I have Lupus and Fibromyalgia. I recently read another article on NutraSweet where it named Lupus and Parkinson’s being affected by the NutraSweet.
My husband was just diagnosed with Parkinson’s’ although none runs in his family. On 4-1-96 I decided to give it a try and went off anything that had NutraSweet in it. I was a very heavy pop drinker and since I’m very overweight, I always drank the diet products. From 2-8 a day, depending on what I was doing. The reason I tried going off it was because on a scale of 1-10, my pain from the Fibromyalgia was a 44. I was in awful pain. Had even had an epidural to try for some relief from the pain. Later I read this article on Vicodin, the pain pill I was taking.
The pain was so bad I was taking them closer and closer together. But the pain just kept getting worse and worse. The article said that for short term, Vicodin was ok, but for long term, it would make the Fibromyalgia worse. And I’d been taking it for over 3 years. So, on 4-4-96, I took myself off all the Vicodin too.
Yesterday I did something I haven’t been able to do in ages. If you’ve never had a lot of pain, you might laugh at this. But, I was able to walk around the hallways of my building 4 times. Something I haven’t been able to do in over a year. My pain was so great that I had to grit my teeth and count. Its 54 steps to our restroom. Then last night, I planted flowers out in my yard. Something I couldn’t do without a lot of pain medicine and a TENS unit and then the lower back pain would cause me to have to sit down every 4-5 minutes. Last night, I planted without pain pills or the TENS unit. Now, I was slow and I did rest a few times, but the horrible pain wasn’t there. What a blessing!!
I know it is still early to really say if it is the NutraSweet and the Vicodin, but boy, it certainly is nice to have the relief from the pain.
Now that I look back, I was having a lot of things/symptoms happening to me. Such as:
- small continuous headache
- my feet hurt all the time
- every muscle in my body hurts
- blurry vision-especially early in the morning
- dizzy spells-
a) some heavy like the big inner ear infections that spin you out of control. You never knew when one would hit you. I even had one while driving in the car, but luckily got the car stopped.
b) light spells-somewhere like 1-4 seconds. Everything goes black and you get very dizzy. These came and went in spells. Some days I had 20-40 of them.
- unexplained earaches. I would have the earache, but the Dr. said he could find nothing except a little pressure once in a while.
I went to a Neurosurgeon, A Heart Specialist, and An Ear Specialist. All to no avail. They could not find anything causing these symptoms.
Since I went off the NutraSweet and the Vicodin, I have had -0- of the big ones and only -1- of the little ones. A coincidence? Certainly makes you wonder, doesn’t it?
Oh, forgot some symptoms:
- confusion. Know what I wanted to say, but something else came out. Go to say something and my mind would just go blank and not be able to do anything.
- nerves on the very edge most of the time. I would think I’m going to start screaming and never be able to stop. Or, I’m going to start crying and never be able to stop. And what did I do to calm these
- fears????
- fatigue – I am always as tired with I go to bed as when I get up. I have to fight going to sleep at the desk. Which on occasion I have done.
And what did I do to combat the fatigue? Go to the candy room of course. Buy a candy bar for a 20 minute shot of energy, and a diet pop. I didn’t buy a real pop, I always bought a diet pop. after all I am fat and don’t need that extra sugar!!
Now that I can see all this and look back. Is it just a coincidence???
I’ll let you know as I progress. But for today, I’m basking in the relief of pain. Such a pleasure. If I find that something as simple as a few cans of pop have caused me all this pain and torment. I will be a most unhappy person to think that they deliberately produced something that could be the root of all my problems.