Hi Susan and welcome to LWL! We're glad you came out of lurkdom and please jump right in and participate even if you can't lift yet.

You might want to hop over to the weekly thread and say "hi" there -- I'm afraid you might not get noticed here as this is kind of a specialized thread. As Ilene would say, we LUVS newbies!

Hope to see you around lots!

YES!! We do luvs newbies!! So c'mon down to the weekly thread!! TWO years in lurkdom!! What took ya so long to come out?

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/phenylketonuria.html

I have been having lots of health problems too. Muscle & Joint pain in particular. I was also sent an e-mail about aspartame poisoning. I am always scepticle. I don't trust a lot of things I get from the internet. Chain letters being my biggest pet peeve. But I wanted to at least try to research this myself a little bit & I did find the above site that I think is a fairly reputable site. One thing I know for sure. Aspartame gives me headaches...& not the typical kind of headache that people have. I am 48 years old...and have never in my life had a problem with headaches, Never had them from sinus problems...never had migraines...never had any real headaches....perfectly healthy in that area...just been lucky that way. But back about 15 years ago I started drinking diet sodas with aspartame...about one a day every day & I was having headaches...at first I did not associate it with aspartame. And the kind of headaches I was having were what I considered weird because...my head did not hurt like a migraine....nor did it hurt all the time. As crazy as this sounds the only time that my head ever hurt was when I laughed. Any time we would visit friends & play cards...or be sitting around laughing & joking with friends...it felt like the middle of my head would explode when I laughed. I have since given up the diet drinks & then gone back to them...and anytime that i drinking them...this happens to me. The one thing that is real & admitted by the medical community is what I found on this site. My personal thoughts are this...if our body has to break these chemicals down...even if we are not a person that tests positive on a PKU test...then we are taxing that part of our anatomy that has to do that...my choice is to give up aspartame for now....my headaches are not worth it anyway...& my new choice is water...it is being touted as the thing to do for dieting anyway.

I also use stevia, you can get it in powdered form or liquid, and (at least here in Canada) you can buy it at the grocery store if you look for it. I have heard excellent things about it and (IMHO) I would highly recommend it to anyone looking for a "non-manufactured" type of sweetener.

Here's a link to an article as to why both Aspertame and Splenda are bad for you. I've been using Splenda for a year with no side effects. However, many others have had serious side effects and I don't want to wake up one day with one.

http://www.thelatestmagazine.com/Articles/0704Sweet.htm

It mentions actual natural sugar substitutes (Stevia or Xylitol) that are safer. I'm sure Splenda is safe for same and not for others. I just don't want to take the chance if I can help it.

my body behaves badly when I consume a lot of these chemicals. so maybe it just me but by avoiding all these chemicals it has at least kept me virtually disease free. On another note I think america is so large because of the steroids use in animals that we eat. something to think about