Aspartame, in reality a drug, also interacts with other drugs and changes the dopamine of the brain. There is no way for Michael to improve until someone gets him off the Diet Pepsi. This should be no surprise because every biochemical component of the aspartame molecule is implicated in producing Parkinsonian structural damage and creating a biochemical basis for parkinsonian symptoms. Aspartame is a source of methanol alcohol. Experts in neurodegenerative disease from alcoholism recognize that methyl alcohol is the component of beverage alcohol that causes neurodegenerative disease in Parkinson's Disease in Parkinson's Disease in alcoholics.
Beverage alcohol is grain alcohol or methyl alcohol.
However, methyl alcohol is also present in very small amounts, although present only in trace amounts in alcoholic beverages. It is the factor that produces the neurodegeneration. Methyl alcohol accomplishes this even though the ethyl alcohol serves as a protective factor. Aspartame on the other hand affords no such protection and the structural components of the molecule are so arranged that the methyl alcohol from aspartame is probably 500 to 5000 times more active in producing toxicity than it would be alone. The structural damage in the basal areas of the brain where Parkinson Disease structural damage occurs from the dicarboxylic amino acid neuroexcitotoxins is a problem long recognized.