I have avoided NutraSweet for nine years now. My symptoms were not as dramatic as some mentioned, merely headaches. Sort of sore eye/thudding headaches every second day or so. Since I was 16 and taking a lot of exams. I didn’t think much of it I had been having headaches at this frequency since I was about 9 year old.
My headaches got a lot less frequent when I stopped the NutraSweet, despite the fact that it was three weeks before my O’levels. I would have expected the stress to increase.
I don’t think I changed anything else in my life, although another explanation may be that it was a placebo effect: I believed the headaches would go and they did. However I think this is unlikely, as like other people I have had headaches having unwittingly eaten NutraSweet.