Aspartamane

I am horribly affected by aspartame and a diabetic, also... I swear by Splenda... which is a wonderful product. Diet Rite Cola products have Splenda, Swiss Miss makes a sugarfree cocoa that contains it, and Snapple's diet Lime Green Tea also has it. Da Vinci syrups are also made with Splenda ... and Ocean Spray Light products and diet V8Splash all contain it, too. The Splash is my favorite... a full serving of fruit and only 20 calories. Amazing.

I wonder how many dieters walk around with awful headaches not knowing that their diet sodas are the culprit? (also diet ice teas and snapples except for the lime green tea)...

Splenda has been a God-send to me. I encourage you to try it and buy products that contain it... and ask your local grocers to carry it!

my 2 cents.

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Well, I was one of them (dieters with a constant headache)
today is my first day of no diet coke. I went thru the pantry, to see if we had anything else with nutrasweet on it, we had two boxes of sugar free jello, they went right into the garbage. I have been drinking water and ice tea, I did buy a box of splenda, and will check out other diet drinks tht contain it,

I sure appreciate wintermoor mentioning this diet coke thing, then providing me with the link on aspartamane, I spent the whole day yesterday reading up on it, and it has me scared. truly scared, I think since I started drinking diet coke in the mid 80's, I have been a heavy drinker. at least 3-4 cans a day and on weekend, easily could be 8-10. that is just a shame....

Hi, y'all!

Check out this website for more info on aspartame...

(The Mayo Clinic) http://www.mayoclinic.com

...then put aspartame in their search window.

Janiejoy, Thanks for the info on Diet Rite, I had given up searching for colas, I have used Splenda, as I said, for a long time with no negative effects. To my understanding, it is one molecule removed from sugar and can be used for baking.
Pebble-you may get headaches, if your cola had caffine; I had caffine withdrawal headaches for a few days when switching to decaf coffee-- tylenol might help or even better, a scalp/head massage (wonderful thing!!)

Propel flavored water has Splenda in it too. This is so funny, when I was in college, they knew about Splenda(just didn't have a name back then) in the 80's or at least knew how to make it(the molecule). One of my profs had worked on it, he said the sugar companies were fighting it's approval.

Check this out on scambusters...

http://www.scambusters.org/otherhoaxes8.html#Aspartame

The third paragraph.

They consider this to be a hoax.

I can feel for diabetic people. Can't have this. Can't have that. And the substitutes just aren't what they are cracked up to be.

Evelyn, what is considered to be a hoax, the material in the article?

Yes.

The editor's note at the bottom indicates the jury's still out, however...

evelyn, I understand from the article that the jury is still out, be that as it may---I know from personal experience that Nutrasweet gives me major headaches, which narcotics could not touch. There was no placebo effect there, as I generally used Western medicine/doctors; but after being out of work for months with headaches so bad that I thought my head would explode-going totally organic and then returning to regular eating except for Nutrasweet products and the headaches stayed away is proof enough for me. From what I have read here, I am not a sample of one.
Very often , when some new idea or information comes out, someone will jump on the bandwagon and try to make some money on it, there-by, negating the basic truths by promoting "this new idea" as a money making device. Very unfortunate. .

Marcia, I am with you. Whatever the "jury" says, my actual experience with nutrasweet products is exactly like yours. Horrid headaches that won't go away till the product is out of my system.

I think the scariest thing is that MOST of the people I know CANNOT tolerate it, yet it is out there in so many products... and there is this "hey, it's a hoax" information out there that causes doctors and others to doubt the truth about the problems associated with this product.

Another product with similar problems associated with it is MSG, which is in tons of things, and because it is a "natural" flavor enhancer they ignore the fact that a huge percentage of the population cannot tolerate it, getting headaches and/or diahhrea from consuming products containing it.

I think the bottom line of all this may be that we need to listen to our bodies when they tell us to quit one thing or another. The way Marcia found out what was causing her problems is how I discovered the same... eliminating all processed foods and beverages that were not completely natural (like iced tea, filtered water, etc.) and then adding back products till I got the headaches back... first discovery was nutrasweet since I am diabetic and wanted the sweet taste, then discovered MSG was causing the diahhrea and headaches combined.

I think it is unfortunate that the big guys in the health and food industry (including the manufacturer of the product, Monsanto, and the Mayo Clinic and the FDA) touts such things as safe when in actuality these things can truly cause harm.

Because it is the least expensive product to use as a non -caloric sweetener, I feel it will stay on the shelves, until there is a critical mass of people who cannot tolerate it or until they discover that continued repeated long term use is what causes the problems.

It just costs too much to change formulations and find other solutions.

Listen to your body and do what is best for you. This is different for everyone and what we really need to do is not be swayed by the media (ha! tough to do) or other sources of information and simply take care of ourselves, because the FDA and big business and even the medical profession will NOT take care of us individually. Money drives our country, its decisions, and its products. Money is behind nutrasweet. It's as simple as that.

more of my cents, hope it makes sense.

Janie
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This message was edited Monday, Sep 9th 11:05 AM

My husband is a type 1 diabetic of 34 years. He is using splenda. The aspartame seemed to be affecting his vision.
He always had a lot of headaches and usually blamed it on his sugar level. Of course now he knows a lot of it had to do with the sweeteners. People need to watch out about these doctors deciding you are diabetic (type 2). They keep lowering the fasting sugar level. DH thinks its just so they can get more money out of people. If you feel good, why should you take another pill just because the doctor says you are diabetic. If you don't have the symptoms, you're probably not. They are doing the same thing with cholesterol levels. Heard of one doctor who told his patient his chol. level should be around 100. If you really believe cholesterol is a problem, drink an ounce or two of wine at night. This was on national news years ago.

Gingerlily, just a heads-up: often diabetes is a silent disease. I had NO symptoms and the disease was discovered because of a terrible female infection on my honeymoon... so bad I had to go to emergency to get treated. They tested my urine and the reading was 267, way over the 121 they want you to have.

Diabetes causes heart problems, sores that don't heal, vision problems, kidney disease, gingivitis, tooth decay, and can even lead to the loss of eyesight or loss of a limb. If your husband's sugar levels are out of control for fear of taking a pill I urge you to re-think your stance on diabetes.

Exercise and proper diet are the most beneficial things you can do for diabetes... but if these don't work you must be on medicine that will allow your body to use the food you eat, something to help your body either make more insulin or utilize the insulin your body is making.

Other than the infections on my honeymoon, I felt fine and continue to feel fine. However, my sugars will rise to over 300 easily without medication to help my body handle food.
The complications from diabetes, either type 1 or type 2, are nothing to take lightly and they don't show up right away... the results of my not wanting to take "another pill" could end up being the death of me, literally!

I hope this doesn't seem too harsh but diabetes is nothing to ignore.

Just a few more of my two cents...
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Glad to see this discussion is alive and well. I avoid aspartame at all costs, so I thought. Then I discovered the low-fat and non-fat yogurts in the 'fridge contained it! Thankfully, I had only eaten a couple of them, and trashed the rest.

Nasty stuff.

Does anyone know exactly what, in layman's terms, is in Splenda? I know it's right there on the package, but that one ingredient isn't in my garden or anything I am familiar with. It's just so difficult to know what every ose and ol on labels means. As the owner of a body that will react violently and lengthily to numerous substances that don't seem to bother many people, I find that I have to be eternally vigilant, and I agree it's up to us to listen to our bodies. On my recent trip to Pa., no one seemed to realize the critical significance of my requirement for absolutely mineral-free water, and I am still trying to recover from the damage. My blood clots, the thing I feared, behaved perfectly, but oh, that poorly distilled water! I defend this need constantly.

Aimee, from what I understand, Splenda is like sugar, with one molecule removed-I need to find the info I (hopefully)still have on it.

JanieJoy, I totally agree with you, I don't know what kind of diabetes my foster bother had other than adult onset ( both his parents had it too). I lost him to complications based on this disease a couple of years ago. For some people, a pill and diet will do it, for others-like Bob-the cumulative affects were too much. I do know, that it can be a lot more serious than I ever knew and I miss him so much.
Take care.

Diabetes runs in my mother's side of the family. My maternal aunt and my brother were what was referred to as "brittle diabetics", meaning that it was very difficult to regulate their dosages of insulin, so their sugar yoyo'd back and forth.

Both were on 2 shots per day, and when things got out of whack, they'd have what we called "insulin reactions". This occurred when there was too much insulin in their systems. If they did not ingest some sort of sucrose in a timely manner, diabetic coma could set in, and death was very likely. It is, in fact, how my aunt died at age 72.

There have been so many improvements in the care of diabetes. Back in the old days, little was really known, and doctors always assumed a patient was "cheating" if they couldn't control diabetes with insulin injections. Now there are metering devices that administer insulin to your system in dosages without the usual shot, I understand.

The diabetes that is early onset, in childhood or early adulthood is much more debilitating than the Type 2, which is usually just our pancreatic glands wearing out. I once read that for every diagnosed diabetic, there are 10 who are not...memory may not serve, but that is what I recall. When you go in for a yearly checkup, why is a blood sugar test not included? Unless things have changed, you have to display symptons or request such a test.

Weez, my youngest child is a brittle diabetic, and was for a long time the victim of "cheating" accusations. He went through a three week residence in an Elks facility, where the kitchen was locked and there was no way he could cheat, with the same results as before, frequent reactions. He is now 34 years old, with a 2 year old daughter, and really wants to control it, but control still eludes him. He has participated in numerous lengthy trials and studies to test methods and meds, and usually ended up with the professionals asking him instead of telling him what was going on. I ache for him in his desire for a normal life. Watching him in a reaction and talking with him about his hopes and aspirations, my heart breaks. So much is not known about the disorder. But as it progresses, it will probably rob him of mobility when his license is revoked for having too many accidents, of his sight from retinopathy, of his lower extremities from poor circulation, of kidney function from the damage done by years of reactions and high sugar, of sexual function, of
any normal social life because he will be so handicapped. This is one of the disorders I pray about the most, for a solution or effective control before it maims and kills my child.

Oh, Aimee, I understand your concerns. Until one is familiar with the symptoms, diabetic reactions can be mistaken for drunkeness. Diabetics have gone into coma in a drunk tank because police officers were not trained to recognize the symptoms.

I can recall times when my brother would slip into a reaction just before dinner, and it was difficult to get him to eat. He would slur his words, he would become quite giddy, and all the while, he was sweating profusely. We'd just keep urging him to eat, offering him a bite or two. Until one has seen this, they do not understand.

If it is any comfort, my brother has lived many years with his diabetes... into his 60's. As the years go by, new methods of treatment are found, and the medical profession understands more about the illness and more about their patients.

For the brittle diabetic, they are their own physician in most cases, as you mentioned. The doctors have little to offer them as far as management goes. I cannot believe that this country does not do more to diagnose and treat diabetes.

The thing that is scary now is, my son's body has "learned" to function even when his blood sugar is in the 20s! So he will appear to be normal until he blacks out. He might be combative, or sluggish, or silly, but unless someone who knows how he normally behaves is there, he will likely not get the attention he needs. Each time his system goes through this, it possibly shortens his life expectancy. If his wife or I are with him, we unconsciously watch for the little signs we have come to recognize. She will say, in a quiet voice because it embarrasses him, "do me a favor and test." In times past, he would argue he was fine, but now he has gotten better about "humoring" us, because he knows full well his judgment is impaired if his sugar is low. Sometimes it even becomes obvious in a phone conversation. Thanks, Weez, for comforting and hopeful words. Not many of these patients make it past 40.

Be comforted, Aimee. My mother was the "watcher" for my brother, and it sounds like your son has two watchers that stand guard. This is so important, because, truly, the brittle diabetic cannot make judgements for themselves when impaired. The fact that he has loved ones watching out for him, and the fact that he recognizes that he needs this can make all the difference in the world.

Aimee, I feel for your son. My sister is also a diabetic, and they cannot seem to get her meds/insulan/blood sugar under control. She once stayed in the hospital over a week just for them to try to control it. baffles me.

Just this morning I was thinking to do a thourough research on splenda, I got a box of it last week, but am leary of trying it till I find out more. It says right on the box that it is made of sugar.....well where are the calories then?

will let you know if I find out anything earth shattering.

What marcia says seems to make sense. How can they do that though? this little mind can't fathom it....

There is a lot of information at their website-www.splenda.com---hope this helps.

My daughter had a sudden onset of classic migraines (that's the kind that starts with a visual aura -- swirling lights, in her case) and olfactory hallucinations at age 15. She was seen by the family doctor and a neurologist. The cinnamon smell hallucination made them think there might be something really bad going on in the frontal lobe of her brain -- this is NOT common with migraines.

After an EEG and some scary days and nights, the wise, wonderful pediatric neurologist gave her a list of foods to avoid. She eliminated all the migraine trigger foods (including all artificial sweeteners) and BINGO, no more migraines. We re-introduced the foods one at a time and sure enough it turned out that diet soda (with aspartame) was her one and only trigger.

Research we did on our own at that time turned up stories of people with MS-like symptoms from aspartame. Hoax? My daughter would tell you it's definitely true. OTOH, I can drink all the Crystal light in the world and it doesn't bother me. It depends on how your body reacts. So if I didn't live through this with my own child I would probably be a skeptic, too.

BTW: if you think you may be sensitive to aspartame, read the labels on all chewing gum. Even gum that is NOT sugar free may contain aspartame as well as sugar. They add the aspartame because it makes the flavor last longer.

suky