because triglycerides are built from sugar and flour is powdered starch easily converted into lots and lots of sugar. It hits your bloodstream like a flood from a breached dam and my body responds by making triglycerides from it. Triglycerides, in turn, are the building blocks of LDL cholesterol. This is the gunk that forms plaques inside blood vessels causing arteriosclerosis. When blood vessels get choked off by arteriosclerosis in the brain, you get strokes. When it's in the heart; heart attacks. We're told about these consequences of a bad diet all the time.

Less well publicized is that blood vessels being choked off in a man's penis can mean insufficient blood flow to fill the organ entirely. Arteriosclerosis can be a key cause of impotence. As stated before, I'm somewhere from 35-48. I am NOT Bob Dole. I had no business being unable to stand at attention for the missus, but there I was all the same.

I had ditched the flour products when I had learned it may help HDL levels improve. This, as it turns out, is because HDL binds to LDL and sweeps it out of the bloodstream to the liver. The flip side is, you can think about it as LDL sweeping your HDL out too. My body was a super-efficient LDL-making MACHINE! I am an LDL powerhouse! There's nothing like a relatively young guy getting an old man disease like impotence to get a him serious about his health. I've drunk a tall glass of orange juice for breakfast every morning since i started college and that had to change. As natural as O.J. is, it's a sugar-packed drink without a stitch of fiber to slow down the deluge. It had to go. Soda was history. I migrated to water and tea and hated life. I took up coffee but later found out that the half-and-half I was adding added fat to my diet which is broken down into fatty acid molecules and...guess what...triglycerides. Apparently enough that I started getting romantic problems again only three or four months after I'd stopped drinking soda and juice.

Enter aspartame. There was just no getting away from it. Fat was the enemy, sugar was the enemy, my weakness for flavor was an enemy. Aspartame became the least of the evils. I began consuming diet sodas in between cups of coffee and my most secret of symptoms has not troubled me for four months now. I am planning to check my HDL and LDL blood levels again and I'll report them in this Blog. I may need to stop drinking the coffee or start taking it black next.

I do not kid myself that I am cured. I believe in evolution. Humans did not often live past 35 when we became the species we are today. Cholesterol is such a critical component of brain tissue that our bodies do not depend on food to get it. Most cholesterol is generated by our own bodies, thus the failure of dietary cholesterol to accurately correlate with arteriosclerosis and blood cholesterol levels. Substantial numbers of our species are affected by syndrome X which may have been advantageous in another time when carbohydrates and fats were difficult to come by. Today, our brain building machinery has been redirected by our modern diet towards our own demise. The plentiful sources of carbohydrates in our beverages have left me with a desire for flavors in my fluid that leave me wistful for the care-free days of my youth when excess calories went towards God-knows-what because I clearly didn't make fat so efficiently then. We are designed to drink water and I have trained myself throughout life to want more than quenched thirst when I drink. Aspartame has become a psychological balm for this weakness I have brought on myself. If I were a stronger, more sensible man, I would confront this obstacle I have made for myself and drink water as our bodies were meant to. Perhaps I will yet. Perhaps something else in my body will have to begin to die before I see the light and engage in proper self-discipline.



(to be continued)