If you were to go just by the information about aspartame that you can find on the Internet, you could well think this sugar substitute was created by the devil himself. In all truth, the amount of Internet sites devoted to destroying aspartame and the brand name NutraSweet is insane. It’s has been attacked like almost no other product on the market, the finger being pointed for everything from loss of memory to schizophrenia. Although the jury is still out on aspartame’s culpability in relation to many ailments, there is no getting around the fact that aspartame has been linked to headaches in many studies.

It is used in NutraSweet, an artificial sweetener. What it does is give off an amino acid neurotransmitter in the brain. In essence, though approved by the FDA as a additive, aspartame is really a drug.

The New England Journal of Medicine, a well known medical journal, has finished studies that have found a connection between heavy consumption of diet drinks sweetened with aspartame and migraine headaches. Suddenly aspartame free chewing gum seems like a good idea, no?

One scientist who has conducted research came to the startling conclusion that 90% of all migraines are caused by allergic reactions to food or food additives! His findings also suggest that this product is the most common food additive related to migraines.

All this research, however, no conclusion has yet been drawn which strongly establishes what it is about aspartame that causes migraines in headache sufferers. Indeed, serotonin pops up quite a bit in medical journals as it seems to play a part in conditions ranging from appetite loss to mood change to sleep problems. When it comes to migraines, serotonin is thought to play a part in the lowering of levels of it in your body thanks to the effects of aspartame, thereby exacerbating pre-existing conditions that cause migraines. So it’s really not so much a case of aspartame being the cause of migraines, but rather being a fast finger on the trigger.

You may not believe, but there’s also a danger from ceasing your intake of aspartame. Crazy eh? If you are currently drinking a huge amount of diet drinks or using a lot of NutraSweet in your coffee or tea, the one thing you don’t want to do is suddenly stop for a few months and then go back. Many people report that they quit having headaches after stopping their use of products containing aspartame. Then they resumed their use of aspartame and were unfortunate enough to find that the headaches returned and were much worse than in the past.

So I did a little research and found some pretty scary results about what I was putting into my mouth every single day. All the gum I chewed contained aspartame in it….and I mean ALL of it. I couldn find anything in local stores that was sugar free gum and didn’t have this sugar substitute in it.

Aspartame can have some pretty nasty side effects from what Ive been reading. Here’s a run down. The list of the side effects related to consumption of aspartame is very long. Moreover, according to the Headache review of November 1997, particularly sensitive people can feel effects with very low dose: chewing gum, for example, can cause an headache. In 1994, the FDA had already accumulated nearly 7000 complaints of side effects connected to aspartame. Most frequent are: headaches (what was confirmed by several studies), giddiness, blurred vision, changes of mood, pains to the belly and cramps.

Among the other symptoms that have appeared are depression, the losses of memory, pains at the joints, menstrual disorders, epileptic fits and even some deaths! And that is only one fraction of the effects currently associated to the consumption of aspartame, since the majority of people have not yet establish the link between their health issues and this product. Even if they do it, only a small percentage of people and health professionals take time to bring it back to the governmental authorities.

In 1991, the National Institute off Health published a bibliography, Adverse Effects off Aspartame, giving over 167 reasons to avoid the aspartame. A recent study also showed that aspartame, just like sugar, promotes calcium loss.