My husband was only in his mid-thirties when he started suffering from debilitating joint pain – primarily in his knees and ankles. He would wake up in the morning almost unable to walk. He started taking aspirin, but soon that wasn’t enough.
I had read a little about the dangers of aspartame (NutraSweet) and asked him to try giving up his beloved diet cokes for a couple of days. He said that he probably couldn’t live without them, but he would try. After only a couple of days without the diet cokes he was pain free. But he thought that meant he could start drinking diet cokes again. It only took one diet coke before he was in agony again.
It turns out that it wasn’t easy to give up the diet cokes. It also is almost impossible to avoid aspartame. The other night he ordered a margarita and there must have been aspartame in the margarita mix because he could hardly walk the next day.
On days that he can avoid aspartame though, he is pain free. I’m so glad that we made this discovery before starting down a long path of pain killers and arthritis medication!
The binder below contains some of the resources that I found on aspartame, though I’m sure there are more. This digital binder has some interesting links with scientific data, write-ups from doctors, personal stories, and even one horrifying ‘home experiment’ with aspartame.
LiveBinders Blog 
I was suffering from dizziness, nausea, vertigo an panic attacks for two years. Doctors did numerous tests and found nothing. I was an avid diet coke drinker and my husband to me that I had aspartame poisoning. Although I knew it would be hard to stop drinking the fizzy wonderful drink I know I had to make a decision. Continue drinking diet coke and live in misery or stop drinking diet coke and start enjoying life. I have been free of Diet Coke for two months. All my symptoms are gone! Although I still crave it and have to fight it every day, I drink club soda and I still enjoy the fizz!
Congratulations Jenny! I had heard that there are many different symptoms of aspartame poisoning. Hang in there, my husband said the cravings get less and less over time!
I went pop free, but ended up having some severe arthritis. I was hoping it was the Aspartame. I’m glad it worked out for him!
My husband drinks at least a dozen cans a day. Starts as soon as he wakes up and does not stop. He even goes down in the middle of the night and takes a few sips. He does not sleep at night, pees at least 5 times, takes several advil for his join pain and has trouble walking due to his severe hip and knee pain. He is only 50 and acts like he is older than my dad who is 84. It sucks! I think it is directly related to his diet coke. He is under a lot of financial stress right now and seems to be drinking even more diet coke. He has been addicted for at least 20 years. How can I convince him to stop?
Oh, I’m sorry to hear that, it is a really hard addiction to break. If you could convince him to try to give it up for a few days, he will be amazed at the difference in how he feels.
I enjoy looking through a post that will make people think. Also, many thanks for allowing me to comment!
Thanks for posting this important information. I have been been battling a diet soda addiction for years. I’ve noticed coke gives me more pain than pepsi. I had 1 diet coke today and both index fingers are killing me with pain. Now I know I’ve got to kick the addiction and forgo both pepsi and coke since the pain is getting worse. -Carol
An outstanding share! I have just forwarded this onto a co-worker who had been doing a little homework
on this. And he in fact ordered me breakfast due
to the fact that I discovered it for him…
lol. So let me reword this…. Thanks for the meal!
! But yeah, thanks for spending the time to talk about this topic here on your
site.
Thanks for posting this. There is some rally good information at the link you provided. More people need to be aware of the dangers of this substance.
I honestly believed for years that people who talked negatively about aspartame were just a bunch of conspiracy theorist (which included my own mother :-). I originally started out drinking Mountain Dew on my overnight shifts at work to help me stay awake. After gaining about 10lbs and having heartburn issues after regularly drinking the soda, I decided to switch to a caffeinated diet citrus drink…problem solved. I didn’t experience anymore heartburn, & quickly lost the extra weight I had gained. I started encouraging others to make the switch, including my husband who was experiencing heartburn issues. I bought him some of the caffeinated low calorie drink mixes for work. He loved them…completely stopped having heartburn from the sugary drinks and even lost a few pounds as well! Why do more people not switch to diet…it’s such an easy switch!?! Now, let’s skip to about 5 years later, I very suddenly started having tendon and ligament stiffness/soreness in my right ankle. It got so painful that I had 2 start wearing a brace everyday, even to bed (as to my foot in plantar flexion or toes pointing down really hurt the top of my ankle while sleeping) , but I couldn’t remember even hurting it. I thought that I must of sprang it & just didn’t remember doing it. This pain went on for months…one day I thought it was getting better, the next day it would be worse than before. In particular, one of the feeling I think that was most memorable was when I tried to stretch my ankles by getting on my knees in the floor, tops of feet on the floor with toes pointed back & just setting back on my heals, it felt as if my tendons were just going to snap on the top of my ankles. The sensation actually scared me & really freaked me out. I looked up ankle tendon and ligament issues and quickly linked aspartame as a possible cause. But there was no way that could be the problem, I had drank the stuff for years & never had an issue!! Plus I only drank one soda a night, only worked four nights a week, & only drank diet soda while I was at work. That means I strictly drank 4 diet drinks a week! So I blew off the possibility that it was true. About a month later while I was a work with not only my right ankle but now my ‘left ankle’ wrapped up and propped up on the coffee table I decided to revisit the possibility of aspartame being the culprit. I looked up some blogs on the issue & I ran across one where a lady was having similar problems and her doctor told her to go off the aspartame for just ‘2 weeks’ & she would notice a huge difference. It worked for her, & even though I truly still doubted it was going to make a difference, two weeks was a small sacrifice to make just to be sure. So, I changed my drinks to unsweetened green tea and black coffee (as I still didn’t want to drink anything with added sugar & still wanted the caffein) & after ‘3’ days I wasn’t wearing my ankle wraps, which I had been wearing everyday for months on my right side!! Honestly I still doubted it & kept expecting them to start hurting again. After a week I dared to say and brag that they felt almost completely normal!! Could it be true?! Still, I told friends & family I was going to give it the whole two weeks before I made my judgement. At the end of the second week I was completely, totally convinced it was the aspartame!! It has been about a year now & I have had no more issues!! I will never touch aspartame again!! So unbelievable they put this in our food & drinks!!! I’m so thankful for that post about only needing a couple weeks to be sure…anyone can survive and change there routine for that long. As for being addicted or craving the drink…I never had any adverse reactions, headaches, or anything. I definitely missed the taste of the soda…but I think it was more of the habit of having it than any kind of addiction. Once I decided to quit, I never looked back.
As for my husband…he only drank the diet mix for about 2 years, but he consumed significantly more than I did. One pack of mix is for two servings, and he would have several a day. In his second year of drinking it he ruptured his Achilles’ tendon!! Coincidence?!? He’s not completely convinced, but regardless we have both cut out the aspartame from our diet.
This is my first time ever posting ANYTHING online…I feel that I should give my story, just incase there is someone else experiencing this issue an hesitating to think of aspartame as a possibility. Just as the post I read that helped me, ” try going off it & switching your routine for just 2 weeks!” Draw your own conclusions & good luck!
I know some of these posts are older but the information is valuable. We have diet pop in the house, although I don’t drink much of it these days. I run and lift weights and when I was drinking pop with aspartame on a regular basis, I had a lot of aches and pains, mostly in my feet, ankles and legs. I’m in my 40s now and this past week, I drank a lot of diet cokes at family gatherings for Thanksgiving. My legs were aching and had some other ligament issues with my shoulder and could totally tell I had some inflammation issues that came on out of nowhere, possibly from drinking diet soda. So, no more diet soda for me. I like caffeine so for those who don’t want to give up the caffeine like me, switch to tea. I drink black flavored teas over ice, and that works great for me.