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Agnes King - Tremendous Pain I have for years used diet drinks and diet "other products". Several years ago I heard about the memory loss and headaches due to aspartame, but my reaction was, "Oh, that is just the sugar industry lobbying against their competition." I live in an upstairs apartment and it is difficult at my age (58) to carry all my groceries upstairs so whenever I would get diet drinks on sale, I would only bring one or two up to my apartment. Also, I had a system of buying the canned diet drinks when the 12 paks sold for 2 for $5.00. I would take one 12 pack in to my office at work and leave the other one in the car. As you know, the heat has been tremendous this summer. It is always terribly hot in the south anyway. When I would bring in the second pack of diet drinks to my office, occasionally a can or 2 would be bent from the heat. Once one even exploded. Even this didn't encourage me to carry the pack upstairs since after all in a few weeks, I would just have to carry it back down to take it to work. I have some back problems and when I over work the pain will radiate down to my knee. However, for 6-8 weeks now I have been in tremendous pain in my legs and feet. It seemed to be a different kind of pain than my usual back pain. I attributed it to the fact that I was having to take care of my oldest son due to a head on automobile accident. (carrying 2 laundry baskets to the wash room, doing all the cleaning, and carrying of groceries up to my apt.) Most days when I would get home from work, I would have to lie down for 20 to 30 minutes before I could go on. Sometimes, I never got out of the bed after work except to fix something to eat then I would lie back down again. I found myself feeling like my legs might fall out from under me - that I needed to physically reach down with my hands and lift one leg and then another. Sometimes, I would find myself leaning against the counter for support in my kitchen as I walked in it. I have a friend who was diagnosed with muscular sclerosis and she labors with walking and I remembered thinking one day that I felt like I almost walked like she does. I went into the local health food store to purchase some items and overheard a lady telling about an article on the internet concerning the effects of aspartame. She was especially talking about leg pains and feet pain and burning. I asked her for a copy of what she had off the internet. She also told me there was a vitamin that would cause aluminum particles to be removed from your body. This vitamin is called magnesium malate. She was not trying to push the vitamin on me as I finally had to ask her to show it to me. I still wasn't convinced that aspartame was my problem. The vitamins were only $9.58 + tax for a month's supply so I bought them. I went home and began reading the article and I was astounded. I suddenly realized that from the heated drinks my symptoms worsened and that I was embalming myself. I took the tablets and got off aspartame products and within 3 days I noticed a tremendous difference. After 6 days, I would say I was 95-100% better. It has now been only 8 days, but the difference in my legs and feet have me THOROUGHLY CONVINCED that I had a case of aspartame poisoning. I have also noticed that I don't crave carbohydrates and sugars like I used to. I would crave sweets so bad that I had great sympathy for the alcoholic because it was that overwhelming to me. There were times when I would "need" something sweet so bad that I would get up and put my clothes back on and run to the grocery store at 11:00 PM at night. I told some friends, if I could march against this stuff, I would. If I could speak out against this stuff, I would - I am that convinced. We are talking about a person who leads an easy going life and doesn't like to rock the boat, confront issues, or get involved. I am a Christian and just have always believed my job was to pray for our world, country, people, etc. and to trust God with my problems. Well, I know He put me in that health food store that day at just the right time to hear that conversation or I might be one of those unfortunate ones who would have developed a disease that could not be reversed or even met with death all because of a stupid product called aspartame. Thank you for your work against this product. God bless!! Agnes King |
