Excitotoxins: Their role in health and disease

Excitotoxins are a class of substances usually amino acids or their derivatives that normally act as neurotransmitters in brain but in excessive amounts lead to over excitation of neurons leading to a state of exhaustion & death. Over 70 types of excitotoxins have been identified so far and many have a free access to our body in form of taste enhancing food additives like monosodium glutamate, aspartame, sodium casienate etc. They have been implicated for the development of a wide variety of neurological disorders like Alzheimer`s disease, Huntington's disease, Parkinson's disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, and even for early ageing.

The purpose of this review is to sort out truth about extent of involvement of excitotoxins in neurodegeneration from the massive propaganda against them wherein they have been implicated in almost all disorders of unknown etiology.

A comprehensive search strategy was developed incorporating both the peer reviewed, non peer reviewed literature and electronic databases like Medline. These were scrutinized and relevant research papers were examined.

There is considerable evidence based research pertaining to the neurodegenerative effect of excitotoxins to the human brain. Yet the autonomous food regulating bodies like FDA refuse to recognize the immediate and long term danger to the public caused by the use of such excitotoxic food additives. Thus only means of protecting oneself from such type of neurological damage is to consume only unprocessed, fresh, whole, organic foodstuffs.