I am someone who has a story about Aspartame. I think I went to the Doctor about 5 years ago because I had numbness and tingling in my face which I thought could be the start of a tooth nerve dying. Ex-ray said no. I think that was probably the first experience I had with numbness and tingling which progressed to a full body flush and tingling which happened about 20 – 30 times a day.
It seemed to occur in parts of my body where I had an injury of some sort – a broken bone in my foot etc.
These symptoms lasted for about 30-60 sec. and did not knock me off my feet but sometimes, if it included a vision problem in my left eye, I had to consciously make and effort to stay in control of my body. In the fall of 2003 I went to my family Dr. who sent me to the neurologist. Of course they looked for things like stroke, MS, epilepsy etc. I had an MRI of my head, a carotid artery test, x-rays; saw the ophthalmologist, orthopedic surgeon and the neurologist 3 times. He couldn’t find anything – I think he thought I was making this up. All he said was if it was still happening in 30 days I should come back. Well, I was seeing ads for food which said “no Aspartame” and I began to wonder. I drank diet ice tea and used other food products since they came on the market. I consumed a large jar of diet iced tea every 2 wks in addition to diet soda etc. I decided to eliminate Aspartame from my diet and after about 2 wks the numb/flushes started to subside. It took almost 6 mo. before they were gone entirely. It hasn’t happened for 6 -7 mo. I received your e/mail address from my daughter who is a professor in the science department because I have wanted to tell this story to someone because I felt it had some significance for others who have undiagnosed neurological problems.