Can the flavor enhancer monosodium glutamate (MSG) do more harm than give you a headache?
Absolutely, says Newsmax Health Contributor Dr. Russell Blaylock, who explains the role he says the food additive plays in weight gain, neurological diseases, cancer tumor growth, and other serious health problems in a recent interview with Newsmax.TV. He warns against consuming it.
Blaylock’s comments follow the publication last week of a study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition that found that people who ate more MSG were more likely to be overweight or obese.
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Monosodium glutamate—or MSG—has been linked to weight gain and other problems says Newsmax Health contributor Dr. Russell Blaylock. Dr. Blaylock explains what you need to know about this popular food additive to live a healthy life.
“It’s a known neurotoxin,” he says. “It not only damages that nucleus in the hypothalamus concerned with weight gain, but it also damages cells in the brain that have to do with memory and learning. It can damage cells that have to do with serious diseases like Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, Lou Gehrig’s disease (ALS). So its damage is rather widespread.”
MSG also can contribute to cancer tumor growth and lead to diabetes, metabolic syndrome, and pulmonary problems, he says.
Unlike the glutamate found in whole, natural foods, which is released slowly into the body, the MSG added to processed foods spills quickly into the blood, creating levels of 30 to 50 times higher than normal and making it more difficult for the body to process it, he says.
It can be very difficult to avoid eating MSG, even for those who read food labels because the government allows manufacturers to use other names for it, he says. Some foods like flavored chips can have three to four different types of MSG added to them, he says.
“It’s in virtually every processed food that Americans are exposed to (under) many disguised names,” he explains.
Among those names are: soy extract, natural flavoring, carrageenan, and hydrolyzed proteins.
The recent MSG study conducted by researchers at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill followed 10,000 men and women in China for 5.5 years on average. Those who ate the most MSG — a median of 5 grams per day — were about 30 percent more likely to become overweight by the study’s end than those who ate the least amount — less than a half gram a day, Reuters Health reports. When people who were overweight at the study’s beginning were excluded, the risk jumped to 33 percent.
Blaylock theorizes that MSG destroys neurons in the hypothalamus of the brain that the hormone leptin, which regulates metabolism and appetite, needs to control obesity.
“So the leptin receptors become insensitive and that makes you gain weight,” he says.
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