When I first moved to Vegas, I was under an extraordinary amount of stress. I'd gone through a lot emotionally and physically that previous year, and had a lot of adjustments to make in settling into a whole new life. Um, not to sound overly-dramatic, I'm just giving a little background.
Anyway, I started getting these god-awful headaches. At first I thought it was all the stress catching up with me or from moving to an entirely new climate (I went from the midwest to the desert), but after spending a few months of settling in and and trying to calm down I wasn't feeling any better. My head felt "fuzzy" most of the time, I had difficulties concentrating on anything, and my last hope for ridding myself of the headaches was updating my eye prescription. New glasses and contacts didn't help though.
About a year in, my headaches turned into full-blown migraines. I couldn't handle any amount of light. I couldn't handle any loud noises, and eventually couldn't listen to music anymore. And it got so bad at times that I'd end up staying in bed for a week at a time, unable to do anything. I couldn't watch tv, couldn't read, couldn't browse online, couldn't eat, nothing; I was in too much pain. It was all I could to lay in bed with the curtains and blinds drawn, pulling the pillow over my head because the dim light seemingly pierced right through my skull.
One day I was feeling surprisingly normal, well enough to be sitting up and reading when Rey got home. He thought it was great, and handed me the drink he'd bought me on the way home from work. After having about half the bottle, I doubled over from the pain in my head. I realized it had to be something in that bottle. It was then I finally made the connection; since I was concerned about my sugar intake, I'd been having diet drinks on a regular basis ever since I'd moved.
I eventually narrowed it down to aspartame (it seems whenever I was feeling better it was because I was having sucralose instead). I eliminated it immediately, although it took several months for my symptoms to completely subside. And if I accidentally had some within that time frame, the headaches would immediately return.
I'm still wary of sucralose, but will allow myself some in moderation in the same way I do for actual sugar, which is pretty minimal. I make my own sodas at home out of entirely natural ingredients for a treat (stevia is a naturally calorie-free sweetener and just a teeny bit of fruit juice goes a long way), but I mostly drink plain water or unsweetened tea these days. And the migraines have not returned since. If I do accidentally drink or eat something with aspartame in it these days, the headaches don't return, but the fuzziness and confusion does. I imagine it's not as intense because it's no longer built up in my system, and I won't give it the chance to build back up again.
When people say artificial sweeteners are perfectly safe I have to shake my head; maybe it's true it doesn't effect everyone the same way, but there had to be a bigger, underlying reason why aspartame was giving me those god-awful symptoms.
