I’m concerned about my brother. He is 46 years old and since 1988 (approximately) he has deteriorated health wise. At the age of 40, all his friends would continuously tell him to “lighten up” and that “life begins at 40” but he could not share their optimism since he felt like “hell”! During this time he experienced several seizures and doctors who examined him told him he was epileptic, even though this is not traced in our family history. He was also told that he was diabetic. Diabetes does occur (mildly) in our grand-parent. He was put on a special diet to control his blood sugar and the doctors prescribed medication to control the seizures. Nevertheless, he continued to feel exceptionally fatigued and generally un-well and the seizures continued.
He went to many specialists, trying to identify what was causing the seizures and underwent a multitude of state of the art tests without any real positive results. They eventually diagnosed him with Multiple Sclerosis but were unable to identify the real cause of the seizures.
On November 18, 1996, my brother was driving on the highway when he had his most recent seizure and of course he woke up in hospital with fractures and bruises (and luckily for him) he was still alive! On the 19th of November (the following day) while resting on his bed, at the hospital, he happened to be watching a report on the news stating that Aspartame had been found to cause seizures, MS and etc. This is when he realized that Aspartame might very well be the reason why his health had deteriorated to such a degree. He had been a habitual user of Aspartame for easily 15 years. He drank Diet Coke, he used Aspartame to sweeten his coffee and he also would look for foods that were prepared with artificial sweeteners to control his diet. He drank a lot of coffee! And he also enjoyed peanut butter sandwiches with Aspartame sprinkled on it instead of honey.
He has not had any foods with Aspartame since that day and he has been extremely careful about his food intake since January and he says he feels much better.