Here is her story:
About 6 weeks ago I stopped consuming aspartame or other artificial sweeteners. The results have been a dramatic improvement in several aspects of my health. The reason I decided to make this change was hearing about how aspartame was approved – a story matched by this timeline: http://www.rense.com/general33/legal.htm
The amount of aspartame I used on a regular basis was probably not all that great – I would drink a 2 liter bottle of diet pepsi in 2 days on average. I would not consider myself a heavy user. I would use saccharin in my iced tea which I would have sometimes when I went out to eat. Maybe once a week on average.
Here is the timeline of changes I noticed after stopping consumption of aspartame and other artificial sweeteners:
At 72 hours:
During this time I felt like a “cloud” had been lifted from my thinking processes. I just felt more in the moment than before.
At 2 weeks:
I have a arthritic joint where the collar-bone joins the shoulder. I have been suffering limited mobility in my shoulder and strong enough pain to plan for corrective surgery this fall. During the 2 weeks after stopping aspartame the inflammation and discomfort in my shoulder reduced considerably. I don’t want to imply that aspartame elimination is a cure for arthritis. There is still discomfort in that joint and it is still clearly arthritic.
What I had not understood is there was significant collateral inflammation in the rotator cuff and tendons going into through that area into the rotator cuff. It appears that this was greatly reduced with the predictable results increased range of motion and decreased discomfort/pain. I have decided to postpone surgery as the discomfort is now tolerable.
At 5 weeks plus:
I noticed that chronic join pain in other parts of my body has reduced gradually during this time. I think there may be a general reduction in inflammation I have experienced for some years. I am also generally feeling better.
A predicted result is I usually am eating smaller portions than before, but the “clean plate club” membership my mother enrolled me in still calls at me to overeat. I got on my scale and found I was down several pounds in the last 3 weeks. It is too soon to see if this is a trend or just a normal variation of my weight. I have heard, and it makes sense to me, that “better” artificial sweeteners can convince to the body it got sugar and put sugar metabolism into motion. When it is not able to process any sugar the result is ravenous desire to eat resulting in overeating.
Another thing I noticed is my craving for the very sweet treats is reduced and I am acquiring a taste for less sweet or unsweetened drink and food. Do aspartame and artificial sweeteners make us crave sweet things more?
So these are my observations in the first 6 weeks. It’s pretty easy to try and you can see how removing artificial sweeteners will affect you. I to suggest giving it at least a month if not more as different people with different diets can take different amounts of time to clear aspartame and artificial sweeteners from the body and may respond at different rates if at all.
For me the results have been very good and I am coming to the conclusion we need to be much more aware of what we put into our bodies.
Lisa Shea's Library of Low Carb Books
