About five years ago a nutritionist (assigned by my physician) asked me to switch to Diet Coke instead of regular. So I did. It took a long time to realize where my problems were coming from. I just never linked it to Aspartame because I was told it was safe. I had violent headaches, trouble focusing my eyes, and severe menstrual cramping and bleeding, memory loss and trouble remembering simple things. I saw a neurologist, my gynecologist, plus my own personal physician. Not one time did anyone ever ask me about diet soda or what medicine I was taking for the problems. I think I was alerted to the problem by something I saw on TV. I stopped the diet soda. The problems were all gone within a short period of time, dramatically. Several years later I was experiencing back pain and took ibuprofen for it. A day later I had a violent headache which was quite noticeable because I hadn’t had one for a long time. After following the same process several more times it finally dawned on me that I was experiencing the same scenario as with the Aspartame. Something in the chemical combination was causing headaches. Since then I have been careful to not take anything with ibuprofen. I have been able to share this information with many people who are having trouble with awful and frequent headaches. To the letter, each one has stopped the ibuprofen and the headaches have disappeared.
This cannot possibly be a coincidence. Two years ago a friend who works in the same hospital I use to be in told me that she was getting a bad headache every day at nine in the morning. She blamed it on the stress of the job. I simply asked her what she was taking and of course it was two ibuprofen pills at nine every day. After encouraging her to stop taking ibuprofen on her two week vacation with us and riding out the headache (that would surely follow) without any meds, she was delighted to find that the headaches were gone for good. Why in the
world don’t medical people ask simply questions like “what are you ingesting?’ when the problems may be easily diagnosed without expensive tests, etc. At least it is a good place to start on a history workup. Every time I have an annual checkup, I remind my physicians about this simple diagnosis (sometimes) for patient complaints of headaches and menstrual cramping. I know it is easy to forget something so seemingly mundane. It may not always be this simplistic. But it is vital to rule these chemicals out first. Why do a costly brain scan when the answer may be removing Aspartame from the diet. This is a lethal product!!! Or ibuprofen which is a wonderful medication for spasms, joint pain, etc., but it can cause severe corneal edema (blurred vision) and violent headaches in many people. Something to think about if these are problems for you.
It probably is better to be anonymous. Sooner or later I am going to have the strong arms of these companies at my front door. The story is actually much more dramatic than I have given it. Too many details, but this is the gist of it.