Yes, I know there is a lot of crap on the internet about the hazards of aspartame and how it will make you and everyone you know sterile, incontinent, and <name anything here>.
My question is about aspartame and hearing loss. Is there any reliable information that links aspartame to hearing loss, either partial hearing loss or sudden complete hearing loss in one ear?
Thanks,
J.
Of course not. And of all the things that could cause hearing loss, why blame it on the synthetic sweetner? People are exposed to thousands of “novel” chemicals, some not very well tested, in their daily lives. Also, there’s bacteria, viruses, and a raft of causes that fall under “failures caused by aging”.
If you think about it rationally, the odds that the hearing loss is caused by an exhaustively tested molecule that is only slightly different than the ones used on a vast scale by your body versus other known reasons are very low.
We’re mortal. If you wanted to be immortal, you and all your friends should have been investing in the scientific research to make that happen.
I believe that this is a very rare individual reaction that has been shown to be associated. It is not a side effect generally. Most aspartame stories are just scare story folk tales, but as with all ingested chemicals, some people will react idiosyncratically.
Do you have any evidence to support this claim?
On the “no” side, this recent articledetailing yet another study on the topic by the European Food Safety Authority found no threat to health, except for those with phenylketonuria.
I’ve seen the claim that hearing loss associated with aspartame use has been reported to the FDA’s Adverse Events Reporting Systems (FAERS). And this may well be true.
However FAERS has the same kind of limitations as VAERS (a comparable system for vaccines). Anyone (i.e. consumers, lawyers, health care professionals, quacks) can report alleged reactions and they wind up in the system. But without documentation and good evidence of causation, they are merely noise in the system or at best, a starting point for investigation. As the FDA says:
“FAERS data do have limitations. First, there is no certainty that the reported event (adverse event or medication error) was actually due to the product. FDA does not require that a causal relationship between a product and event be proven, and reports do not always contain enough detail to properly evaluate an event.”
One cannot rule out an idiosyncratic response to virtually anything*, but that does not make it so.
*for instance, I find it hard to discount the possibility that something could trigger a migraine attack. There seem to be roughly a quadrillion foods, additives and environmental factors that a person will cite in this fashion. Significant hearing loss traceable to such a factor is reported much, much less commonly.