I've always used them sparingly - like a soda a day (diet) and perhaps a half a teaspoon in an evening tea.

However, with trying to get over my holiday sweet tooth, I allowed myself to suck on some sugar free lozenges - about 6 calories each - I would have 5-6 a day, 4-5 diet sodas a day (half cola half lemon/lime), and still that wee bit of artificial sweetener in a tea in the evening.

Well, that has NEVER happened before. Since I've done that, my face has broken out. I haven't had pimples on my face since I started taking meds for my thyroid.

And my usual "whoosh' this month (which according to my records, SHOULD have happened) is much less than usually. 3 pounds instead of the typical 5-6 if I've been good (and I've been good).

I know I can't draw any conclusions based on these anecdotal exerperiences, but is it the soda? or the artificial sweeteners?

Today I had ONE diet cola and no other thing with artificial sweetner and will keep it at that. I'm curious if my face will clear up and the scale will finally give it up. Or do you think it's all unrelated?

What's your experience with diet sodas and or artificial sweeteners? (Splenda).

I've never had any issues with Splenda and I use it a lot (diet soda, coffee, tea, baking). Sucralose is not absorbed by the body and passes through (hence it being considered a diuretic) and maltodextrin is derived from starch based food (corn, wheat, etc). So if you are sensitive to that it may be a factor but marginally so as it's so processed it barely resembles what it comes from! Maltodextrin is found in pills, sugar substitutes, beer, etc.

I don't use many other artificial sweeteners except aspartame in sodas and have had no issues associated with them (headaches for those allergic to phenylalanine).

Perhaps it's hormone fluctuations that are causing your breakouts? I know in exercising more frequently, I tend to get more breakouts in general.

Any chance you are in perimenopause? That was the first thing that came to my mind.

The one thing I've found for myself when it comes to artificial sweeteners, well besides the taste which I just never really cared for... is that I seem to get more frequent headaches when I use them... So I just pretty much avoid them for those reasons... But I never really thought of them as "bad" for you or anything like that... They just didn't seem to "agree" with me...

Recently I've been trying to really cut out sugar, so I've been using various sweeteners like Nectresse and Stevia in the Raw because I'm still a sucker when I see "All Natural" on the box (I know that the stuff is still highly processed and for all intent and purposes it might as well be artificial) but unfortunately, even those seem to trigger sugar cravings for me... which makes me wonder if I might have to stay away from them totally to avoid all of that as well...

Sometimes I really wish I could just go back to having some sugar in my coffee and little bit of honey in my tea and not have to worry about all of this...

I think I am... but it's hard to tease out sometimes if it's my thyroid acting up or perimenopause.

I can't even have a stick of sf gum without incredible cramps and bathroom issues. My body won't accept it at all.

My face is always broken out, especially for TOM. Doesn't matter if I'm having artificial sweeteners or not. Doesn't matter if I'm eating "clean" or not. Doesn't matter what kind of acne medication I use what my daily skin routine is. I've taken vitamins for my skin for months and months and still see no difference. So annoying!

As far as I can tell, I don't have any reactions to sucralose (Splenda), and I'll drink diet soda/tea sweetened with it. But some lite/sugar-free candies, and most diet drinks & sugar-free gum contain aspartame (Equal). I totally have a bad reaction to that stuff! I went through months and months of debilitating migraines a few years back, sometimes spending a week in bed unable to do anything but hold a pillow over my head, praying that the pain would stop. Part of me thought it was stress from moving across the country and being in a new climate, but my head was also foggy much of the time. I couldn't think straight nor concentrate on anything. No clue what the cause was until the night I was feeling decent for a change and my hubby handed me a bottle of tea. I doubled over in pain halfway through, and it dawned on me when I read the label. That was back when I was first attempting to ween myself away from sugar and had turned to diet products. And I felt so stupid; my dad had issues with aspartame years before (headaches and sores on his gums from eating sugar-free breath mints) that I'd totally forgotten about. A few weeks away from aspartame products and I started feeling like my old self again . . . no more headaches and the brain fog finally lifted.

I read labels on everything and no longer buy fountain soda, and in the stores I'm pretty much limited to Diet Hansen's, Diet RC, Diet Coke with Splenda (in the yellow label), and Zevia since everything else seems to have aspartame in it. The only gum I've been able to find in stores that's aspartame-free is Cinnamon Trident (even every other Trident flavor has aspartame, yeesh) but I read the label each time because there's always a chance the formula has changed (I found out the hard way once when drinking "lite" cranberry juice).

I've never noticed a difference with weight loss or bloating between either sweetener though, and have never noticed a difference in my complexion no matter what I do. But you never know, every body reacts differently to these things. Maybe you could try experimenting with abstaining to see how your body reacts, and then see if you have issues again when going back to it.

Good luck!

Artificial sweeteners like Splenda make me nauseous and give me bad gas. I'll use stevia and be fine though. Chemical artificial sweeteners are really bad for the body anyways. Little fun fact, the man who "discovered" it actually had accidentally got a little bit of an experimental medication on his finger and for some odd reason decided to lick it...and now we have splenda!

That's what I plan to do. Would be better to not have it anyway.

It's strange for me to get breakouts when I got them. And they were different than usually too. I'm nowhere near ovulation or TTOM, so what the heck?

You know, I was drinking Diet Pepsi tonight over dinner with friends and suddenly got a headache, nausea and some gastro distress. I have never noticed a pattern before with artificial sweeteners, perhaps certain combinations of foods + aspartame/sucralose/what have you can trigger reactions?

Now this could be total coincidence, but I've been peeing like mad today, and I just hopped on the scale and I'm lighter now, in the evening, than I was in the morning. That usually means I'll around 2 pounds lighter tomorrow morning.

I'll have to keep this in mind. Though, I'm proud of myself. I've been super sleep deprived which usually means I make bad food choices. Well, instead of grabbing the cookies (which are in the kitchen) or other such things, I grabbed a sugar free lozenge or a diet soda. It might have temporarily made me hold water and temporarily made my skin break out, but at least it wasn't sugar which does far worse things to me (cloudy/stinky urine, lethargic, increased sugar cravings, water weight gain, and fat gain).

I have to have massive quantities of artificial sweeteners to have any malaise and I've never noticed a stall. That doesn't mean they might not affect you, but I find they're benign, especially sucralose and erythritol.

AND... the scale is down 1.6 pounds from yesterday morning. Could be a fluke, but I'll keep watching it to see if it is a factor for me or not.

I tend to hold water quite easily - like UNBELIEVABLY easily!

when i was a child I had severe migraines when i drank diet soda or had sugar free candy. We eventually determined that I had an allergy to the sweetener NutriSweet. However they pretty much quit using that in diet sodas and such so I haven't had any problem. I use artificial sweetener in my coffee every morning (2 packs per mug, 3 mugs a day) and one Pepsi Max. If I use more than that I will get a pretty nasty headache though.

This is a loaded statement that I would disagree with. What research have you done to come to this conclusion and which sweeteners are you indicating? Chain emails and hearsay don't really count...

I haven't seen Kaplods around in a while but she often chimes in here with the "natural" vs. "artificial" debate with some good facts. There's a lot of natural stuff out there that is terrible for you (Hemlock, for example).