Eliminate Excitotoxins

ALS Diet Pages

• Introduction-Homeostasis
• Eric is Winning
• Cell Death
• Dietary Guidelines
• Eliminate Excitotoxins
• The Relationships of Glutamine, Glutamate, and Glutathione
• MSG Sources
• Remove From Environment and Body All Toxins
• Heavy Metal Sources
• Other Toxins To Be Aware Of And Avoid
• 100% Certified Organic, Mostly Vegetables, Whole Foods Diet
• Twelve Riskiest and Twelve Best Non-Organic Foods
• Why Mostly Vegetable and Whole Foods?
• For Now Avoid Excessive Precursors to Nitric Oxide
• What About Dairy?
• What About Meat?
• Low Arginine Foods
• Supplements
• Terminology

Eliminate Excitotoxins MSG (Glutamate), Aspartame (Nutrasweet) Diet for Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis

Studies

"Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis" (ALS) is a fatal neurodegenerative disease which was thought to be untreatable for a long time. However, recent evidence in men indicates that antiglutamatergic strategies are the first to have an influence on its pathogenesis and slow down the disease process." Antiglutamate therapy of ALS - which is the next step?A.C. Ludolph, T. Meyer, and M.W. Riepe. Dept. of Neurology. University of Ulm, Federal Republic of Germany

"Excitotoxicity mediated by glutamate has been implicated as a cause of this progressive degeneration." Altered AMPA and cannabinoid receptor trafficking in motor neurons of ALS model mice: Implications for excitotoxicity.P. Zhao, M.E. Abood, E.C. Beattie. Research Inst., California Pacific Med Ctr., San Francisco, CA Oct. 2006.

"Defects in neurotransmitter glutamate transport may be an important component of chronic neurotoxicity in diseases such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis...we developed a model of slow toxicity in cultured organotypic spinal cord slices...." By inhibiting glutamate transport they slowed the degeneration of motor neurons in the spinal cord. Chronic inhibition of glutamate uptake produces a model of slow neurotoxicity. Jeffrey D. Rothstein et al. John Hopkins University. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA Vol 90, pp 6591-6595, July 1993 Neurobiology.

"Along with ionotropic and metabotropic glutamate receptors, the cystine/glutamate antiporter, may play a critical role in CNS pathology. High levels of extracellular glutamate inhibit the import of cystine, resulting in the depletion of glutathione and a form of cell injury called oxidative glutamate toxicity." Oxidative Glutamate Toxicity Can Be A Component of the Excitotoxicity cascade. David Schubert and Dana Piasecki. The Journal of Neuroscience, October 1, 2001. 21(19): 7455-7462.

"L-Glutamate is the major excitatory neurotransmitter in the mammalian central nervous system"....dysfunction of transporters [EAAT1 and EAAT2 in glial cells] in the brain are implicated in the pathology of neurodegenerative conditions such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Transporters for L-glutamate: An update on their molecular pharmacology and pathological involvement.PM Beart and RD O'Shea. British Journal of Pharmacology (2007) 150, 5-17.

"Jeffrey Rothstein has uncovered an abnormality that seems to be widespread in patients with sporadic ALS." Rothstein and his colleagues at Johns Hopkins University presented evidence that a brain protein called EAAT2 is improperly made in almost half of the patients they studied. This protein deactivates and recycles the neurotransmitter glutamate and a deficiency could lead to a glutamate build-up. Glutamate is toxic to cells in high concentrations and some thought by researchers to be the cause of neuron death that control muscles.

"...excessive glutamate was found to injure cultured neurons by stimulating Ca2+ (calcium) influx, and this is thought to be involved in a variety of neurological diseases."Glutamate neurotoxicity and diseases of the nervous system. Choi DW. Neuron 1988;1:623-634.

"Excitotoxicity is a common mechanism seen in many neurological disorders, including strokes, brain trauma, CNS infections, autoimmune disorders, multiple sclerosis, heavy metal toxicity, brain tumours, and the majority of neurodegenerative diseases...including Lou Gehrig's disease (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, ALS). Excitoxicity: A possible central mechanism in fluoride neurotoxicity. Blaylock, R. Fluoride 2004;37(4); 301-314 Research Review 301.

"Glucose is a major precursor of glutamate and related amino acids. Other precursors of the small glutamate pool were found to include glutamate, aspartate, GABA, serine, leucine and sodium bicarbonate." M.S. Starr. Evidence for the compartmentation of glutamate metabolism in isolated rat retina. Journal of Neurochemistry 23 (2), 337 - 344 (1974).

"Human ingestion of "chickling peas" from the plant Lathyrus sativus, which contains an excitatory amino acid, L-BOAA (L-beta-N-oxalylamino-L-alanine), leads to a progressive corticospinal neurodegenerative disorder...These results support the view that thiol oxidation and concomitant mitochondrial dysfunction (also implicated in other neurodegenerative disorders), occurring downstream of glutamate receptor activation by L-BOAA, are primary events leading to neurodegeneration." Striam K et al. Thiol oxidation and loss of mitochondrial complex I precede excitatory amino acid-mediated neurodegeneration. Journal of Neuroscience 1998 Dec 15;18(24):10287-96

Glutamate induces cell death by upsetting the cellular redox homeostasis, termed oxidative glutamate toxicity, in a mouse hippocampal cell line, HT22 Suh HW et al Curcumin attenuates glutamate-induced HT22 cell death by suppressing MAP kinase signaling. Mol Cell Biochem 2006 Nov 25

Monosodium glutamate [MSG] was discovered in 1908 by Kikunae Ikeda, a chemistry professor at Imperial University of Tokyo. He discovered that it made foods taste better. It was discovered later that foods tasted better because MSG "excited" the taste buds [which are a "hot bed" of sensory neurons] into tasting the food more acutely. Unfortunately, that same excitation that occurred in the taste buds, can also occur anywhere in the body, including the brain. Normally, glutamate in the brain works by "exciting" neurons into connecting and doing their job. But all you need is manufactured by your body or obtained in whole foods, and all you need is miniscule.

Years ago, during World War II our soldiers got a taste of Japanese foods to which MSG had been added as a "seasoning" (though of itself, MSG has no flavor). American soldiers wanted their food to taste as good. This was the beginning of America's love affair with MSG and it being brought to the United States. While there are very low levels of "free glutamate" found in foods of all kinds - these are not the problem - they are put there by Nature (or God) for a good purpose. Contrarily, hundreds of thousands of metric tons of MSG are produced and added to our food every year. To complicate matters, MSG is only required to be listed on the label if it is a separate ingredient in the food. Therefore, in most cases, MSG is hidden by including it as part of other ingredients on the label. Yet, it can make up as much as 60% of these other ingredients! Here, then is where MSG becomes a neurological poison: In the brains of people who have the inability to "clear" MSG [see "Jeffrey Rothstein" and EAAT2 above] neuron damage inevitably ensues.

Where are you getting glutamate? Everywhere. Even a Chinese restaurant boasting "We Don't Use MSG" is either lying or ignorant. I went into one of these restaurants once posing as a student studying restaurant management. I asked to view the kitchen and took photos "to show how well-run the kitchen was" and while pretending to be taking photos of the "well organized supplies", I took photos of product ingredients. Every one of them had an MSG source. The truth is, when you hydrolyze, modify or texturize soy, wheat, and corn, you generate high levels of MSG. In addition, sources that you don't even realize are sources of MSG (like "yeast food" or "calcium caseinate") would never let on that it was there for the glutamate. When you eat "out" and eat food that has been seasoned by someone else, you run a 99% chance of consuming high levels of added glutamates.

In a 2005 "blog" (http://autisticconjectureoftheday.blogspot.com/2005/11/beware-chinese-food.html ) the author has obviously done her homework on MSG and it's affect on brain disorders. She states:

"MSG and its related ingredients have been found in increasing amounts in processed and fast foods. Almost every restaurant and most processed foods from snacks and soups to ready-made meals have glutamate in them in some form or another. MSG has no nutritional value. Scientific studies have shown that food laced with the MSG cause people to eat more of it, and faster, than food without it. Corporations use this knowledge to sell their products. Their competition uses MSG, so they keep adding it in larger amounts to keep up with them."

Thanks to John Erb, a developmental disorder researcher and author of the book The Slow Poisoning of America, the cause of ADHD is no longer a mystery. "These diseases appear to be caused by a food additive commonly known as MSG or Monosodium Glutamate." John Erb explains, "MSG is added to food because of its addictive qualities, it is nicotine for food. It is highly reactive in the human brain and other organs." John Erb comments: The FDA has no limits on how much MSG can be added to foods, even though as little as two tablespoons of it has been shown to cause epileptic convulsions and death in animals such as dogs."

Is the answer a drug to "block glutamate"? That's how the drug and medical industry think. When you go to your doctor does he tell you that a diet carefully excluding added glutamates would help you? No, if aware of glutamate, he would look in his PDR to see if there's a drug to block glutamates instead. In fact, the only drug approved by the FDA for the treatment of ALS is Riluzole®. Riluzole® blunts the effects of glutamate by decreasing glutamate release and blocking the ability of glutamate to bind to its receptors, which decreases the excitotoxicity that leads to cell death. It has been shown to prolong survival times in ALS patients by only two months. Some might say this is "progress". I say that you cannot completely block anything in the body and get away with it. What the body needs is balance - homeostasis.

As the third guideline above states, you need to consume organic foods, pure and whole - but you need to also make sure that no MSG has been added. Unfortunately you cannot simply eat at restaurants or buy anything off the shelf of your health store. Because "glutamate" is "natural" manufacturers have been duped into thinking it can be added to foods (arsenic is natural, too!) In fact, health stores have some form of MSG added to many of their foods, with soy products being among the worst. No matter where you get your food, at home, in a health store, and even in restaurants, you must read labels - and better still, eat foods that don't have labels, like fresh, whole foods.

ALS Diet Pages

• Introduction-Homeostasis
• Eric is Winning
• Cell Death
• Dietary Guidelines
• Eliminate Excitotoxins
• The Relationships of Glutamine, Glutamate, and Glutathione
• MSG Sources
• Remove From Environment and Body All Toxins
• Heavy Metal Sources
• Other Toxins To Be Aware Of And Avoid
• 100% Certified Organic, Mostly Vegetables, Whole Foods Diet
• Twelve Riskiest and Twelve Best Non-Organic Foods
• Why Mostly Vegetable and Whole Foods?
• For Now Avoid Excessive Precursors to Nitric Oxide
• What About Dairy?
• What About Meat?
• Low Arginine Foods
• Supplements
• Terminology

Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis Please click the PDF icon to the left to read or download the entire 36 page Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis Diet by Dr. David Steenblock