I am a healthy 35 year old, healthy, fit, male. I was on the Adkins, low carb, low sugar diet for a couple months where I drank 4-5 diet pops, ate numerous sugar-free (Aspartame laced) foods and chewed sugar free gum constantly. I started noticing a brain fog where I actually thought I was experiencing the first signs of Alzheimer’s. I’m in sales where I need to be at the top of my mental game all day long and I was finding myself losing my train of thought, stuttering and sometimes slurring my words. Then one day, I was sitting down watching TV drinking diet pop and eating low carb French toast with sugar free syrup, I noticed the tips of my fingers starting to go numb with a headache that I could put my finger on. A few minutes later, I jumped out of my seat and started running for my life. I felt out of my body with a huge fear of dying.
I ran around my house 5 times in my shorts, in 32 degree weather, until I felt this fear subside. I felt this surreal and scary fear a couple times over the next hour when I decided to play it safe and go to the emergency room. By the way, I am not the kind of person to cry wolf to get attention and to me, I never would have gone if I thought for one second this was no big deal. Anyway, I was driving to the hospital (15 minutes away) when IT hit me. I thought I was dying in the car.
My legs and arms went completely numb, my heart felt like it was fluttering out of control. I was starting to lose consciousness or dying, one of the two. I called 911 in my car, saying in hysterical, unintelligible speech that I was having a heart attack or a stroke.
They told me to pull over to wait for help, but I said I was too scared to wait. I drove 120 miles an hour to get to the hospital. I got there and to make a long story short, my heart rate was at 130 and I had trouble remembering my birth date. They didn’t find anything wrong and said I probably had a panic attack. I had never had one before and wasn’t really stressed or depressed about anything. I knew there was more to it. I researched panic attacks and found the Aspartame link which made perfect sense, especially after reading other people’s similar situations. I can attest that you don’t get better overnight from stopping Aspartame. I hear it can take 60-90 days to get it out of your system. It has been a slow progression to wellness. It’s been almost two months since this episode and the last time I’ve touched Aspartame and even though a lot of the symptoms have subsided, I still get numbness in my hands and feet on occasion (including right now) with an occasional heart palpitation.
The memory loss and the fog, however, have been lifted. I am confident in the next month or so, I will be symptom and Aspartame free.
What’s amazing is if you go on the Aspartame website, they talk about all the great benefits of their product. They say it was approved to be safe and not to believe all the internet myths saying that people are having bad reactions to it. Well, I was a skeptic too, until it happened to me and now I tell everyone I know that the victims are “the truth” and them saying its safe is “the myth”.