Aspartame Anti-Testimonials© #1143 – Birth Defects, Daily Headaches

I am responding to your article/web page on Aspartame. I am 44 years old and have been suspecting Aspartame as a major health hazard since it hit the market. I have been “dieting” all my life to stay thin and because of all the hype about saccharin causing cancer, as soon as NutraSweet hit the shelves I was all over it. I ate everything they had with it and added the packets to my numerous cups of tea on a daily basis. As soon as it was in soft drinks, I drank that too. In 1982, I had a child born with a major heart defect, and then in 1985 I had another child born with cranial-facial deformities. Even at only 23 years old, I was beginning to suspect the product as a possible cause of the completely unrelated birth defects my children had and wrote to the governor of Ohio (Celeste) explaining my suspicions. The governor’s office wrote back saying they were not aware of any problems with the product but did not give me any advice on how to pursue the issue. The rest of my family and friends convinced me that the government would not allow a product on the market if it were not safe so I continued to drink it. By my late 20’s, early 30’s I was sick of the daily headaches I was having. I hate taking any kind of drug (go figure) and I hated having to take pain relievers all the time. At that point I had read some serious articles about Aspartame which made me truly believe I was right all along. I stopped using it completely (mind you I had still been adding it to my numerous cups of tea daily) and my headaches stopped. I still have blood sugar problems (insulin sensitivity?) to this day which cause me not to be able to eat large portions of carbs at a time or I become completely dysfunctional. I maintain a lower-carb diet (1/2 cup of carbs at a time mostly) to control it. On occasions where I can’t take it and have to have a donut or something, an hour or two later I become extremely irate, shaky, and hungry, can’t think straight or barely have a conversation without wanting to kill everyone. I think this is permanent damage as I have been off Aspartame for about a decade and I still have problems with that.