There’s good glutamate and bad glutamate

It’s really tricky to talk about glutamate. It’s one of a bundle of amino acids — molecules used by all living things to make proteins. Humans have always created glutamate in their bodies in carefully controlled amounts. And up until the time industry discovered how to make unlimited supplies of glutamate, you could generally get all the essential amino acids your body needed by eating a healthy balanced diet on top of the amino acids that you made in your body.

Then in 1957, what had been true wasn’t true anymore. In 1957 one of industry’s finest began to produce free glutamate in unlimited quantities. Now, humans were no longer dealing with carefully controlled amounts of free glutamate in their food. Instead, they were dealing with adverse reactions such as skin rashes, asthma, migraine headache and fibromyalgia. And although it only became evident years later, many also suffered brain damage followed by obesity and infertility.

Think about it. Ingesting the quantities of free glutamate that became available in 1957 means there is more glutamate flooding the human body than the cells of the body can use. And the excesses accumulate in what’s called interstitial tissue (areas between cells), where they join with other excitotoxic neurotransmitters, firing repeatedly until their targeted glutamate receptors die — causing brain damage.